KCVideoCore - an Adobe video community focusing on Video,... > Discussion Board

Workstation Specs? (5 Comments)

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:27:48 +0000

Thread by wwdesign

I posted this in another group, but thought I might get some help here too. Here's the question:

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Can anyone offer any insight as to what specs I should look for in buying a new workstation specifically for Premiere Pro?

I've read the minimum specs listed on the web site, and spoken to someone in customer service -- who wasn't much help. He kept insisting that all I needed was the minimum specs, and I'd see no performance improvement beyond that, which I find hard to believe. He did claim that they prefer Nvidia video cards (though wouldn't specify a model).

The current machine is very basic, and the AVCHD MTS files I'm working with are taking FOREVER to render -- high def against a green-screen. I need to speed the process up considerably. Also planning on moving to CS5 as soon as it is released.

Can anyone offer their opinion on the following:

Processor -- any benefit of the Xeon over an i7? What I've read to date is steering toward a dual Xeon 3.0.

16GB RAM -- too much or not enough?

Nvidia card -- but which model? Will the GPU (or multiple cards) help speed up rendering time?

Win 7 64-bit

Hard drive -- Anything internal is ok. Mass storage is pretty much already covered with a dedicated 3-terabyte network drive.

If you're a regular Premiere Pro user and could buy your 'dream-machine' what would it be? Trying to keep within a reasonable budget, but expect it might wind up in the $5,000-$6,000 area. Thanks for any insight you can offer.

Philips Carousel for Cinema - your thoughts? (1 Comment)

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:30:52 +0000

Thread by Balaganesh72

Content

http://www.cinema.philips.com/

and the making ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teoSDTJDjF4

Link

Philips Cinema

Meeting: 004 Production

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:57:26 +0000

Thread by Nick Schale

Production Coders 4 Charity Event

KCVideoCore weekend event! We will be meeting at a different location!

Centriq Training
8700 State Line Road Suite 200
Leawood, KS 66206
913-322-7000

I imagine there will be signs pointing on where we need to go! (Buck please reply all or post on our site if you have further details)

The actual meeting will be on Saturday at 3PM.

There should be food if anyone wants to snag a late lunch. Our subject is PRODUCTION. Actually putting together a finished product. We will recap pre-production, shooting, and Buck will have his system and we will work a little bit of editing during the meeting. Also most likely we will work with some export options as well (hopefully get to see some real rendering speed!).Of course we will have our usual door prizes! (And i have to say, I'll be giving out an Interesting book!)

This can be a fairly short meeting, But 3PM - 3:30PM will be networking, then the meat and potatoes will start around 3:30 and last till 4:30-5:00ish HOWEVER, after the meeting we could shoot some more footage!

FRIDAY: For those interested in some filming. Caleb Vetter, Cory Vetter, Nick Schale and Buck will be attending Friday night for sure (and this is open to anyone that wants to help... if you want some experience shooting, THIS is your chance!). We will probalby get there no later than 5:30 PM. And rush to get ready for the opening parts. We will capture a few minutes of that, then snag some charities to interview (we really need good one-liners) then its off to the Geeks to get some quick footage. After all that we will get some B-Roll and dump the footage on Buck's computer and bail out.

SATURDAY: Film crew / grips may want to stay a little later AFTER the meeting.

SUNDAY: Is the awards ceremony, more details will be given out at the meeting on Saturday.

Video Resources! (3 Comments)

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:24:35 +0000

Thread by Nick Schale

So at our first meeting we discussed resources on the web. As promised I have put together a list so that everything is at one place :) Please posts good ones that you find so that others are able to benefit as well!

Free tutorial Sites

VideoCoPilot.net Andrew Kramer constantly updates this site with outstanding tutorials for After Effects. Go to the website and click Tutorials, there you will find 82 to date. All free! He has some products to for purchase and honestly they are VERY useful. Personal note, I think this is a bit more towards intermediate/advanced stuff. So be sure to check out his After Effects Basic Training at videocopilot.net/basic/ There you will find 10 lessons that will get any basic user up to speed!
Adobe.tv. Why wouldn’t this be a source of knowledge! Lots of good stuff here. Hardly any cons here; but if they had to improve one thing it would be the actual organization of data and layout. Best with good connection speeds. These are small cons for the huge amount of content at this site.
CreativeCow.net Another site thick with content for tutorials! They also have 9 different podcast, about half of which are video podcast. Also they have a magazine. The only real con here is organization of the videos, but a huge A+ in my book.
StudioDaily.comThe part of this I used was the printed magazine. I believe they are stopping the physical magazine (this month) and going purely digital. Not primarily an Adobe software resource probably more of a main focus is hardware. From that site it has links to film&video and HDStudio.
AETUTS Stumbled across this one after our meeting and Buck called me also bringing up this site. Check it out! It seems to be growing very fast also!

Pay / Subscription Sites

Lynda.com Many video tutorials. Not a lot for advanced / experts IMHO. But will take you from beginner to intermediate fast!
Total Training.com Another site that offers decent video tutorials.
Digital JuiceLoads of goodies here folks. Add a ton of production value to your videos with pre-made lower thirds or animated backgrounds. The Sound Effects volumes and Stacktraxx are GREAT!
Smart Sound Sound stock

Forums

DV Info This place has a HUGE user base.
Digital Juice and Video Copilot also have friendly forums!

Tools for Filmmakers

Film Maker.com (url= http://filmmakeriq.com/) Nice site! When I posted this, the featured articles included: 1001 Adobe After Effects Tutorials; 144 After Effects Plug-Ins; and many more!
Micro Filmmaker Lots of tips and tricks. For a small fee they will give you a professional review of your work!
incompetech This guys is good... and NICE. Composes original music for you to use in your projects, all he asks in return is a credit and maybe a donation. The website could use a little bit of a face lift, but it is worth a visit!

Don't see something here that you use often and think the group might benefit from it... POST!

-=Nick... the MonkeyButlerNinja

Meeting 003: Hardware

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:13:37 +0000

Thread by Nick Schale

In the meeting our main subject was HARDWARE. We focused mainly on cameras, but in truth we could spend 4 or 5 meetings on lighting and not cover everything. So, how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?

NAB, National Association of Broadcasters, is an annual convention that seriously is an amazing show. Las Vegas host’s this event and it fills the Vegas Convention Center, which if you have never been, is HUGE. Also, Las Vegas isn’t too shabby of a town either ;). If anyone plans on going this year PLEASE let us know! http://www.nab.org/

If you have a decent idea of what to buy, my suggestion is shopping at BH Photo. This is the place to buy / shop / price compare / or just browse when Best Buy just doesn’t cut it for you anymore. I’ve made quite a few purchases myself from this store and have actually got to visit their one and only location in New York (quite a shop). Specializing in Photography / Video / and equipment the only thing they lack is locations and in my humble opinion computer hardware (there are literally hundreds of sites that do this well though). The physical store in NY is a wonderful place to play around with cameras before you drop $2,500 (or higher), so having one on the west coast and perhaps one in the Midwest would be fantastic. Even still, huge 5 star rating from me. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/

Quick rundown for CONSUMER level cameras. You can spend from $150 to 700 in the consumer range (actually some now adays are even going around $1,000). I always ALWAYS recommend spending the extra cash and getting 3 CCD (or CMOS) cameras. CCD and CMOS sensors are basically what the camera sees, so in 1 chip cameras that solo chip is capturing everything by itself. The cameras that have 3 chips are designed so that each one is capturing a different color, red, green, blue. Having seperate chips for those colors makes an amazing difference in the quality of the footage. The next step for CCD sensors is size, although most consumer level cameras are 1/6". Prosumers are typically 1/3" and Pro level cameras are 1/2" and up. Bigger sensor = more detail captured!

What kind of media your camera records to is preference. I still like MiniDV tapes, but am growing fonder of chip based cameras. MiniDV have probably handled the test of time / quality / price the best over the last 10years or so while other formats have come and gone. Hard drive cameras are convenient but if that hard drive breaks, camera is toast. Not to mention IF you run out of space on your 3 week trip to Europe, you can't go buy more film/tape. I think chips will rapidly replace all media types, even pro level cameras like the glorious RED is recording onto chips that you could pick up almost anywhere, and getting footage from your chip to your computer is a breeze! (Note that transferring footage to the computer and actually doing something with it seems to be a big hurdle in the consumer world) *Also, and this applies to digital still cameras as well, the OPTICAL ZOOM is the important zoom, never use digital zoom.

www.bhphoto.com
www.bestbuy.com (consumer level cameras)

Adding a little production value to your shoot goes a long way. A $30 mic from BHPhoto and a couple bucks put into a tripod can turn a hand held youtube video into something much more professional! Personally I bought a 503 bogen tripod and legs, it ran around $550 and is the best investment I have made for my freelance business. I consider myself a freelancer/part time, so you might not need to go that big. If you are doing a production that allows you to rent that kind of equipment, it could be totally worth it.

www.bhphoto.com

Lighting kits cost around 1,000 to get you going. But there is a ton of options. LED are new and upcoming but can be flawed as they emit light from several sources. Fluorescent are cool in temperature and create a nice even light. Lowell have 3 point light kits that's everything you need. In the end, do some research and find something that matches your budget, even if it is a cheap light from Home Depot, it makes a difference.

www.lowel.com
www.coollights.biz

Please feel free to add comments below!! I'm sure everyone has something they can offer. Remember, this is about learning and growing!

Sponsors (what we need, and what they get)

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:35:00 +0000

Thread by Nick Schale

Ok fellow User Group members; we need to have a chat about Sponsors!

Here is what we are looking for:

Refreshments during our monthly meeting.

Typically we have the Mr. GoodCents party platter, which is enough for about 20 people. Also includes two 2ltr sodas. This is approximately $50. If a member is the one floating the tab, they will receive an extra raffle ticket as well. We are not limited to this; we could go with Pizza, or something else.

Door Prizes

Every month we give out door prizes to members. Currently Focal Press is signed on as a full time sponsor. I encourage people to browse their products and give them a try, honestly I have been very impressed with the books I have read/reviewed so far. Use the link on our page to get 20% off.

Guest Speakers

I want to be the first to admit that I am only an Adobe Ninja in some software! If you are, or know a really talented individual and that person would be willing to give a presentation. We would love to hear someone who knows what he/she is talking about! :D

What we can give to the sponsors: A logo and link on our homepage (for the number of month's they sponsor +1. ie. If you sponsor one meeting, you get two months of banner space. If you sponsor three months, you get four months).
We will also take a moment each meeting to thank our sponsors and let everyone know who we owe thanks too! Spreading the sponsor's name by word of mouth.
In the end we want to get name recognition for our sponsors to create a mutually beneficial arraignment!

Note that I am posting this here because I want to make this open to our community. This is OUR group so I would like to hear everyone's feedback and suggestions!

Signing Off,

Monkey Butler Ninja. aka, NICK

Meeting 002: Expressions

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:33:30 +0000

Thread by Nick Schale

Well my fellow Adobe User Group friends, another meeting under the belt.

As promised here are some links for expressions.

http://www.motionscript.com/ Scroll down to the Expressions Lab, click that link and it will take you to a page that has a table of contents for various scripts. Drill further into a selection, example: "Pendulum" and it will give you a short video example of what the code does, a description on how it works and how to use it... and the code to copy and paste into your AE project!
http://www.aenhancers.com/ A community forum for suggestions / help / or just a place to express how scripting has turned you into a super hero.
http://www.colinbraley.com/tutorials.html A few examples here. Some of the stuff is a bit advanced, but hey... this is how you learn ;)

Have more info? Maybe some tips? Post them here.