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Buying A High Definition Editing System But Don’t Know Where To Start?
By Frey | September 3, 2007
Editing High Definition is not for the faint of heart. It takes a big machine to cut together High Definition, slightly bigger for 2k, and the biggest, baddest machine money can buy for 4k (as a side note, a $15000 Mac or Dell probably isn’t going to be cutting 4k stuff very easily).
Although editing uncompressed is what everyone talks about, editing with compression is much easier on a system than uncompressed. With that said, compression, no matter what you’ve heard, isn’t really a bad thing. Honestly. Compression is actually a really cool thing that helps us to work with tons of video data, and yet 99% of the people who watch it won’t notice the compression. A whole lot of money is dumped into developing compression codecs that look good. Sony’s HDV 1080i60 and 1080i50 codecs keep the compression hidden in the interlacing. It’s definitely there, but the average person isn’t going to notice it very easily. It’s an extremely smart way of putting compression into video - just hide it.
If you want a “low-end” system for editing HD (any format from HDV to DVCPro HD to XDCam and so on), you’ll want at least a dual 2.4Ghz computer - of course, that’s depending on which software you’ll be using - some softwares (like Premiere) need even bigger processors to run. Single processors aren’t worth your time - you’ll want at least a dual processor or more. You’ll also want at least 2Gb of RAM (that’s a minimum - 4Gb is definitely preferred). At least one RAID0 array totaling 1TB or bigger (a RAID0 array consists of at least two drives striped together to form one big, fast storage drive).
If you are a student (or teacher), you can get a great Academic discount on software. Buy from Avid and you can get Xpress Pro for $295 (education price is on the right side), from Adobe and you can get Premiere for $349 and Apple only wants $149 for Final Cut Express HD (they want $699 for Final Cut Studio - it’s more expensive, but you get a whole lot more in that package).
I use and even teach Final Cut Pro, but I am not a disciple of Steve Jobs or of Apple. I use Macs because they work for my particular workflow, but I’d switch over to Avid or Adobe in a heartbeat if I thought they would improve my workflow more. I’ve been looking at both NLEs for a while - and think very highly of what those systems can accomplish (for instance, I love the fact that you can go back and forth between Adobe’s Premiere, After Effects, and Photoshop effortlessly - that’s something that is extremely enticing in an editing package).
I guess the question is: How much are you willing to spend on an editing system? Over or under $1500? If under $1500, you may want to look into buying a 20″ iMac from Apple (the 2.4Ghz model) and use iMovie HD for cutting your films together (you may want to buy some extra RAM when you get a chance) or a PC with the High Definition version of Windows Movie Maker (included in Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista). I haven’t used Movie Maker, but I’m sure it works great - I’ve seen a few films cut together with it and they looked fine to me. On occasion, I have used iMovie - it has some great transitions/filters, and you can cut a lot of stuff together with it. It’s easy to learn and use, and it has a lot of great transitions, sound effects, and other cool things. iMovie HD is not going to be FCP or Avid Xpress (it lacks things like color correction), but it is going to be easy and instead of looking at a ton of raw footage, you can actually edit your footage together and make a film. And if you think iMovie won’t cut it, try this one on for size: a few years ago, a local Maryland woman shot a documentary with a small MiniDV camera, bought a Mac, and used iMovie to cut her film together. The film made it into Sundance. Not bad for a cheap little program called “iMovie“, eh? Both iMovie and Movie Maker will get you in the game - the bigger programs like Avid’s Xpress Pro, Adobe Premiere, and Apple’s Final Cut Studio will keep you playing.
Want another great idea? Meet with fellow film makers in your area EVERY chance you can get. Ask to use/rent their editing systems, or trade them camera time (if you have one) for editing time, or something along those lines. It’s certainly cheaper than buying an editing system (up front anyway). If nothing else, getting in with the local film makers can help you ask questions and discuss the pros and cons of their specific editing platforms. btw: One way to meet other film makers is to join groups of film makers doing the 48 hour/72 hour/weekend film maker contests - lots of fun and you get to meet a lot of cool film makers in your area.
Several years ago, I ended up going with FCP because at the time the only other film makers/editors I knew were using FCP. I had originally started out with Adobe Premiere on a PC, and then made the switch after getting extremely frustrated with that system (the system would not allow me to import footage via firewire). Since I didn’t have anyone local to fall back on to ask those basic system questions, I switched over to FCP.
I’ve found over the years that it’s usually better to run the same system as people you know (for instance, I started using Linux in 1995 - and everyone I knew at the time used RedHat Linux, so I used RedHat), so you can ask them questions when you run into problems (or if need be, offer to buy them beer and pizza to fix your problem).
Like I said, editing High Definition is not for the faint of heart, but, luckily, there are many ways to get around the high dollar curve ball (and not to mention the immense learning curve that goes along with it) that the big dogs are throwing at us.
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Topics: editing, high definition |
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