Young Editor-Next Move?

[Walter Soyka]

If you’re asking for technical advice, we’ll need a lot more information about your system and your requirements. Please let us know what the specs on your MacBook are, describe a bit about the videos you’re working on, and let us know where you’re getting hung up in your workflow.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Kelton Corc]

Ok forgot that as the post went way off track, it is a 2.26GHz MBP with the 9400M GPU, 2 Gigs of ram and a 160 GB HDD. I edit with like stated above, Flip Ultra HD footage converted via MPEG Streamclip to HQ ProRes files. Most of my videos end up to be 1-7 minutes long. Final codec is H.264

[Ryan Mast]

So what’s your bottleneck right now?

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Kelton Corc]

Well I want to know my cheapest way to get some good gear, I either want to go for a camcorder, yet with that I would get a nice HD one Probably a Sony CX-100 or a Cannon VIXIZ HF200. I don’t know if I could edit that on the system I have now though. Or I could pick up an hard drive for my FCP work, it would be a nice 1-2TB 7200rpm and big cache buffer. What do you think?

[Ryan Mast]

Get the VIXIA. Very nice camera for its price range — one of my clients is using it for a web series right now. It plays nicely with Final Cut. Get a decent shotgun mic, too.

Get one of these:
https://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11030

Don’t bother with converting Flip video to ProRes HQ — it’s overkill. Vanilla ProRes or ProRes LT sufficient.

—
Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Kelton Corc]

Ok, but is the video editable on my system, because this baby gets really humming when I’m editing my Flip footage. Also, I cannot use other forms of ProRes because I still am using FCS2, my dad’s company will be purchasing 3 soon though and I can install that then. It should work with FCS2 right, latest update for AVCHD?

[Grinner Hester]

Your tools are not important, Kelton. Your pushing them to their limits is what will get ya gigs. Create a sweeet reel, shop it around and take the first internship offered. You need real work experience and this is how you’ll get your foot int he door.
Props on the early initiative, brother. Have fun, man.

[Ryan Mast]

[Kelton Corc] “It should work with FCS2 right, latest update for AVCHD?”

Yes. Final Cut Pro 6.0.1: About transferring AVCHD footage

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Kelton Corc]

Thanks for all of the help guys, but with a family trip coming up and me becoming more experienced I am looking at picking up a camcorder because then I will be set for a little bit. Also, I am not talking about if FInal Cut can handle AVCHD I am talking my MBP, it gets pretty slow when editing with flip footage, I can’t imagine 1080p. I know that tools are not important, but it would really change things to have a smooth workflow. Yet I guess that is what post-production is, a headache, yet we do it because the final product makes us proud. Also if any one could check out some of my videos on https://www.youtube.com/XxHiLaRoUSxX
that would be great. A quick word about those videos though, there are some not taken seriously. The ones that are good are as follows: Best Parent In America: Interview, Kahlahad Takedown PT.1(pt.2 will be much better as we are setting up dates for it), The chase(one of my best edits when I turn the corner with the M4 and then cut to another angle. And finally my first gun shot test was the showdown.

Thanks A TON,

kelton

[Kelton Corc]

Sorry about that the link was not showing up for some reason
https://www.youtube.com/XxHiLaRoUSxX