recommendations to build an edit bay from scratch

[BereaJay]

HELP! I hired a consultant to help transition us to HD, but that flopped. So, now I’m left holding the bag and $50k to get it done.

Here’s the situation: I am overhauling our video production operations and upgrading to HD. What I hope to get from you is your opinions on how you would recommend equipping our post-production bay, in essence, starting from scratch.

What computer system and specs do you recommend at the minimum? I currently have three editing stations: two MacPros and one MacBook Pro. I hope to setup a system where each machine has its own local RAID that is connected to a central server where files can be temporarily dumped or shared between machines.

Computer: MacPro dual core Intel Xeon 2.66 GHz processor, 4 Gb RAM,
OS: Mac OSX 10.4.11
Software: FCP HD, After Effects, Compressor
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. This is not HDCP enabled, so it will have to be replaced.

So, what computer and specs do you recommend? What graphics card?
What Blu-ray burner and software? What raid storage solution?

What else am I not thinking about?

Jay Buckner
Public Relations Manager, Berea College
859.985.3023

[edDV]

HELP! I hired a consultant to help transition us to HD, but that flopped. So, now I’m left holding the bag and $50k to get it done.

Here’s the situation: I am overhauling our video production operations and upgrading to HD. What I hope to get from you is your opinions on how you would recommend equipping our post-production bay, in essence, starting from scratch.

What computer system and specs do you recommend at the minimum? I currently have three editing stations: two MacPros and one MacBook Pro. I hope to setup a system where each machine has its own local RAID that is connected to a central server where files can be temporarily dumped or shared between machines.

Computer: MacPro dual core Intel Xeon 2.66 GHz processor, 4 Gb RAM,
OS: Mac OSX 10.4.11
Software: FCP HD, After Effects, Compressor
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. This is not HDCP enabled, so it will have to be replaced.

So, what computer and specs do you recommend? What graphics card?
What Blu-ray burner and software? What raid storage solution?

What else am I not thinking about?

Jay Buckner
Public Relations Manager, Berea College
859.985.3023

Key missing infromation is which formats are you editing? Is this all uncompressed SDI (SMPTE-259M/292M), DVCPro/DVCProHD, DV/HDV or something else?

I'm assuming you prefer FCP? Alternates for Mac are Adobe Premiere Pro or AVID Media Composer.

Where are your students likely to work after graduation? That may help determine the edit program to use.

All this can also be done on a PC using Adobe Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas, Avid Media Composer or other.