Article: Opening My Mind Has Opened Doors

Welcome to the dark side Richard, we're glad to have you...

We always get funny looks when we say we edit on Windows, but then all we have to do is go home and render something, and everything feels better.

Thanks John-Michael. These days its paying to be open minded

Richard M. Harrington, PMP

Author: From Still to Motion, Video Made on a Mac, Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Studio On the Spot and Motion Graphics with Adobe Creative Suite 5 Studio Techniques

i think the clue is XP and 4gb of RAM. Your PC is really old mate !

Good read indeed. The z800 is a fantastic workhorse and so flexible. Combined with CS5 and MC6 it totally rocks. However, I am also discovering a lot of truly great tools and workflows on the windows side that are less known to Mac users and it would be great if someone wrote a piece on that from a Mac/FCP user perspective. Avisynth alone makes a windows workstation worthwile.

Good read. Don't think I'm ready to drop my Mac just yet - there are still too many features about it I like - but I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of CS5 over FCP. It's fast, intuitive, and just all around better than FCP.

OK so I ran CS1 through CS5 on an HP workstation (went to a 64-bit OS as soon as Adobe supported it) and could never understand the popularity of FCP given its limitations and I totally appreciate the epiphany you've had. Once I got my first CUDA card and loaded up 32 gig of RAM I just dug my heels in further and could only think that Apple better do something pretty amazing to top the performance I'm getting out of this set up.

I've run a Henry, Fire, Smoke & Avid and the way CS5 just flat out works together is amazing and I can't believe people overlook it whether for sake of platform or branding or whatever. I'm running CS5.5 on a Macbook Pro now (changed jobs) and really miss all that CUDA goodness. I'm using FCPX too whenever I can just to better my personal toolset as well. Good but not as useful to be sure.

I mention all this only to say that I'm truly in your corner on this one and completely dig what you're doing. My problem is that you're comparing 32-bit and all its memory constraints to 64-bit and who knows how many gigs of RAM. Not really fair. An eye-opening comparison for somebody still using FCP7 to be sure, but not a really apples to apples (pun intended) comparison, eh?

We are an all Mac shop but I am intrigued by a faster workflow on PCs. We have all of our Macs networked on a gigabit network. I can edit off video files on another Mac without issues. We all have internal RAID drives and we share these amongst all the edit stations as needed....so no centralized storage really...just our internal RAIDS and a Gigabit network. We also have external JBOD enclosures with SATA connections to any computer we choose.

In other words networking on the Macs is a breeze and I am afraid to lose that easy connectivity.

I also feel that Premier likes to create new files and the structure of the scratch disc is still a bit bewildering.

So sharing media files across the network seamlessly and reliably without a massive (and expensive) SAN is key.

Doable on a PC based facility with 5-6 edit seats?

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
http://www.tiltmedia.com

Load and sync your video layers in a sequence. You can load audio tracks with them but you only want to have one active to cut to. Have all your video layers turned on.

Open a new new sequence and place the sequence with your synced layers into it.

Highlight the nested sequence on the timeline and go to "Clip/Multicam/Enable". Then go to "Window/Multicam Monitor".

Hit the record button and then the play button and switch cameras by tapping on whichever one you want. You can stop and pick up again with no problems.

Audio in the multi-camera feature of Premiere is a little bewildering. Once you have nested the multi-camera sequence in a new sequence, the audio is going to come from Audio 1, or from the specific camera if you checked "Audio follows video." This may not be the best workflow, but here's my workaround: I mixdown the audio in the initial multi-camera sequence, export the master track, then reimport it and lay it down as Audio 1 in the multi-camera sequence. Then nest that sequence in a new sequence and select multi-camera monitor in the window menu. You can now cut to all of your cameras without messing up your audio.

If you have a CUDA supported card you don't have to transcode anything.

This is a nice article.

I think one reason why people still hold on to Macs is that you can mess up a PC way faster and more easily. You have to be more cautious about crap- and bloatware. Than again... if you truely use your PC for working only, than this is no problem. Also I think the default settings of Windows have enough room for some tweaks and adjustments.

I'm a starter in business and I think that PCs are the way to go for beginners, because you can get the same hardware power with less money. As a beginner you probably don't need the unique features of a Mac anyway. I film (most of the time) with a Canon EOS 7D and just love the Adobe Creative suite. This was the right choice for me! (oh and the new i7 3930k is a beast of a 6xCore CPU :) )

The PowerPC days are over (when buying a new system...). The cpu architectures are the same today on PC and Mac.

There is also the big myth that a Mac makes you a better designer or artists. This is so wrong in many ways.

***
Digital Film and Animation student @ SAE Vienna

Richard, thanks for the article about your OS/platform-epiphany.

I'll second the previously stated "welcome to the dark side" comment, I also want to add Bruce Willis' quote: "Welcome to the party pal!"

The PC-waters are fine and have been fine since the early 1990's.

Utilize any and all OS/platforms' strengths to get the job done, free your mind, the rest will follow, is my professional motto.

I hope now you'll get to spend more time with your family and less time at the office.

Bert O'Connor

Nevermind, I checked out the z800. Anything that's $8,500 has to be reliable

HP sponsored this? :o)

We clearly labeled it and even put ON EVERY PAGE that it was sponsored by HP. And in case you missed it, we even put a GREAT BIG HP LOGO on the cover.

Glad you noticed.

Best regards,

Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
A 2011 FOLIO: 40 honoree as one of the 40 most influential publishers in America
http://www.creativecow.net


Creativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.

"Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm." - Woody Allen

Sorry for the late reply. You're right to be skeptical about editorial integrity, Tom, given its dire absence outside the COW.

You have it backwards, though. It's not that HP wouldn't have sponsored the article if Richard had mentioned problems. It's that Richard wouldn't have DONE the article if he found issues. Like most of the people in the COW, he doesn't have time to write about what DOESN'T work. He'd spend the time finding something that DOES.

Here's how I know that: I asked him to write the article before he had any relationship with HP whatsoever. He told me this story, and my jaw dropped. Only after this did I suggest that he and HP might want to talk to each other. By that time, Rich had already started construction on a new room to house his new PC system, and was going ahead with it without regard to HP or anyone else.

As he also mentions, there may be not be a more hard-core Mac guy in the COW. There's nothing that could have persuaded Richard to do this if it didn't work. And as he ALSO also mentions, he's not getting rid of any Macs, nor ruling out buying more Macs in the future. FCP is still his editing environment of choice. It's just that, as he organically finds room for Windows in his workflow, he's going to run it on HP workstations.

So if you ask which came first with the story and HP's sponsorship, the chicken or the egg, the answer is, THE APPLE. All of these expanded workflow stories, or conversion to Media Composer or Premiere, whether on Mac or Windows -- that isn't being driven by any dark corporate conspiracies. Apple is the only company that could ever have made them possible.

I should also note that we've done bunches of these stories for other companies, including a recent run of them for Blackmagic, Sony and Assimilate. Always clearly marked. Neither we nor those vendors would have it any other way. They do this to protect their own integrity too.

So I'm not sure what the problem is. Richard's story 100% checks out, and is echoed by people in every walk of life across the COW. We very clearly marked that the specific presentation of it here is sponsored. This is how it's SUPPOSED to work.

The last thing I'll add is that this story originally appeared in a print supplement to Creative COW Magazine. We have posted it as a standalone download, which you can download here. It couldn't possibly be more clearly marked...

...and it's one of the most popular downloads in the history of Creative COW Magazine. Tens of thousands already, and it's been up just a few weeks, over the holidays no less, and, other than this article, no publicity whatsoever. People are finding their way to it on their own, and downloading it because they know that more information leads to more options.

Again, we understand anybody's concerns about editorial integrity, and believe that our diligence has been one reason Creative COW Magazine is still growing, while others are out of print. But we're proud to stand alongside vendors who take their own integrity every bit as seriously, and always happy to talk to COWs who have questions about any of this.

So, Tom, when you get a chance, download that thing. :-) Drop me a line any time to tell me what you think, tim@ you know who dot net.

Finally, I look upon the info provided in an "Advertorial Supplement" a little bit different than a regular article. Most folks (at least the smart ones) do!
I realize this supplement represents lots of income for the COW, and Im glad you made it clear that its was bought and paid for by a client. It up to us readers to take that into consideration when reading its contents.

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

Tim, I will gladly let you know my choice to replace my Mac Pro. Right now the finalists are ADK, Boxx and HP.The web has really provided a great source of info when researching such an important investment as this. And the COW continues to play a major role in that process.

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

Interesting reading experiences of so many people going from FCP to PPRO, and from MAC to PC. We are now evaluating the best PC to PC on steroids solution, or MAC solution for continued PPRO work. Choices seem to be Z800 (self-configured on HP website), custom-built from system integrator such as ADK, or Mac Pro. There are pros and cons to each.

Mike Cohen

Good read. We've had the HP z800 for 7 months and been very happy with it. Zero issues. We edit on Avid and do a lot of After Effects work. Running multiple applications, like having AE rendering in the background while editing in Avid, has never been smoother.

http://www.corpcommgroup.blogspot.com
http://www.corpcommgroup.com