[Ben Holmes]

Hi Geoff

I think this question has been answered a lot here – so let me give you a brief rundown:

1) The iMac has limited connectivity. Although you use a tapeless workflow, you cannot see an output on a video monitor (unless you use a DV-type camera via firewire) and so CANNOT properly monitor your footage at full resolution or gamma. I’m guessing from your question you don’t care about this, so I won’t labour the point here why this is bad. You COULD use an IOHD, or V4HD, but these require the FW800 port, so you’d have to use more esoteric storage options, like ethernet – which although a good option for shared storage networks, is less convenient for stand-alone setups.

2) Forgoing the video output, you can use the FW800 port to connect a fast-ish array, perfectly capable of compressed HD footage. If you send an iMac to OWC, they can fit an eSata port on the back of the iMac, so you can use a much faster eSata array.

3) Although FCP only uses 3Gb RAM, other software will want to use some, so I recommend getting an iMac with 8Gb RAM – Apple’s prices are not too bad now.

4) On a recent job, a core i7 2.93 Ghz (quad core) iMac with 8Gb RAM I was using beat an 8-Core 3.0Ghz (early 2008) Mac Pro we also had there. These machines are the best for price/performance I’ve ever seen, with a great screen as well.

Most of the arguments against the iMac (which are totally valid for pro users) are the lack of connectivity and upgradeability. If, however, you want a fast machine for NOW, can live with the storage limitations (btw – the idea of using an external drive for the system sounds dangerous to me, I’d use the internal for this, and a good quality external array for video) then the quad core i7 iMac with the 1Gb gfx chip and 8Gb RAb (around $2400 + taxes) is a great machine.

Should Apple ever see fit to upgrading FCP for proper 64-bit, multiprocessor support, the choices might swing the other way.

One other point – if you already have a Mac Pro system, purchasing a cut-price, more recent Mac Pro to use with your existing monitors etc. could be cheaper than a shiny new iMac.

Edit Out Ltd
—————————-
FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producer

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/casestudies/detail.asp?case=therydercup

[Ben Holmes]

There are many ways to skin this cat, but I would add a couple of suggestions:

1) Use Magic Bullet’s excellent Grinder app to speed up 5D transcodes (especially if you’re on a octo-core system) – it’s worth every penny. It also makes BITC proxy files for viewing rushes, and allows for TC to be carried through the process, via restriping.

2) You can now use EDLs in REDCineX, or make offline and re-link the R3Ds and send to Color to grade yourself. This allows you to do a faster log and transfer in FCP, then only encode what you need later. I haven’t tried the EDL support in REDCine – it’s pretty new, so can’t comment on how good it is. For all your re-linking needs, you should probably be using Clipfinder.

3) A lot of people are transcoding to ProRes4444 instead of working with R3Ds at all – it’s not as good as RAW for grading, but works ‘well enough’ for things like broadcast.

4) RED is a lengthy post process however you look at it. There is no quick or easy solution, and every single post person I know has a different workflow. Getting it reliable and stable is often more valuable than speedy, so if you have a method that works, proceed with changes at your own risk.

RED’s own forums are an excellent source of info for all of this.

Edit Out Ltd
—————————-
FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producer

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/casestudies/detail.asp?case=therydercup

[Ben Holmes]

Keep this simple. If it’s an HD project, output unsing quick time conversion in FCP. Use the Apple TV preset. This makes a nice, lowish and quick to encode 720p file which will play nice with Youtube or Vimeo. I use Vimeo out of choice for client work. I embed these on my site, so there’s no bandwidth issues.

Edit Out Ltd
—————————-
FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producer

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/casestudies/detail.asp?case=therydercup

[Ben Holmes]

You can run FCP completely off an external drive AFAIK – I seem to remember reading a couple of editors saying they did this when working in some facilities so the version they used was correct and set up as they wanted it.

To do this you would have to choose this drive as the install location when you installed all the software. Moving system resources after installing sounds like it either wouldn’t work, or would cause endless problems. Certain things, like the preference files would simply be re-written in the original location anyway.

Edit Out Ltd
—————————-
FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producer

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/casestudies/detail.asp?case=therydercup

[Ben Holmes]

Yes – you will receive all point updates to FCP7 with academic. I believe when FCP 4 was made ‘HD’ by release 4.5 (the biggest update I can remember Apple offering by point release) this was also included in Academic.

I seem to remember that Academic used to not include a couple of features like XML export, but that may have changed since Express was released. Why not search on Google or Apple support for a definitive answer.

[Ben Holmes]

Any PAL DVD player that offers Progressive playback will play the video at 24p. That includes Playstations etc. And, I would imagine, DVD players in computers. For these, there will be no speedup. To be honest, I’m not clear what happens in players not offering this. However, shooting in 25p will cause far more problens in conversion to NTSC.

The professional DVD standard is NTSC 24p for DVD replication – often known as 480p, and this is BY FAR the most used, as Hollywood drives this standard from film production. If it was required for distribution in PAL land, I suppose you could re-master a PAL version, but I really wouldn’t worry about this.

Edit Out Ltd
—————————-
FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producer

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/casestudies/detail.asp?case=therydercup

[Ben Holmes]

[Adi Ell-Ad] “keep my money for good times in Hawaii”

man….

Edit Out Ltd
—————————-
FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producer

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/casestudies/detail.asp?case=therydercup

[Ben Holmes]

I’d add one more thing (that I believe Shane has experience of too). Don’t use the log and transfer – use the Magic Bullet Grinder app from Red Giant software. It gives you a drag-and-drop window for transferring to the ProRes codec of your choice, and is considerably faster than L&T, as it uses all the cores on your computer – if you have 8, it encodes 8 at once. It can also make proxies with burnt in timecode, although I don’t think that’s relevant to you.

Copy all the video files right off your camera card into a folder on your disk array. Drop into Grinder. Transcode to a seperate folder (always keep your original media – on a seperate drive etc. if possible, as these are your masters) and then drag them into FCP. I know spending money on a ‘small scope’ app is painful, but if you work with a DSLR, it’s the best $50 you’ll ever spend. Don’t even both with Compressor.

Advert over – I don’t work for Red Giant by the way, I’m a satisfied user!

So I think you have a workflow now? Nearly. I’d add audio recording workflow into this, if you’ve not done it before. Based on your project, and really for all DSLR work, you’ll want to record separate audio, right? If you do this, ensure you SLATE EVERY SHOT. If you have an iPhone or iPad there’s a great DSLR slate app that gives you take/shot info and a nice bright sync frame for every take. Trust me – saves hours syncing audio in post. Sync the audio up in FCP nice and easily – although there are software solutions that do this automatically, you’d really have to have a lot of footage to justify this IMHO – YMMV I suppose. I prefer just to keep rolling on set so I don’t have too many short takes, and less items to sync.

Edit in a 1080p24 timeline (unless you plan to shoot 720p on the camera, but with DSLRs the more resolution the better to overcome the ‘shortcomings’ generally), output a 1080p24 ProRes Quicktime (or reference file) then use Compressor to make an NTSC Mpeg2 file at 24p and AC3 audio file. Drop that into DVDSP and burn away. This master will be good for all NTSC and 90% of PAL ones – maybe all, I’m not sure. Maybe check this with a DVD Replicator to clarify before mastering.

And you’re set!

Ben

Edit Out Ltd
—————————-
FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producer

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/casestudies/detail.asp?case=therydercup

[Ben Holmes]

Adi

ProRes422 or even HQ works a charm on firewire arrays like the VR mini or G-RAIDs. Your options for lower cost I/O are then much better and cheaper. I’ve been successfully using the excellent MXO2 with a 17″ MBP for HD broadcast use for over a year now, capturing ProRes at HD resolutions, an option they added to the MXO2 after I bought it – it even comes with a 3 year warrantee.

There are alternatives from AJA too that I haven’t used, but they are a company with a good rep.

Ben

Edit Out Ltd
—————————-
FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producer

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/casestudies/detail.asp?case=therydercup

[Ben Holmes]

I can only echo the Editshare shout – Having work successfully in a medium sized facility where I recommended it (over AVID Unity, to which it is a very affordable alternative), I can only praise what they’ve done for shared environments in FCP. Even without using their FLOW ingest solution, you can effortlessly share files and media and collaborate on large scale projects.

If you think Editshare is ‘too expensive’ you haven’t properly looked at the cost (including the human cost in man-hours) of the the alternatives.

Ben

Edit Out Ltd
—————————-
FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producer

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/casestudies/detail.asp?case=therydercup