DS Assist?
 

Anyone using Avid's DS Assist program? It's a $10,000 software only version of DS that apparently does everything but capture.

The idea would be to use AXP or MC to cut and DS Assist to finish.

Interesting. I don't know of anyone. But, I do know that DS is a proceesor and memory hog. You will need no less than the latest dual core Xeon with 8 Gb of memory. If you're doing DPX 2k work you would need very large 4 to 8 way stripe raid drives. Remember, most people use DS for conforming, color correction. In thecommercial world, the DS is starting to be replaced by the Discreet Smoke.

So your hardware could cost you another 10 to 15k. At 25k you could buy a Avid MC Adrenaline. While DS is very powerful when it comes to color correction, effects, etc. You could pair a very good After Effects setup with MC or Xpress and do pretty much the same thing, with the exception of 4k.
In all honesty, I doubt many people are currently editing 4k.

Cheers,

EDIT: http://www.avid.com/products/dsnitris/nitris/ Although they do have a free 45 day trial. So at least you could test out on your hardware. Also it supports the Aja Xena Le card.

Dave,

I would definitely need to get a new machine to run DS. But then I would have 64-bit version of Avid.

My main interest in DS stems from working on a documentary that I hope will get picked up theatrically. (Realistic? Probably not, but you never know.)

So my thinking is to cut and do some basic post work in AXP or MC, but then use DS to finish as much as I can. The result would be a DS project which (in theory) would have much of the finishing completed that I could then give to a post house. I have no idea if there is any real benfit to doing that, perhaps the finishing would be significantly cheaper? And all my hard (probably substandard, LOL) work would transfer over easily.

If I were to go the After Effects route, I imagine that any color correction or finishing done is for my eyes only and DVD/tape out. I assume the AXP or MC project is used by the post house but the AE work would be wholely ignored.

As for 4K, no I won't be using that. The highest band width would be uncompressed 1080 X 1920 24P. But mostly a lot of HDV.

Your thoughts are MUCH appreciated.

-Peter

http://www.synthetic-ap.com/products/cf/index.html

I would still go the AFX route using Color Finesse plug in because I'm just cheap. It has the same level of Color Correction, with secondaries, with DPX export for less than $600.00. You can still send sequences in a variety of ways back and forth with Avid (QT references, MXF, etc.) And you can work in 32 bit float, 4:4:4 and you can export DPX files out of AFX for film out. The down side is that it might be slower than a DS for sure. In the end, you could use AFX or MC for Color Correction for an HD version and then interfeace with your post house for lay back and mastering.

I would get a beefy PC, and download the trial of DS asst. and AFX, and Color Finesse and test out your workflow.

We'll keep our fingers crossed for your project,

Good Luck..

David,

Thanks very much for your good thoughts and insights. BTW, do you have any experience with Boris Red?

Thanks again ;).

I have an old version v. 3 I believe that I used for a short spell a couple of years ago. It's okay. Avid FX module is actually Boris Red. But I've since been using After Effects v. 7. The one cool thing that Red does do is EPS import, which saves a step in Photoshop, but beyond that it ran slow for me.