Joseph W. bourke
Forum Replies Created
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They obviously didn’t try very hard. Relax…breathe in…breathe out…make nasty call to FedEx office…
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Hi Duke –
I’ll bet you’re excited! Here’s the gospel according to Adobe on the various OS which work with CC 2015:
https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/system-requirements.html
I have no experience with this, but Adobe says that the minimum OS required is Win 7, so you should be good. But you may want to ask elsewhere as well, since I have no direct experience with it.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
I consider h.264 a delivery codec for web playback, of course. Some of the projects I work on are “contract” jobs, where I’m doing animation work for a larger project. In that case, I’ll deliver Quicktime uncompressed, which is a huge file. We recently got a fiber connection (here in the boonies of NH!), and that has made all the difference in the world with timely delivery. With my old dsl connection, it would sometimes take a day and a half to deliver the goods. That same file will now take a matter of maybe a half hour or so.
With After Effects, (I may be repeating myself here), I output a master file in uncompressed Quicktime, then use Adobe Media Encoder to generate deliverables (sometimes the uncompressed is the deliverable). For my own website, I will usually create a 960 x 540 mp4. I used to use Flash on my website, but that seems to be a dying codec, if you can call it a codec, and HTML5 is the new standard, although it’s a long time coming. Here’s a good chunk of reference material for encoding video from Adobe:
https://www.adobe.com/devnet/video/encoding.html
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Yes I’m from Boston – yes I’m a Red Sox fan. But I don’t hate the Yankees the way most rabid Boston fans do. I like to see a good ballgame no matter who wins.
Funny about bears. I’ve had close encounters with quite a few of them. The only time they won’t head the other way (this is the NH black bear by the way) is if you happen to run across a female with cubs; then you run the other way! The only problem with the bears is if you put out bird feeders. They’ll trash them every time, especially in early spring before the skunk cabbage is out (their first natural food of the Spring season). Otherwise they’re just trying to make a living…
Sorry to hear about your wife. I’ve lost most of my family due to old age, but I can’t imagine losing my partner. I really hope I go before she does, but that’s kind of selfish on my part. Back to the Z800.
I work with AE all the time, my main software packages being AE, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, 3D Studio Max, and a few other non-Adobe packages. Unless I’ve got mucho layers in After Effects, it practically renders to RAM in realtime! And it renders very quickly as well. I generally output to Quicktime Uncompressed for my master copy, then render off delivery codecs from AME. It really flies! I use quite a few plugins as well – the Magic Bullet Suite, Element 3D, Layer Monkey, the Trapcode Suite, and others. They all function quite well.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
It’s because they’re currently rewriting the CC software from the ground up. I’m sure it will be coming fairly soon in the future, but as Andreas Gallagher says, the rewrite is like changing the wings on an airplane while it’s in flight. So I would probably start out with CC2014, and then keep your ear to the ground. As I said earlier, I’m still on CS6, but I did work a six month freelance job setup up the graphics department at a TV news station that required the Creative Cloud. I’ve not at all averse to paying the monthly fee – I just haven’t needed it yet. But I’ll pull the trigger when I need to. I’m just a cheapskate, I’m not on a mission from God against Adobe.
As far as drives go, also take a look at B&H in the used department. They often have returns that they can’t sell as new. I recently picked up a Western Digital Blue 500GB drive for my Drobo system for 43 dollars.
I’m doing the same setup as you’re planning with my desktop/business machine to the left of my workstation. I can roll back and forth when I’m working on a project – I use Easy Time Tracking Software on my desktop for billing purposes, and I’m rolling back and forth as I shift gears with multiple projects.
It’s really nice living out in the woods and working for clients all over the place. I’m on a dirt road, with a 15 acre field right behind my house; I can watch the deer, fox, coyotes, moose, and bear as they come through. My next door neighbor is a farmer and trains teams of oxen, so every day they parade by my house doing training sessions pulling heavy weights – it’s pretty cool. I grew up in Boston, though, so I still consider myself a city boy, but I’ve been living up here over 20 years. They don’t consider you a native up here until three or four generations have come and gone. I’m 67, so I’m hoping it will be a while until I’m in the ground…
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
In the interest of inundating you with documentation, here’s another very useful one – it’s the complete list of what was available as options when the Z800 was released – it’s a great guide as to what you might want to add, and what’s compatible with your machine:
https://www.advance.no/Pdf.aspx?id=1181
And more important – here’s a page where you input your OS version and specs (I’m using Win 7 64-bit Ultimate), and you’ll get a download page with all of the free HP software for your machine. You can get your BIOS update here if need be. There’s firmware for your Nvidia card if you need it, plus a lot more useful stuff. HP takes good care of their users, as far as information goes, so you can find anything you’re looking for right there:
That will not display correctly – use the pulldown Product Support/Repair & Warranty/Customer Self repair, and there will be all sorts of documents there.
OK – last one, I promise – page with all the maintenance and upgrade information you will EVER need! Good info at the top on the BIOS upgrade, should you need it:
The links are so long, they will not display correctly, so you’ll have to poke around to find it. Sorry…
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
That project will be a good comparison to see what you get for results when you first kick on the Z800, then what you get after you’ve optimized the Adobe software following the guidelines.
I ended up putting my Z800 on top of my desk to avoid dust from the floor – also bear in mind that it will want to be at least a foot from the wall (the back of the machine, that is) to allow for good airflow. In the HP Z800 information documents, you’ll find the guidelines for that stuff. Your dual processesors can get pretty hot since they’re the faster models, so plenty of air will be needed. As a matter of fact, I’m in NH, where it’s pretty cold in the winter. When I have my Z800 running and my desktop as well, the temperature in my office hovers around a comfortable 69 to 70 degrees! I don’t even turn the heat up during the day…
You may also want to grab a free copy of Speccy, a great, free software package which monitors everything that’s going on under the hood on the machine – for some reason, on my machine, it shows the overall amount of RAM, but not the individual sticks – maybe has to do with registered RAM:
https://www.piriform.com/speccy
And here’s the document with all the environment requirements I was talking about above:
https://cdn.cnetcontent.com/aa/95/aa957bda-4612-48aa-be14-79f6919fd396.pdf
The above document is for high end Autodesk color correction setups, but is also a good general guide as you’re hooking everything up. When I first got my Z800, the drives which came with the machine were setup for a RAID array, so I had to learn how to “unRAID” them to use them as standalone media drives (I’m only doing HD work right now, not 2K or 4K). You will want to check whether you have the latest version of BIOS (Basic Input Output System); you can probably contact the seller to see if it’s got the latest version – my seller mentioned that BIOS had been upgraded when I purchased my machine. It shouldn’t effect your performance speedwise, but it’s good to know you have the latest version.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
From what I see on the Nvidia PDF, you’ve got three choices: 1 DVI, 2 DisplayPort, and 1 SDI output. That’s a lot of choices, and I can’t give you answers on which to choose, since my Nvidia card only has Displayport and DVI outputs – I currently use the DisplayPort to HDMI on my monitor, using the Monoprice adapters I gave you the link to in the last post. Here’s a link to the PDF for the card which is coming with your system. Since it’s not a capture card, the connectors are output only, so the SDI is probably out, since you won’t have a broadcast monitor. Here’s the PDF for your card specs:
https://www.nvidia.com/docs/IO/127917/NVQFX3800-4800-5800SDI_UG_v20.pdf
Here’s a good discussion on DVI vs DisplayPort:
https://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1665093/dvi-display-port-hdmi-quality.html
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
You shouldn’t have problems with the graphics card which comes with your Z800. Just check the output specs on the Nvidia website. I think your card comes with DVI outputs. Check on that – at worst, if you have HDMI cables, you’ll need to get a DVI to HDMI adapter – I purchase mine from Monoprice – their quality is terrific, and the price is low:
https://www.monoprice.com/Category?c_id=104&cp_id=10419
The link will get you to a page with all sorts of adapters. DVI/HDMI are second from the top, but make sure that’s what you need. I have my Nvidia card pumped into an ACER monitor, and it looks great!
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
For some reason that link will not work when I paste it in – just try Googling “HP Z800 memory” and the PDF will show up in the first or second spot.
And at the bottom of page 4 on this pdf, there’s a brief explanation of why the separate drives:
https://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf.aspx/4AA5-4938ENW.pdf?ver=1.0
My Z800 has an OS drive, and Apps drive, and two Media drives (on one of which I have AE and PPro caches).
In the HP memory link, which I somehow messed up, there are breakdowns of the differing types of memories. I barely understand it, but registered memory is for some reason slower than the other type (I think it’s unbuffered), but it’s more stable for large amounts of RAM in mission critical situations. Here’s an explanation I found – I have no idea whether or not it’s gospel, but it sounds convincing:
“Deciding on Registered or unbuffered really depends on what you requirements you have for the system i.e. speed, stability, amount of RAM, low cost etc. In your case, if you are going to need more than 24GB on this system then you will need to go for the registered parts.
ECC Registered memory works by controlling the data flow between the chips on the memory module thereby improving the quality of the signal and increasing the efficiency and stability of the memory. They place less electrical load on the memory controller and allow systems to be more stable with more memory modules that’s why it can support more GB using this type of memory in this system. It is usually recommended for mission-critical servers.
With ECC registered memory there is a slight performance decrease; it can be thought to run one clock cycle slower than unbuffered memory as each read and write cycle is buffered between the memory bus and the DRAM. However I doubt this will be a significant issue especially with the amount of RAM you will have.”
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com