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moving into uncommpressed world, what should I know?
I’ve been in the DV world for my past 2 jobs, uncompressed wasn’t a viable option due to the massive amounts of content.
I want to start editing uncompressed at home and I’m wondering what I need to do this.
I do a lot of editing at home and dv compression has been fine, but due to the fact that a lot more folks have higher end tvs (that no longer “hide” some compression issues),
I’m thinking I want to step up my game a bit.I have a new 17″ MacBook Pro, and currently I’m using Lacie Drives thru firewire800.
If I want to edit uncompressed, what is the basic setup?
RAID, RAM, input card etc.?
Can I use LaCie drives and stripe them?
Money is somewhat of an issue, but I’ll pay to make it look nicer if I have to. -
7 Replies
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Uncompressed work is usually relegated to a G5 tower…because you need a capture card to capture uncompressed. There is one card out there that captures uncompressed SD via firewire, and that is the AJA I/O. But you are going to run into an issue of Drive speed. Firewire isn’t going to cut it for uncompressed. And you can’t stripe firewire drives for better throughput in this case. I have used G-Raids for uncompressed 8-bit successfully…but those are two hard drives hardware raided in the case, and they are connected to my computer via firewire 800. I wouldn’t recommend them for uncompressed 10-bit.
You will need:
G5 tower and monitors
Capture Card (AJA or Decklink)
SATA RAID or FIBRECHANNEL RAID hard drives
Color Correction MonitorShane
Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net -
Shane-
What kind of results do you get from your G-Raid (8 bit)?
That sounds like it may be a viable solution for me.
I plan to buy a tower/AJA next year sometime, but I’m hoping I can have a more immediate solution that doesn’t require a huge investment.
(key word, hoping)
My clients are extremely happy with what I now provide, but I’m not anymore. -
I never really measured the input/output. All I know is that it worked fine for uncompressed 8-Bit SD very well.
BUT…if you get the AJA I/O and G-Raids, you must have a PCIexpress card adaptor to add more firewire ports. The firewire ports on the Macs all share the same bus, and this will cause problems.
I just ran the AJA system test…I get about 55-60 MB/s read write.
Shane
Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net -
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Abandon the idea of FireWire drives. What if you need to do 10 Bit? You only get one stream of playback with a G-RAID. You need a real RAID array if you are doing hardcore day to day editing in uncompressed land and are serious about it. I’m not a fan if the Io as FireWire latency is not cool in my book. I prefer a Kona card. If you are concerned about cost, it’s better to either wait until you do have the cash to do it right OR finance it and hope the increased business will help you pay it off.
Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com
Pres. SF Cutters -
[Kevin Monahan] “I’m not a fan if the Io as FireWire latency is not cool in my book”
Todd, if you are planning to do uncompressed on a powerbook, the io is the only way to go. The firewire latency is not a deal breaker, as a matter of fact if you set it up properly, you won’t even notice it enough to care. You will be able to do 8 bit uncompressed SD on a FW800 RAID, such as a GRAID. You can also look into getting a striped SATA solution from companies like Firmtek. I have done this is on two different Powerbook (even a 667 titanium) with no problems for my mobile edit situations. With a Macbook, your disk rendering and speeds will be just as good if not better than a dual 2.0 Gig G5. Spend a little money now in an io, a GRAID and a FW800 or SATA express34 card, then make more money and then get your G5 or Intel mac or whatever it’s going to be in the next coming months. Your io and GRAID will connect just fine to the new tower when you decide to make the big purchase. This is how I started with FCP, got a laptop system and gradually built up to an uncompressed HD editing suite. AJA products are top notch in the FCP world and if you have any issues at all, there’s an io forum here on the cow and contacting AJA support is actually a pleasurable experience. Good luck in your endeavors.
Jeremy
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I don’t mean to say that the Io sucks or anything. It’s fine if all you have is a portable Mac. But I much prefer the accuracy of monitoring via a capture card. Latency via FireWire is really crappy though, I’ve also learned to ignore it (with DV) as I know the issues. But I’d rather not have to deal with that, Playback offset just makes your keyboard spongy if you try and “fix” it.
Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com
Pres. SF Cutters
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