Joseph W. bourke
Forum Replies Created
-
Hi Duke –
If you’re comfortable with having your apps installed on one drive, you’re good to go. I know that Adobe suggests that you have your cache files on a separate drive from the app, but, that said, you can get away with having it all on one drive. It may not be optimally fast, but I’m sure that with the sheer horsepower and RAM, you’re going to be way ahead of where you are now.
If that photo is the actual machine, it appears that all the drive sleds are there (bottom right internal photo), and the airflow cowlings as well. I think I saw that he had a 90 day warranty on everything, so you should be good to go.
It would be nice if you had a drive for your apps and cache files, and for future reference, B&H sells what they call “used” hard drives, but they’re really just returns. You can get a 500GB internal drive for under 50 bucks. I just bought a 2TB replacement drive “used” for my Drobo, and it’s just like new!
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/801241167-USE/wd_wd5000aakx_500_gb_caviar_blue.html
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Hi Duke –
That looks like a good machine, and the processors appear to be a newer model than mine, and are also the fastest Xeon offered in that generation of Z800. One thing I noticed is that I think the seller got the processor speed wrong (by .3Mhz – nothing you’d notice). I would double check with him and make sure that all of the internal housings are included (4 drive sleds, and all of the airflow cowlings – there are two major ones), and that if anything is missing, he will provide them. If his photos are accurate, all the drive sleds and airflow cowlings are there. This is just a double check – when I bought my Z800, there was one drive sled missing, and one cowling didn’t have a proper connector to the chassis. The seller, in my case, made good on it, and quickly.
Here’s a list of the varying specs on that model:
https://h20564.https://www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c01709724
You’ve also got room to double your RAM, and you could do that pretty cheaply. There are currently six RAM slots open. But I would see how performance is before jumping into that. I would suggest you go to an SSD drive for your OS, but since the media isn’t provided for Win7, you’d probably have to spring for a license. My current setup has an SSD OS drive, an Apps drive (all installed apps), and two 2TB media drives. I also added an Orico dock in the front of the machine, which allows me to slide in an internal hard drive for client backups. I also have an 8TB Drobo for regular backups. You shouldn’t need any of that stuff off the bat – I didn’t add that stuff until a few months down the road. I’m still adding stuff, and there are lots of inexpensive possibilities available, such as adding a USB 3.0 board (for about 20 bucks or so), since the machine comes with USB 2.0 ports. I haven’t had a speed problem, since my Drobo is connected via FireWire (there are two FW ports, front and back). You might want to ask which power supply is in the machine – there are two options, an 850w and an 1110w. You’d only run into the need for an 1110w PS if you’re going to run multiple high-end Nvidia cards.
Here’s the page for the motherload of HP Z800 documents. Anything you’d ever want to know is there, plus more:
Let me know if you have any questions. Walter Soyka is also a good source of info on the Z800 and later machines, since he owns at least one of them, and is technically way ahead of my knowledge.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
That’s dependent on the graphics card you put in it. The Nvidia Quadro 4000 card in my Z800 has Displayport and DVI outputs, but it’s easy to throw an HDMI adapter on the Displayport output. Of course if you want, you can throw whatever graphics card you want in there, there’s lot’s of room on the motherboard:
https://h20331.https://www2.hp.com/Hpsub/downloads/Optimizing_PCI-Express_on_Z800_3-18-09.pdf
A number of the Nvidia GeForce cards have HDMI ports.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Duke –
That was just the price I paid. I wanted the fastest clock speed dual Xeons available at the time, and the 48GB of RAM. I run all of the Adobe products, plus 3D Studio Max.
If you look at what’s on *bay, you’ll see that they can be had starting in the $400. range for a dual Xeon machine. The trick is to find a good seller, plus the most RAM you think you’ll need. I say the minimum should be 16 – 24GB. The beauty of this type of buy is that the machine can be upgraded whenever you want, and easily.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Duke –
I’ve been the very happy owner of an HP Z800 spaceship since 2013. I puchased it refurbished from a guy in Texas who buys off-lease pallet loads of them from the likes of Pixar and others. He then pulls them apart, refurbs and sells them on *bay. I picked mine up with 48GB of RAM, dual Xeon 3.2mHz processors, an NVidia graphics card (since replaced with a faster one), and two 2TB storage drives for 1300 bucks! All I had to add was an OS, an SSD for the OS, and the old drives from my previous workstation. It’s still kicking butt almost 3 years later, and it is a true enterprise class workstation. You can pull it apart right down to the motherboard with no tools! I see them all the time on *bay, as well as the Z820s (one gen back from the current crop of spaceships) for cheap. Just vet the seller carefully and you’ll be good to go. And all the support manuals and guides are on the HP site.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Here’s a search in AEScripts which uses the term “distribute” – since your link doesn’t work, I can’t see exactly what you’re going for, so take a look at these choices:
https://aescripts.com/search/?q=distribute
Looks to me as if Distribute Layers, or Layers2Grid might be helpful. Short of something like that, sometimes you just have to roll up your sleeves and eyeball it. I always find that the Align and Distribute tools always need some hand tweaking.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
I used Wondertouch Particle Illusion several years ago, and it came (at the time) with a huge number of presets and libraries, from fire and fairy dust, to all sorts of water, electronic effects, smoke, and other which are too cool to describe.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
I have baited breath – I just ate some smoked salmon…
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
After Effects most certainly does have particle emitters – take a look here:
https://cgi.tutsplus.com/articles/an-introduction-to-particle-emitters–ae-21766
That said, you will find that a third party effect such as Particular will give you a lot more power and more alternative looks than the built in particle effects.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Sounds as if you need to start with the E3D tutorials on their site:
https://www.videocopilot.net/docs/element/
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com