*if* you were designing your own editing desk, what would you do?

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PDX_DVX

Veteran
I am starting to design a new desk for my new room, I want enough room for 2 19'' CRT monitors, a 17" color production monitor, and a pair of KRK rokit rp-5's (or similar). It's going to have a top shelf for the speakers and monitors, and a main desk area (no keyboard tray) for everything else, with the computer tower(s) being located to the bottom right. I think a 6 foot wide desk will accomodate this, but what I am wondering is what works and what doesnt work as far as ergonomics are concerned.

I am going to make the top shelf about 7'' off the main deck so that when you're looking at the monitors they are about eye level (for me). I am also considering putting a slight curve on the top shelf, from about 20'' at the center, to around 25'' on both ends, so that I can arrange the speakers and monitors in a sort of semi circle around me. I think the entire thing is going to be about 3.5-4 feet deep, so that will leave about 28'' of open desk in the middle, and about 23 on the edges. Do you think I am allowing myself enough room?

Would a corner desk be better?

Any suggestions would help, because its hard for me to visualize whats going to work best.
 
Bought this one at Organized Living about a year ago. Think we paid about $500. The Horizontal box of the same material was mounted under the desk vertically for the CPU but as you can see I have the CPU on top of the desk because it would not fit inside that compartment. It's a Koolance case that was way too big. Anyway, I took it and mounted a lazy-susan to the bottom of it and now use it for my monitor. Makes it easy to spin so clients can see it when they sit behind me and to the right from the bottom image.
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good idea, since I might soon acquire a waveform scope. I will also be using a DSR-11, which I think can be rackmounted vertically? There's just something about a corner desk that doesn't appeal to me...Maybe thats just me though....What kind of LCD's are those sirius? Are they wall mounted? how big are they?
 
PDX_DVX said:
There's just something about a corner desk that doesn't appeal to me
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I love the corner desk. I'm left-handed and what you can't see in the photo is that the desk extends as far to the left as it does to the right. The entire left side I leave open to lay out scripts/paperwork/food:beer:/etc...
PDX_DVX said:
What kind of LCD's are those sirius? Are they wall mounted? how big are they?
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Samsung 19" 915V's
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Yes they are wall mounted on an articulating arm that can extend from 8" to 18" from the wall. My best investment as it clears up the space below the monitors for stuff like the camera, Wacom pad, X-Keys controller.
 
Yep - The logo shot was taken when he was about 4 months old. He's gonna be 5 years old in a few weeks.
That's my baby. Life revolves around him (and my wife) as anyone that knows me knows..
 
Sirius Doggy, man, thats a pretty cool setup. It looks comfortable.. I like how your dog poses for the camera. Cool stuff!
 
Very comfy - There's a couch behind my chair for clients and a little mini fridge next to it. Sometimes I hardly ever leave the room when I'm editing by myself.
Yeh - he's a ham....
 
Build Your Own Edit Desk

Build Your Own Edit Desk

I love the idea of building my own edit desk. The desks and consoles that are for sale are way too expensive.

I would love to see some of the design ideas from you guys, let's see who can come up with a cool design that dosen't cost too much to produce.

Joseph
 
Hopefully mine will be done in the next few weeks. I am having a carpenter friend of mine build it for me. I am basing it off of a Winsted desk. It's going to be sort of a wrap around desk with a top monitor shelf. We'll see how it turns out. He usually builds trade show booths for shows like NAB and Interbike, so hopefully it will turn out good.
 
I personally just bought the "Jerker" desk from Ikea. It's pretty nice, and it cost about $200 in total with all my accessories (the wings, the top shelf, etc)

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I hope I'm not the rain on the parade here, and bear in mind, what I'm about to say isn't feasible for everyone but....

None of the set-ups here are conducive to mixing audio. If you have any intention of doing sound design/recording/mixing and you are designing a room and desk, you REALLY owe it to yourself to read up a bit on room tuning and speaker placement before going further. Creating a workstation that is good for both video AND audio isn't hard (if you have the room, I for example, don't) and your productions would benefit greatly from it.

Matt
 
Some great layouts.

A feature I will definitely incoporate in my next edit set up is to make it easily and quickly (<this is the tricky part) adjustable to accommodate sitting or standing positions.

I think it's Walter Murch who favours standing while doing his magic. There's something to be said for adopting this position when a certain energy flow is needed.

Instead of changing the height of the desk set up another way would be to build it for standing and then choosing a higher chair for the sitting position or changing the floor height.

If anyone comes up with a good way to accommodate this feature, please share it.
 
Here is the one I designed and built. It's a bit different now, and I have a better chair, but you get the idea.

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Sirius: That edit controller you have is already on my "Christmas List."
 
Here is my setup... I also have 3 high-end web servers in my network closet set up for network rendering. I got over 1TB of disk space between all the computers.

I do all the video work at this station.
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http://bin1.myphotoupload.com/P1010084.JPG

Digital Audio Studio, powered buy 4 networked computers can create a full symphony. This is my dad’s setup and he is the composer in the house...

And we do all the audio here.
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Oh BTW, the desk in my video editing station i built from plumbing pipe and some nice wood work.
 
mcgeedigital said:
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Is it possible to get spec's on that? Or is there a website with the spec's? That setup looks great, and it does not look to difficult to build. Just need the measurements ....
 
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