Which Software to buy?

[mantlepicture]

mantle, if you are so sure, submit an amv with your work! your profile says you dont have any movies uploaded? how can you prove your skills as an editor without submitting ne? i would like to see this "3 hr amv" that you speak of lol!"

Soon enough. All the work I have so far was made at school and dumped onto DVC Pro. Since I cannot currently afford the thousands of dollars it would take for a DVC Pro deck, I will have to wait until I get access to one. Most of my "skills as an editor" is displayed through work I have done for clients, not necessarily AMVs. And, while professional in quality, I doubt anyone wants to see a bunch of commercials.

But don't worry, when I get my Mac(within in a month), I will be making many new AMVs, and possibly uploading some of the ones I already have. I'm not claiming that they are better than everyone elses, so don't take my comments as arrogant.

Also, I believe a lot of people are taking my "three hour" statement to mean "coming up with an idea, capturing footage, editing, rendering, and encoding". I am simply talking about cutting, timing, and adding effects.

[mantlepicture]

Give me a DVC Pro deck <b>and some webspace</b> and I will gladly share my work.

I'm not going to pretend to know what a DVC Pro deck is, but you do know that you can upload your AMVs (and I must emphasize the "A" part of that) to the Org's own dedicated video server, right?

Well, that's cool then. I've never uploaded anything here before, so I wasn't too sure about that. But I still have no way of importing my footage. DVC Pro is a digital tape. They are mainly used at news stations. They aren't expensive, but decks are a few thousand dollars. Since I am not rich and they are becoming obsolete(especially now that everything is going HD), I will not invest in one. But when I get access to a deck, I will transfer everything to DVD. But since it costs a few hundred dollars to do this at a post-production house, I will have to set up something with my old school. I'll tell them I am cutting a demo tape or something.

But to be honest, my best work is music videos I have produced myself. My AMVs are technically fine, but I will probably end up just making new ones to post here.

Again, I must stress that I was not trying to sound arrogant, and I am not trying to appear as a better editor than anyone. I was having a bad day yesterday, and looking back on my posts, I did not communicate well. My apologies.

[narcted]

Give me a DVC Pro deck <b>and some webspace</b> and I will gladly share my work.

I'm not going to pretend to know what a DVC Pro deck is, but you do know that you can upload your AMVs (and I must emphasize the "A" part of that) to the Org's own dedicated video server, right?

Well, that's cool then. I've never uploaded anything here before, so I wasn't too sure about that. But I still have no way of importing my footage. DVC Pro is a digital tape. They are mainly used at news stations. They aren't expensive, but decks are a few thousand dollars. Since I am not rich and they are becoming obsolete(especially now that everything is going HD), I will not invest in one. But when I get access to a deck, I will transfer everything to DVD. But since it costs a few hundred dollars to do this at a post-production house, I will have to set up something with my old school. I'll tell them I am cutting a demo tape or something.

Wait, when you mean digital tape, do you mean DV tape (as in camcorder) or are you referring to a Digital Linear Tape (DLT)? That's overkill for making AMVs.

I work with DLT mastering discs and sending them to replicators for CSS encryption. And granted I'm using the Quantum DLT drive, which IMO is a pain in the butt. Maybe this deck you refer to is better. If you just need everything transferred to DVD, you can just use Media Studio Pro, since it has basic DVD authoring built in, which Adobe Premiere does not. But even so you can just use proffessional DVD authoring programs like DVD Workshop to make a master DVD disc. (it will also output to DLT) I could make a disc with my home computer and send it to the duplicator for mastering if I wanted in order to make hundreds of copies. These programs accept all standard video file formats. Even the less expensive programs like Movie Factory can make a basic DVD. What format is your footage in right now? Overall, not having a DLT machine is a lame excuse for not having any finished product.

[narcted]

Okay, I figured out DVC Pro is a tape format, not a machine. Guess you need a machine. My bad.

DVC Pro Tapes http://www.edgewise-media.com/dvcpro.html

(Oh yeah, kinda odd you show as a member since April 2002, but just started posting this year.)

[mantlepicture]

Wait, when you mean digital tape, do you mean DV tape (as in camcorder) or are you referring to a Digital Linear Tape (DLT)? That's overkill for making AMVs.

I work with DLT mastering discs and sending them to replicators for CSS encryption. And granted I'm using the Quantum DLT drive, which IMO is a pain in the butt. Maybe this deck you refer to is better. If you just need everything transferred to DVD, you can just use Media Studio Pro, since it has basic DVD authoring built in, which Adobe Premiere does not. But even so you can just use proffessional DVD authoring programs like DVD Workshop to make a master DVD disc. (it will also output to DLT) I could make a disc with my home computer and send it to the duplicator for mastering if I wanted in order to make hundreds of copies. These programs accept all standard video file formats. Even the less expensive programs like Movie Factory can make a basic DVD. What format is your footage in right now? Overall, not having a DLT machine is a lame excuse for not having any finished product.

No, I mean DVC Pro. It's a type of DV tape. Yes, it is overkill for AMVs, especially since you never need it on tape in the first place. I put it on tape because that was the only way to output footage. Since the school taught mainly news broadcast, they didn't equip those computers with DVD burners. Instead, they put a $12,000 VTR deck on it. Which is REALLY overkill. Most post-production houses don't have decks that nice.

When I get my computer, I will capture the footage with Avid and use DVD Studio Pro or iDVD to put it on DVD. It's just a matter of getting to a DVC Pro deck. This is more of an editing deck, but just the tape decks are a good $2,000:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... eName=WDVW

I could get it duplicated, but money is something I do not have right now. With my new Avid/Pro Tools system and camera, I have absolutely no budget. I am still in contact with some of my instructors from the aforementioned school, so I have to get up there sometime and see if I can get a copy... Actually, since they don't have a DVD burner(I'm not sure if they even have a CD burner) in the editing suites(stupid mistake on their part), I wouldn't even be able to do that. And I'm not settling for a VHS copy.

But I'll find a way. If not, like I said, I will be making new ones when I get my Mac next month, so whether I get them off the tape or not, I will get some up.

I am currently taking advanced editing courses, and while we have very nice computers, we do not use DVC Pro, so there are no decks there. But I will find a way. After all, I also have all my demo tape footage on DVC Pro.

[mantlepicture]

Okay, I figured out DVC Pro is a tape format, not a machine. Guess you need a machine. My bad.

DVC Pro Tapes http://www.edgewise-media.com/dvcpro.html

(Oh yeah, kinda odd you show as a member since April 2002, but just started posting this year.)

Damnit, I need to read all these posts before commenting. Sorry for the spam.

Yeah, I joined in 2002, and I've used the site a lot. I just never really used the forums until recently.

[rose4emily]

I could get it duplicated, but money is something I do not have right now. With my new Avid/Pro Tools system and camera, I have absolutely no budget. I am still in contact with some of my instructors from the aforementioned school, so I have to get up there sometime and see if I can get a copy... Actually, since they don't have a DVD burner(I'm not sure if they even have a CD burner) in the editing suites(stupid mistake on their part), I wouldn't even be able to do that. And I'm not settling for a VHS copy.

Why not get your own DVD burner and an external hard drive? That'd also cost about $300, but you could transfer the tape streams to the hard drive at your school lab, and then take the data home to burn it to DVD. Even at the 25 Mbps (or 50 Mbps, if you're talking about the 4:2:2 variation I can never remember the name of), you can fit a lot of footage on a 120 GiB external hard drive. At least that's how a fair number of the film folk here at RIT go about taking their short-project DV footage home for editing. Keep the DV/DVCam/DVCPro tape as a backup, use the lab equipment to transfer to disk (usually in a Quicktime container because FinalCut seems to prefer DV in a Quicktime container to DV in a DV container), and then edit/transcode/burn on your Mac.

One caveat, however - I'm not actually one of the film students. I just live with two of them, so most of that last paragraph is secondhand advice. I also imagine it applies more to short subjects than feature-length projects, since I think most of the longer films done by the upperclassmen are edited by people specializing in the editing track using DV as a mockup of the actual film and physically cutting and transfering the film for the edited master. Unless, of course, there's a digital intermediate - but I think they do those in some other crazy high-fidelity format to preserve the picture quality for the sake of printing it back to film.

[mantlepicture]

Why not get your own DVD burner and an external hard drive? That'd also cost about $300, but you could transfer the tape streams to the hard drive at your school lab, and then take the data home to burn it to DVD. Even at the 25 Mbps (or 50 Mbps, if you're talking about the 4:2:2 variation I can never remember the name of), you can fit a lot of footage on a 120 GiB external hard drive. At least that's how a fair number of the film folk here at RIT go about taking their short-project DV footage home for editing. Keep the DV/DVCam/DVCPro tape as a backup, use the lab equipment to transfer to disk (usually in a Quicktime container because FinalCut seems to prefer DV in a Quicktime container to DV in a DV container), and then edit/transcode/burn on your Mac.

One caveat, however - I'm not actually one of the film students. I just live with two of them, so most of that last paragraph is secondhand advice. I also imagine it applies more to short subjects than feature-length projects, since I think most of the longer films done by the upperclassmen are edited by people specializing in the editing track using DV as a mockup of the actual film and physically cutting and transfering the film for the edited master. Unless, of course, there's a digital intermediate - but I think they do those in some other crazy high-fidelity format to preserve the picture quality for the sake of printing it back to film.

Well, external hard drives cost money, which is something I have very little of at the moment, with student loans, and the like. The money I have now is going towards a Mac, which is a much higher priority than getting some old footage off of DVC Pro.

But everything you said was correct. It would be no problem if I had an external hard drive. The school doesn't allow you to connect stuff like that to the computers(they cost like $7000 each), but the teachers know and trust me. But alas, I have no hard drive. It's next on the list after the Mac though.

[rose4emily]

Well, if you're getting a Mac...

Just set up an FTP server on your machine. You should be able to do that pretty easily thanks to the UNIX base. Then you can put your files to your Mac from your school machines through the internet. If you do that, however, you might want to transcode, and then transfer, since doing it the other way around would take WAY too much time and bandwidth.

[mantlepicture]

Well, if you're getting a Mac...

Just set up an FTP server on your machine. You should be able to do that pretty easily thanks to the UNIX base. Then you can put your files to your Mac from your school machines through the internet. If you do that, however, you might want to transcode, and then transfer, since doing it the other way around would take WAY too much time and bandwidth.

Already thought of that. I have an FTP server set up, but the school's computers do not have internet. In fact, they only have three Win98 machines with internet in the school. They don't even like you putting CDs of floppy disks in them, so I can see why they don't have internet.

My current classes(Avid certification classes) are upstairs from the school, and they have a T1 line, but no DVC Pro decks. I finish the classes in three weeks, but I will be able to use the building afterwards. When I get an external hard drive, I will capture all my footage downstairs, export it to my hard drive, then take it up stairs. Since DVC Pro is lossy, I may have to clean it up a little, and definitely do color correction on some of it(mainly non-AMV footage). Then I will put it on DVD.

But, to be honest, you will probably be seeing new videos before I get that old stuff off. Some of it is decent, but I really don't like it that much. But maybe it's better than I remember.

My PC is not powerful enough to edit on, but I am thinking of turning my laptop into an editing machine for the time being. I have a copy of Premeire 7.0 and Pinnacle Liquid Edition(I've never used 7.0, but I hate Liquid Edition, so I will just have to learn). It will be extremely frustrating after using Avid on G5s at school(kind of like going from cable to dial-up), but it will get the job done in the meantime. Tragically, it's only a 40GB hard drive. But I can work with that.

I had a decent idea for a Lain(yes, I know it's overdone, but oh well) video, so you may be seeing that from me soonish, as well as a Kimagure Orange Road one.