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What Do You Use For Digital Video Editing?
Viking Coder asks: "Hello, I'd like to get involved with Digital Video recording and editing, and I was wondering what other people were using. The iMac at first seems a good option, until you see the limited hard drive and editing capabilities. Are there any pre-packaged solutions that would make for a better system? How about Linux or W2K compatibility / support? Any Open Source solutions to what would be obvious roadblocks?"
"So, I've been looking to build an eMonster 550R from eMachines, with a $500 DVRaptor from Canopus, also loading in a 30G EIDE (UDMA) HD, and Adobe Premiere 5.1, running everything from my (company's) Sony DCR-TRV103.
Am I in for a rude shock, or am I going to love what I can do? Are there other options I should be aware of? Will uLead's Media Builder (?) blow me away, or is Adobe the way to go? Is there an obvious winner card that makes the DVRaptor look silly? Is a 30G UDMA enough? Any caveats? (Like, 7,200 RPM for instance?)"
And from Rares Marian: "What tools, OSes, platforms, and hardware do I need to put a good machine together? I'm currently considering the following:- Platform: Athlon 700, Alpha, G4, SGI
- OSes: Linux, Windows, AmigaOS, BSD (are they there yet?)
- Tools: Broadcast 2000, Premiere
- Systems: PC, Amiga, Mac, Alpha, SGI
- Hardware: Linux Multimedia Labs LML33, VideoToaster
I've had some quotes from $2000 for an Amiga3K setup (hey they used it on Babylon 5, Jurassic Park, and many TV stations still use it) to an $8000 Windows Athlon based machine. Any ideas? Hint: Small Budget No Limits. (From home video to full blown Internet based publishing)"
Right now, all the serious folks are using Mac G4's with plenty of fast HD space, RAM, etc.
Take a look see.
Video editing is a HUGE market. There exists a solution on anything that'll run it. The big thing to think about when putting together an NLE (non linear editng) suite is what formats you will capture/output in.
Capturing.
How are you going to log your tapes? Most productions have waves of interns logging the in and out points of all the juicy bits of video on a given reel. The producers then grab the logs, look at the pieces they have to deal with, and puzzle together a show with it (a jigsaw puzzle without benefit of a picure). They do this by generating an EDL (edit decision list) which contains the reels and smpte in/outs of all the clips they want to use. NLE software uses this file as an instruction sheet, and controlls the decks to send video to the capture card.
Output:
Are you outputting to the web? NTSC? PAL? 601DV? The NLE solution you need may be much cheaper if you don't have to deal with the hack that is NTSC.
So it is imperitive that you take into account what video formats your tapes will be in (if analog, then you'll need a capture card and software that supports it, if DV, you need firewire and your NLE must have the DV codec). You may want to standardize on input format if analog, to save money on decks (you don't want to use your camera to send video to the NLE, what if you want to capture and shoot at the same time.) Output is important, because you may not need an expensive NLE if your putting movies on the web.
Unfortuneately, most of these suites are for NT (SCSI is a black art on these boxen), but some are cross platform. M=mac, W='doze, L=linux/D=DV codec, A=analog video:
suggested suites:
Edit (discreet logic) W/A
Avid (avid) MW/A
Final Cut Pro (Apple) M/DA
Broadcast2000 (Open Source) L/A
Premiere (Adobe) MW/A
If output is for the web, don't bother encoding in your suite. Render uncompressed and large and use something like media cleaner pro to encode while you sleep.
Hardware:
One word...SCSI, RAID if you can
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Just fired it all up this past weekend. I'm not doing anything DV (yet).
o P3 600 Coppermine
o 256MB RAM
o 15G UDMA66 IDE HD, 7200RPM
o U2W SCSI Controller w/ 9 G U2W drive (for capture/playback)
o Pinnacle DC30 Pro
(all on Win98 unfortunately, with premiere 5)
While most of the system is pretty straightforward and inexpensive, the two most important parts are going to cost the most $$$
The SCSI controller and drive are important because you'll want to be capturing your video to it's own device, preferably on it's own controller? Why? You don't want the drive getting bogged up doing stuff like swapping and general system stuff. The faster and wider the better. If I get more $$$ I'll add more drives on the scsi chain....
The DC30 is a dedicated analog in/out board. So far I'm pretty happy with the results. No dropped frames. It ran me around $500 something. Nothing beats 'all-in-hardware', plus I've got the outs for a tv monitor and out-to-tape.
For DV, you're going to need A LOT of FAST disk space, and keep in mind that DV *is* 7**x4** resolution (forget the exact numbers) and you HAVE to capture at that res. at the DV frame rate.
and for back out to DV it's got to stay the same.
Do your research on motherboards, too. You don't want to get a cheap motherboard only to find that it can't hack the throughput.
My $.02
Blech. Signatures.
Needs
Do you just need to edit down some video you have? NTSC video tops out at about 720x480 (that's also the resolution of a vanilla 4:3 DVD). Or perhaps you want to digitize and edit some film at a much higher resolution. Maybe some special effects.
Platform
If you have no limit to your spending, you're going to want the best. Using an Amiga would only be a solution if you're happy with 640x480 video and can afford acceleration boards (if they're still available). Jurassic Park was --not-- done on Amigas. Some of the dinosaur rough-up proof-of-concept animations were done on an Amiga with Lightwave, but all of the final work was done on high-end workstations and edited the old fashioned way on film. Silicon Graphics solutions do exist but will cost you a minimum of $10,000 for software, I am un aware of any freeware packages that with give you anything more than the common cut, paste, and a few overlayed titles and credits. Your best bet is with a Power Macintosh or Windows PC system. Consider spending plenty of money on a good disk subsystem (drives and a controller card) and RAM.
Capture
You need to get the video in there. If you're going to start from scratch, do yourself a favor and get a DV (digital video, Firewire/iLink/IEEE1394) compliant camcorder and a Power Macintosh G4, G3, newer PowerBook G3 or newer iMac DV as well as Apple's new Final Cut Pro software. Many of the pros are using this setup and aside from a minor luminance-clamping issue, it works like a charm and Apple is actually listening to its users.
If you're going to start with an analog source (VHS, Beta, Betacam SP, etc) then you're going to need a damned good capture card and some fast hard drives. Consider a mid-range Miro card, maybe an Avid or even a second-hand Radius if you can find the drivers. PCs and Macs are pretty equal, just be sure to get at least an Ultra/Wide SCSI card and plenty of drives. (maxing out your onboard IDE with 4 x 40 GB 7200 RPM IDE drives may not leave you with enough disk space).
Edting
There are several good software packages out there for editing. Don't look for feature lists or spec sheets, ask around, see what folks are using. Final Cut Pro is getting -A Lot- of users and awards. Many people are dissing Adobe Premiere, but the fact remains that it's still the most popular in its area (but even I will admit that it is aging). There are even plenty of consumer and even some free packages that may do everything you want. These would be fine as long as you don't need some of the higher-end tweaking and quality features, the most important aspect of editing video on a computer is Getting It In There, so spend most of your budget on a good capture system. Or, do yourself a huge favor and go DV, then you won't be digitizing, just transferring.
Bundles
Many camera and video catalogs offer preconfigured Power Macintosh and Windows PC systems, filled with RAM, drives, software, and capture cards or bundled DV camcorders. Some companies like Avid offer decked-out custom jobs with hardware and software for a highly-supported and highly-respected editing suite.
I have used PersonalStudio and I am really enjoying it. For about $200 I was able to get the capture card and the software. It is extremely easy to use and with an anolog capture card it can capture 30 fps at 320x200. I can mix mpeg's and quicktime's, a bunch of sound formats and image formats and can export as .avi or quicktime. I haven't tried the IEEE1394 support yet but will probably get a PyroDV when PersonalStudio supports it(which from what I hear is very soon). Overall, I recommend it for an inexpensive solution. -BJuano
The iMac DV's are nice little self contained systems... Their main drawbacks would be the lack of a second monitor and lack of slots, which limits them to only being able to use only FireWire camera's. iMovie may be lame, but you can buy Adobe Premiere and have a nice, cute little system...
Further up the scale, a Mac G4 couple with a Targa 1000 or 2000 video card would be a great choice for editting, because you've got all the expandability of the G4's, plus the ease of use and plug and play of the Mac... Video capture cards are very finnicky creatures, so it's nice to not have to worry too much about if device 1 will work with device 2 while on motherboard 3.
If you really want to have 3D effects, an NT based system would probably be the way to go, since most of the 3d developers target NT workstation at the low end, and either Solaris or Irix at the high end. Yes, there is some stuff available for the mac (Lightwave, though it lacks the 3rd party plug in support of NT, Infini-D, Electric Image, Strata Studio Pro all ship on the mac... missing from that list is 3D Studio, most notably).
Moving past the low end, you mightt also want to check out systems from Avid and Media 100... They sell turnkey solutions, based on the Mac OS, Windows NT, and Irix.
Without knowing budgets or goals, it's hard to recommend a video editting solution... One thing is, there just aren't any open source tools, or tools that run on the open source operating systems, that can stack up against the proprietary tools.
Lastly... If you end up on a Mac or Windows machine, you'll probably want Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects for your editting and compositing. Throw in Photoshop and Illustrator for titling, and you've hit almost $2000 on just software, so be warned it's not at all cheap!
First of all, there is Broadcast 2000, a GPL non-linear editor. For your video capturing needs, try dvgrab (assuming that you've got a IEEE-1394 compliant capture card). And as a cheap plug for my own program, I am the author of gvplay, a simple Gnome/GTK video player. I wrote gvplay to help render my special effect (object replacement through tracking and edge detection).
I have previously used Newtek's Video Toaster Products, so when I started into this I naturally thought of them. I was surprised not to see any mention of their newer VideoToaster NT.
While the original Toaster and the Toaster Flyer are not suited to NLE (non linear editing) the newer Toaster NT is well suited to it.
The system comes with outstanding software, Speedrazor VT and Lightwave VT are the biggies.
There are options that allow you to handle IEEE 1394 in/out.
The big advantage of using a Video Toaster is that your video is handled UNCOMPRESSED. That means, given a digital source, that you will have no quality loss no matter how many generations or layers you use in your projects. You have to step up to very expensive AVID systems to get better quality.
This does come at a price though. You will need a LARGE and FAST disk subsystem capable of handling a sustained transfer rate of 23.4MB/s. You can also plan on about 1.3 GB per minute of video. Medea offers some excellent systems that can meet these needs. I suggest their VideoRaidrt series, which are actually based on IDE DMA drives that'll plug into the external connector of your fast SCSI controller. This makes the drive arrays very affordable. I think you could build a similiar HD array using Linux and an IDE RAID controller, but I don't know how to get it to act as a drive and communicate across the SCSI channel like an ordinary SCSI device. That approach would no doubt save you a pretty penny though.
You will need a fast system, I think a system with two Pentium 3 600 Coppermines is a good start. Look for 256MB RAM or more. You also need a high qualtiy PCI sound card. I am still looking onto those, but you can always start with Soundblaster. I am using a GeForce 256 DDR video card. You could probably use an older card, but I'd urge you to get as nice a video card as you can.
The Toaster itself is about $3000 US dollars, and you can expect to spend about $5,000 US on a system and drives.
You didn't mention camera's. I am using a Canon XL1 for most of my work. The camera has interchangeable lenses and with a converter can use any EF series photographic lens. An XL1 will run you about $3800 US. If I had the budget I'd look at the JVC GY-DV500 which has larger CCD's and uses standard professional video lenses. It also has better low light performance and a more professional look and feel. This means that if you have to hire a cameraman, they'll probably be reasonably familiar with teh camera. It runs about $5,000 US. The lenses are harder to find and more expensive than EF lenses. I plan on using a Canon GL1 as a second unit camera, when my budget allows me to acquire one. ( Of course if my budget allows I'll probably go after the JVC and using the XL1 as a second unit.) All these cameras use MiniDV cassettes and have IEEE 1394 in/out.
That said, I have to forewarn you to remember that you will need to budget for lighting equipment, professional microphones, particularly if you are going to shoot outside on windy days tripods and LAN-C or Control L controllers that will allow you to operate the camera while it is on a tripod. If you are going to try to move the camera I reccomend a steadicam. Also for the XL1 I reccomend using a shoulder mount that will counterbalance the camera as it is "front heavy" with most of its lenses.
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
www.desktopvideoworld.com
and
www.matroxusers.com
You'll find a ton of info on these sites - about Pinnacle, Matrox (IE RT1200), and others.
Cheers.
Coolfish
The real problem here is that the posters have never defined what they are doing, and what they want. Are you looking ot do ollywood post-production work? Are you doing a little simple video editing (splicing, soundtrack, and transitions), or are you goign to be creating content on the compouter to interact/overlay on DV video? are you going back to the DV cammera with the work, to a DV storrage array over fiberchannel, making a video-Cd, or goign to be publishing on the web? Who are your customers, and what quality do you expect?
For most people the answer is going to be the simple home movie, publishing back to the cammera, or mabey to the web for short videos. In both cases my recomendation is an iMac DV or Special Edition, mabey replacing the Hd with a larger one. This gives you a quality computer with enough horsepower to work on video, built-in OS supported FireWire (1384), and a great consumer level editing package (iMovie.. i have given 2 hour courses on its use, and it is simple to learn, and very powerful for the usual stuff, I highly recomend it for most uses). I would recomend having someone demo iMovie for you once, as it is a great piece of comsumer level software! the size of te Hd is a consideration, but not as big a one as you might imagine, as most of the time you are not woring on more than 20 minutes of video, and you just toss stuff back onto the cammera when you are done, if you are going to be doing hours of video at a time, get a profesional system...
On the next level of stuff.. TV broadcast quality work, I would recomend a G4, a Cannon XL-1, and either Apple's Final Cut Pro (my personal recomendation), or Adobe Premere, and a copy of Media Cleaner Pro, oh and a copy of Apple's QuickTime Pro (the best value tool you will find out there!). If you really feel that portablility is important (say to cut together a news clip while you are russing back to the station in the van), the new FireWire powerbook can serve as a nice little mobile station. Incidentally, this seems to be the combination that ABC has chosen to send it's teams into the field with.
And the final level that I am going to be talking about, the high end content creation level: Here I would go with a a G4 or a SGI (depending on what your company is better at supporting) decked out with a Arora or Avid card (top end is $10,000+ a card), a Gig-and-a-half of memor (remebering of course to get 2-2-2 memory), a fibrecannel Gigabit interface, Dual Channel SCSI-160 (one for scratch, 10K RPM of course), and maybe one of those nice quad-processor digital co-processor cards (4 G3's on a card... not real multi-processing, but even better fo DSP stuff...).
Hope this helps someone out there, and if anyone is in the Madison, Wi area, I am more than willing to do short demo's of the lower end products mentioned (I am not a salesman...). I do have a pro-mac bais, and in this case that is really where the professionals are going, so the bais is justified.
There are a couple of relevant articles on MacCentral today. Check them out: http://maccentral.com/news/0004/ 10.apple2.shtml and http://maccentral.com/news/000 4/10.finalcut.shtml .
The first one is a summary of an announcement made by Apple, Matrox, and Pinnacle Systems concerning a new "Macintosh Only" uncompressed standard-definition (SD) and uncompressed high-definition (HD) video solutions. The second article describe the latest release of FInal Cut Pro.
Avid Technologies makes two main versions of their software/hardware packages, each of which is fairly modular and very powerful. The Avid Express version runs on an Apple G3 computer (usually a 9600/300) because the G4 don't have enough open slots for the custom hardware. From there, video capture is up to you. An SVHS deck is fairly common, especially with remote editing capabilities, but many places are moving to DVCPro, which is a little more expensive. A Mackie 1220 is a great mixer for the Avid, nothing too elaborate, yet powerful enough to be professional quality. It'll mix audio from a variety of sources (say the deck, a CD player, a tape/MD player, and a voiceover mic). Avids support dual monitors, and I highly recommend looking at two 19 inch Trinitrons, especially if you're going to be looking for a long time. Throw on any preview screen you want (just about anything bigger than 13" will suffice) and you have a pretty standard rig. Avid alows a host of third party add-ons, from sound effects and editing to some amazing visual effects packages. The basic set that comes with it, though, is more than adequate for the vast majority of editing. Unless you're doing MTV sytle music videos, you'll be fine. Hard disk space is handled via specially formated SCSI disks. For working on the Avid, expect to get about 1 minute of video on 100MB of disk. Yes, about 10 min/gig. A couple of 9GB SCSI drives are expensive, but the avid allows you to save a project and remove the media, then automatically redigitize it later. Very handy if you're working on multiple projects. Of course you can always step up the system to a little more power, but the base configuration is good for producing just about anything. Most schools and universities use the Avid for non-linear digital editing because of it's value and power, while they use the Play, Inc.'s Trinity system for live production. It'll be a trick to add the Avid to an existing system, but if you're willing to build one from scratch, it's definetly the way to go.
Error loading humorous sig.
IEEE1394 gives you isochronus transfer mode an the ability for two devices, say a iLink digital camcorder and a 1394 harddrive to communicate directly without lugging a computer around with you. Alternatively, the new Powerbooks have IEEE built in.
In any case, the isochronus transfer keeps you from dropping frames as even the fastest of asynchronous busses like SCSI can. It locks down a guaranteed bandwidth for devices that need it(and DV devices are the classic example of somethign that needs a certain amount of guaranteed bandwidth), so no spike in bus usage can lose you a frame that you can never get back.
The device-to-device communication is nice for keeping things light, but apparently not absolutely necessary when you consider laptops are not that bad to work with.
-N
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
Okay, so it has a pricetag the average consumer might poop themselves over, but it's worth every penny. I produce medium length (5-20 minute) videos for local campus groups at my university, and I've found that if you've got the cash to shell out for the camera ($1000 and UP!) you can afford a system to go with hit. Primary examples would include ProMax Technologies setups complete for a beginner or some guy with a pro-based background. No, there's not much out there in terms of PC stuff, not unless you want to drop $30k on a system. Granted, a G4 system may run up to $20k, but that will include a WHOLE lot of stuff that's worth your while.
Now while Digital Video is just a fledgling industry, there are some great sites to check out. I highly recommend the 2-pop.com site for questions about ANYTHING related to DV. Another good reference point is ProMax . Don't forget the Apple site for their software (FCP is WAY better than iMovie.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.