$10,000 For An Editing Suite, What to Buy?

A

agold4me

Member
My high school recently received a $20,000 grant to spend on video production equipment, which it currently has none of. I have, along with several others, been asked to come up with a list of recommendations for purchasing. Of the $20k, I estimate that about half, $10,000 should be available for Editing/Post equipment and software.

So, the question, for $10,000, from the ground up (minus furniture), what is the best combination of equipment to create a great Final Cut Studio 2 based HD-capable Post Suite?

Any other relevant suggestions on spending the money are welcome as well.

Max
 
8-core 3ghz Mac Pro
8gigs of RAM (4x2gb)
1x250gb and 2x750gb(raid0) hard drives
ATi x1900 video card
2x23" ACD's
=$8,256 plus tax

This is one helluva workstation. You can save a lot of money buying the RAM and HD's from 3rd party vendors, but for an institution purchase it may be easier to buy direct from Apple.
 
looking at a couple sites, you could add 8gb to a stock Mac Pro (you'd have 9gigs total) and save $900. Also, getting the hard drives from a 3rd party, you could get a three 750's for less than buying two from apple.

How many workstations do you need? you could also get two 2.66 mac pro stations with 4gigs of ram each and 500gig hd's.
 
Do you want more than one machine? I don't see a reason to go all out on one Mac Pro for regular HD work. You can get the students several Mac Pro's instead of maxing one out.

For that matter, you might be better off with Dual-Core iMacs. It all depends on what you want...one awesome machine, or several great ones. Either way, I don't think the students will see the difference in performance. Again, it depends on what you plan to use it for. Let us know.
 
I'm asking for specs on one edit station, but I'm not just asking about what kind of Mac to get, I'm asking for the whole picture, including software, monitors, I/O, everything. The school is purchasing several other new Macs (no specs yet, purchases occur over the summer) seperately from the video money, and I will probably be able to ask that one of them be an editing capable machine that we could use, so the multiple computers thing isn't really an issue, and the school is really small anyway so there shouldn't be excessive demand.
 
Final Cut Stuido 2 - $1499.00 - that will cover you from ingestion of footage/audio all the way to final output (DVD, D5, D1, whatever). Some really nice looking additions here over Final Cut Studio 1 (especially with "Color" and like Motion 3). That one package and you'd have very little else to worry about software wise.

Monitors? I'd just got like a couple of LG or BenQ LCD's for editing and then a Dell (22" or 24") or an Apple (23") display for a monitoring option. Sure like a dual Dell or dual Apple setup would be all kinds of sweet, but not particularily necessary. So $1049 for the Apple (or $610 for Dell 2407WFP 24") and 2x say 17" LCDs ~ $400 or 2x say 19" LCDs ~ $500

I/O? Well what do you figure the school will usually be finishing on? If all you're ever going to finish on is DVD then you don't really need such. But if you have a VTR (D5, D1, Digibeta, etc.) then you might want to invest in something like a Kona LH or Kona 3 (Kona 3 is great, especially w/ hardware Up/Down Conversion).

As for the Mac itself...

Mac Pro

Two 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4GB RAM
250 GB hard drive
ATI Radeon X1900 XT
Two 16x SuperDrives

I don't see any need to kill the extra $800 going to the Two Quad-core chips. I don't see FCS 2 needing it (if its even able to properly make use of it at all). Even when Leopard comes out, I think Two Dual-Cores will give you tones of juice for many years to come.

I'd add more RAM outside of buying from Apple. Unless they will give you a discount because you're a school. Then I'd see about going straight to 8GB right out of the box. Also this could be upgraded later, and not a huge necessity out of the box.

Hard Drives I would definitely get outside of Apple. The new Intel Macs make it a cinch to slide them in to. And really, this depends if you'll be storing footage locally on the machine or on an external server? And if using an external server, does it have Fibre Channel ability? If so, then you'll want to snag a Fibre Channel card too (the Dual should do you fine). The aforementioned 2x750GB Raid 0 would definitely be a good way to go. That would give tones of space for a couple of projects on the go at a time and offer some good stability. Though you might want to use Raid 5 if you'll be outputing uncompressed to any VTRs.
 
Final Cut Studio 2 - $1499.00

No, it's actually $1,299.00 and you should be able to get an academic version for about half that. Academic version is exactly the same as the $1299 version, only drawback is that you won't be able to upgrade the next time Apple does an overhaul on FCP studio. But, then, the academic version of that new suite will cost about as much as an upgrade anyway.
 
Any suggestions on a real reference monitor, mainly for color correction (not a Cinema Display), and how are such systems best set up? Do I need any special hardware to view footage on a monitor, or do I just use a DVI-Component cable and drive the monitor straight from the video card?
 
If you can find the post, I think Shane Ross detailed calibrating his Cinema Display (or was it a Dell?) as such and it was balanced to match his CRT Broadcast Monitor. I wouldn't give up on that idea as a budget solution. But if you really want to do it right, then get a broadcast monitor. That could sort of be broken up between both video/post as it could be used on set (feed out from camera for the directors to watch). Though at a school, it might not be wise to have it going out to set.

To view it on a Dell/Cinema display, no special hardware required. To view it on a broadcast monitor, yes, you need a card that has a proper (component or SDI) out (and make sure your monitor has the same corresponding inputs). You could also check out Panasonic BT-LH1700W (you'll need a SDI/component out card for this, and I think its about $2,900).

cheers.
 
I don't know if this is the best idea, but... When you have a list of what you want it may be a good idea to go to a company that specializes in putting together systems. I say this only from a support aspect. Unless you or the person putting this system together has a good knowledge of everything that is involved it might be worth having someone just a phone call away that can help diagnose a problem if one appears. The key to this would be going to them (the company) with exactly what you want to avoid up selling and getting stuff you won't need.

I only say this because the system I work on was professionally set up and it just gives me a little extra confidence knowing that someone set my system up and that's what they do for a living. Plus I can call them with any situation.

Just an idea.
 
Call the geniuses at Apple...they can help you a lot better than the people here (no offense) because they know EVERY aspect of the machines, the software, etc. The people here do too, and they have real-world experience, but the geniuses at Apple can really help you budget the money accordingly. When I bought mine, I spent an hour in store debating whether to get one or two quad cores, and how to budget my money to build the best machine. I have to say, they were a big help.


I spent aprox. $4,000 on my machine (a year ago, so I'm not sure of the exact figures), and heres what I have:

Apple Mac Pro
2x 2.8Ghz Intel Quad Core Processor
2GB RAM
~200 GB Hard Drive
ATI Radeon Graphics Card (the standard one that they came with a year ago)
Gateway HD2201
Final Cut Studio 2

As for a reference monitor, the Apple Cinema displays are made for that, so thats what I recommend, but any NON GLOSSY monitor should do the trick. The gateway is a glossy monitor, but when I get a real display, I will use that to show the timeline because it doesn't hurt my eyes. :)
 
If you are going with Apple. Call them and get an educational price for the software and hardware. Decide what you are going to shoot with first before you buy anything. Current AVCHD cameras (Like mine HMC150) are a pain in the ass to edit with on a Mac. Remember that there is a new OS coming soon and hopefully it will solve problems like the AVCHD one and offer new options. The big edit suite setup are wonderful but limit the number of users. A series of workstations or smaller setups make it possible for more people to benefit from the technology. You will always spend more time editing than shooting so if you have one suite you will have a lineup.
My two cents..
 
JCal11379 said:
As for a reference monitor, the Apple Cinema displays are made for that, so thats what I recommend, but any NON GLOSSY monitor should do the trick.
Click to expand...

JCal... don't dig up threads that are 2 years old...

and the advice quoted above is 100% incorrect. computer monitors are not video reference monitors.
 
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