Brendan Coots
Forum Replies Created
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Everything is trouble-free until it isn’t. Having your own servers is great, but if they do go down, everything goes down until your IT guy can get it fixed. Unless you have a specific email setup using third party relays, you will lose any emails that come in while the server is down, not to mention your site being down. If the server is hosed or the drives die, you’re looking at significant downtime. if the power dies in the night due to a storm or something, you are either going in at 3am to fire everything back up or losing morning emails (assuming you don’t have a setup that deals with that for you).
We had roughly the same setup as you for several years (using Xserves instread of Linux), but we were also using the same server/RAID system to serve files to all of our FCP suites etc. and it just got me worried that so much is riding on one system. Just one visit from an IT professional costs more 2-5 years of outside web hosting, so we decided to outsource that and use our servers strictly for in-house file serving etc.
Obviously it’s a personal choice, but you definitely have to take the “if, not when” approach when deciding how to proceed.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Ahhh, live a little. I’m sure the producers of the Berenstein Bears are not going to complain if your mother gets a free copy. Just don’t advertise it in online forums…
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Read (yes, I know, reading) this article on Ken Stone’s site. It tells you the best settings to use for YouTube to prevent their backend system from crushing the quality of your video. The article is for Compressor but the settings and concept are the same.
If you use just any old settings YouTube will recompress the video, resulting in double-taxed pixel soup.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
I agree with Bob 100%, and I hate to say it but it’s only going to get worse and worse. I personally think the root of the whole issue is that many people in our industry feel they are lucky just to be working in the field, and allow all manner of totally unethical practices go without so much as a word. When one studio lets net 30 become net 60, that business forever expects to get net 60 from all their video production vendors. They also expect the ever shrinking time frame, smaller budget, etc. etc. and only because THEY GET AWAY WITH IT.
While I realize this sounds like a naive over-simplification, if everyone in this industry stopped letting clients walk all over them, it wouldn’t happen, plain and simple. Sure every industry faces similar pressures, but within the video production realm it seems to be getting worse almost daily.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
I agree on the piracy issue. A lot of kids show up in the After Effects forum who are clearly using pirated software and I want to throttle them. They’ve obviously never made something that took a lot of work and had to watch people steal it. They sure would be singing a different tune if the roles were reversed!
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
You would think the 8 cores means machine #1 is faster, but since it has a mere 2GB RAM (even less RAM than the quad machine), it won’t perform very well unless you dump more $$ into RAM. As everyone has mentioned, you really should have 2GB RAM per CPU core if you want to max out the machine’s potential. The more cores and less RAM you have, the lower each core will perform and therefore having 8 cores doesn’t do you that much good. If it were me I would go with the 8-core, but budget for a lot more RAM. Can’t afford it, get the quad.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
For years we’ve been hosting our own website on an in-house Xserve, but I recently decided it wasn’t really worth it so I sought out a new host. I used to be a web developer and so I’ve dealt with many, many web hosts in my day and know what to look for and what to avoid.
That said, we also went with inmotion hosting and so far it’s been great. Very fast (including larger videos), partially because you can select which half of the US you are on and they will put your site in a more local datacenter. I’ve been on the phone with their support about 5 times (stupid MySQL issue, not their fault) and they answer quickly and know what the hell they are talking about. The CPanel dashboard is really great, has a ton of features, and their mid-level package includes everything you could possibly need for less than $10/mo
I can definitely recommend. I can also definitely recommend you avoid iPower, Lunarpages and speakeasy.net. All three are a nightmare.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
For both of you a quad-core mac with 8GB RAM is plenty of power, if not overkill, for your needs. The octo mac is total and complete overkill except when it comes to doing 1920×1080 content with many dozens of 3d layers etc. Even then the octo really only helps with render times.
Spend the money on more RAM instead. You should always aim to have 2GB RAM per CPU core, per Adobe’s recommendation. This will allow After Effects to max out each core’s potential while rendering (each CPU core can address up to 2GB RAM, so for a quad-core you need 8GB total). This is one area I wouldn’t skimp on if you can afford it, as it really makes a difference when it comes to render/preview times.
As for the video card, it makes no difference whatsoever as After Effects makes little use of it.
For video previewing I can strongly recommend the Blackmagic Decklink Studio card for monitoring on a professional broadcast monitor with BNC inputs on the back. If you are planning to monitor on an LCD HDTV, the BlackMagic Intensity is cheaper and features a single HDMI out. Both are specifically for video production use. They don’t merely show the desktop on your monitor, they only send your comp window and even then only when you want it to (per the preferences in AE). Both downscale HD for viewing on standard def monitors which is quite handy. If you can’t afford a true professional broadcast monitor, you will be previewing via a firewire cable. If you have a monitor/TV that takes Firewire you can just plug right into it. Otherwise, you will need a device that goes between your computer and the TV, translating the Firewire signal into standard Component or Composite outputs that all TVs accept. One such device that is commonly used is the Grass Valley ADVC110.
Aside from that you shouldn’t need anything too special. Some people will always suggest insane systems but it’s just not necessary, especially for standard def. I completed probably 15 High Definition (full 1920×1080, not HDV) projects last year on macs configured to the above specs and it was very smooth sailing.
Let me know if any of this is confusing.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Check this out. Essentially, the trick is setting up MIDI controllers to enable live mixing of video, effects etc. Not easy to be sure, but it’s being done. I have read stories of other people using programs like this in combination with GarageBand and getting live audio into the mix in some crazy ways.
Good luck.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
The PBS stuff is a more touchy subject, especially since you are making it very public (on YouTube no less) rather than just showing it to prospective clients. I just use a written contract with my clients that specifically stipulates that I have the right to use the work for promotional purposes, and you should probably do the same if this comes up often.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com