Building a system for EX
 

We are transitioning from DV and investing into an XDCam EX workflow system,
so after long sleepless nights there are still some questions left to solve.

THE GOAL:
1. Acquire material using Sony PMW350 in XDCam probably 720/50p with centercut in mind
2. Edit natively in Edius 5.12
3. Transcode center cut to 4/3 SD 50i Mpeg2 for broadcast - final delivery over ftp
4. Transcode to blueray for archive on external HDD and Blueray

question 1.
Can I do it this way or is it better to downconvert in Sony's clipbrowser before going
into Edius?

Computer specs for the task
Dual Xeon E5540 (Nehalem 8 cores)
12gb DDR3 ECC 1333 RAM
4x1TB 32mb buffer HDDs in Raid0 for media
10k HDD System drive
external disks for archive
Win7 64Bit

question 2.
Will the Spark do the job for monitoring given I don't really need analog and the format
of choice is 720/50p?
question 3.
Will the Spark output slow motion files and play them correctly (50% slow)?
question 4.
Can I use a PCIe to Express slot 34 adapters for ingest of SXS media into the desktop?
question 5.
How to configure sound inputs to Edius if I want to stay balanced all the way
(using XLR ). I thought of buying an M-Audio sound, a mixer and monitor speakers.
Will the spark deliver on this - preview sound?

I can go with Edius SP board with component HD if I have to, but if I can do it with spark
it is cheaper and money is a factor. I thought that if I'll have to print to digibeta I could
just write back to SXS and play out from the camera trough SDI.

Thank you all for your advice.