[Adam Taylor]

there are many other things i could put – but without knowing the purpose of your suite (or the choice of edit equipment) its kinda difficult to say.

I was in a similar situation a couple of years back. I was taken on the buidland run an in-house facility for doing all our tv commercials (which runs close to 80 per year (plus all the associated other uses for in house A/V).

If its any help – i chose the Final Cut Pro route for the video and Protools for audio work. I had previously been an Avid editor but was never a big fan. FCP has its own character but it has proven to be a reliable workhorse. Protools i know from 3 years as a sound editor. As previously mentioned – all the post work (audio/video and graphics) and much of the pre-transmission paperwork is all done by me. So i made sure the kit i got was going to do exactly what i wanted.

One thing i cannot stress enough – SERVICE CONTRACTS !!! pay the extra when you buy the kit, you will be glad you did when a piece of kit goes tits up! What i paid for ours has already paid for itself in replaced bits of kit.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking they are offering a vast sum that can be spent on creating a high end looking facility. Once they start going through the list with you, you will need to justify every bit of kit. Be sensible and don’t give them a reason to think you are anything less than committed to giving them the best value for their money. It could all backfire if they approve all your fancy room accessories and then deny you the broadcast monitor because the boss just bought himself a cheap plasma and he thinks its all you need. Its not!!

Get the kit right and the ergonomics of the workspace right, and only then can you think about the nonsense you can’t do without.

If you do your homework (do it well – i spent several months researching the options before placing a single order), then you should have a comprehensive list of kit that should do exactly what you need with enough flexibility for the future. An do cost comparisons to and projections to help backup your choices.

When we did our plan, i knew from day one that moving the post production in-house would save vast sums of money. And it did. I spent the kind of budget you mentioned knowing full well that huge savings were being made immediately. Financial directors love to hear that stuff – but don’t start thinking that you are a wonderkind because you saved them some cash – thats why they did this in the first place, and it won’t guarantee an unending supply of new kit when you feel like it. That initial saving is soon forgotten because the money will be redirected into making more ads, or whatever they want to spend it on.

Have fun !!

Adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

[Adam Taylor]

comfy chair? Hermann Miller Mirra…even nicer than the Aeron (i’ve had both!).

Wacom Intuos 3 tablet – you’ll never want to touch a mouse again.

Desk – get a custom made one to your own specs….you will never find an off the peg desk that is big enough.

will you have more than one computer? – get a Gefen 4x4DVI KVM Matrix. Lets you have two dual monitor computers sharing the same two screens (or each using one of the screens, etc)

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

[Adam Taylor]

if you are intending to make programs for broadcast, then it would be foolish not to contact all the possible broadcasters who may show the material and ask for their Delivery Specs.

Many of the decisions will be made based on what they will accept for broadcast, and if your material falls outside these specs, then chances are they will reject the show.

Also, depending on where in the world you are will have a bearing on the format and frame rate you choose. If you are lucky enough to live in Europe or somewhere that uses the PAL system, then you will be working at 25fps (50hz power matches up to 50 fields – 2 video fields to each frame). If NTSC is dominant in your area then it gets a whole lot more complicated (at least it does for a pal man who has never had to deal with drop frames/non drop frames, fractions of frames, etc.I always used to think that the 60hz power in USA equated to 30fps (60 fields per sec), but i think it gets a lot more complicated than that…

When it comes to HD formats, then i believe you can use the 50/60 in the name to decide if its suitable for a Pal or NTSC broadcast system.

good luck!

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

[Adam Taylor]

thanks Aharon – exactly what i needed. In fact i tried putting the light in the right place in the stack – i just didn’t realise i needed to hit the adjustment layer button for the effect to do what i needed!

Oh well -i’ll know next time, as i managed to complete the effect using the nested precomps.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

[Adam Taylor]

Ahh – of course. I had tried that but just hadn’t gone far enough.
To achieve the effect required multiple layers of nested pre-comps!

thanks Chris

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

[Adam Taylor]

Hi Jeremy,

no – i stopped using Motion after l kept on getting random coloured frames when i rendered the files in FCP!!

I think i have just cured the problem….I could find the files it was looking for, and they did have video content but would not link up. So i trashed prefs, used Render Manager to delete all renders (and this also entailed going through every folder on the Raid, to ensure there were no hidden Render File folders – which there were!).

Anyway – i think its working ok right now…but thanks for the suggestion.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

[Adam Taylor]

i’ve seen no compelling reason to jump to 10.5 yet, so i’m still on 10.4.11.

After the initial startup problems, it has been behaving. I’m hoping that its sorted itself out!!

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

[Adam Taylor]

appreciate the spelling Michael!!

I’m using sdi all the way, into a JVC TM H1950C crt.
I tried rendering into various different codecs and the problem remained (Pro ResHQ actually made it a lot worse).
The only one that looked promising (at least unbtil i actually rendered was the “Graphic” codec. Once rendered it looked really grainy and unpleasant.

I don’t have “sheer”so can’t try it.

i wish i could post a screen grab, but as its only showing on the crt, that aint’t possible.

I can say that the noise is not crawling in anyway, but looks more like echoing shadows that follow the shape of the edges of the red and white. With the graphic on a black background (to cancel any possible interference from other layers) there is a definite series of vertical shadows on the left hand side of the red box…much more obvious than on the other edges.

I’m now thinking its possibly the limitations of the crt that could be the cause!

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

[Adam Taylor]

version 6.0.3,
Kona 3
OSX 10.4.11

haven’t tried it in 8bit….and no – not doing any scaling to this particular graphic. I have tried it at different scales and it seems to happen regardless!.

I gotta say, this has been noticeable on red/white logos since i got the kit 2 years ago, and after making initial investigations i kinda convinced myself to ignore it. Recently a job needed the logo bigger than normal which emphasized the issue and forceed me to look into it again.

I have a feeling this is one of those rare occurences where a PAL shortcoming rears its head, and will mean little to NTSC users. I remember a dim and distant seminar years ago when an engineer explained certain differences between the two systems, and i think what i’m seeing is one of those!

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

[Adam Taylor]

I don’t think thats it Jerry, as i avoid using jpgs if at all possible.
I have even remade the image from scratch, saving out to tiff (several different ways, also). I even created a red layer (cropped) in FCP and overlaid the white text and i still ended up with the interference pattern.

I think its something to do with how Pal handles saturated colours, but i am not sure how to approach the problem without drastically altering the look of corporate logos…which is usually frowned upon by the companies themselves (how very intolerant of them!!).

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK