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[Walter Biscardi]

[Nate Stephens] “The trick is to purchase the right gear,,, that works together,, as advertised and meets the maximum requirements at the least price…”

That’s always a moving target. All I can say is I’ve had an AJA Kona 2 board running almost three years now cutting SD and HD projects. It’s about to be retired and replaced with an Io HD to match up with our two Kona 3’s.

With the price of video cards these days, your first job should really pay for it. If you want something that has to work on a laptop, then you look at the Io HD. That gives you the maximum flexibility for both SD and HD.

And AJA products work as advertised. When they say something works in realtime, then it’s really hardware based “real” realtime.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Jeremy Garchow]

Sounds like the ioHD is for you. It up down and cross coverts and also lets you move it around from MacPro to MacBookPro. Yes it’s expensive, but you will get the most mileage out of that cool little machine for years to come.

Jeremy

[Nate Stephens]

” your first job should really pay for it. ”

And your guaranteed low interest rate on the credit card will never go up,,,

such statements might be true if you live and work in an area that is growing very fast with lots of video work…. My town is not in one of those regions…

I like what I have heard about the Kona 3 card, it was on my upgrade list, till the summer client cut my budget by 15K.. The Kona 3 is aprox $3k with the Component to SDI another grand/.. I have the old Cinewave/G4 to digitize SD video. All HD mastering to tape will be contracted to a dub house.. So the Kona card is really just an over priced monitoring card at this time.. All HD ingest is P2 cards. If I can get another big job with a big downpayment this summer, sure the Kona is back on the list…. But I am not going to buy it with the credit card, on the hopes that my interest rates stay below 10% and the economy doesn’t tank after the elections..

I am being forced to be very frugal, if I am to accomplish my goal of being HD compliant for the fall TV spot season. It is a good exercise to force yourself to do every now and then. Is it fun, not really.. can it be done…. maybe…..

I think there is a lot of collective experience here on the Cow. With the help of this herd, I am confidant that I will have a working MacPro HD edit solution… the question is, at what price and is it bug free..

Frugal HD, not cheap or stupid or blow the bank HD… All Mooos are encouraged because I Know some old bull, or young calf have found themselves a thick bunch of HD clover.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Nate. You’re going to have to spend money. Getting a Kona3 or ioHD is not going to break the bank and that equipment will last you for years and years to come… well past the fall spot season. Also, the more you keep in house, the more money you make. Everything you send out to a dub house is money out of your pocket. Send back the HPX500 as you don’t have a lens. Use that money to beef up your edit system, shoot and make money with your HVX200 and buy the whole camera with lens when you can afford it.

Work smart.

Jeremy

[Nate Stephens]

Jeremy,

If I buy the Kona, then I need a HD deck to master to, Panny 1400 =19K or Sony HDcam 1800=25K…. No deck – back to the dub house… There has to be another avenue to monitor Broadcast HD .. besides the Kona (there is one 1400 deck rental in town at $500 per day)

HPX500, My clients want to see the large cameras, not the little toy cameras (that do a damn good job) … An SD lens on the HPX500 should work for the near term, or I can rent locally a HD lens for those fussy clients.. (HPX500 has a 2K rebate till 6/30/08)

I sell, write, shoot and edit my projects. I do not have clients that just have me edit, unless it is fix-ups of their crap.. and I do not have clients that I just shoot for. I do turnkey video production. I am lucky if my clients can write a paragraph, about what they have to see and hear in their video productions… And yes they are all college graduates in upper level corporate, Government and University jobs… that were told to do a video.

I am not east or west coast.. I am a small 2 person shop (plus day hires) in the midwest. It is tuff having to wear so many hats. I dream about Ad and PR Agencies coming in with scripts and storyboards all ready to shoot and edit…. Not in this town,,,, they go to the west coast, for the sand, sun and babes,,, and the very good (cut throat) production community out there.. 😉

[Jeremy Garchow]

Nate, you’re kind of sending mixed messages here.

What do you NEED to do?

[Nate Stephens]

“What do you NEED to do?”

What I need is a winning Lotto ticket…. but since that is not going to happen, what my goal for the summer is..Is to be HD compliant by mid July.

Our HD will be all P2 based… we will ship HD via FTP, DVD-rom, Blue Ray or Hard drive.

So I need to upgrade (not throw away) my G4/Cinewave edit suite, with a new MacPro that has 2 monitors for the timeline and Browser and a third monitor for HD color correction..

I will test your Kona codec (thank you) on my MBP to make sure it translates Cinewave files correctly with out Kona card. If it does I will keep the G4/Cinewave to digitize and master SD video.

I will have about 8K to accomplish a P2 HD edit upgrade, that has to include the Blue Ray burner, Adobe CS3, FCP upgrade, MacPro, ram, hard drives – raid, monitors and “Broadcast” HD Monitoring.

I am not trying to build the perfect HD in-out suite. I am trying to put together the “minimum” components that I can add to as more revenue becomes available.

My clients do not sit thru the edits. They never even visit. They do not care how I do it, just so I do it for a reasonable fee and it looks great.. It is just video,,, magic right 🙂

[Jeremy Garchow]

So why do you need upconversion?

[Walter Biscardi]

[Nate Stephens] “I will have about 8K to accomplish a P2 HD edit upgrade, that has to include the Blue Ray burner, Adobe CS3, FCP upgrade, MacPro, ram, hard drives – raid, monitors and “Broadcast” HD Monitoring.

I am not trying to build the perfect HD in-out suite. I am trying to put together the “minimum” components that I can add to as more revenue becomes available.”

All that for $8k will be very tough. I just spent about $6,500 on the new Mac Pro Octo 3.2 with the 8GB RAM. I think you’ll need to budget more like $12k for everything you have listed at the bare minimum.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!

[Nate Stephens]

“So why do you need upconversion?”

My main client has a Betacam SP based animated Logo that goes in all their TV spots.. As of today that is the only reason…

Considering their logo is over black, I have thought maybe I could export it as animation and then uprez and doctor it in Photoshop, or maybe the new Boris uprez plugin or even compressor. I have read where the Kona 3 and the Terranx (sp) are the best for uprezing. This is a seven second animated logo, so how critical does it have to be??? Good question… only the eyes will tell.. The logo does have edges and diagonal edges but no circles or ovals. So it would be nice to keep the edges from going too soft or aliasing..

At this point in time a Kona 3 purchase to uprez a 7 second animation is a little over kill. I apologize if I left you with the impression that Uprez was a critical need.