Suggestions…

[Ben The camera guy]

do you have a need to buy the machine (besides learning purposes)…do you have a job(s) to cover a good chunk of the machine’s cost? if not, I’d hold off…everything I’ve ever bought without it being needed/paid for has been a bit of a waste in my mind…

but if you’re dead set on getting a machine now, either platform is great…windows, intel core 2 duos are smokin, wait till cs3 for the mac, and 4gb of memory should suffice (I have 4 in my machine, 3 for AE, 1 for everything else hehe)…

[Dave Hirschberg]

My company is purchasing the equipment. I don’t think I will get everything I ask for, but I want the ultimate list so I can work backwards. And who knows maybe they say yes to the whole thing.

D

Dave Hirschberg | Motion Graphics Designer | Creative Department
TELEMUNDO/NBC NY | 201.969.4204 | dave0@lowerthird.com | david.hirschberg@nbcuni.com

[Ron Lindeboom]

If you want the dream machine and it must be a Mac, be sure and spec out some fans also. ;o)

Or, get a small child’s pool from Wal-Mart and keep it handy as Summer approaches. ;o)

Kathlyn and I use the multi-proc Macs and it is as if the Earth rolled out of its orbit and suddenly drew closer to the Sun.

There is nothing like multi-cores in Summer.

Order beer, says Cowdog. He should know, he loves his beer.

So, in closing, a true dream machine has to include beer.

Tell your bosses at NBC/Telemundo that Cowdog says so. They’ll understand.

Oh, and don’t settle for anything less than the new dual-quadcores with at least the ATI Radeon X1900 video board or the nVidia Quadro FX 4500 if they are feeling especially generous.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

[Dave Hirschberg]

Thanks and the slide and diving board are being installed as we speak!

Dave

Dave Hirschberg | Motion Graphics Designer | Creative Department
TELEMUNDO/NBC NY | 201.969.4204 | dave0@lowerthird.com | david.hirschberg@nbcuni.com

[Ben The camera guy]

i’m with ron…a true dream machine is one that holds, nay, dispenses beer…

[Kevin Camp]

from the sounds of what ae cs3 can do, you’ll want a lot of ram… 2 gigs per processing core regardless of platform. so if you want an 8-core mac, you’d like 16 gigs of ram ($$$) to get the all the rendering power from the new render engine.

you’ll also want a striped raid… sata2 seems like the way to go, components are relatively cheap and very fast. if your working in sd a 2 drive raid is probably good enough, but if your working in hd you may want something closer to 8 drives ($$$).

you’ll want a way to at least monitor ae in ntsc/pal/hd, if not also ingest and record to tape. i like the blackmagic products, they’re good devices at good price. plus, when they update thier drivers, they don’t just fix problems they also add features (like when they added capture and monitoring from photoshop and, recently, capture to photo jpeg).

graphics cards.. at least get one that is opengl 2. i haven’t heard any opengl specifics on cs3 yet, but a lot of what i’ve heard from ae7 is that it doesn’t utilize the high end features of the pricey pro-line cards that are designed more for 3d applications. so, i think you’ll be fine with a fast non-pro card and spend the thousands of dollars you’ll be saving on ram.

how about a 30-inch lcd panel display too. apple and dell both have nice ones.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Mike Procunier]

If its going to be a Mac Pro WAIT until AECS3 comes out (they’re saying July) AE7 won’t go full speed on Mac Pro (it runs faster on a G5 quad) and has some memory cache issues. There are workarounds but expect crashes anywhere from a couple times a day, to every 15 minutes, depending on project (spoken from experience) The AE8 Free Preview is really cool and FLIES on an 8-core… seriously, it’s FAST. But it still has a bunch of bugs & doesn’t have a preview of Keylight, Cycore or Color Finesse. They’re good at suggesting workarounds, but it just seems really unpredictable right now. As for your video card: if you’re going to go with Blackmagic, at the very least get the Decklink Extreme HD. The Decklink Extreme (SD version) won’t work on a Mac Pro with more than 2GB of RAM, & if you get an 8-Core you need at least 8GB. Good Luck.

[Ron Lindeboom]

I didn’t feel the need to warn him of the Mac Intel / AE issues as he works for a major broadcaster. The year will end and we’ll be discussing CS4 before the deal is done. ;o)

But hey, I wonder when those beer-dispensing Intel Macs will be rending all those tiny bubbles???

Best,

Ron Lindeboom

[Delete]

It’s Quantum processing! the beer is the processor. Wow, look at the new and improved work-“flow”, cough..cough.

That said… Get smart build your own, and crank it up with two quadcores. Liquid cooled, etc. for Summer.

Heck if you cool it right, you could cut down on cost of AC for the year. (maybe not)