Basic Editing requirements?

S

Steve Washer

Member
So it's time to set up the post area now. My G5 currently has over half a dozen cheap firewire drives hanging out all over the place. They are used mostly for transferring video to the internal media drive for editing in SD with footage captured from my DVX.

But this won't do for the HVX, will it? Here's the loaded question. What's a decent configuration for storing and working with DVCProHD footage? How much will I need? How much RAM? I think I'm working with only 3/4 of a GB.

And forgive me, but what other questions am I not even asking that I should be?

Thanks!

Steve
 
i work in the field very happily from hvx/p2 footage with my old 1.0ghz 17" powerbook G4 with 1 gig of ram working off the internal drive.

in the office im editing fairly graphic intensive stuff on a dual 2.0 G5 and a quad 2.5 G5 each with 4 gigs of ram out to caldigit svrduo esata raids and they hum along happily all day with no probs...

you dont "NEED" a state of the art, fire breather machine for the hvx. but as always get all you can afford! more power never hurts
 
Steve Washer said:
David, will having such a configuration mean that one won't need an external RAID?
Click to expand...

A MacPro has a boot drive and room for three more SATA internal drives.

DVCProHD works fine on a single SATA drive . . even less.

Why are you thinking external RAID?
 
agreed with wgzn. I've been working quite happily with my powerbook G4 and 300gig firewire drive. It's a pain because I run out of space (can't afford more just yet) but I've yet to fail at working on somehing. Everything turns out.
 
It depends on the NLE you want to use, and how big your projects will be.

1.) Determine which NLE you want to use
2.) Hit the software companies website for minimum requirements
3.) ask people on this board specific questions or about any 'gotchas'

The reason this particular forum exists is because there are an infinate number of ways to get from capture to answer print, so you will have to find the way that you are comfortable with.

For example: I run Avid on an unsupported AMD configuration. I have a top of the line dual core CPU, and a 3.5 TB internal RAID array. Because Avid is not smart enough to do 2:3:3:2 pulldown removal (Gotcha!) I had to buy DV Rack HD. Now that I have it I am so psyched about all the other stuff it can do I have decided to forgo additional P2 cards in favor of building a dedicated DV Rack capture computer (around $600, a laptop would have been $2500).

In terms of RAID, use it! Configure it for data protection (1, 0+1, or 5). Hard drives are not solid state, and someday they will fail! My file handeling methodology:

1) DV Rack capture to RAID1
2) 'Eject' from DV Rack then copy to one of seven external drives
3) Copy from external drive to RAID on NLE
4) Offsite the external drive from the editing office.

Only when the files are safely on the NLE will I erase them from the capture compurer's array. My point is that from capture the files are never on less than two disks. Project files in Avid are small, so I will probably just upload them to my ISP on a regular basis during the editing process.

Bob
 
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