Chuck Spaulding
December 8th, 2006, 03:31 PM
I’m not sure I should try to tackle so many questions in one thread but since I’m new to the Mac I didn’t want to inundate this forum with a lot of uneducated questions. Hopefully we can break any insightful discussion out into its own thread.
Probably the place to start is to explain my situation and what I’m hoping to do. Currently I have two edit suites built on PC’s using Adobe’s Production Studio Pro. I convert all HD, HDV and SD to the Cineform Intermediate codec which is stored on 5TB of shared storage [SAN]. So all five PC’s [two edit, two graphic and one ingest and file system management] have high speed access to the data.
Two friends of mine have a production company which has two FCP edit suites and an Avid suite. They initially asked me to join them to work with the Avid. After some discussion they decided they would like to scrap the Avid in favor of another FCP system and asked if I could build a similar workflow with the Mac that I currently have with the PC’s.
After talking with an engineer at Apple regarding XSan and Xserve RAID it appears that it is possible, albeit a bit pricey, to build this type of system using Mac’s. Is anyone on this forum running XSan and/or Xserve if so how well does it work?
Regarding working with a common file format, it appears that Apple relies almost exclusively on the DVCProHD codec for HD work. If you connect an HDV camera via firewire to FCP will it capture and convert the footage to DVCProHD?
If it doesn’t can any of the Kona cards capture HDV via firewire and convert to DVCProHD?
Blackmagic cards are big with PC’s does anyone have experience working with these cards on a Mac?
Are their any converter boxes that convert HDV to DVCProHD that work with FCP?
Is there a Quicktime codec that would be better to convert all of the DVCProHD, HDV and SD into that would work very well with FCP?
I tried to find documentation about the Apple Intermediate Codec but it was limited and appears to be strictly an 8bit codec working in 4:2:0 so it wouldn’t appear that this would be a good solution for working with 4:2:2 HD. Does anyone care to share their experiences working with the Apple Intermediate Codec?
I hope I’ve provided enough information that you can get a sense of what I’m trying to accomplish. Also this is definitely not a PC versus Mac thing, if I end up working with these guys it will be with FCP. I’m just trying to figure out how I can make the facility more scaleable and efficient and the only experience I have developing a workflow like this is with PC’s. I feel like the fat guy in those Mac commercials – does anyone want a C++ GUI Guide for the holidays?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Probably the place to start is to explain my situation and what I’m hoping to do. Currently I have two edit suites built on PC’s using Adobe’s Production Studio Pro. I convert all HD, HDV and SD to the Cineform Intermediate codec which is stored on 5TB of shared storage [SAN]. So all five PC’s [two edit, two graphic and one ingest and file system management] have high speed access to the data.
Two friends of mine have a production company which has two FCP edit suites and an Avid suite. They initially asked me to join them to work with the Avid. After some discussion they decided they would like to scrap the Avid in favor of another FCP system and asked if I could build a similar workflow with the Mac that I currently have with the PC’s.
After talking with an engineer at Apple regarding XSan and Xserve RAID it appears that it is possible, albeit a bit pricey, to build this type of system using Mac’s. Is anyone on this forum running XSan and/or Xserve if so how well does it work?
Regarding working with a common file format, it appears that Apple relies almost exclusively on the DVCProHD codec for HD work. If you connect an HDV camera via firewire to FCP will it capture and convert the footage to DVCProHD?
If it doesn’t can any of the Kona cards capture HDV via firewire and convert to DVCProHD?
Blackmagic cards are big with PC’s does anyone have experience working with these cards on a Mac?
Are their any converter boxes that convert HDV to DVCProHD that work with FCP?
Is there a Quicktime codec that would be better to convert all of the DVCProHD, HDV and SD into that would work very well with FCP?
I tried to find documentation about the Apple Intermediate Codec but it was limited and appears to be strictly an 8bit codec working in 4:2:0 so it wouldn’t appear that this would be a good solution for working with 4:2:2 HD. Does anyone care to share their experiences working with the Apple Intermediate Codec?
I hope I’ve provided enough information that you can get a sense of what I’m trying to accomplish. Also this is definitely not a PC versus Mac thing, if I end up working with these guys it will be with FCP. I’m just trying to figure out how I can make the facility more scaleable and efficient and the only experience I have developing a workflow like this is with PC’s. I feel like the fat guy in those Mac commercials – does anyone want a C++ GUI Guide for the holidays?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.