[David Johnson]

Thanks for the great feedback, Butch. Our circumstances aren’t as extreme as shooting news so it’s reassuring to know that the format stands up in your scenario.

We use XDcam Browser for our XD-camHD footage, which will still be the large majority, so I’m hoping we can use it for the EX stuff too. To clarify, since Sony didn’t see any need to do make things clear, I’m talking about XDcam Browser (the one where they supposedly combined XDcam Transfer and XDcam Clip Browser).

I went with the SxS-1 cards since they’re about half the price and, according to Sony, they offer “the same performance and reliability as more expensive SxS Pro cards, the SxS-1 has about one-tenth the lifespan (about 5 years with heavy use)”. I’d feel safer replacing any type of memory cards with new ones after about 5 years anyway.

Since I had to rush through the various purchase decisions before I knew about the D-M Accessories shoulder mount, I ended up going with the Nipros shoulder mount (https://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/micro-hdvsite/cat-accessories/product-ST7/).

[David Johnson]

Thanks very much for your feedback, Andrew. My employer is a large corporation so buying used on eBay isn’t an option or worth the risks. Using the camera as a deck isn’t an option either so I’m currently leaning towards the SBAC-US10 Reader/Writer and a few 64Gb cards.

[David Johnson]

Glad to help, Brian.

[Brian Betz] “I’m thinking that the hard drives will be better off without RAID and just have the three drives.”

From a performance standpoint, yes, you are correct that separate drives for system, read and write is best. That said, it depends on the rest of your setup … keep in mind that it’s best to also have a backup of some sort. That could be an external RAID or a series of regular drives with automated backup software or a backup tape system.

By the way, Walter makes a great point that, while GPU doesn’t make much difference to AE itself, it does matter to the other stuff you may use or decide to use later.

[David Johnson]

Those specs are very similar to the Z800 I use so I can tell you first-hand that it makes a stellar AE machine (and also handles PP, PS and everything else I run very well). I never thought I’d hear myself say something like that since I’d been dead set against using pre-fab machines (i.e., HP, Dell, Compaq) for most of my career (and for good reason), but I must admit that HP knocked it out the park with the Z series. Not only will you be thoroughly impressed with the performance, but take a look inside the box … the workmanship has come a very long way.

And, you are correct that, as far as AE is concerned, the graphics card is indeed the right place to shave a little cost.

I’m just thinking out loud here so this is not a slight against the machine, but am I the only one who finds it weird that they market the chassis as “89% Efficient”? Maybe it’s just the marketing guy in me, but it seems that encourages people to ask themselves why am I paying all this money for something that is 11% inefficient out of the gate!? lol

[David Johnson]

Just to add to John’s answer, you may want to check the preferences box that says something like “default spatial interpolation to linear” to avoid this issue in the future until you get more use to working with keyframes in AE.

[David Johnson]

Hey Ron, This is waaaay overdue, but thank you very much for the kind words as well. Sorry I disappeared just after posting in one of the more interesting threads I’ve participated in a while. I won’t bore you with the long, boring story so suffice to say it was unavoidable and, more importantly, I’ve now found my way back to the pasture.

By the way, I hope you got my attorney reference in that post … and, if you did, that you weren’t drinking something at the time. ;~) Cheers!

[David Johnson]

Well, no help yet, but I’ve heard and read more than enough horror stories about SDHC cards/readers so I’ve decided we’ll only use SxS cards. So, to refine my question, do I just need some SxS cards and one of these …
Sony SBAC-US10 SxS Memory Card USB Reader/Writer
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/526430-REG/Sony_SBAC_US10_SBAC_US10_SxS_Memory_Card.html

Or, does anyone know why it might be better to use either of these …
Sony PXU-MS240 Mobile Storage Unit
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/659880-REG/Sony_PXU_MS240_PXU_MS240_Mobile_Storage_Unit.html
Sony PHU-120R 120GB Professional Hard Disk Unit
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/676991-REG/Sony_PHU_120R_PHU_120R_120GB_Professional_Hard.html

[David Johnson]

One way is to precomp the layers, apply Time Remapping to the precomp layer, then switch the positions of the two default keyframes that are created when Time Remapping is applied.

[David Johnson]

You don’t even need keyframes … just put the effects on Adjustment Layers instead of directly on the footage layer, then set the in points of each Adjustment Layer accordingly.

[David Johnson]

Glad to help, David. I don’t know why the manual warns against using Finder to delete render files … honestly, I didn’t even know that it did … just that I’ve been doing it that way for years and have never had a problem as a result so the reason why doesn’t matter to me.

Perhaps it’s just Apple’s way of trying to protect users from themselves … render files are sort of like system files in that they’re not files that the user directly generates or uses. In other words, I can see how deleting the entire root folder would cause issues even though selectively deleting known files within it is fine.