[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Mike,

I laughed when you mentioned losing the pen so fast. I don’t keep the cleanest editing desk, but I don’t seem to have a problem losing my pen? I keep the pen holder right next to the pad and my pen doesn’t walk away. After using it for over 7 years, its just a habit to grab for the pen when I need it and put it right back in the holder when I don’t. I know some people have a tendency to walk around with pens in their hands, so maybe that’s your issue?
For ergonomics reasons alone, it’s better to use a tablet and pen. I wrote an article years ago about the bad habits of mouse work. Up until I wrote that article, I never experience ‘carpal tunnel’ in my wrist, but believe me, you don’t want to.
https://www.eventdv.net/Articles/News/Feature/Editing-Ergonomics-37802.htm

Setting aside the ergonomics of the tablet, it’s still a MUCH faster way to edit and work on the computer. Sometimes I will still use the Wacom mouse that comes with the tablet, but usually after a couple minutes of working with it, I’ll think to myself “why am I working so slow?”, then I’ll remember and grab my pen. Also, on each side of the tablet there are 3 buttons and a touch strip-all programable. So, I’ve setup the buttons to do many different things; In & Outs, zooms, filter favorite, ‘enter’ command, etc. Once you start getting that going along with the tablet, you become a speed demon. 🙂 Granted, most of the time speed is not the problem in editing, but there are those occasional projects that you need to do a lot of repetition editing and thats when it becomes more helpful.

FWIW,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

For iMovie; exporting (self contained) in it’s ‘native’ format would be best-HD/SD.

iPhoto, it would be better to have them load the Raw camera files. Whatever format it’s in; tiff, jpeg, raw, etc. This way iPhoto won’t add any compression or modify the picture.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

You’re between a rock and a hard place. If you really think things through you have VERY limited options. I doubt you can have every person encoded the footage to ProRes-they would all have to have FCP. Some of the footage would be too large to transfer over the internet. I’m sure some of the people would have a hard time even getting the footage into a editable format? If they could, how would you get it? DVD-Rs are too small to hold more than 1/2 of DV footage, so you might need them to break it up into serveral DVD-Rs. The files would be too big to send over a network.
So that doesn’t leave a lot of possibilities. The best case situation would be to send a Hard Drive to everyone and have them load their footage onto it for you. Or have everyone send you a hard drive. That way you’ll be able to control how to encode the footage and try to keep as much quality as you can. But that would require a lot of time to mail it around. Making a DV tape copy is a good choice, but still requires everyone to have a DV tape deck.
I guess my point it that you probably won’t have ONE solution that will work for everyone, you’ll need to figure it out on a case by case basis while still trying to retain the quality as much as possible.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

[Mark Suszko] “ust export an HD reference movie from the timeline”
Reference movie files will not play on a clients computer. The reference movie files need the source media to play correctly.

HD files are large, unless it’s small video, it will not fit on DVD-Rs.

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

To piggyback onto Tom’s post, if you scale the image, the matte points DON’T adjust to the size, so the point will also misalign. No work around, you just need to make due or change your workflow.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Kyle,

If you do a search, I’m sure you’ll find lots of recommendations for edit suites.

As to what would be the best choices for you, depends a lot of the type of work and gear you’ll need to digitize from. Depending on which Maxtrox you would get, it should support the i/o you’d need for most decks. A lot of people recommend AJA over Maxtrox, I personally have a Motu V4 box that costs about the same as a Maxtrox Rack, but the Motu have much greater functionality.

You should try to have double the RAM per core, so for the 8 core, you’d want 16gb RAM. You should think about configuring the media HD for RAID 5 or 3. You’d want a mixer to monitor and control the levels if you have multiple decks.

You really can’t afford a HD monitor with £7000, but with the right capture/ i/o device you can monitor SD/HD (downcoverted) through it. Unfortunately CRT monitors still look better for SD.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Todd,

As with any FCP project, it can only perform as fast as it’s slowest link. So if you are using the GRAID for render files, FCP will run as slow as the FW800 can handle.

I wouldn’t really recommend breaking up the project files into different drives, it can complicate things and you won’t see any speed boast. As long as you have enough space to run everything off of the GDrive, that would be the fastest (once you’re running eSata).

Many people recommend having the project file on another drive, mostly due to the fact the the media drives are so heavily used, that they would be more likely to fail. I know in a lot of post-production environments, at the end of the day the editor will save a copy of the project file onto a another drive/directory so they have that as a backup in case the drive fails. I would recommend that type of workflow for you.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Kyle,

You will definitely see a performance boast with eSata over FW 800. But depending on how Buffalo configured the drives, will determine how much of a boast.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Rafael is correct, somethings not the same.
When I’m not sure what different, I’ll highlight the clip and the sequence in the browser and then look at the dimensions, frame rate, compressor, etc. You should see a difference there.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Mike,

I’m a little fuzzy on your workflow, but ProRes would be a better choice for compressor settings in your sequence. Once you bring in your footage, it will be better for you to get away from HDV. It’s very compressed and can require a lot of processing power to edit with.

If you’re able to export out a ‘good’ looking SD video, then you should be fine when you compress out to DVD.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production