[Herb Sevush]

Jessica –

Recommended memory is at least 1 gig per core – in your case 8 gigs, at a minimum. More is always better.

You’re getting a lot of monitor real estate – The apple monitors are expensive, I would suggest looking at Dell and HP alternatives – high quality at almost half the price. The type of monitors you need will also depend on whether or not you are getting an I/O card.

You don’t need an I/O card but you will be stuck monitoring within FCP using the cinema desktop – not the optimum way to go. I’d recommend getting the best I/O card you can afford – you might not need the AJA Kona3 (around $2500) but if you have $1500 the AJA Lhi; otherwise Blackmagic and Matrox have less expensive options.

Cal Digit makes excellent drives, however you didn’t say which of their drives you are looking at. For a setup like yours I would recommend a protected raid set, typically raid-5. This will require a raid card as part of the package. You can get away with firewire drives, but it would be pennywise and pound foolish.

Something else to note – Apple is going to be coming out with a revised MacPro in the coming months based on the new intel i7 chips. If you can wait to buy till after they come out, it might be worth your while.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Mark –

As a Heinlein fan, and what boy wasn’t, with a quote as good as that, I need more than the author’s name – what’s the source.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Anthony –

My plans changed and I haven’t, as of yet, switched over to AJA. I still intend to in the next few months and after speaking to more editors I now feel comfortable with the fact that there will be no problems with legacy files.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Emre –

Your firm is obviously on a much larger plane than mine, but still a few observations

with a 6000 tape library we are very quickly moving to get rid of them all. The space used to house them will be turned into edit bays to generate money. Big cost savings there.

Yet later on you talk about the safety and wonders of off-site cyber storage. I work in NYC where the cost of office space is at a premium and I store my tapes in an off-site warehouse where costs are minimal especially with the size of digital tapes.

Video tape cannot store project files …

Obviously not, but project files are tiny in comparison to media, perfect for digital off-site storage.

When you commit your tapeless content to tape you also loose all the metadata, clip based editing/re-linking and option of MXF aware database search.

If you create master files of your clips, that you later lay off to video tape, and edit with these master clips, you will have total re-linking capabilities. It is true as you pointed out that you will also lose all the MetaData.

different formats require decks.
DV, BETASP, DIGIBETA, MPEG IMX,DVCPROHD, HDCAM, HDCAMSR, HDV…etc Thats a lot of money to buy or rent.

All too true, but I’m assuming your talking about a facility that already owns a good number of those decks and is now having to deal with tapeless workflows. If your a start-up and if your clients are not bringing you tape then you don’t need all those decks for backup, just get a Panasonic HD 1400 for HD and an SD93 for SD, around 24K combined, and your all set.

In my original post I was just trying to suggest that archival storage is the unspoken spectre of tapeless acquisitiion. I know the future will be tapeless but I think that for the present, especially if your a small company, the rush to tapeless may be foolish.

When the time comes that remote digital archival storage becomes a finacial reality on a tight budget, then I’ll be all for it.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Navarro –

Ah yes, the elephant in the room, the pig in the garden, the P2 tapeless workflow …

AS has been stated on this forum tape is much more reliable than any disk backup. But instead of Data tape I might suggest a novel approach – video tape. It’s cheap, small, easy to store, comes with this thing called time code that enables you to recapture at a moments notice.

I don’t know the long term prospects for XDcam in terms of storage – does it flake, degrade or scratch – but I do know that in the past few weeks I’ve been digitizing show masters for a series I did on PBS 10 year ago from BetaSP – a few dropouts here and there – but nothing crashed and nothing was lost and you’ll still be able to find a BetaSP machine 10 years from now if you have to.

The one major tapeless project I had I backed up to DVCPRO HD tape when I was done. If someone wants to recut it 5 years from now, short of a fire, it’ll still be there.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Eibe –

The hardest thing to find and the hardest thing to do is – Sales.

The hard part is selling it – making it is the fun part.

If you can sell, you’ll never go hungry. If you want to make art – tighten your belt.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Lynn –

Glad you liked the show – I run the credits xtra slow whenever my name comes up.

I still miss the old *edit forum, mostly because of people like you, Ron Shook, etc. – all I’ve got on the Final Cut side is DRW (just a joke David.)

Good to hear from you, hope your doing well.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

David –

About 10 years ago Jacques did a series with Julia Child and that’s when I worked with him. So, much as I’d like to, I can’t take any credit for your amorous success.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

DRW –

I guess I’m going to have to play the role of the Ludite at this party.

In 1954 Hitchcock made “Dial M for Murder” in 3D. At a special screening many years ago I saw the 3D print with glasses. At the key moment in the film there’s a lovely shot with a scissors going right out into the audience before ending up between the shoulder blades of the bad guy. Everyone in the audience loved it. But not so much that enough people wanted to wear the glasses to make it worth the distributors while. Which is why almost nobody today knows that this very much watched movie was ever released in 3D.

A few months ago I saw “Up” in 3D and while I liked the movie, most of the time I was annoyed with the glasses and 3d effect. I fail to see how movies like Juno, Precious, or Up In the Air will be much improved – and I think if an audience had a choice between a 2D “Terminator” or a 3D “The Abyss” Arnold would still be taking in all the money – what would 3d add to the moment when he says “I’ll Be Back”. The most memorable moments in movies are the human interactions that resonate – “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse” needs no other dimension.

I don’t doubt that 3D action films and sports shows will find a sizeable audience, but for me content is king and I’m quite happy to watch Red River in 3:4 Academy B&W.

For the most part I make PBS cooking shows and I can’t see the call for 3D here – hell, it took years before HD got a foothold and still today most cooking shows are still shot in SD. When someone asks for 3d I’ll be quite happy to learn and oblige, but I’m not holding my breath.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Steve –

In order to see 3d imaging each eye has to look thru polarizers turned at 90 degrees to each other – so having both eyes looking thru the same sheet of polarizer just won’t cut it. If it did, you could just put the polarizer on the monitor.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions