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My New Editing Computer
While speaking to a local IT guy, he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. It probably would have taken me a week and who knows if I would have made a mistake. For $100 he did it all except installing Windows and updating the drivers. I volunteered to do both of those easy jobs.
Here are the parts that VideoGuys recommended for their “Budget” machine at $1400. The “Hot Rod Machine” they outlined cost $2500.
Motherboard ASUS P6X58-E Pro
CPU Intel i7-950 Quad Core
GPU (graphics processing unit) Ge Force GTX 570
RAM Corsair XM3 16 GB (4 x 4GB)
Here we varied from the Videoguys recommendation which was for 05 G.SKILL Ripjaws 12GB (3 x 4GB) SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800). My IT guy described this as not the most reliable so I went with the Corsair RAM and got 4 more GB of RAM for the same price.
Case Antec Nine Hundred Two V3 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Gaming Case
Power Supply Corsair Enthusiast Series TX 850 V2 850 Watts
System Drive Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive. The original recommendation was for a Hitachi 1TB 7200RPM drive, but I heard it referred to as a “deathstar.”
Operating System Windows 7 Professional 64 bit OEM
Optical Drive Pioneer Internal Blu-Ray Disk/DVD/CD writer BDR 206 Black $
CPU Intel Core i7-950 3.06 GHz 8 MB Cache Socket LGA 1366 Processor
The build above cost a hair over $1600. I found most of the elements at NewEgg.com, but a few of the items were cheaper through Amazon.com
I choose to stick with the 1 TB hardrive for now. With the setup I have I can upgrade this and add an additional Solid State Disk (SSD), but I’d rather save the money now and get a great system working.
My old computer is a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 2.3 GHz with 6GB RAM and a 32 bit operating system running Windows Vista Home Premium. It could edit HD footage if you were willing to guess at exactly what you had until after it rendered.
The most important elements of a video editing machine are the processor and the video card or GPU, but all of these have to work together and this is where it’s helpful to have someone like Gary Bettan from VideoGuys and a smart IT guy. I still need to add external hard drives and to upgrade to Sony Vegas 10 Pro. (Vegas 11 seems to have issues I don’t want to deal with.)
One thing that struck me during the process is that a gaming computer might have worked just fine for HD editing. They both require a fast processor, lots of RAM and a powerful graphics card. I found some used gaming machines that might have done the trick, but for just a little more money I could have brand new.
The bottom line is that I couldn’t be happier with my new editing machine. Everything works so much faster. All previews are at the best quality. Rendering is fast. Video effects are shown in real time. I’ve learned that the world of computer hardware changes so quickly that you must be flexible.
Ditch Final Cut Pro, But Keep QuickTime Pro
When I decided to make the move away from Final Cut Studio (and Final Cut Pro) I also took that time to completely upgrade my existing laptop with a Solid State Disk (SSD) and perform a clean install of the OS (from an optical disk no less!) and a clean install of Adobe Creative Suite 5. (CS5). Everything became quite snappy on this “new” laptop and I quickly became busy learning the ropes in Premiere. I upgraded an existing machine, but this also applies if you are making the jump to a new machine.
But, of course, I still have clients who need existing projects worked on, updated, tweaked, etc. For one client, I was in the midst of putting their finished video on YouTube for rental. I needed to grab 30 seconds of this video from the finished, stand-alone, rendered movie and make a new clip which I would upload separately and then link it as the preview file for the rental.
I went to my default tool, QuickTime Player and was flumoxed by the fact that I couldn’t set an in and out point to copy a portion of the clip. And then I realized what the problem was: the “Pro” part of QuickTime Player requires a separate $20 purchase from Apple to be activated. Using FCP for over 10 years meant that I never needed to buy QuickTime Pro separately. But now, leaving FCP behind, those QuickTime Pro features were no longer available to me. I needed to find another way to make excerpts quickly.
Selecting an excerpt in QuickTime Player Pro
In Premiere, I imported the source clip. Opened it in the viewer. Set my in and out points and couldn’t figure out how to export the clip from the viewer. So I dragged the whole thing into the timeline and then cut it down. Time to export. I really just wanted to copy what I had into a new file. No transcoding or anything. Then, I faced Premiere’s daunting Export module and was immediately flumoxed by the fact that I didn’t see “use current settings” anywhere. It wanted me to either pick one of the presets or create a new setting from scratch. This was getting much more complicated than I wanted to deal with.
I wanted my QuickTime Player Pro back.
I asked fellow professionals for help, and of course I was told that Premiere can do anything, that Vegas could handle this. Edius has no problem… but most of them missed the point. I wanted something fast and simple. On a Mac, especially one now with a speedy SSD in it, QuickTime Player opens and plays a clip in under a second. Creating an excerpt takes just 7 keystrokes:
- Double click the file, click spacebar to play,
- Type “i“, type “o“, Copy, New, Paste, Save, type a name, Enter
- Wait a moment, then Quit.
QuickTime Player defaults to saving the file as a “self-contained movie.” Doing this copies only the data between the In and Out points of your source movie into a new file. In the Finder, it literally does just COPY the footage from one file to the other. No transcoding. No export settings. It’s nearly as simple as selecting “Duplicate” in the Finder, except QuickTime Player Pro enables me to pick what portion of the source file to duplicate. This is why QuickTime Player Pro had become essential to an expedient workflow on my computer.
But how do I get QuickTime Pro back?
The answer lies in the registration file for Final Cut Studio that QuickTime Player checks to activate the Pro features of the app. This registration is nestled on the hard drive in a logical place, and just needs to be copied from the old hard drive to the same place on the new one.
This is where you find the ProApps folder. Or where you put it if you need to make one.
Starting from the root level of the drive > Library > Application Support > ProApps Look for the “Final Cut Studio System ID.” That’s what you need to copy. On your new hard drive, go to the same place, and create the ProApps folder if you need to. Drag “Final Cut Studio System ID” from the old ProApps folder to the new one. Done.
Copy this one file from your old system to keep QuickTime Player Pro features.
The next time you launch QuickTime Player, you’ll have full access to every feature it has.
Don’t be confused by the Final Cut Express files I have in my new ProApps folder. I have a client who requires that we swap project files back and forth so I am still using Final Cut Express for them. But installing Final Cut Express actually does NOT enable QuickTime Pro. So, I still needed to install QuickTime Pro separately.
If you aren’t cleaning out your System and Library folders, or using an application to remove all vestiges of Final Cut Studio (which spreads itself out into many different locations) then you probably will end up keeping the ProApps folder and QuickTime Player will continue to see your registration. But should you ever need to upgrade your hard drive, or move to a new Mac, and you’re not going to reinstall the old Final Cut Studio… you’ll want that one little file to keep the QuickTime Pro you’ve become accustomed to using.
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Can You Show Video Samples That Are Not Yours?
Can you show samples that are not yours? Here’s a brief correspondence I had with someone I’ll call Acme Video.
Acme Video wrote:
From: Acme Video
To: Hal Landen
Subject: Need Video(s) for Website
Hey Hal, my name is Acme Video out of ___________. I’m new to video producing, but I have purchased and began reading your “Professional Video Producer- Home Study Course.” I have recently begun constructing the website for my company, but I have no footage or photo’s to display. Where can I get a few videos to temporarily display on my website?
Thanks,
Acme Video
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From: Hal Landen
To: Acme Video
Subject: Re: Need Video(s) for Website
Hi Acme,
Before you build the website you should produce a couple or more free promotional videos for non-profits in your area. This will benefit you in several ways: You’ll have real videos to show others, people will talk about their videos and get your name around, you will become more confident in your producing skills.
These are all worthy goals that will help you, especially if knock yourself out to produce very effective videos that actually help the non-profits.
If you don’t have videos to show, it’s a bad idea to show videos you have not produced. Don’t try to cut corners. That would only slow your business growth.
I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear, but I honestly think this will help you more than showing videos you did not produce. Another bonus is that when you produce a free video, you get very clever at doing a good job quickly.
Best Wishes,
Hal Landen
(401) 253-2800
http://videouniversity.com
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From: Acme Video
To: Hal Landen
Subject: Re: Re: Need Video(s) for Website
Thanks! I appreciate the honesty very much! I now have clarity and understanding on the best thing to do for my company. Thank you Hal.
Acme
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That is a question every producer faces at some point. It’s a small world and if you are ever caught showing someone else’s work as your own, you’re sure to pay for that mistake for a long time. And besides, it’s bad karma.
There are some circumstances where showing someone else’s work is legitimate – when you are representing them as someone who freelances for you. And then only when you clearly credit them for the work and have their permission.
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