Making the Leap to a FCP/High-Def Editing Studio

by , 4:15 PM EDT, March 23rd, 2007

More and more video editors are making the leap to High Definition (HD). The components that would be required to build a basement HD editing system were listed at Creative Mac.

"There are four main categories we will delve into, and we’ll take a look at potential options for assembling a system that is right for you and your clients. One thing that's important to keep in mind for the purposes of this article, is that we are going to look at building an edit system that can do uncompressed HD, as the whole point of HD is to have the highest possible picture quality you can get," Kevin McAuliffe wrote.

Here's what's needed for FCP HD editing:

1. Mac Pro, two 3 GHz dual-core Xeons with 4 GB RAM
2. NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 with 512 MB VRAM
3. An HD capture card: Kona 3 or Blackmagic Decklink series
4. Fibre Channel card and RAID storage. The 4 TB Media Vault 4210 was recommended.

The Media Vault was described as, "Lightning fast, with (almost) no dropped frames, and as every HD editor knows, that's a must because your clients will lose faith in your edit system quick, if they see the "Dropped Frame" error message."

In addition to FCP HD, of course, some additional software is desirable. Shake 4.1, Adobe After Effects 7, and Photoschop CS2 were listed.

Grand total? About US$31,000.00.

The author concluded by noting that a system like this may be better assembled by a professional reseller. "In a lot of cases, resellers will offer additional phone or onsite support for a year or two, so if a card or drive fails, you won't be left in the lurch. It's also great to have the support of a reseller so that if you have a problem, even something minor like not knowing how to do something in Final Cut, you can give them a call, and they can help you through it," Mr. McAuliffe concluded.