Self building a new FCP system

[Peter Wolsey]

Splendid – much heartened by all this. We currently edit Digibeta SD /SDI and will continue to for the next 12 months thence onward to HD of some flavour or other.

Our existing suite has the capacity to upgrade to HD and the next suite will also – so I know what we are looking at in terms of future capacity. It’s also comforting having developed an understanding of our current machine too.

My real concern was if there was a lot of ‘Black Art’ stuff relating to the mystical communication between the hardware and software – but it looks as though this is reasonably straightforward with the G5, Blackmagic Decklink, etc.

It also doesn’t hurt to have a relative who is ex HO Engineering at a large TV station! So on the whole I think we’ll take a crack at it ourselves.

Thanks to all for your comments, as ever. Great food for thought. Pete

[Adam Smith]

By building my own rig I saved around $4000 with which I was able to get more/better components than compared to the best best dealer’s quote.

Assembly was fairly straightforward, but it helped that I had to wait around 2 months for financing to go through and I had all that time to do research.

[Rennie Klymyk]

[msacci] “Hey my son is going to UVic.
“

Hey, small world, what is he studying?

[msacci] “Retail sales – talking to them is scary or maddening, which ever way you look at it”

Yes, although my experience was during the reserection, Apple had been going through hard times in those days but still it was a shocker.

[John Davidson]

I knew virtually nothing about fcp or macs – but spending $1200 a day in avid was motivation enough to figure it out.

I used the DR group in Hollywood to configure my RAID, purchased a loaded mac with cheaper ram installed from a 3rd party dealer, and installed the Kona 2, e-sata, breakout box, and digibeta deck on my own.

It was a great experience for me. I can’t wait to do it again with a Mac Pro and a new second system.

1 day to leopard….

John Davidson____ writer | producer | director____https://www.magicfeather.tv