PC for Uncompressed HD
 

Hi
I'm currently editing my movie shot in HDV and I'll be doing it on Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 native. I'll probably send the timeline to After Effects CS3, render it out to uncompressed HD and then reimport it to AE to do the compositing, green screen and other effects work. I will be mastering it at 32-bit as well, so all the VFX work will be done on 32-bit uncompressed HD footage. Master will be 32-bit uncompressed TIFF Sequence. From that, I'm going to HDCAM SR (Backup), HDV (Backup) and M2V (For DVDs).

I need to build a PC (not MAC please) for this purpose and here are some specs I was looking at:
Intel Quad Core 2.4 Ghz
D45 Intel Motherboard
4GB DDR II RAM 800Mhz
1.5 TB HDD 7,200 - 500GB for Windows and 1TB for work
Graphics Card??

I'm not sure I need a Xeon or an i7 for this job. There is quite a bit of compositing (at least 40% of the movie), titling and some motion graphics. Do I need a graphics card at all? Will this system do the job for me or do I need to invest in a Xeon workstation and an nVidia graphics card?

Thanks, will appreciate any help.

It will work, but for uncompressed your storage is a bit limited. Your OS disk could be much smaller and faster, for instance a Velociraptor 150 or 300 GB. Unless you want to work blind, you need a graphics card as well as a display. An ATI 4850 might be a good card. As always, it is a matter of budget. An i7 will give you a significant performance boost and an 8-core system even more, but you pay for being on the bleeding edge.

Yeah, budget is the big key here. I don't have a ton of experience editing uncompressed, but HD in uncompressed is going to take up a HUGE amount of diskspace... You really should be considering more storage space considering how relatively cheap it is today. I also second the better video card here as I believe Premiere is able to work with them quite well - particularly the ATI branded cards... If you're going to go with a single chip quad core, might as well step that up to the next chip faster. In the case of this project, and extra $200 - $500 spent on this system could save you many hours... I'd love to hear what you end up doing and how it ends up working out..

Jon

single point disks will probably not cut it for uncompressed.

check out this article from black magic, who make a card for receiving uncompressed HD

Blackmagic Design: Support Detail

it indicates their view on how disk performance can affect render/playback

Hi
 

Unfortunately, the i7 hasn't been released where I'm at....in India! I thought nVidia did better with AE and similar Adobe Products. Am I wrong here? I was thinking about the nVidia 8800 512MB series.

The nVidia 8800 is quite a good card. Nothing wrong with it. However, ATI currently delivers the most 'bang-for-the-buck' , especially with the 48xx series. I have never experienced problems with ATI cards in combination with Adobe software, so I can't say that nVidia is better than ATI, but I do know that nVidia cards have died more on me than ATI cards. I don't have large number statistics to prove or disprove one is better than the other. My suggestion is to get the card that has the most attractive price. In performance you will most likely not notice any difference. Your disk setup will be far more crucial for performance.

I believe you have this backwards, I'm pretty sure it is in fact ATI that typically does Adobe products a little bit better.

any quad core will do.

I use a 2.66 with the 1333 bus 9450 I think.

Aja or Blackmagic.

Motherboard is also an issue. Make sure is has enough PCI-E slots.

just use the onboard Intel Raid for a RAID 0. Use at least 4 drives, 6 would be better. Velociraptor would be best, but 4 1 TB WD's at 7200 will work as well.

Nividia 8600GT w/512 ram is what I'm using and it works fine.

If you want to save on drive requirements you could use Cineform which works great, but costs a bit of money. On the other hand 3 or 4 streams of HD in Premiere rocks.

Good luck,

Chris

Hi
 

Thanks for the info. I was going for something like this:
1. Quad Core 2.93
2. 4GB RAM 800Mhz
3. nVidia 8600 512MB Card
4. Intel Desktop Board D975XBX2
5. 160GB for Windows
6. 640GB for 'work'
7. 1TB for renders, etc
Why do I need AJA or Blackmagic at this stage?
Thanks again!

If I was building a new box for Uncompressed HD, I would do something like .....
(assuming budget allowed)

1. Quad Core 2.93 or AMD Phenom
2. 8GB RAM 800Mhz
3. nVidia 8600 512MB Card
4. Intel Desktop Board D975XBX2 or High end Gigabyte AMD board
5. 160GB for Windows (c drive)

You need.

* Fast write disk for capture
* big Safe harbour disks (external) for storage
* Render Fast read set to destination fast write set.

perhaps

* 4 x 500 GB in a RAID 0 array (used for capture and your read set) (d drive)
* 2 x 1 TB in a RAID 0 array for fast write set for renders (e drive)
* 2 TB external for storage

yes its lots of disks, lots of money, lots of heat , lots of power drain ... but if you want great performance thats the cost ...

Also, keep drives d and E as clean as possible to prevent any fragmentation affects. Also, RAID 0 offers great write speed but no redundancy, so you do not want to store criticals on them ......

OT: Blackmagic is a card for accepting uncompressed HD over HDMI into your PC. You only need a BM card if that is your transfer for capture protocol, camera support obviously required.

If you aren't going to use RAID, then don't work uncompressed. Seriously.

Unless this is a short, you're going to be WAY too small on disk-space. Check this site for data rates:

Uncompressed video - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Note that for 10 bit 1080p 4:4:4, you're rolling 834 GB per hour. If you're anything like me, you'll have several partial renders on the render drive, and perhaps some alternate edits on the work drive. If I was working on a full sized movie, and thinking of working with uncompressed, I'd probably increase my sizes over what you have by a factor of 5-10. Unless you shoot and edit in the camera, you're going to be dumping a LOT of raw footage onto that work drive. Or maybe you intend to cut the entire movie before moving it from HDV into uncompressed.


How are you planning to write out to an HDCamSR?

Hi
 

Hi
Thanks for the info. I'm editing native HDV (cuts only) and then moving it to AE CS3. Then render out the movie in uncompressed HD, reimport it in AE and work on the effects, titles, etc.

Since I'm using a high-end laptop, can I render out the movie from my laptop to an eSATA 2TB external drive? Can I use this drive to work from my laptop. The effects are mostly motion graphics, nothing fancy.

About HDCAM SR, yes I need to do it finally. But I have no idea how. Would appreciate any help I can get. I'm just going with the flow, I guess.

Forget about even a high-end laptop. Not enough muscle. You need a very beefy workstation with tons of hard disks in a raid configuration with a very good raid controller (on board is not good enough) and lots of memory.

perhaps I am missing the point here, but why would you want to go uncompressed AFTER the material has hit the tape in HDV format? The HDV codec has hit your source material and it is super compressed; decompressing is not going to give you more color space or allow the footage to look better.

The only way it would have helped going uncompressed via hdmi or hd-sdi;if you shot the footage live to a capture card and recorded it uncompressed. Otherwise, imo, it is a waste of space.

Hi
 

Hi
I shot it on HDV on a 111E, JVC. No option of HD-SDI on that model.
I wanted to render out uncompressed HD for two reasons:
1. Color Correction and Green screen work better in HD than HDV.
2. I might get a theatrical release and want to keep my master that way.
I understand the footage is not going to look any better, but i can keep the losses at any stage to a bare minimum.

Hi
 

I understand I won't be able to work in uncompressed HD completely. However, i have about 15 minutes of green screen and motion graphics work that need to be done.
Editing was a breeze on my laptop.
My movie (the 15min) exported to uncompressed TIFF at 32-bit would be 8MB per file, or 200MB/s. An eSATA external disk is around 300MB/s, which leads me to believe that I can work (slowly and painfully, yes) in AE CS3, and then import all this into my Adobe Premiere CS3 timeline, and then reopen the entire completed project in AE and render out to a 1TB eSATA drive. Will this last step work?
Ultimately, I have to take the uncompressed film to a post facility for color correction, checking and rendering of the final master.

So, why not work in uncompressed proxies? Or even lightly compressed proxies? Do you HAVE to do your work with full sized files? Working with 540p or 480p uncompressed images is going to give you the same quality for greenscreen and motion graphics. And it will speed up the process tremendously. When you get ready to go to the facility, take the original files and your proxies, let them do a media replacement, and a master render.

They don't even work with full sized files in Hollywood. Who wants to cut and grade on 4k? Doing the same thing works FINE on 1080p or 2k files at that level.

Hi
 

I was also considering it, but since i shot green screen in HDV, i have no idea how the settings on a proxy will work with the actual uncompressed footage. I don't want to take it to the studio to realize i have to fine-tune my compositing work. Since this is my first time, i guess I'm going to get my hands dirty either way.

Easy. Take 10 seconds of your video. Cut an uncompressed proxy file at 480i. Do your compositing and see how it works. Replace the media yourself and see how it blows up full sized. If that 10 seconds looks like you want your final to look, you're all set.

Incidentally, call the studio, and tell them you'd like to do your work with proxies, and ask them for their advice on the workflow. And if they see any potential issues. They do this all the time, and can probably give you great advice.

-P

Sareesh /

With your intended workflow in mind - consider Prospect HD/2K/4K.

It will meet your demands on "recycled" compositing of clips export after export,without quality loss - as objective.

Premiere on Red Bull.

Their Intermediate codec workflow will free your mobo's hardware resources and their higher quality selectable exports will give exstra headroom for compositing work.

Greetings.

Hi
 

I've already edited the film in native HDV. I can open the project unrendered in AE CS3 and finish it from there. I was pretty impressed with Cineform when i shot a short film in January, and used the trial version of Aspect HD to capture HDV live via OnLocation.

But it does not beat working in uncompressed HD.

Hi
 

I'm following your advice, but I'm doing it on native HDV - my Laptop can handle it. I'm doing the project in 32-bit AE CS3, and will probably finish here.

I have an 18" full 1080p LCD screen, but I was wondering how I'm going to blow-it-up to really check the fine details.

About the studios in Mumbai, India - they suck - at least the ones I can afford. They don't know anything about HDV or HD. All they know is Digibeta. I've tried - it's like breaking your head against a huge wall.

I would not do this with HDV. You want something with more room to do things in post, like a good 10-bit codec. But if that's your choice, that's ok. You should be able to pull a still image from the footage, and take it into photoshop or similar and blow it up 400% and check your matte. Not too tough.

Digiibeta is 10-bit YUV 4:2:2. You can use that for your proxies actually as that is a terrific SD implementation.