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upgrade a regular firewire G5 FCP system to handle Digibeta
Cheapest option to use DigiBeta in FCP HD
Hello!
I’m a Columbia university film student from Eastern Europe.
I shot my 35mm thesis movie in Romania and is now it is transferred to digibeta and a cloned timecode copy to dvcam.
I am now editing the dvcam but after I finish, I wonder what can I do to save on costs – I want to finish on a digibeta master.
I was thinking about doing some of the stuff myself on the digibeta – color correction (I have color finesse). I have some experience with it, not great though but also I just read twice a great book Color Correction for Digital Video (Hullfish and Fowler) and I am anxious at trying my hand at it. I am a student and besides saving on costs it would be a great experience – now it’s the time to try every new aspect without being afraid of the unknown but – on the contrary – being very excited about exploring every new aspect of filmmaking. Anyway…
My system is just a regular firewire system – FCP 4.5HD, on a dual 2Ghz G5 with 2G or RAM. I have 2 ATA internal drives of 250GB , a firewire 400 120Gb Lacie and a Firewire 800 500Gb Lacie – both external of course.
What is the minimum thing I need to add to my system to be able to handle digibeta?
This could be too much for me to handle (logistically) so I want to ask for a kind advice so I would know what I am getting into. I want to do it as cheaply as possible.I will need a capture card and a professional monitor. I am looking into a mid-range 19′ JVC monitor and the cheapest BlackMagic card – the entry-level DeckLink listed at about $295. I think that will that allow me to have digibeta in Final Cut pro HD in order to do my own color correction using Color Finesse (?). At least, it will be useful to connect the JVC color production monitor to my G5 – this is all I can afford in any instance.
I probably need faster drives? Not very big since my finished movie will have 15 minutes, so I need to capture that many minutes in Digibeta. I am thinking about going to some online facility and transferring the footage and bringing it home.
This is too large of a question I know and I am a neophite at on-line things – only have experience with regular firewire systems. That is why any advice if this is doable on the cheap side would be GREATLY appreciated.
Thank you very much!
Bogdan -
6 Replies
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Get a Blackmagic or AJA SDI card and you are away. The internal drives will capture 10bit uncomressed without a problem. I do it everyday. Keep the non-System drive as empty as possible and use it as your scratch drive for capture and playback.
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A single stream of 10 bit uncompressed will probably work on a single internal SATA drive but to be safe, use two such drives and the Apple Disk Utility to stripe them as RAID 0. You will need a PCI Serial ATA controller card to add two disk drives, but you will definitely get the bandwidth that you need.
The Decklink Pro SDI card is probably the best value since it can do other things that the Decklink $295 can not.
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OK I will see if I can stretch my finances for a DeckLink Pro AND a JVC monitor – very glad I don’t need seemingly other drives to buy…
The only concern is how to load the digibeta footage onto the internal drives without renting a digibeta deck whick is so expensive! – Take my computer with me to an on-line facility of I can convince some friends there?…
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There’s no ‘probable’ about it. The internal drives on a G5 will give you a regular 50MB/s read/write. As I said, do it every day. For multiple streams in FCP a raid is required but many editing jobs don’t need it.
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Thank you very much for the replies friends!
Vincent I will follow you advice. I really appreciate it!Bogdan
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[Bogdan] “The only concern is how to load the digibeta footage onto the internal drives without renting a digibeta deck whick is so expensive! – Take my computer with me to an on-line facility of I can convince some friends there?…”
Hi,
They provide that service here. Send them your tape and a FW drive.
https://www.digitalservicestation.com/Best Wishes,
Mitch
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