Setting up my new Edit Workstation - Technical Questions

JoeNash

JoeNash

Well-known member
Hey everyone, I've been editing with FCP since i was a soph. in highschool. I'm now a junior @ college in Allentown, PA, and im finally getting myself set up with my own edit workbay. I'm selling my powerbook, getting a 2.0 Dual G5 for christmas, and getting myself finally up and running.

My Question is, i've finally put enough money together to get my Apple Dual G5 and 20" display, now im working to save up for my
1) DSR-11
2) Production Monitor
3) Small 4 Channel Mixer

now as i slowly get my bank large enough to purchase these item's i want to hook them up to my system, but i've never set up my own editing suite before, so to get to my real question is

do i need to pick up certain cards to install into my G5 to have my Monitor/Mixer , etc or anything i need to install in the my computer to hook up these external components? Sorry if this was poorly written, i'm very hungvoer, Thank you very much
 
I would suggest that you hook everything up when your sober! LOL! Anyway, I am not sure if you can control your audio with an external mixer. I have been wanting to do this for some time now. I have been using the mixer in FCP with Record Keyframes selected and that has been working out pretty good. Your external monitor would be hooked up from your deck. Output of deck to Input of monitor. You run your firewire cable from the G5 to your deck but you will have to run seperate cables from the deck to the monitor.
 
Haha, yea , well im sure i can hook a mixer to the my mac for Final Cut because i've seen setups with it (i'm almost positive i have), and i feel like i would need some sort of attachment to hook that up. The mixer in FCP is alright but it doesnt give me amazing control, i guess one way to do something like this for superior audio mixing would probably consist of an MBox and Protools or something, i'll have to continue researching.

Thanks for the hookup advice for the monitor-deck hookup tho
 
The mixer would only be needed for other external audio sources, ie midi players, keyboards, etc.... The audio will follow video over firewire from the DSR-11 so you will not be able to "mix" the dv deck audio.
 
You can get a "control surface." It looks like a mixer but it allows you to control the software mixers in FCP, Soundtrack Pro (I think), Logic, etc.,. A mixer is also helpful if you have multiple audio sources you want to run thru the same pair of monitors. I have my Mac, a PC, my deck, and a DVD player all hooked up to a pair of powered Roland monitors via a small mixer. Not a life saver or anything, but it's definitely easier than fumbling around w/four independent volume controls.

Have you thought about getting a good pair of audio monitors? If you are just working w/DV you can Mac--FW-->Deck--Analog-->Monitor (both audio and video). But if you are working w/HDV you'll need something like a DeckLink card to send the video out to a monitor. Or you can also use FCP's "desktop cinema" feature, but I'm not sure if that's as good as going out to a monitor or not.


-A
 
JoeNash said:
Hey everyone, I've been editing with FCP since i was a soph. in highschool. I'm now a junior @ college in Allentown, PA, and im finally getting myself set up with my own edit workbay. I'm selling my powerbook, getting a 2.0 Dual G5 for christmas, and getting myself finally up and running.

My Question is, i've finally put enough money together to get my Apple Dual G5 and 20" display, now im working to save up for my
1) DSR-11
2) Production Monitor
3) Small 4 Channel Mixer

now as i slowly get my bank large enough to purchase these item's i want to hook them up to my system, but i've never set up my own editing suite before, so to get to my real question is

do i need to pick up certain cards to install into my G5 to have my Monitor/Mixer , etc or anything i need to install in the my computer to hook up these external components? Sorry if this was poorly written, i'm very hungvoer, Thank you very much
Click to expand...

Well I take it you are shooting in SD and not HD with the DVX correct? Then I was wondering why you would dump so much money into the DSR-11 when you can just digitize using a budget firewire camcorder to get your data into your G5. The money you save will be better be used for audio monitors, tapes, or even getting good software to compliment your FCP system. You can get a internal Soundcard like the ones M-audio or better yet RME makes with ASIO support for better sound or for midi support. But if your just doing video then firewire is only needed. In shooting live music situations, I use external programs (Wavelab and Sonar) in order to clean up the live audio and latter drop back into the timeline with midi support. This is done after picture lock and adding it to my rendered MPEG-2 video.
 
Yeah, as much as I would recommend a good deck like a DSR-11 for capturing, a capture card like Decklink really helps you more for daily editing. You can hook up your prod monitor to it, see stuff on it without needing to turn on the deck all the time, use it for previews in other apps like Photoshop, Shake, Combustion, and use it to view formats other then DV (very helpful when working on VFX stuff). Also the connection to the monitor is lots better than the regular S-Video connection of a deck and the sound is loads better. You can also use the decklink for sound output in apps like Soundtrack and Logic. And you can of course capture any sort of video source with it. When for some reason my Decklink driver didn't work for a week after the Tiger update I really felt like a FCP -> FW -> deck -> prod monitor was nothing but a really ghetto setup.
 
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