Cracked out Cube PC for A1/G1 tethered?

[Kholi]

Has anyone researched using a Cube PC with a high-end motherboard and graphics card along with a PCI-E slot for tethered shoots?

[Elton]

It'd probably be great if you capture with CineForm. You could also use Sheer and transcode to PhotoJPEG for universal compatibility. CineForm should be available in FCP 6 too. (for a non-trivial fee, I think)

It will probably take substantial processing power but the newer chips and mobos should be able to handle it.

Poor man's Wafian!

[Kholi]

Yeah, but FCP isn't PC based. Sooo what program would you use to capture? Adobe Premiere? And then move it on over to a G5 for FCP editing?

As far as I knew, the new Mac Mini's and the Old One's don't allow for an expandable PCI card. Blackmagic and the like.

I was thinking if you got a nice Shuttle PC with about 4 gigs of ram and some large internal HDD's then you'd be okay with installing a Blackmagic PCI card to capture the Analog signal.

[Elton]

Yeah, but FCP isn't PC based. Sooo what program would you use to capture? Adobe Premiere? And then move it on over to a G5 for FCP editing?

Precisely. I'd consider buying Sheer (Windows version at least, or get it for both platforms) and using Premiere Pro for capture. Prospect HD (CineForm) is a nice 10 bit wavelet codec environment but it's not cheap. Install 2 500 GB SATA drives and stripe them RAID 0 and you should get uncompressed quality at about 45 MBs with Sheer. It's about 3 times the bit rate of DV100 but far superior. 1 TB would give you approx. 300 min. of recording time with lossless image fidelity. Transcode to an offline codec to cut with and then conform the Sheer originals to maintain ultimate quality.

Lots of options if you don't mind juggling formats a bit.

As far as I knew, the new Mac Mini's and the Old One's don't allow for an expandable PCI card. Blackmagic and the like.

Correct.

I was thinking if you got a nice Shuttle PC with about 4 gigs of ram and some large internal HDD's then you'd be okay with installing a Blackmagic PCI card to capture the Analog signal.

Like I said...poor man's Wafian!

[Kholi]

I just saw what you meant by the Wafian.

This could be a really good solution for tethered work. I've seen pre-built systems go for 400 with like 2gigs of ram on Ebay.

Couple this with a Dell 2405 or 3007 and you've got a rather practical field solution. Even better, for a very small studio that needs every inch of space (like the office room we use at work.). And then, if you Firewire/Daisy Chain two 500gb Externals, you can offload the footage and then transport to a G5 for editing.

Sounds like I'm about to start putting together a Shuttle PC.