Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/02/15

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Subject: Re: [Leica] WKs 7,8 Includes picture of new film camera fromFrance
From: Johnny Deadman <john@pinkheadedbug.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 10:03:00 -0500

on 2/15/01 9:03 AM, Austin Franklin at austin@darkroom.com wrote:

>> For online editing, yes. I've tried onlining DV on my G4/350
>> and it just
>> isn't worth the hassle. For offline, however, Macs are great.
>> I've edited 13
>> boradcast films on them! Starting with 040 Quadras!
> 
> DV or HDTV?  I believe we were talking HDTV...which, as I said, I believe is
> beyond the storage and processing capability of anything but the highest end
> Mac or PC...

When you're offlining, the storage and processing requirements are
independent of the format (which in my case included 16mm, Super 16, Beta
SP, Beta SX, Digital Betacam, and various other high-end digital formats).
You can offline-edit 35mm or HDTV or even iMax on an iMac if you want to
because you digitise at a very low quality in order to produce an EDL (edit
decision list) which you then use in a very high-end and very expensive
online suite to assemble the finished film from the original tapes at the
highest quality.

So, for example, I edited my last film, which was 75 minutes long and
assembled from hundreds of hours of Digibeta, on a 120 MHz PPC with a
digital capture card and a soundcard, using Avid software. I think the
Quadra had 64 Mb of RAM! We had a total disk space of around 30Gb available
to us. The whole hardware kit was probably worth around $4000.

We then went into our own  digital online suite to assemble the visuals. I
think we paid around $400,000 for this new! It's probably worth less than
the Mac now.... this had several hundred gigs of RAID arrays along with a
custom built multiprocessor and bus configuration. You can see the latest
version at:

     http://www.accom.com/products/sphere/strata/strata-info.html

In the end we got a '2' on technicals from the broadcaster. (They don't give
'1's on principal, rather like not giving gymnasts straight sixes).


- -- 
Johnny Deadman

http://www.pinkheadedbug.com