Walter Biscardi
Forum Replies Created
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In my opinion they’re not worth much of anything quite honestly unless you want to go into teaching. If you want to be a teacher or an instructor at a school or training company, then you need it.
Otherwise, those certifications from Apple, Adobe and others simply tell me you know how to push the buttons the way those companies want you to push the buttons. It doesn’t tell me that you know how to craft a story, assemble a graphic or create that animation I need.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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When you are viewing your movie in FCE, how are you looking at it? On the computer screen or on an external properly calibrated TV?
In order to know exactly how your film will look after compression and delivery, you have to be viewing correctly on your edit system.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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[Alf Hanna] “You don’t need to go to some expensive third party utility as Rafael suggests. Apple disk utility is plenty good for most issues. I’ve restored corrupt RAID arrays with no problem using it. It finds the issues just fine.”
Disk Utility is pretty weak in terms of fixing issues with the computers except the most basic and I would NEVER allow Disc Utility to touch my RAIDs. We only use Disc Warrior to look at and fix any issues with our RAIDs when needed. Multiple VERY bad experience with Disc Utility and RAIDs in the past keep me from repeating that mistake.
Basic repairs on a single drive, Disc Utility is fine. If you’re having serious issues or corruption, nothing beats Disc Warrior that I’ve found.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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[Dylan Robertson] “Yes, I have heard that they new imac’s have dropped jumbo frame support, Which is LAME.
I also don’t online 8 bit or 10 bit uncompressed HD over the ethernet. Or, if you are pulling 444 uncompressed, for that I use direct connection. PRO Res 422 HQ Does work.”
ProRes and ProRes HQ does not work here with any of the newer iMacs. Drops frames every 5 to 10 seconds. Just can’t work without the Jumbo Frame support.
[Dylan Robertson] “Yes, the XSAN is going to be better. If I were cutting a reality TV show, I’d get an XSAN. But I cut television and feature docs plus commercials.”
Nah, I wouldn’t get an XSAN, I would go with a Maxx Digital EVO series array. Much cheaper and more efficient. That’s why we run them here. Apple wants WAY too much money for their stuff.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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[Todd Terry] “I chalk up Darrin McGavin’s “Old Man” in that movie as one of my all-time favorite film performances.”
Hear Hear! In fact chalk that movie up to one of the best casts ever in a film. LOVE that film and hope to make it to Ralphie’s house in Cleveland one of these days….
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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[Nick Griffin] “It’s official, Walter. You’re my hero. (But the lamp is supposed to be in the front window where the whole neighborhood can admire it. And keep Ralphie away from it at all costs.)”
It moves to the front window of our house for Christmas week so the entire neighborhood can see our Major Award!
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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[Richard Johnson] “After deleting everything off a hard drive I booted the computer to it and installed Snow Leopard and Final Cut Pro Studio 2.”
For Studio 2 I would be running OS 10.5.8, not Snow Leopard.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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[Dylan Robertson] “For people who already know this, please disregard. But for the rest of the FCP world, you don’t need to spend $20,000 on a server. Just an ethernet switcher – that’s it. I thought I would post a tutorial on how to do it.”
If you’re referring to the Final Share SAN system, you do realize that the $20,000 includes a 16TB RAID. Right?
The actual cost of setting up the Mac Pro and the Ethernet based controls is considerably lower, particularly if you already own the computer.
[Dylan Robertson] “If you are nervous what computer you use, we have used everything from a macbook pro to an Imac to a macbook to a MAC PRO. The faster the better, but it has to have gigabit ethernet.”
Almost all of the current Apple computers except the Mac Pro do not support editing over ethernet, at least not reliably. We discovered that and as I have posted in my blog Apple changed the Ethernet controller dropping Jumbo Frame support which takes away reliable HD editing capabilities. Why Apple did this is beyond me, but we had to abandon plans to install 27″ iMacs in four of our new suites because our testing on the i7 iMac was a disaster. So we purchased one of the last Core Duo machines before they phased them out, but from here forward, all of our ethernet based machines are Mac Pros.
Your method is a start, but I know from our experience for the past two years with Small Tree, Atto and Maxx Digital, they are continually tuning our system, particularly the server and RAID card to ensure the maximum speeds for all 7 of our workstations. So while it might be “simple” to connect everything, it’s not so simple to tune what’s going on inside the Mac, the RAID card, the Ethernet Host and the RAIDs themselves to get the fastest, most reliable performance from your system. In our case, this is one area where we can’t just “build it ourselves” and hope for the best. We have too many deadlines and projects to undergo something like this.
But if your workflow is not so deadline driven, your setup is certainly an option for folks to try.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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Todd,
We might not have the super cool tree, but we do have the lamp.
You’ll shoot your eye out kid! Ho Ho Hooooooooooooooo
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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WeibeTech RTX Series. These are trayless SATA arrays. Purchase 1 or 2TB bare SATA drives, back up all your material to a drive, pop it out and put it into a DriveBox. Looks like a VHS case. Put the drive on your shelf.
For added security, make a clone of that drive.
That’s what we do for all our archiving here.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.