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Upgrade quandary
Hi,
We have an academic version of Xpress Pro 5.7 (my wife is a faculty member at CUNY) installed on a five year old BOXX pc with XP Professional SP3. We use an analog MOJO. The display card is an NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400. We store media on a CalDigit HDElement raid 5, 6tb sata array; the pc has a CalDigit RAID controller card. We’re producing a documentary about a former Hollywood matinee idol. It’s an ongoing project that we work on when we can. I’m a working freelance cameraman in the NYC market.
The media for the project has consisted of BetaSP, VHS, DV, scanned photos, DVCProHD.
We’re thinking we should upgrade to media composer 5 but our project is far from over – in fact it’s not more than half finished and will take several more years to finish considering the speed at which we work. We’re nervous about changing systems mid project but also nervous about our current system becoming unworkable (already I’m having problems updating Windows Media Player, Foxfire, Kaspersky, Kensington Mouse Works) – seems like applications are beginning to not play well together and I figure it will just get worse.
I would like to switch the project over to a new HP Z (qualified), or a new BOXX (unqualified), or a MacPro and upgrade to Media Composer 5. Maybe we should just upgrade from XpressPro to Media Composer 5 – but it might not like the older system. I’m aware that switching systems mid-project is fraught with dangers; the dangers of switching operating systems too mid-project …. I’m not familiar with. Does anybody have any suggestions/advice/guidance?
Thanks very much,
Herb Forsberg
Herb Forsberg
Cinematographer
NY/NJ
Local 600/NABET 16 -
2 Replies
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You are right in your thinking that you should not upgrade in the middle of a project. Sometimes effects do not carry forward or links are broken. However, I have worked at several facilities that have upgraded systems over the years and have had very little issue opening old projects.
I am currently working on a project that was started on MC 4.0.x Vista, was considered complete but revisions were needed. So we opened the project on the same computer, but now that computer is Windows 7 with MC5. I haven’t had any issues.
My feelings are…backup everything, make copies where necessary and upgrade to your system of choice.
Avid and FCP Preditor
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Anything worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
– Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield -
I don’t see why you would have any issues. I’m primarily an online (finishing) editor and my company just did a massive upgrade of all edit systems to HP Z400s or 800s, Windows 7 and either MC 5 or Symphony 5 respectively. All of the projects I’m currently working with were offlined with MC 4 on HP 8000s Windows XP. The only problem I have is a few scans may have to be re-worked a little bit and some FX may need to be tweaked slightly or re-rendered… nothing particularly out of the ordinary when onlining. Avid is pretty solid when it comes to opening old projects or moving projects to different computers. I’m not sure how you manage your media, but I find it easiest to have your AvidMediaFiles, OMFIMediaFiles, Archives, Music, etc. folders on one drive. Just make sure all of your files are backed up and all drive letters and folder names/location stay the same otherwise you will have a fun time trying to relink everything. Basically, if you’re a Nazi about keeping your media well organized you should have no problems beyond a re-render.
Unrelated:
I would switch from Firefox to Chrome if I were you. Much faster and cleaner UI.
Avid Symphony Nitris v5.0, Boris RED 4.0, HP z800 Intel Xeon X5570 @ 2.03GHz (2 processors), 6 GB RAM, NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800
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