Advice for a HD newbie

D

Despin

Member
Hey there.

So pretty soon I'm going to have access to the the EX1, a spare battery, a pair of 8gb cards and a decent tripod. I was hoping to spend same time learning the camera and then make a few short films with it.

My main problem is I have zero idea of where to start when it comes to post production with HD. I've been editing DV for years now. Right now I'm using the adobe C3 and finding Premiere pretty solid..

I'm running vista premium with a dual core 2.66Ghz processor, 2gb of ram, with a NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GS graphics card. It has a 500 gig drive and a ton of external harddrives that I have been using for editing. And when it comes to DV everything is working fine...

Will this machine be any good for editing the footage I get with this new camera? Ive heard premiere can't edit the footage at the moment without paying about £500 for a 3rd part codec. Is this true? I remember reading Sony Vegas can edit this footage fine. Is this true?

Will I be better off just buying a new machine? If so, any recommendations for what I will need in it to be able to edit this stuff? If needs be I can buy a new editing machine. Ive been reading about this black magic intensity cards. Any good advice about them? At the moment I have two decent lcd monitors hooked up for editing but I have a decent HD tv that I would like to hook up to the machine for playback if at all possible.

Ive heard macs work great but Im so used to PC's now and feel like I've only just got really into premiere pro/after fx.. I 'd rather not change.

Also... I have an oldish laptop sitting around doing nothing... celeron 1.5 processor, half a gig of ram 40 gig hard drive.. Will this be of any use whatsoever for anything? With the USB reader would I be able to dump the footage to this machine before backing up to external harddrives when "in the field"?

Sorry if these are all obvious questions to you guys. But I'm feeling pretty clueless here. Any good solid advice would be a godsend.

I'm in the UK, by the way. If that matters.

Cheers.

Despin out.
 
Despin, I don't have a direct answer for you concerning editing on your current machine because I don't use Premiere, so others will surely give you advice there.

But here are a couple of thoughts for you. First, I am a Vegas user and love it, and it works very well with XDCAM footage. So if you went that route, your current machine would have no problems running it. It is now equiped with a 32-bit engine so working with color is fantastic. If you are running Vista, you may want to add a little more RAM to your machine to work smoothly. Vegas is a very intuitive program and the learning curve is low to get started.

If you have any interest in changing to a Mac, here is some good news for you. Adobe CS3 now runs on Macs, so you could still work with what you are used to, but have a door open for you if you ever wanted to take advantage of Final Cut Pro. The only shortcoming of a Mac, in my opinion, is if you need to do a lot of 3D modeling and animation. More 3D apps run on windows machines, but very few on Mac. But for multimedia they are beautiful.

If your old Celeron machine has an Express card slot, then you can use it to download footage without a USB adapter. If not, you could still use the machine to download your footage with the USB adapter you mentioned, and it would work just fine, but a bit slower. So you can definitely use it one way or the other.

Not a lot of help if you are wanting somebody to point the way, but I thought it might help you to know that you have a lot of options open to you from where you stand. Vegas - a great choice. CS3 - a great choice that runs on PC and Mac(don't know if it ships with both versions in a box, or if you have to purchase separately). And with a little RAM, your current computer is likely fine.

Bill
 
Hi
I just can recommend to buy a mac and Final Cut Pro. Why? Because it's so easy! You just need to buy the Mac and Final Cut Pro and that's it. No more thinking about drivers, videocards, will it work, will it work fast enough... A friend of mine got his EX today and he is overwhelmed: Shooting, Camera>USB>Mac>Final Cut Pro - that's it. Cutting works seamless without any problems or limitations as far as he told me.
His Mac is about 4 years old!!!! Cutting is native, you don't need to convert the files to another codec. Final Cut & EX1 are rock solid (with the newest version!) I worked 15 years with PC and Avid and I was kind of ignorant about Macs. But last year I finally got my macbook and shortly after I decided to switch and also bought my MacPro. And I don't have money to give away!!! But I knew it was worth and I cannot imagine to go back to PC.
Really: Having a Mac very often means you will have more time actually to do your work, to be creative instead of thinking about the system, upgrades, limitations etc.
I have cut a musicvideo on my macbook in HDV - 2GH, 2MB Ram and it was soo seamless. I just can't wait to get my EX1 finally (about next week)
 
rainermann, more and more I heard people saying or going to FCP...and I'm thinking of that route too. I'm using Avid but it's so difficult with Avid. I have to have the right hardware for Avid to work. Avid have to approve the system or else you're going to have problems. I'm thinking of moving to Mac too, the problem is, I already spent a lot of money with the PC I have right now...so perhaps sometime in the future, I may move over to Mac with FCP.
 
Quote: "The only shortcoming of a Mac, in my opinion, is if you need to do a lot of 3D modeling and animation. More 3D apps run on windows machines, but very few on Mac"

Try telling the developers at AutoDesk that for Maya and companies such as Digital Domain who do all the FX work cinema releases. Same with Shake which is more powerful than AfterFX - all Mac.

If you look at all the major companies out there producing or working with the amounts of data that HD video has (Digital Doman and many others) - they will be 90% on Macs. This is industry, not personal use at home or small production companies - i can't say for them.

I was a beloved PC and Vegas user for years til i started with a Mac - wow, no viruses to worry about, no wires, no crashing, no microsoft etc etc. Apple work hard with Sony, RED, Canon, JVC and loads of third parts apps to make sure that final cut is the most sophisticated.

Ha, we can talk all day on what we prefer, but i think that you should go to an Apple store and try it with one of the people working there - hell, even take your own camera along and they will show you the ropes on it all. If you like it - cool. If not, then Vegas, Premiere and After Effects are all wonderful pieces of software.
 
Congratulation for the camera, it is a very capable camera with awesome feature for under $6500 ! Absolutely the best camera under $15k in many people's opinion.

a) Editing HD is the same as editing SD, just that HD will tax your computer system more.

b) I will try to get more RAM (4 gig maybe??), do you manage to run Premiere and AE on your PC ok ? Vista in my PC is too unstable to run Premiere and AE CS3. A lot of Studios still use XP Pro as their OS for this reason.

c) Currently, Premiere cannot edit xdcam ex natively without an intermediate codec (www.cineform.com). Adobe is known for its super slow responsiveness in terms of Premiere pro. Example, they just introduced DVCPRO and DVCPROHD (industry std codec) recently to Premiere. Apple, on the other hand, is very robust in terms of keeping Final cut studio up to date.

Sony vegas can edit XDCAM EX natively. I had a chance to play with a Vegas system recently. Coming from Premiere and FCP, I did not like Vegas at all. The UI is very clutter and not really that intuitive. Premiere and FCP had a very close history (same engineers), so you should be able to pick up FCP, no steep learning curve.

d) IF you are looking for a new system, I would recommend the new Mac Pro with FCS 2. The new Mac Pro was just released by Apple and it has 8 core with max 4 tb storage with max 32 gig RAM.

For your SFX works, there are AE CS3, Photoshop CS3, Shake and Maya for the Mac. If you can master those programs really good, you probably can go work with ILM :thumbup:.

FCS 2 also support Pro Res codec. The XDCAM EX has SDI out port, and you can capture uncompressed video 4:2:2, 10 bit from the camera with the Pro Res codec if needed.

If you have a chance, go demo the Mac and Final cut studio system. (Warning: Macs do crash also, they are not crash proof).

e) If all you want is to monitor your footage on your HDTV, the card should do the job fine. One of the advantages of the BM Intesity card is its ability to capture video via HDMI. Problem is, the Sony XDCAM EX1 doesnt have HDMI port, it has SDI instead.

f) Your laptop should be fine as a "dumping machine". However if you have or can get an express card adapter that is even better. You can buy 1 more SXS card and have the following workflow/rotation.

i) Shoot with 2 SxS cards. When one is full, hand in the "full" card to the assistant.
ii) Get the 3rd card (blank SXS) from the assistant and continue shooting.

While you are shooting the assistant
i) download the footage to the laptop.
ii) backs up the footage to 2 external HD (backup & security).
iii) have the card ready for the next rotation.

If you dont have express card slots or an express card adapter, you would need to stop filming in order to connect the camera to your laptop via usb or firewire just to dump the footage.

Of course, the ultimate solution is to sell your PC and get a Mac Pro and a Macbook Pro. Majority of the studios that run FCS have both machines.

Welcome to dvxuser and enjoy the XDCAM EX1. Post some footage and share it with us. :thumbsup:
 
Hi
just one thing about Mac, too:
Yes, they DO crash - I had a crash last year in april. I am not kidding. Only once I had a crash and still I can remember when it happened :cheesy:
On the other side, almost daily on my office job I have to restart my PC in the office at least once a day because I was too fast with Photoshop and other stuff doing the same time...
But... just try it in a Mac store - you will see by yourself

Rainer
 
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