[Elijah Lynn]

You make a very god case! I gave you 5 cows!

[Elijah Lynn]

It will be nice if when using the “Share” interface to compressor that you can choose a cluster for compressing (multicore) and it not crash FCP PLUS then you can continue to work on your projects.

[Elijah Lynn]

[Michael Sacci] “Okay how many single features are worth $300

Background Export, I always encode from a FCP sequence with Compressor!
MultiCam Seq. to Color, most of my major work is Concerts!
P2 and AVCIntra Playback (I just you set compression to ProRes like with R3D clips)
New ProRes versions
Faster Optical Flow Rendering

Is it worth it HELL YEAH!

Is there room for improvement, sure, but that is what FCS4 is all about, let the rumor mills start again.”

+1

AVCHD native editing makes it worth while for me! I am upgrading as soon as I get authorization 🙂

EDIT: Looks like I misread Apple’s marketing material. No native AVCHD editing, :(. That sucks. Guess I won’t be so jumpy to buy the upgrade.

No multi-core support either. 🙁

Lot’s of other cool stuff including ProRes with Alpha but I really hope they support native AVCHD someday.

[Elijah Lynn]

It appears that we can actually burn blu-ray straight from FCP 7 now. See the new video from Ripple Training below.

https://www.box.net/shared/static/k71fcnqeq9.mov

It even gives you a few menu template options.

[Elijah Lynn]

Mark – I really enjoyed the read!

Thanks

[Elijah Lynn]

I think HQ is more for when you will be doing multi-generation compositing.

Also, if you are going to capture raw green/blue screen footage then 422 HQ is good as well.

If you are not doing much compositing with it then I think plain 422 is good. I am just a noob though.

[Elijah Lynn]

I am going to second the AJA disk whack. Everyone here has that installed on their system. There is also an app that I bought I really like a lot, it is called disktester (one word) and is what Barefeats to do all their tests. It runs from the CLI though so many people stay away from it.

Many times a computer is slow it is because of the disk. So many people don’t realize that it is their disk that is the culprit of everything. Many people often run to blame the processor or ram, I used to do it too!

If you really want to know what the best disk out right now is.

It is the Intel X-25 E (extreme) 64 GB. It reads at 270 MBps and writes at 170 MBps. Has no latency and has over 1500 iops (input output operations per second) while a standard sata drive has less than 90 if that.. However, it costs $800 for the 64 GB and $400 for the 32 GB.

But, it’s older brother, the X-25 M, still reads at 270 MBps but only writes at 70 MBps. An 80 GB X-25 M is under $400 right now and can appear to revive a computer from the dead.

Bottom line – Every video editor should strive to have a X-25 M or higher (X-25 E) as their boot drive.

[Elijah Lynn]

A few of the keyers you will want to demo are:

Primatte Keyer Pro (slow but good, only uses 1 core, I use this one)
Boris Keyer (don’t know the name)
DV Matte Pro (uses GPU and is very fast)
Primatte RT (comes with Motion 3, essentially free, also fast)
Keylight (highly talked about)

Of course it is all about the source footage. But assuming you have done a good job with that then those are your options.

FCP’s built in Keyer has a reputation just slightly above that of Premiere’s keyer. There have been a lot of jokes when it comes to poorly keyed footage, one I hear the most is, “Did you use premier to do that” and the lesser is, “Did you use the built in FCP keyer for that”.

Cheers,

Elijah

[Elijah Lynn]

I just bought 4 – 1.5 TB seagates and used a Caldigit Raid card and put them in Raid 5. Very fast! 300 MBps read/write.

They were $130 each with free shipping from Newegg. I have used Mwave in the past, I actually forgot about them until Michael mentioned them. They are a good company.

Get the 8-core. You will use it in the future and you can use it with compressor right now.

[Elijah Lynn]

I would get it if you can. It may not be of much value right now but it will be soon. Right now Compressor can use it nicely.

I would get it.

Also.
——————————————————–

My advice is to get an 8 core and the most basic setup you can get from apple/dealer. Do not buy ram or hard drives from them. Do not buy your raid card from them. Get an ATI video card and get the wireless mighty mouse too.

Get a 28″ Hanns-G monitor from newegg for under $400 and also get memory from them too, iRam, 8 GB minimum.

Get a Caldigit Raid Card along with 4 – 1.5 TB seagate drives and put them in Raid 5. This now comes with a bay adapter for another HD that uses the internal sata ports.

Put at a minimum a velociraptor in the extra bay and use that for your OS. Ditch the factory drive and use it as a Time Machine backup with a BlacX HD dock ($40).

But what you realy want is a 80 GB Intel X-25 M SSD for under $400 as your Boot drive. That will make your computer uber fast!!!

The ultimate Workstation would actually have the 64 GB X-25 E ($800). 270 Mbps read/170 MBps write with like 0 latency. This thing is awesome!!! I just put a X25-M in a laptop and it just flies with App/file opening!