A friend emailed to ask what editing system I’d recommend that would do 500Mb a second for his editing/post-production workflow. I figured I’d share my answer with you, the MarylandFilms.com readers as well:
I’m not sure exactly, as it really depends on several things. But, I’d have to say you’d want a bare minimum of at least a dual-core 2.5GHz system, 8GBs of RAM, and a fast RAID.
Honestly, if you are doing HD work, you want a bare minimum of a quad-core 3GHz machine to do any ‘real’ work. Anything less and you’ll be waiting on render times so long you’ll be an old man before you get your first cut finished… Currently, I’m running an 8-core 3GHz system and I find it’s too slow for all of my needs.
As for RAID systems, go with a SATA RAID setup like this and you can’t go wrong:
4 x 1TB SATA drives (or 4 x 1.5TB SATA drives)
1 x Storage Tower with 5X1 Sata Port Multiplier
1 x ESATA Cable (connect tower to computer)
1 x ESATA RAID Controller
I got my most recent storage tower from amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Storage-Tower-Sata-Port-Multiplier/dp/B000DEMMMW
You’ll want to build two RAIDs, since YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED REDUNDANCY!
Final Cut HoHoHo isn’t the best NLE system for true real time work. It will play the raw footage in real time, but if you start adding filters, the timeline will need rendering. It’s a pain in the ass.
Haven’t used Avid and don’t know anyone in my area currently using it (most of the companies in my area are big into Adobe), so I can’t give you much feedback there. Avid is selling their systems to students/educators for dirt cheap though, so may be worth a look.
Haven’t used Adobe in a while, but I have several friends that swear by their Adobe Premiere systems, so Adobe seems to be worth looking into. Get the new Adobe Suite and you can’t go wrong – you can edit with Premiere, do your FX in After Effects, and Color correction with Adobe Photoshop. It’s a really *suite* deal (get it?).
Costs are always going to be thru the roof for equipment and software. An editing system that actually works will probably cost around $7,000. The less you dump into it, the more you will feel it – and the more you dump into it, the less you will feel it. And there’s a reason why Big films are cut on $100k systems – they are fast and do real time.
Of course, you can always off-line everything and edit it in something small like 640×480 academy or 640×360 widescreen. Goes much faster that way. When you are finished, just online, render, and viola.
Convert this post to pdf
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
