New Studio Build Out

[Aaron Neitz]

Welcome to the fold. I would suggest keeping an Avid around until you’re REALLY comfortable with Final Cut – especially for those jobs where time is critical and clients are sitting in the room.

Some quick suggestions:

1) get either a bigger Wacom, or a “widescreen” wacom. Two 23″ screens or a 30″ is a lot of real estate

2) get a Kona 3 pci card. It’s pretty much the premier warmachine. It can do everything, all the time, and does it well without any complaints. Track proven. the IO-HD is still a little new…

3) drives. If you’re not doing Uncompressed HD – then buy some G-Raid2 firewire drives. They’ll do uncompressed SD no problem, and ProRes will serve most people HD needs for years to come. A SAN solution is a whole different email. Search around the forums first.

4) Get the 10UK. They’re the newer model. Can’t go wrong with the Panny’s. They do a great job with standard def signals too

[Nathan Byrne]

Aaron Neitz wrote: 2) get a Kona 3 pci card. It’s pretty much the premier warmachine. It can do everything, all the time, and does it well without any complaints. Track proven. the IO-HD is still a little new…

This was a large point of debate for us. I’m really hoping that this product is stable. I prefer the work flow of the Pro Rez outboard processing. I feel that since you have to choose a codec, might as well keep it consistent through the house. And ProRez seems to be a great choice. The other big issue is that the IO HD has all the inputs and outputs necessary. I don’t like that the Kona 3 has limited outputs, requiring D to A’ and distribution amplifyers… It seems that in a professional environment, it might make quick trouble shooting overly complicated.

Thanks for your input. I’m gonna take a long hard look at the IO-HD option and follow the many postings on it here.

[Mark Raudonis]

Nathan,

I would strongly suggest that you investigate a networked workflow. There are plenty of solutions out there for a small set up such as yours: Facilis terrablock comes to mind, but there are others.

Going networked is probably a much more significant decision than what flavor of Kona card you choose. A group based workflow will CHANGE how you do business. One model of card or an other isn’t going to do that.

I’m partial to Apple’s X-SAN, but I recognize that for a small studio it may not be the most economic choice. Moving forward for the next few years, I can’t imagine you setting up a new operation and NOT having shared storage. It’s just too good to ignore, and the prices have come down to the point where you can’t say no.

Good luck. All of your other choices seem fine. I just urge you to consider shared storage… you’ll thank me later.

mark

[David Bogie]

We’ve seen this topic dozens of times over he years. The hardware seems to be where people focus. My suggestion is to make certain your budget and planning include comfortable chairs, adequate air conditioning and circulation, power conditioning and uninterruptable battery for about 5 minutes of computer and drive service, an espresso machine (about $1k, I know from espresso), insurance, and a backup program that guarantees you can be back in business in a worst-case scenario.
These are a few of the things that fail to be included in remodels, startups, and rebuilds after catastrophes.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Jeff Coleman]

ditto that backup plan if you’re planning on being in business more than a week.

POWER: Make sure you have a 20amp circuit and UPS to handle the new Intel Mac (PS rated at 12Amps) and it’s displays. Then another 15A and UPS to handle your storage, vtrs (and that expresso machine).

ENVIRONMENT: Please don’t forget about cooling your storage solution in a dust-free environment/enclosure/room. I haven’t used it but after using another box to store our xRAID I wish I had tried an AcoustiLock cabinet instead.

Oh, RELIABILITY. Does Motion work with Leopard yet???
Each system should have an extra drive for daily backups of critical documents/files on your internal harddrive and firewire clones a key intervals (like OS upgrade). We use a Leader HD waveform (model# escapes me). Pricey, but you can’t rely on the scopes in FCP. Oh, you might want to have an external Pioneer DVD burning drive handy by looks of this thread:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/155/868099.

STORAGE: With that many rooms running you ought to have at least some kind of shared solution even if only gig ethernet.
We’ve had an xRAID for 3+ years–relatively expensive, old technology, not at all reliable and not very good support either (unusual from what I’ve read though). By year’s end we’ll have a new Studio Network Solutions SAN in place, but will withhold comment until thoroughly evaluated. Firewire drives are a way of keeping your costs down but create unwanted reliability and management headaches for general media storage.

CAPTURE CARDS: We use the Kona LHe and LH. The analog inputs are handy for those BetaSP, HDV or HVX component output from camera only sources or just to make a quick daily to your DVD burner. Kona 3 does the cross conversions and we could’ve used that a time or two. The IO HD can’t do the HD uncompressed so if (& when?) QRes becomes a problem or you want more traffic on your native firewire bus then your a bit stuck. With more than one suite, I’d be tempted to do a Kona 3 and a Kona LHe, or perhaps two Kona LHes and a utility FS-1 (https://www.aja.com/html/products_rackmount_FS1.html).

Let us know how you make out.

[Geoff Addis]

Ref your audio upgrade. I don’t know which Yamaha desk your supplier is suggesting, but we are using an 02r96 desk here with great results in classical music recording. The Yamaha 01 has similar mic pre-amps and its facilities may well be adequate for your needs, it will certainly sound better and give you more facilities than the ProSonus FireStudio. We also use the 02r to provide a control surface for the Nuendo software that we use for sound editing; you can probably do the same with an 01.

Oh, don’t forget to get some good monitoring seakers that have a well extended bass response to reveal all the traffic and othe rumble noises!

Hope this helps,

Geoff

[Jeff Coleman]

We use the PreSonus Central Station with the handy remote. Works great to hear VTR, Mac, Capture Card and to monitor by two different speakers to check mixes. It’s not a surround sound device by any means if you’re heading in that direction with STP or FCP.

[Dylan Armajani]

Question…. so ive got the VESA adaptor for some cinema displays (20inch). Looking on xsanity i see that UNIT has rackmounted theres…. anybody have any ideas what rackmount would work for these? Havent had much luck looking around. Middle Atlantic seems to max out at 17inch.