Oakmozart
Forum Replies Created
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Hard to say. You could try using dual-hyperthreaded P4’s, but remember: Avid doesn’t officially support hyperthreading. In fact, in my experience, the ACSR’s I know have always told me to turn it off or the system will encounter problems/instability.
I don’t know of any dual-P4 motherboards out there, but I’m sure you could find some with some digging around. You can get dual 3.06 ghz Xeon’s for around $350 or so (though they’re the older ones with the 533mhz FSB). Find a dual-Xeon mobo that supports the older type of Xeons but supports more modern RAM (like DDR PC3200) and you’ll probably be in business.
Xeon’s will ALWAYS be insanely expensive in their prices…why, I don’t know. I do know that they are incredible processors and I’m very curious to see what this fall’s new dual/double-core chips are capable of. I know they’ll blow Xeon’s right out of the water…and then Xeon prices will come down as everyone tries to clear them out.
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I don’t see why you couldn’t. However, I’d stay away from AMD chips and go strictly with Intel for this older system, which is obviously Meridien-based. Avid is in the process of including support for AMD chips (a seminar I recently attended said that Avid would be demoing future products on the HP xw9300 dual-Opteron system in the near future and probably at NAB 2006), but they didn’t offer it back when your Composer was manufactured. Save yourself the headache and stick with the components your computer was designed to run on.
If PCI-X is backwards-compatible (and I don’t think it is, but I don’t know for sure), then you might be okay throwing your old PCI-based Meridien boards onto a modern PCI-X board. For safety’s sake, I think I’d build a computer that’s as close to the original system as possible. In otherwords, build the fastest Xeon-based system you can, cram it full of the fastest RAM that you can (DDR-RAM, probably) that has AGP 8x (or 4x or whatever your original system had), regular PCI slots, etc. An HP xw8000 might fit your needs nicely and you can still find them for very affordably these days, including new/refurb models.
I’m NOT an ACSR, nor am I real familiar with the new PC hardware technologies coming out. It’s time I get caught up again, but that’s beside the point. Before building a system, it might not hurt to talk to your reseller about it and maybe they can set you up with a proper system very inexpensively, or at least give you some advice on what to put in your “new” system.
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Try looking at Avid’s website to see if they’ve got any books for sale on DS. Sometimes they sell books, without you having to take the class.
I just recently saw a whole bunch of DS manuals for sale on ebay a few days ago. Check again, under “Avid” or “Avid DS” in the search bar.
Your employer probably has some DS manuals laying around. See if you can get your hands on them for a couple of days, along with some time after hours on the DS to start to get acquainted with it. You’re right: DS is a COMPLETELY different animal than the rest of the Avid products. But it’s also the most intelligently coded and the most powerful, too.
Good luck.
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Primatte Keyer AVX by Red Giant Software. $495, I believe. Killer keyer, I’ve been using it since its original inception as an AE keyer by the now-defunct Puffin Designs. Have a gander: https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/primattekeyer.html
I also second MichaelP’s suggestion of zMatte from DFT. Excellent product, as are all of DFT’s products. Definitely a strong enhancement to your Effect Palatte.
The best keyer for Avid, besides Avid’s own SpectraMatte Keyer, is Ultimatte AdvantEdge. It’s the best of the best, dude. Problem is, it’s around $1600. Spendy. I know it’s out of your price range, but I just couldn’t help mentioning it. Check it out for spits and grins: https://www.ultimatte.com
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…As of right now. That will probably change. The way I described would mean that XPro HD 5.5 users would be able to capture their HDV footage as the lowest-end 8-bit DNxHD format, edit it in RT, then output it as native HDV. In other words, you’d be able to capture the footage as 8-bit DNxHD, but not output it…for that you’d need Adrenaline or higher. This is a typical Avid “save the Adrenaline!” maneuver.
Again, since it hasn’t been released, no one outside the company knows. My reseller told me the above, gleaned from conversations with those he knows at Avid Corporate. Again, it is purely speculation, but it makes sense. HDV requires pretty monstrous system resources, so I find it very difficult to believe that Avid would leave the HDV footage in its native state and still allow XPro HD 5.5 users with low-end system specs RT HDV editing. Also, when you take into account that Mojo is not capable of handling HDV (and I don’t mean the RT downconvert of HDV footage to view on an SD monitor), since it’s an SD-only device at this time, you realize that you’re going to be relying stricly on your CPU to do all the work when working with HDV footage. This is why I believe the above speculation from my reseller is accurate. It may not necessarily be right, but it makes perfect sense and would definitely be, in Avid’s own words, “an elegant solution.”
What you described about being able to “‘play and edit’ footage encoded with the 8 bit DNxHD codecs,” is a feature that is already available in the current version of XPro HD. The problem is, everyone I know–including me–who’s tried to edit DNxHD footage on their XPro HD systems as of now are experiencing hefty delays, since XPro seems to have to do some sort of conversion process to the footage as it imports it. Also, it seems as though the system gets a bit sluggish when you finally start working with it. Unfortunately, this lengthy wait pretty much makes the feature worthless to most. I suspect/hope this will be remedied this fall when the HDV release comes out.
Stay tuned.
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My understanding is that you will either 1) work with HDV in its native format and all effects will be handled via DNxHD, OR, 2) the HDV will be captured as DNxHD, where you will be able to work with it in RT, then output it back again as native HDV, again with all your effects remaining as DNxHD to allow for RT output over firewire without Mojo.
This is from my reseller. Since no definite specifics have been given (including release date, which I’ve heard will be anywhere from June to October), this is simply speculation. However it’s done, Avid has said straight-up that it will be an elegant solution and the best in the industry. We’ll see.
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Nope. I’ve got all 3 VideoTraxx and I LOVE them…I use them daily. If they were to offer the VidTraxx libraries in HD that’d be sweet, but it’d also be cost (and storage) prohibitive.
To each his or her own.
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https://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=21166&item=7512386036&rd=1
It’ll probably go for close to $400, but that’s still a great savings.
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Digital Juice VideoTraxx 1-3. Excellent libraries, all ROYALTY-FREE!! Affordably priced for the amount of content you get. Check it out: https://www.digitaljuice.com/products/product_volumes.asp?cid=1&pvid=10
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Try the ones in the users manual.
Otherwise, Steve Bayes started a company called “ArtFXual” which has released a DVD entitled “Marquee Demystified.” Great stuff. Only hitch: it costs $600. A tad spendy, IMHO.
Other than that, I have not found any Marquee tutorials.