Bernard Newnham
Forum Replies Created
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Yes – completely OT – the cable car is worth a trip –
A small joy was on the Hitachi stand, where I was given this –
He turns out to be a USB stick. I shall obviously henceforth always buy Hitachi
Bernie
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I went Tuesday and met some of our students there. Any day is student day if they write “freelance” on their badges. I got three tickets sent to me, and one said VIP, so i used that one and got a free bag from Root6 and a coffee. I have no idea why I should be a VIP.
As for the sessions, most sessions are full most of the time – I think FCPX is junk, but I would have watched had there one been on at the time I was nearby. The only session I’ve been to which was nearly empty was the one at IBC 1996 at which I was the main speaker. I was talking about how DV and desktop editing would change the world….
Around the hall, which used to be full of Macs, I saw one iMac and no FCPX. PPro and Avid were what people were running.
This year I hardly bothered with the cameras, as every time I go there are more and more small black machines that look the same but have different numbers on them. Where once there was an Ikegami HL79 and a couple of rivals, now it’s like a consumer show with a new model every week.
If you want to do UAV helicopter filming, there were lots of those. I asked the owner of the biggest if the CAA have taken an interest yet. He mumbled an bit and said no, but the thing is very much big enough to kill you if it falls out of the sky.
Does anyone who went think that it’s gone upmarket? Has someone noticed that not everyone in the UK wants to try and get a hotel in Amsterdam yet again, lovely city that it is?
Bernie
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Meanwhile, out in the wider world, Nvidia announcer the GTX Titan –
https://www.zdnet.com/nvidia-launches-1000-geforce-gtx-titan-desktop-graphics-card-7000011493/Won’t fit in your iMac though
Bernie
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The original House of Cards in 1990 was excellent. Can’t watch this one, not having Netflix, but I assume that after a while they’ll will try to get their money back by selling the series to ordinary tv.
Bernie
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At our London-based university students learn on Premiere Pro, mainly I think because someone a while back chose to go with the Adobe Production Bundle. You can get that in the education version for just over £300, and it includes all the standard stuff – After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator etc etc. Not only that, it runs on PCs, so that the area used for editing can also do compositing with Nuke, 3d with Maya, and other stuff. Keeps the all-round cost down.
As for which editing system students should ideally use – it really doesn’t matter. As someone further up says – it’s the story that matters. I’d have that line tattooed on their foreheads. If asked and given an open budget, I’d probably – at this point in time – still pick PPro. It runs in a standard way – no magical new concepts – and gives an introduction to the way most editing systems work. Anyone who can edit on PPro would have little trouble switching to any other, especially Avid or Edius.
Bernie
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They’ve all gone to build PCs.
Bernie
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[Paul Dickin] “Bernard’s “sweet spot, with Walter’s amendment, doesn’t even give a quarter of what you want ;)”
One shouldn’t get too pedantic about the “sweet spot” bit. There are a huge number of choices, so if an i7 is preferable, and there’s the budget for it – well, go for it. Pick the amount of memory you want, and the shade of GPU. There aren’t just a few expensive options, there are thousands of cheaper ones. My sweet spot bit is just a middle ground pick. I know it works for ordinary HD editing, with a few layers, some sounds tracks and a lower third or two, because my machine here, which is set at a sweet spot months old now, does the job perfectly well.
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Why didn’t my car pick work??
Bernie
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[Jeremy Garchow] “It really boils down to being able to swap the GPU, and that’s about it.”
Or anything else. Whilst the processor manufacturers keep the same slot, you can just keep substituting a more modern processor, for instance. Intel are notorious for changing more often than necessary, but AMD have I believe kept the same one for a long time now. Upgrade the power supply to run more drives? Just unplug the old and plug in the new. More memory? Just slots in. More drives? Put in as many as the case will hold, usually up to around six.
Personally, I tend to upgrade my main machine in bits. A new GPU maybe up to a year apart from motherboard/processor. The power supply in this particular box has moved on from 350W to 700W as more gear has gone in and GPUs have got more hungry. Back in the low cost unit I was part of at the BBC we did similar stuff.
I just want to point out again that whatever box you buy, inside it’s the same stuff. Mac/pc is just a change of operating system and little else. If you want to buy a pretty and expensive box which you can’t really upgrade, buy an iMac. If you want a Xeon processor – mostly you really don’t any more than you want the Ferrari – go and buy one, but a Core i5 comes a lot cheaper and for normal editing you won’t notice much difference. You can probably put either on the same motherboard.
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“I made this”, as they said at the end of X-Files – not a Ferrari, but I do like making things. A propos of nothing because we seem to be going round and round a bit now. Jeremy – dip your toe, there’s a whole new (cheaper) world waiting…
Bernie
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[Chris Harlan] “Basically, he was trying to decide if an over-clocked i7 was competitive for his needs or whether he needed to shell out for dual Zeons”
I always wonder why people bother with that stuff – I it think might be “gear porn” stuff that gives them a thrill.
Getting the very fastest machine at any point in time might be good hobby, but it isn’t good business. Those processors they were talking about cost more even than an iMac, and give a few percentage points of speed gain. Add on water cooling – a slightly dangerous option – and you’ve spent a very large amount of money. Then a few months later AMD or Intel come out with some basic chip that’s much faster at a tenth of the price.
For the price they were spending they could have built a good few ordinary machines and used them as a render farm, then passed them on for office use when they got slower that whatever came next.
Bernie
