Setup of Final Cut Pro System for Short Film

Okay all of you Final Cut Pro gurus. Feel free to toss up suggestion.

After leaving PC editing over a year ago and diving into Final Cut Pro 6, doing very short sequences, etc, I am finally doing a 10 minute short film later this year, using Panasonic's AG-HVX200 camera. (Will log and transfer on set then copy to hard drive)

My tools so far:

MacPro Dual Core (2 X2.8 GHz Processor)
OSX 10.5.6
10 GB RAM
500 GB Mac Drive
2 1TB Drives (One for Time Machine)
Final Cut Studio 2
DVD Burner
30 inch Apple Cinema Monitor

I am considering getting:

Apple 23 inch Monitor (Refurbished because Apple doesn't sell them anymore) for Color Correction, reference, etc (And it looks cool)
Black Magic's "DeckLink High Definition" (To be able to master and have I/O on most decks, or, if I shoot on tape)

What else should I consider?
Is the Apple 23 inch a good solution for an inexpensive studio monitor setup?

Thanks!

You could try running one of the ACDs off an interface like the MXO for monitoring, but you need a calibratable broadcast signal.

Not sure about the Time Machine, as I don't use that to back up media files, but you'll need a separate back up of the media/P2 files.



www.strypesinpost.com

Quote

Is the Apple 23 inch a good solution for an inexpensive studio monitor setup?

Emphatically no. In order to know what your work will look like on a television, you need to see it on a television.

If you need an inexpensive monitoring setup, buy a cheap CRT television (not an LCD or plasma) and feed it with the composite or component output of your I/O board. Google how to do a basic calibration against color bars. You will not get it right. Let me say that again, because it's important: You will not get it right. But it will be better than trying to imagine what your shot will look like.

You call your project a "short film," but that's pretty ambiguous. If you're actually going to do a film-out, you simply can't get accurate color from consumer-grade gear. It's just not possible. Color accuracy for film-out is part art and part science, and beyond the capabilities of "inexpensive" gear. Your best bet in that situation is to do a test. It'll cost you, but it's the only way to know what your footage will look like once it's printed to film stock.

Hmm... Shane Ross did a review of the ACDs with the MXO. I'm not too sure how well it will hold up for finishing though.

On the other hand, getting a cheap CRT TV (I'm assuming you're talking about SDTV) may not be a good solution if he's shooting HD as he'll need the pixel for pixel accuracy.



www.strypesinpost.com

You know, you may be right. I was thinking, when I wrote that, that judging color on a CRT via an SD downconvert would be a better option than trying to judge color on an LCD. But I forgot about the conversion from Rec 709 to Rec 601. That might be an issue.

That also depends on which hardware/software is doing the downconversion. They all look different, from the LHe to the HDCAM decks to Final Cut. And there's always a color shift, even if slight.

Also, the ACDs only have DVI inputs, which you won't be able to get from the BMD capture cards and you really don't want use the DVI from the graphics card on the digital cinema desktop preview for finishing.

The pixel for pixel accuracy is important too. As you need it to gauge noise and banding when you're doing finishing, or you'll never know how far you can go.

I won't recommend cheap either. Consumer grade gear never provide a true picture. Saturation and contrast are always tweaked so pictures always look artificially "better and sharper"..



www.strypesinpost.com

Or save the money on the monitor and do the final color correction in a Da Vinci suite... A 10 minute short film could be helped immeasurably by two hours in $500/hour suite.

Noah

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For COMPUTER monitors, you can get anything cheap. Samsung, Dell make good inexpensive monitors. Then if you want external monitoring of your footage to know what it looks like on a broadcast monitor, then you can look at the MXO/Apple monitor option, or Decklink Intensity Pro or newer Decklink Studio in combination with a good Plasma or LCD monitor.

Some card that allows you to calibrate the monitor to bars. The MXO and ACD does this. The MXO 2 does this via HDMI to a plasma or LCD monitor (Chuck Spaulding knows this well)...not sure about the Decklink cards. Typically they want professional monitors with internal calibration tools.


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