[Alan Okey]

You could use Qmaster to set up a distributed rendering cluster for Compressor. I wouldn’t be surprised if the new Mini is faster than your G5 when it comes to pure CPU grunt – the bottleneck in the Mini is more likely to be hard drive speed or RAM than CPU speed.

In any case, you could set up a cluster using Qmaster and send batch jobs to the cluster from Compressor while you continue to work on your G5.

Here’s a quick setup guide on how to achieve this:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1043581

[Alan Okey]

https://toolfarm.stores.yahoo.net/wopaemformo.html

[Alan Okey]

Check out Wraptor at quvis.com.

[Alan Okey]

My vote would be the Sonnet. I’ve used their cards before and have never been disappointed.

I’ve seen plenty of LaCie products fail, and since they’re not really in the business of selling PCI cards, I’d be suspicious of their level of commitment to the product.

Too bad about CalDigit, that’s disappointing to hear. I was considering one of their cards many months ago but the immediate need passed so I never pursued it. To their credit, their sales, service and support has been great for my HDPro RAID.

[Alan Okey]

[Shane Ross] “Snow, rain, smoke.”

And let’s not forget… Star Dust!

No self-respecting local car commercial is complete without Super Sparkling Star Dust!

By the way, this is a must-watch:

https://www.makemylogobiggercream.com/

It made me cry with laughter.

[Alan Okey]

I can’t wait to hear Bob Zelin weigh in on this.

This oughtta be good…

[Alan Okey]

What DVD Studio Pro really needs is a check box to set the aspect ratio of the viewer’s brain.

I’d pay extra for that…

[Alan Okey]

[Bjarki Gudjonsson] “I’d also love to hear good ideas on what media drives to use. I work with all formats, from SD to uncompressed HD and RED, so I’d love some pointers.”

Don’t skimp on storage. Get yourself a big, fast RAID-5 array from a reputable company that specializes in video storage such as:

CalDigit (HDPro, HDOne)

Dulce Systems (Pro DQ, Pro RX)

Maxx Digital (Evo 2K Expando, Evo 4K Expando)

[Alan Okey]

[walter biscardi] “All you need to do is export the QT file and have your client switch the counter to TC. “

I’m guessing that the client wants the timecode overlaid over the video in large numbers so that they don’t have to look at the tiny counter. Because, you know, it’s just too much work to look at a tiny counter.

😉

[Alan Okey]

Does the client need to see the original footage in HD? If not, and if you have a video interface card like an AJA Kona or Blackmagic Decklink, you could use the card to downconvert your raw footage to SD and connect the card to a standalone DVD recorder to make client review DVD dubs of your source footage.

Otherwise, I would suggest that you use Compressor to transcode your source clips to h.264 Quicktime movies. h.264 is an ideal codec for cross-platform compatibility and small file sizes. Just make sure the client doesn’t want to use these clips to edit with – h.264 is a delivery codec, not an editing codec.

You could also try transcoding to ProRes 422 (not HQ) and making sure the client installs the ProRes codec on their PC. ProRes is a much higher quality codec, and it might be faster to transcode to ProRes than to h.264. The caveat is that the client must first install the ProRes playback codec to view the footage. The codec is available here:

https://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/application_updates/appleproresquicktimedecoder10forwindows.html