Putting an HDV Kit together for someone

Hello all,

I've got no HDV experience, i only use FCP with DV material. However I'm helping someone who's new to FCP put together a kit, they want a powerbook 15 inch which will have the RAM, VRAM and HD space maxed out, they've already got some FW800 external drives but are wandering if the Powerbook will be able to hack HDV procsessor and harddrive wise.

Cheers

Sven the Jonson

i would NEVER use a powerbook as my main editing machine (even at the DV level). i use a 17" quite a bit for mobile work, but im always sooooo glad to get back to my office g5.

for general cutting, the powerbook should perform acceptably, but anything processor intensive like encoding or rendering effects is going to be painfully slow by comparison

I have a Dual 2.0 G5 w/ 4GB of Ram and an X800 video card with 23" ACD. I also have a 12" Powerbook G4 with 1.5 GB ram and the built in video card. I shoot HDV and DV, and obviously the g5 blows away the powerbook, but if you're on a trip or out in the field and need to capture and make quick cuts, the powerbook does the job. I would never want to edit anything beyond just basic cuts though, as it would take much too long..then again I think back to a few years ago when I had a 533Mhz g4 and I thought that was fast compared to an old g3 from 98.

for capture and simple cuts, a powerbook would be ok for HDV.

mine was when i was doing some recent tests.

but the rendering!

it felt like i was back on my old 400Mhz G4


nick

Likewise -

I use my ancient 15" 500 g4 PB to cut shows all the time. It's fine for capture and loging, and fine for basic cuts. You can get a surprising amount done on it. I bump to the G5 to do anything beyond a simple title. And yes - 2 21" monitors are way more spacious.

But I'm an old and gray workhorse, and I like to go home every now and then.
Sitting in the yard while the wife putters stifles any complaints about small screens.

Seeing the family before midnight is so much more important sometimes.

Ian

wanna hear real pain? try doing a volumetric lighting effects on a 33mhz quadra 840av, writing to a 4gig raid you paid $6,000 for - took 13 hours for a 3 second section... YEA for advances in technology!

So what's teh bottom line, the Powerbook will not be great for Compositing HDV just cutting simple things? They've made up they're mind that they want a Powerbook, mainly cause they want to use it for this project they've got which recquires them to travel.


I cut a big feature on an iBook G4 1GHz which included quite a bit of compositing and tonnes of rushes and sound work done to it, it worked out fine, material was DV.

the bottom line is what' s THEIR performance expectation?

as youve heard here, a powerbook will do it, it will just do it slower - and with HDV, id bet any significant work will be MUCH slower than a desktop dual g5. especially when it comes to exporting and rendering.

HDV is a bit under twice the resolution of DV, so do the math... for me personally (and i do a LOT of compositing work) i would NOT build my MAIN seat around ANY powerbook.

i say IF a good bit of the work is to be done mobile, get a proper rack mount g5 from grande vitesse systems - www.gvs9000.com and build a flight rack to hold it and the external drives. or maybe just stick a desktop cpu in a wheeled pellican case. another case for the display - done and off they go. . then cram the various firewire drives in a carry-on.

i couldnt live without my 17" powerbook for field work, but there is no way in hell i would ever consider building my main production seat around one (especially at the HDV level). it would be like pouring syrup through a collander.

Thanks Sven, I should probably jump in at this point. (by the way love the job yah did on Bye Bye, Paco's ranting about it all the time).

The work my editor and director want to do on the powerbook will have nothing like effects, compositing, or motion graphics. they want it for simple a-b editing with no more than 2/3 layers of video (even that is a lot, these guys are old school). It will be spread out over the two machines. We have spoken to Apple about it (15'' pwerbook, 128m graphics card, 2gb Ram) they seem alright with it though mentioning that it could be slow. We have faith.

One thing to remember about Apple is that they are a VERY cautious company.
If anyone thinks that they had anything to do with Cold Mountain, you are VERY wrong. They left Murch and co. on their own, alone. They mention it in the Apple workshops though.....reaping the rewards for other peoples pioneering.

That aside I am impressed with the platform, the reason that we are using powerbooks is the fact that we are shooting in the Ghetto's of Manchester for nearly three months and I would like to be able to put our (mine and editor P. Sweetman) machines in a backpack and run. Literally.

Rupert Foxx
Ass. Editor

I agree with Wayne.

Not a good idea. For one - the will not be able to play HDV material as HDV to an external monitor. A G5 is required for that. So they will be forced to edit in DV if they want live playback at native resolution.

Why is that important? Because with HDV there are a number of little compression jaggies and blips in any footage with moving stuff that show up ONLY in HDV. The DV down-convert will look stellar on a scene that is un-watchable in HDV.

So a G5 is gong to be required ANYWAY.

If they plan to do even light color correction it will pay for itself. The difference is between a road case (see above) and a briefcase - and on a film - that's a TINY difference. You'll still need A/C wherever you go, and all the support gear. You'll still need the shelter to keep sun off the monitors, and the portable desk to work at. One more case should be no big deal.

Ian

Is there not a function on FCP 5 that we could down grade the footage somewhat (akin to Avid's AVR) so we could perform a working cut on the film using the two beefed up Powerbooks and then import an XML into a G5 which we can get easy access to at a later date, do a full online ready to bump out onto a digibeta deck which we also have access to? Effectively gettting the best of both worlds? Mobile cutting (off-line), and then a full online on a dual (2.3Gig) G5?

Hit me with the info guys, I'm an assistant editor trying to persuade a pair of die hard Avid using filmmakers to do this and make the switch to the fruit flavoured magic machine.

Rupes.

p.s. Sven, when are you and K back in the UK, Paco was talking of meeting up for drinks......

easiest is to just capture your HDV as DV, which you can do from your HDV camera

maybe that depends on the frame rate? i dont know.

but yes, you can down-convert to a lower res oncew you've captured in FCP.
i suspect that that, too will be fairly time-consuming with HDV media.
maybe not.

if you capture as DV, then dowen the track you'd batch capture the HDV..
just like an online.

if you down-res your HDV, then yes you can reconect to the HDV at a later stage.
onl;y problam will be motion FX, which will be screwy because of the different frame sizes, but it doesnt sound like you;d have many of those

cheers
nick



Post Edited (07-20-05 16:49)