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All the news now and in your digital future
I wish to upgrade my "work" editing suite
Posted by PhillyFilmmaker
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Re: I wish to upgrade my "work" editing suite August 14, 2008 09:24AM |
Believe it or not, you're better off with your old CRT than you are with a new LCD TV.
Standard-definition material is interlaced. CRTs are also interlaced. LCDs aren't. Looking at a standard-definition show on an LCD shows you something that isn't faithful to the actual picture. For example, you can't spot field-dominance problems on an LCD.
My room is equipped thusly:
Mac Pro with 2x23" cinema displays
Kona LHe board with break-out box
KRK VXT6 studio monitors (2; no surround mixing here)
Tascam FW-1082 mixer-slash-control surface-slash-audio interface
Panasonic BT-LH1760 broadcast monitor fed by two SDI links from the Kona, one for HD and one for a real-time SD downconvert
Cheap and terrible Samsung consumer-grade television, fed by composite video and unbalanced analog audio, for confidence
Mine's about a $25,000 room, give or take a little bit. You don't have to go that far, especially if you're still working in SD. You can get a Blackmagic Intensity Pro card for your Mac that will give you component analog out for about $350, so you can go straight from your Mac to your TV without having to do a DV downconvert first.
If you want to go HD, yes, you're going to need an HD monitor. The Intensity Pro will work here too, because it's got an HDMI output on it. Finding a consumer-grade LCD for monitoring HD work is something I can't help you with myself, but I bet somebody else here can.
If you're going to stay SD, just keep your TV. You're not doing professional color-correction, so while having a proper broadcast monitor would certainly be helpful, it's not strictly necessary to do your job. Just throw up some color bars and do a basic brightness-contrast calibration on your TV, and you'll be fine.
I recommend G-Tech storage. It's reasonably priced, and has a good reputation. Give them a nice, long lead time right now, though; they're a little backlogged. My order for a G-Speed ES has been in since the 5th, and it's just being bench-tested now.
The HVX200A is a good piece of kit. But be aware that tapeless introduces a number of serious workflow hurdles that you'll need to get comfortable with. It's not objectively better or worse than tape ? though preferences can be strong ? but it's different. Maybe before pulling the trigger you should consider renting an HVX kit for a few days and trying out the workflow? I think those cameras usually rent for about $250 a day including a couple P2 cards, so you could try it out for a reasonable sum.
Standard-definition material is interlaced. CRTs are also interlaced. LCDs aren't. Looking at a standard-definition show on an LCD shows you something that isn't faithful to the actual picture. For example, you can't spot field-dominance problems on an LCD.
My room is equipped thusly:
Mac Pro with 2x23" cinema displays
Kona LHe board with break-out box
KRK VXT6 studio monitors (2; no surround mixing here)
Tascam FW-1082 mixer-slash-control surface-slash-audio interface
Panasonic BT-LH1760 broadcast monitor fed by two SDI links from the Kona, one for HD and one for a real-time SD downconvert
Cheap and terrible Samsung consumer-grade television, fed by composite video and unbalanced analog audio, for confidence
Mine's about a $25,000 room, give or take a little bit. You don't have to go that far, especially if you're still working in SD. You can get a Blackmagic Intensity Pro card for your Mac that will give you component analog out for about $350, so you can go straight from your Mac to your TV without having to do a DV downconvert first.
If you want to go HD, yes, you're going to need an HD monitor. The Intensity Pro will work here too, because it's got an HDMI output on it. Finding a consumer-grade LCD for monitoring HD work is something I can't help you with myself, but I bet somebody else here can.
If you're going to stay SD, just keep your TV. You're not doing professional color-correction, so while having a proper broadcast monitor would certainly be helpful, it's not strictly necessary to do your job. Just throw up some color bars and do a basic brightness-contrast calibration on your TV, and you'll be fine.
I recommend G-Tech storage. It's reasonably priced, and has a good reputation. Give them a nice, long lead time right now, though; they're a little backlogged. My order for a G-Speed ES has been in since the 5th, and it's just being bench-tested now.
The HVX200A is a good piece of kit. But be aware that tapeless introduces a number of serious workflow hurdles that you'll need to get comfortable with. It's not objectively better or worse than tape ? though preferences can be strong ? but it's different. Maybe before pulling the trigger you should consider renting an HVX kit for a few days and trying out the workflow? I think those cameras usually rent for about $250 a day including a couple P2 cards, so you could try it out for a reasonable sum.
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Re: I wish to upgrade my "work" editing suite August 14, 2008 11:33AM |
I wouldn't recommend using internal storage in your Mac unless, as John says, you buy the Apple RAID card as well. There's no performance reason not to stripe some SATA drives together to use as your framestore, but all Apple's software supports is striping, which means if you lose one drive ? and you will ? you'll lose the entire volume.
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Re: I wish to upgrade my "work" editing suite August 15, 2008 06:10AM |
I would NOT get the Apple RAID card - WAAAAAY too expensive when there are better ones out there from CalDigit and HighPoint.
Barefeats did a comparison of the CalDigit vs the Apple RAID card here: [www.barefeats.com]
The CalDigit card outperformed it and is MUCH cheaper $800 for Apple vs $549 for CalDigit plus you will have external connectors available to update your storage on the CalDigit Card later on which you don't on the apple card.
If you want to go internal only then:
The HighPoint 2640X4 vs the Apple RAID card: [www.barefeats.com]
The other HighPoint Card to look at would be the RocketRAID 3510 which I have been told is a real trail blazer. Price less than $500.
As far as HDDs are concerned take a serious look at the Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB HDDs - I have 11 of them (8TB RAID, 1 Spare, 2 Internal System HDDs on MacPro) and they are much quieter, cooler running and every bit as fast as the Hitachi DeskStars that I usually advocate.
The real bonus is the price - they are MUCH cheaper than comparable models.
A quick look on Google shopping $149.00 for 1TB: [www.directron.com]
For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]
Barefeats did a comparison of the CalDigit vs the Apple RAID card here: [www.barefeats.com]
The CalDigit card outperformed it and is MUCH cheaper $800 for Apple vs $549 for CalDigit plus you will have external connectors available to update your storage on the CalDigit Card later on which you don't on the apple card.
If you want to go internal only then:
The HighPoint 2640X4 vs the Apple RAID card: [www.barefeats.com]
The other HighPoint Card to look at would be the RocketRAID 3510 which I have been told is a real trail blazer. Price less than $500.
As far as HDDs are concerned take a serious look at the Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB HDDs - I have 11 of them (8TB RAID, 1 Spare, 2 Internal System HDDs on MacPro) and they are much quieter, cooler running and every bit as fast as the Hitachi DeskStars that I usually advocate.
The real bonus is the price - they are MUCH cheaper than comparable models.
A quick look on Google shopping $149.00 for 1TB: [www.directron.com]
For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]
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Re: I wish to upgrade my "work" editing suite August 15, 2008 08:01AM |
The virtue of buying the Apple card is that if there's a problem, you'll never hear "Oh, that's a Mac OS X issue, we can't fix that."
Well. Hardly ever.
And on a system like what we're talking about, the difference between a $550 board and an $800 board is noise level. The shipping on all your gear will come to more than $250. Unless you ship it via UPS second-business-day goat-herder or whatever.
Well. Hardly ever.
And on a system like what we're talking about, the difference between a $550 board and an $800 board is noise level. The shipping on all your gear will come to more than $250. Unless you ship it via UPS second-business-day goat-herder or whatever.
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Re: I wish to upgrade my "work" editing suite August 15, 2008 05:25PM |
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And, if I am not mistaken in any way; it is the ONLY card that can use the three (or four) internal sleds of the MacPro.
Yeah you are mistaken; according to the promotional material the CalDigit Card uses the internal slots of the MacPro...
[www.caldigit.com] click on the Mac video in the middle you will see that it utilizes the internal HDD option on your Mac.
I'll ask John at CalDigit to clarify... if you want an extra yes from the horses mouth (not implying you are a horse Jon
)
For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]
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Re: I wish to upgrade my "work" editing suite August 15, 2008 05:35PM |
Additionally, the HighPoint RocketRAID 2640X4 supports four internal SAS or SATA drives (just like the Apple Pro RAID) as well as card level RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 (just like the Apple Pro RAID).
John (Foley), I did do a fair amount of homework before I posted to double check as I don't have either of these cards. However I neither consider myself dumb enough or ignorant enough to suggest an alternative that is unsuitable and needed an external case!
Both options are a viable alternative as far as the information on their sites and by the reviews on Barefeats et al...
For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]
John (Foley), I did do a fair amount of homework before I posted to double check as I don't have either of these cards. However I neither consider myself dumb enough or ignorant enough to suggest an alternative that is unsuitable and needed an external case!
Both options are a viable alternative as far as the information on their sites and by the reviews on Barefeats et al...
For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]
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Re: I wish to upgrade my "work" editing suite August 15, 2008 07:03PM |
Ben, I don't know much about this stuff, but doesn't the Caldigit card have only two internal ports on it? I don't think you can do RAID with just two drives. Well, unless you count RAID-1, but you can do that entirely in software.
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Re: I wish to upgrade my "work" editing suite August 16, 2008 06:07AM |
The CalDigit RAID card has 2 connectors internally. One is to connect the card to the MacPro via the iPass cable which allows the CalDigit to control of the HDDs.
Optional: The other connector is used for connecting back to the motherboard iPass socket (with an additional miniSAS cable) if you wish to use bootcamp.
Internally the CalDigit and HighPoint cards support up to 4 HDDs.
Externally the CalDigit supports a further 12 via 3 ports each capable of 4 HDDs each.
The installation procedure for the CalDigit card is in the getting started manual here: [www.CalDigit.com]
Its an almost identical installation for the Apple RAID card: [manuals.info.apple.com]
If you want to know more about the Highpoint card one of our other members has written about it here: [www.lafcpug.org]
RAID originally stood for "Redundant Array (of) Inexpensive Disks" and more recently - "Redundant Array of Independent Disks", (both are correct but the latter is probably used more often) and can be made from 2 or more HDDs.
With 2 HDDs you can make RAID 0 (Striped and Fastest RAID option but no redundancy) and RAID 1 (Mirrored RAID set, identical copy on 2 or more disks for maximum redundancy but is as slow as a single drive). With more HDDs you can add further RAID options such as RAID 5, 6, etc.
Generally you use Disks of the same size and manufacturer but you can make what is called a "concatenated disk set" where you can string together 2 or more HDDs (of any size) to make 1 volume.
The use of a hardware controller will free up processor time for other system functions and won't suffer if the processors are very busy as it does with software RAID. Also you cannot do software RAID 5 or more with the Mac OS.
Sorry to say but the Apple card really is a pathetic option at $800... Its not even capable of the performance you would expect for that price!
So my suggestion would be to get the CalDigit card instead of the Apple one as you will get more performance and expandability for your bucks!
For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]
Optional: The other connector is used for connecting back to the motherboard iPass socket (with an additional miniSAS cable) if you wish to use bootcamp.
Internally the CalDigit and HighPoint cards support up to 4 HDDs.
Externally the CalDigit supports a further 12 via 3 ports each capable of 4 HDDs each.
The installation procedure for the CalDigit card is in the getting started manual here: [www.CalDigit.com]
Its an almost identical installation for the Apple RAID card: [manuals.info.apple.com]
If you want to know more about the Highpoint card one of our other members has written about it here: [www.lafcpug.org]
Quote
I don't think you can do RAID with just two drives. Well, unless you count RAID-1, but you can do that entirely in software.
RAID originally stood for "Redundant Array (of) Inexpensive Disks" and more recently - "Redundant Array of Independent Disks", (both are correct but the latter is probably used more often) and can be made from 2 or more HDDs.
With 2 HDDs you can make RAID 0 (Striped and Fastest RAID option but no redundancy) and RAID 1 (Mirrored RAID set, identical copy on 2 or more disks for maximum redundancy but is as slow as a single drive). With more HDDs you can add further RAID options such as RAID 5, 6, etc.
Generally you use Disks of the same size and manufacturer but you can make what is called a "concatenated disk set" where you can string together 2 or more HDDs (of any size) to make 1 volume.
The use of a hardware controller will free up processor time for other system functions and won't suffer if the processors are very busy as it does with software RAID. Also you cannot do software RAID 5 or more with the Mac OS.
Sorry to say but the Apple card really is a pathetic option at $800... Its not even capable of the performance you would expect for that price!
So my suggestion would be to get the CalDigit card instead of the Apple one as you will get more performance and expandability for your bucks!
For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]
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Re: I wish to upgrade my "work" editing suite August 16, 2008 08:40AM |
Oh, okay, that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up, Ben.
In general, you could tell me that inside my system there are leprechauns with hammers who forge my pixels one at a time, and I couldn't argue with you.
In general, you could tell me that inside my system there are leprechauns with hammers who forge my pixels one at a time, and I couldn't argue with you.
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Re: I wish to upgrade my "work" editing suite August 16, 2008 01:47PM |
HAHAAHA Jeff!!
You must be thinking of the Typo-faeries, Grammar-gremlins and Keyboard-trolls that cause the havoc you might associate with dyslexia or a hang-over and the pixels you see on screen are created by an ink-spitting dragon, whilst the sound is created by a small impressionist from Bratislava (Note: Sometimes Peruvian in Early MacPros) who lives behind the DVD drive.
Video is handled by the the ghosts of boys who died on playground roundabouts/merry-go-rounds by using dark 16th century magic to "spirit-chain" them to a sort of zoetrope...
...Leprechauns however, are only active in Ireland and in Lucky Charms!
For crying out loud man, this is basic Apple hardware 101! Noob is too good a label for you.
For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]
You must be thinking of the Typo-faeries, Grammar-gremlins and Keyboard-trolls that cause the havoc you might associate with dyslexia or a hang-over and the pixels you see on screen are created by an ink-spitting dragon, whilst the sound is created by a small impressionist from Bratislava (Note: Sometimes Peruvian in Early MacPros) who lives behind the DVD drive.
Video is handled by the the ghosts of boys who died on playground roundabouts/merry-go-rounds by using dark 16th century magic to "spirit-chain" them to a sort of zoetrope...
...Leprechauns however, are only active in Ireland and in Lucky Charms!
For crying out loud man, this is basic Apple hardware 101! Noob is too good a label for you.
For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]
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