Post-Production Hardware - What's Next?

KyleProhaska

KyleProhaska

Veteran
I want some solid advice (which DVX has always proved to give). I own some decent equipment but I want to go a step farther or at least plan to, and I want to move in the right direction. I'm a big fan of doing things right, and right now I'm a bit confused.

Here is what I currently own:
MacPro 2.66, 5GB, 3TB, X1900XT
2x Dell 2408 24in Screens
15in JVC CRT Prod. Monitor
Panasonic 50in Plasma
Sennheiser HD280 Headphones

Color-Correction & Output : This is square one as far as I'm concerned. The Mac can suffice and I like my monitors (although I do need a new graphics card), but I want to color correct properly. As far as I know, the old CRT's are still the best you can get for color accuracy. Mind does NOT have HDSDI in/out and I'm curious, what should I buy to color-correct on this thing via my Mac? I'm sick of putting together an image that ends up far too bright/dark on everyones TV's. Yes I understand that every TV is inherently different, but color-correcting properly can get you a good base for all those changes to stem from.

I was thinking a Black Magic Intensity Pro? Would that be a good item to purchase? My source footage at the moment is HDV and 1080 but I hope to step it up to a new and better format in the future. That CRT I have has a S-Video input and that's the best it has, is that worth it? No it isn't the best, but for the color will the actual quality of the picture be AS important? Also it'll be down converted from 1080 to SD so it'll look pretty good on there regardless. I had in the past connected it as a second monitor, but then you have the color-profiles within your OS to deal with, I would rather output properly.

What about those expensive panasonic lcd's? I worked at a company in LA in May and we color corrected between one of those (they're $2k+) and the Panasonic Plasma to see how it would look in it's more optimum contrast and what it would look like on a perfectly calibrated monitor. Would a purchase like that be worth it? What about a card to actually output to that monitor? What about outputting to my TV at the same time as that panasonic OR that CRT, how can I do that properly?

Internal Hardware : RAM, should I get more? It's not that expensive but even using HDV I've noticed some problems. Soundtrack Pro seems to choke on sound mix files all the time for me, and it crashes constantly giving me that "out of ram" notice. Is there a different issue here or is adding RAM the best option? I find it odd that with everything else off Soundtrack Pro can't handle some simple files sometimes. Slow and clunky :/

Graphics card? I saw you could get a new one for my current gen of Mac that's much faster than the one I currently have, and it only be a couple hundred bucks. Upgrading GPU in mac's can be a pain, but with these two monitors pumping dual 1080, I might have to do it...it seems to be working pretty hard keeping up.

Post-Sound : Can anyone recommend any budget production speakers? Something that'll give me a bang for a buck but not mislead me horribly in my mixing? Right now I'm dealing with lower key things like dramatic narrative and such, not too much intensity right now. I just need to hear a good range of FQ to fix problems in the audio that might be there. Any external mixers that I might need or what? I'm a n00b on this end so if you have anything to say go for it.

Lots of this info is on the internet, I understand...but I want to hear it from someone who uses some of the stuff I was talking about. This crap is expensive and I save for each piece of the pie, so I want to get it right. If anyone has any suggestions, even those outside of what I asked about, feel free :) (no "get a pc" answers please lol)
 
Only a total moron would respond with "get a PC." If you're new to the world of computing, you only use Excel, you are extremely poor, etc., you should use a PC I guess. But if you aren't a n00b, you get a Mac. Anyone who trusts Windows for their computing needs seriously is an idiot.

Well I'm not a post-production expert, I know what I have and what I use, and that it works well for me. I have an 8-core 3.2 Ghz Mac Pro, the previous chip set before i7, and run that with 10 gigs of RAM. I think you should upgrade to more like 8 at minimum, because it is fairly cheap I believe, so not much damage to your wallet there and it will help performance.

I use an AJA Kona 3 card and then output to a Panasonic BTLH-1700 reference monitor (also use that on set) for color correction. It's highly accurate in that regard. I can throw stuff on the 40" Samsung I have here as well but it's not attached directly to the computer or anything like that. Those Dell monitors you have are good -- we also used those same monitors in our office before they were stolen. Now I just use a 28" Hanns-G and a 20" Apple monitor for my primaries. The 28" is really high contrast, only good for a primary monitor to do editing and throw lots of stuff up, very color inaccurate, but that's what the reference monitor is for anyway. And the 20" Apples are surprisingly color accurate too.

The biggest thing for me is the hard drive speed, which is why I edit on a CalDigit HDOne in RAID 5. It's only a 2 TB unit, 1.6 useable, but that's plenty for current projects and the bandwidth you get through that thing is very high, so you can have lots of concurrent HD streams and no problems, fantastic for editing music videos, which is probably the most intense thing you can edit in my opinion. Nothing is tougher to edit than a music video. Narrative being the easiest stuff to edit.

Those are just a few thoughts, but it sounds like you have a good setup and maybe a few places here or there you could make it even better. Trust me I know how expensive it all is, and the worst part is you have to keep spending money to keep things up to date. When the next chip comes out, I'm sure I'll upgrade the computer again, because if there's a computer out there 4 times faster than mine it's probably time. Right now the newest Mac Pros are most 1.9 times faster than mine. I can live with that.
 
If I had to keep things cheap for the moment, would an intensity pro attached to my JVC prod. monitor be a good way to go? I won't be viewing in HD but if I have the Plasma to output to via the Intensity as well do I really need the Panasonic LCD?

The RAM upgrade sounds like a no-brainer...and perhaps my smartest upgrade regardless of anything else.
 
The first question, I would defer to someone else here who knows better than me. Haha, I'm honestly kind of in the position where I did things backwards. I started with learning the very basics about filmmaking, yes, and I started with an intense devotion to film theory and film criticism. But then I quit film school after 2 months and started a production company, so my knowledge is mainly as a producer and a director, I'm not as hands-on because I never "worked my way up" by actually doing everything at one time or another you know?

That being said, simply because it makes sense to me, I've been learning and interested in learning a lot more about basic editing because in the course of a year it will save me a LOT of money. The fact is I spent $18,000 or so on my setup, with software, I have all kinds of stock libraries, I have an amazing setup for post work. And yet I'm not an editor. That's an incredible waste if I'm just going to hire other people to do everything. Especially with corporate work, it's SO EASY to edit, I started editing my own stuff about 4-5 years ago actually before I really learned filmmaking, and then I did have to teach myself Final Cut because I was doing some amateur work for a Tae-Kwon-Do studio, and had to make the entire project from scratch, music, editing, DVD menus, everything. Great learning experience. And since for every single pro project I've done here, I've always overseen every hour of editing basically, I've seen how it all works and what my editor does, so I've been working on training myself better so I can at the very least put together rough drafts of every project. That way instead of paying someone let's say $200 to $400 per project to edit, I can basically say alright it's done but would you basically do some touchup to each project or tell me some notes on what you'd change, I'll pay you $100 per one, etc. That keeps my costs way lower, and plus I enjoy editing... it's pretty fun. I'm tech savvy enough to know how everything works together, what it does for me, etc. I'm just not experienced at actual editing, I've only done some work. I've touched up projects without my editor there, though, and it's only music video editing that's extremely tough, haha.

Definitely on the RAM, just don't max upgrade. RAM is THE biggest ripoff ever, I'm sorry, haha. But seriously look at it, you get 2 x 2 RAM chips for a Macbook Pro, it's $93 at Newegg. Get 2 x 4 RAM chips, it's $730! So twice the RAM, about ten times the price ;) That's ridiculous. In 18 months that RAM won't be worth s**t. And I mean that, it'll be worth like $40 or so.

I have 8 x 1 RAM chips, DDR1, from a G5, they are worthless. I'd give them to a homeless person but they wouldn't be able to sell 'em either. So it's best to keep your RAM where it needs to be for optimal use but not so high that it's a waste of your hard-earned cash.
 
JonathanLB said:
Only a total moron would respond with "get a PC." If you're new to the world of computing, you only use Excel, you are extremely poor, etc., you should use a PC I guess. But if you aren't a n00b, you get a Mac. Anyone who trusts Windows for their computing needs seriously is an idiot.
Click to expand...

All the Hollywood editors who are using Avid on a PC for their film must all be idiots. I don't want this to turn into a Mac vs. PC deal, but anyone who just flat out say "PC sucks" for all cases shouldn't be taken seriously.
 
Lol

Lol

Avid sucks, I'm sorry. Have you used Avid? I have, I was forced to use it. It's terrible. I've used Premiere, Final Cut, and Avid, and Avid is the worst of all.

And besides gaming, yes, PCs suck for everything. Anyone who likes PCs can't be taken seriously at all, I'm sorry. Using them because work makes you, totally understandable. Many people fall into that situation. Buying a PC instead of a Mac? You're just a tool in that case, or extremely poor. Yeah you can get a Celeron-based PC for like $500, lol, but if you want crap computers, you're going to get what you pay for!
 
JonathanLB said:
Avid sucks, I'm sorry. Have you used Avid? I have, I was forced to use it. It's terrible. I've used Premiere, Final Cut, and Avid, and Avid is the worst of all.
Click to expand...

Your opinion doesn't change the fact that Avid owns the high end NLE market and is used in a ton of major film.

JonathanLB said:
Buying a PC instead of a Mac? You're just a tool in that case, or extremely poor. Yeah you can get a Celeron-based PC for like $500, lol, but if you want crap computers, you're going to get what you pay for!
Click to expand...

Yea, generalized statement like this really served to convince me. This is just gonna get locked as a PC vs. Mac sh*tfest but let me just say that I'm being forced to use a Mac right now to edit on FCP and it's causing me to want to smash the damn thing to pieces. Mac does some things better, PC does other things better, we'll leave it at that.
 
While I would have laughed at Jon's bashing 10 years ago, truth is, I have a $50k Avid on a PC today and simply can't wait for it to die so I can upgrade to a $10k FCP system.
It's true that a brother can build a bang for the buck system with Premiere or Vegas but if building, it's pretty hard to justify not just going with FCP and a nice mac today.

imho.

Of course it depends on needs, workflow and clientele. It's why I had three years of house payments on a sub-par NLE. If just wanting to make fine shows, Premiere has been more than fine for a decade. Couple it with AE, Photoshop and a 3D app and it all revolves around the artist at the controls. An artist can make do with a chissle and stone. Tools have never been the key ingredient to produce art.
 
grinner said:
it's pretty hard to justify not just going with FCP and a nice mac today.
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I don't know, personally I've never been able to get used to the quirks of a Mac (not a diss, simply a different workflow) and I hate FCP with a vengeance. While it certainly has its strength I feel like Apple is just sitting on their laurel as far as development. Many of the features seemed to be stuck back in the stone age where solid state editing was still new (Log and Transfer, really?) and the title tool is just cumbersome. Personally I'd rather build myself and nice PC for less money.
 
To each his own. Again it revolves arounf needs, worflow and clientele expectations.
I can tell you though Avid is the one that has not ugraded in some years now. At least FCP's are indeed upgrades. Avid's new releases are just bug fixes a little closer to what was originally purchased. I see Premiere and vegas growing leaps and bounds, if wanting to stay in PC world. I don't see Avid hanging around much longer. They have not had a developmental department in years. The writing is on the wall for em. This, of course, is why most staff gigs you now see for editors are FCP gigs.
 
I knew that was going to happen (the Mac vs. PC) thing...ugh.

My Intensity Pro arrived this morning and I gotta say it's really awesome seeing my film in full HD on my plasma, and seeing the color for what it really is on my production monitor. I've been waiting for a long time to get to do that!

RAM and GPU is step #2 :)
 
Right now I am using a Dell Studio XPS and using Adobe Creative Suite CS4.

The specs are:

i7- 920 CPU
3GB RAM
500GB Hard drive space
ATI Radeon HD 3450
Vista 64 Home Premium

I run the entire suite properly and edit HDV and HD content. So slowdowns, excellent workflow. I plan to get 6 more GB as Adobe says Premiere and After effects will use this to the fullest.

The testimony is in the clients. Since getting this system in July and using cs4 and the amazing dynamic link feature I have been doing jobs at higher quality and much faster than ever before and the best part is the client's love what I am producing for them. I have gotten jobs just via word of mouth and I am now considering getting part time help and possibly purchasing another one of these systems if workflow requires it.

But basically, if you look at the specs, the main power horse is in the CPU, the ram and definitely the GPU (once it is dedicated, I prefer ATI) can be an afterthought.
 
Mac vs. PC arguments are juvenile. I run XP because the software I run to make money only runs under XP. I'd be running a variant of UNIX if I could get the software I need running under it (which I suspect is only a couple years away.)

I tried FCP but it couldn't do what I needed it to do and in a timely manner (mainly edit and render multilanguage projects simultaneously). But for many people Macs are the perfect solution -- good for them.
 
I'm loving this Intensity Pro card...watching my film played back in full 1080 is amazing. I've only seen it in this way off the actual source format and not with any edits in or CC. The result is amazing. I can't believe what a Canon A1 can pull off for it's price. phew...

Totally worth the money.
 
Kyle,

What is your intended budget for upgrades and updates to your current system and tools? With the amount provided, we as DVXUsers can give you a better breakdown of what might suit your needs.

I persoanlly use both MACs and PCs. Funny how Macintosh used to be called a PC as well. The reason for me to use both platforms is that different softwares are only available for one OS and not both. My dilemma was to stick with one platform and not switch back and forth between operating systems. Unlikely. So I adapted to a workflow that coincides working with both platform. They're just tools for you to use.

Re: RAM, get as much as possible. I'm not exactly sure why Soundtrack Pro is behaving like you described. It could be a number of factors; harddrive speeds aren't capable of handling large amounts of playback tracks, CPU unable to process all the automations, onboard audio card unable to handle the amount of latency/samples of the given project (meaning upgrading to a dedicated professional audio card that can handle low latency mixing/playback capabilities), and much more. Since you're going to be rendering and working with multitudes of VFX and HD-realtime playback, your 1900XT is limited. For what you're doing, at least have 8GB of RAM ready to go.

Re: audio playback monitors, anything nowadays would be adequate for EQ fixes and mixing. I'm assuming your room acoustics aren't that great, so any kind of mid-line pro monitors would do. Unless you're working in a large dub stage, stick with near-field monitors. It wouldn't have that big theatrical impact that you're expecting, but it'll work. Don't think about subwoofers yet. It'll create bigger problems in a smaller room.

A.
 
JonathanLB said:
Only a total moron would respond with "get a PC." If you're new to the world of computing, you only use Excel, you are extremely poor, etc., you should use a PC I guess. But if you aren't a n00b, you get a Mac. Anyone who trusts Windows for their computing needs seriously is an idiot.

Well I'm not a post-production expert, I know what I have and what I use, and that it works well for me. I have an 8-core 3.2 Ghz Mac Pro, the previous chip set before i7, and run that with 10 gigs of RAM. I think you should upgrade to more like 8 at minimum, because it is fairly cheap I believe, so not much damage to your wallet there and it will help performance.
Click to expand...

Jonathan,

Please becareful what you say. Those two paragraphs are contradicting each other.

A.
 
heh, no

heh, no

Sorry, but no they are not. I was a PC user for 15 years, until 4-5 years ago, when I switched to Mac. Before OS X, I didn't much care for Macs, and used them in school sometimes, I wasn't very impressed.

But Mac is a far superior computer system, and to use Windows for projects you trust, I'm sorry, that's just stupidity. Avid doesn't even support a computer with a bunch of other programs on it. Heck at our film school they disconnected them all from the Internet because apparently that made them unsupported systems in Avid's eyes.

Avid is a terrible editing program. I did have the displeasure of using it for an entire term and had to learn how to use it inside and out, and what Final Cut made intuitive, Avid made impossible. I've used Premiere as well, and it used to suck back in the day, but it really caught up. Adobe did a great job making it quite a solid program. The only reason we don't use Premiere is because I prefer Final Cut and its overall package, and it's more of the industry standard for indie projects, broadcast, etc. But that doesn't mean Premiere is bad, it isn't at all, it's just not what we use primarily. I do have CS3 though, just no reason to upgrade to CS4 for now. We use a lot of Adobe programs.

I'm not an expert, I know what I'm doing though, and if you know what you're doing, you don't use PCs to edit. They are awful computers, slapped together by companies with parts from everywhere, no standardization, then you run the worst OS you can possibly get, Windows, and you expect to have a good experience? Yeah alright whatever.

I don't care, do what you want to do, not my projects! I don't care what other people choose to do, but when someone wants to argue about how great a PC is and how it's all personal preference, well I think anyone who knows anything about computers knows that's total BS. How many viruses are there for Mac? Yeah, ZERO. You don't even need anti-virus software. Also, why would you want to use a computer where every part, every piece of software, etc. is made by someone else? It's pretty obvious that if you're using an Apple computer, with Apple's OS, and Apple's pro apps, they're going to work a LOT better together. This isn't rocket science. It's just stupid to try to pick the other side of that argument. You can certainly say, "Well yeah you can use a PC for editing." Of course you can. Nobody debates that. But to say that you SHOULD do that, or that really it's all personal preference and there's no good reason to use one or another, well that's just misleading and false.

I think this alone would justify what I'm saying:

PC you can use 2 of 3 major editing systems.

Mac you can use all 3 major editing systems: Final Cut, Avid, and Premiere.

That closes the book on that argument, and that's not even getting to how much better OS X is than any Windows OS, which I don't think anyone would seriously debate whatsoever. It makes me personally angry when someone tries to argue about this because they act like somehow you were born one or the other. No, you were not. I used freakin' PCs for 15 years ok? I know what it's like to use that goddamn awful OS. I know what it's like to have my computer freeze 3-4 times a week and Internet Exploder crash 10 times a day, literally. I lived that nightmare hell for years of my life. Anyone who has used a Mac consistently knows that it's the difference between living in Beverly Hills and living in Baghdad. One, you feel safe and secure and it's a pleasant experience. The other is a warzone.

I even fought this Mac vs. PC battle with a few friends for years, and it's so funny, two of my best friends just got Macbook Pros in the last year and both said it was the best computing experience of their lives, no reason to go back. One was a die-hard PC gamer, I never thought he would convert, ever. But now that he doesn't have time for gaming as much, he realized it made no sense to use an inferior OS. Hey I was the same stubborn guy for years, made fun of my friend for using Mac, and I thought it was just some niche computer for dorks. Then when I got mine, I was really angry that for years I hadn't made this switch, and was wishing that I had ditched the lousy PCs forever long before then.

But if it behooves you to be blissfully ignorant of basic computing principles and understanding what makes a good computer, hey, don't let me interrupt you from your miserable experience!
 
If you want to argue the Mac vs Pc or Avid vs FCP points, start a new thread. 99% of what you're posting is flat out wrong or entirely opinion. There is a difference between fact and opinion, and you seem to be confusing the two.

See my response to this same discussion here:

http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=28885&page=14

Look for the post by Michael Hancock.

FOR THE OP:

If you need a capture card/output and you're using FCP, look at the Kona3 or KonaLHi. It's more expensive but does everything you need it to. Go with Kona3 if you may need 2K in the future. I know you just go the Intensity card, but as your business progresses keep the Kona line in mind. For monitoring--you'll need a professional grade HD panel to get accurate color, but remember that once it goes on air it's anybody's game. You can control what's in your suite, but you can't control how grandma has her saturation and brightness cranked to 100. Just color according to an accurate baseline and hope for the best. They're expensive, but look at FSI monitors. They're highly recommended in the CreativeCow Color forum.

RAM: Third party RAM, fill it up.

GRAPHICS CARD: If you'll be using Color, go with an ATI card. I can't remember exactly which one is recommended, but Color works better with ATI than nVidia, so if you're upgrading/swapping cards, look at ATI. If you're not using FCP and Color, look at what your NLE of choice recommends.

SPEAKERS: Can't help you on this one. We're using HHB Circle3 speakers and they're fine for what we do but sound hardware is not my forte.
 
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