Final Cut Studio 3 turnkey system?

L

LMA

New member
Hi,
I have a good amount of experience shooting HD, and using FCP, but now I am ready to make the leap into upgrading/buying my own equipment for my own indie, feature film. For starters I am going to be shooting with a Canon 7D in 1080p at 24 fps. I'm looking into investing into a Mac turnkey system with Final Cut Studio 3. I am aware of what the minimum specs are to run FCS 3, but I'm not sure exactly how I need my turnkey system tweaked. The movie will be finished onto Blu-Ray. I'm guessing most of the viewing of the film will be via dvd, but some showings will be via Blu-Ray, from a digital projector, in a theater. What I want to know is what specs do I need to efficiently edit footage from the 7D, without dropped frames, artifacts, etc. Basically I want the turnkey system to run without hiccups for this type of footage, but I want to do it as cost-effectively as possible, i.e. the most minimal system, or cheapest system that will run the footage effectively. I have been very satisfied with Mac and FCP in the past, so I know that is the type of system and software I want. I'm not looking into getting cinema monitors, to reduce cost. I'll review the footage on my TV when I'm ready to check it. So do I need a quad or 8 core, how much memory and how many hard drives (as I'm going to use an external hard drive to store all raw and edited footage), what kind of RAID card (if any), and what kind of graphics card or cards, and a ballpark figure of how much what I need will cost? And also does anyone have any recommendations where to get this system? I apologize for the length of this post. Thanks in advance.
 
A "turnkey" system means a fully spec'd out and built system. Preconfigured by an expert. So what you need to do is find the expert or company that does this, and talk to them about it. And this would be REALLY helpful to you, as you have a lot of misconceptions about much of the equipment.

For example, "Cinema Monitors" are actually called Cinema DISPLAYS. They are COMPUTER monitors....attached to the computer so you can see what you are doing. They are not used to view the playback of your footage full screen with any level of critical judgement. No...if you shoot HD with the Canon, you convert to ProRes, and the only way to you can see this on an external TV (HDTV, BTW), is with an HD Capture card.

This is definately why you should have someone sell you a turnkey system. They determine how much RAM, what media storage to use...and how to figure out BluRay support...which ain't easy. ProMax does this, as do other people across the country.
 
Thank you

Thank you

Hi Shane,
Thanks for all the great info. I appreciate it. As far as the Cinema display goes, that is what I am going to do (go with an lcd monitor to edit with, but actually critique the footage on a HDTV). I apologize, I guess I wasn't clear with that. But thank you for the info anyway. I had considered just buying a Mac and putting FCS on it myself, but I don't think I have the expertise to do that, so it sounds like a turnkey system is the way to go. I understand cameras, and FCP, but definitely not the system requirements, so any any help is appreciated. Thanks for the ProMax idea. Have you worked with them? Would you recommend them? If anyone else has any ideas, I'm still open to ideas and suggestions.
Thanks,
Logan
 
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