Editing Computers

Can anyone tell me what you know about Raptor and RexRt editors made by Canopus.

How about an easier question - If you had 8-10,000 dollars and you already had a Cannon GL1 digital camera, what type of editor would you invest in for
church productions? The Student ministry currently uses a Casablanca NLE, but the church wants something better - any suggestions?

Thanks for the help
Troy Amster
Posted by Troy Amster on Oct 11, 2000.


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I replied directly to Troy concerning his question, but I'll repost the information here, for those of you who may be interested.

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Troy,

I am a Raptor user, and I am extremely satisfied with it. It's not everything I wanted in a DV capture card, but I knew that when I bought it. What I would prefer to add to it is analog inputs/outputs and real-time effects. For both of those, if you need them, I would suggest the Matrox RT2000. Don't even consider the Pinnacle DV500 - most everybody will tell you to steer clear of Pinnacle products. Canopus does have a new product coming out that they're calling Storm. It's supposed to be their answer to the RT2000 and DV500 - analog in/out, possibly real-time effects, etc.

Since you already have the GL1, you have analog in/out, which you can use to capture to your Raptor system, unless you're recording live events (church services, weddings, etc.) using that camera, then it's a little more hassle, just depending on where you place the camera.

A lot of this depends on what kind of productions you'll be doing - will you be recording your services non-linear, editing short segments to be shown within a service, editing weddings, etc.

For our church, we have a Video Toaster NT in the same computer as the Raptor. I love the VTNT because of its uncompressed quality, but it sure eats up a lot of disk space (22 MB/second, compared to 3.6 MB/second for DV compressed video). I will be buying more drives soon, but until then, I can't practically record any kind of long service, wedding, etc., since I only have about an hour and 45 minutes of drive space capturing through the VTNT. If I had analog in/out on the Raptor, however, I can use the same drives to capture about 10 hours, enough to record all four of our services on Sundays, if I wanted to (and I may begin that soon). You can purchase (and I will soon) an external adapter, for about $300, which converts analog in/out to DV, if you decide to purchase the Raptor, and decide it's not practical to have the camera hooked to the Raptor every time you want to digitize analog video. It just depends on how often you'll be working with analog footage.

Another thing I would recommend, if you get the Raptor - get it with Ulead's Media Studio Pro 6, unless you already use and like Premiere. Premiere has been a standard for a long time, but I'm using MSP 6 and I love it. The integrated Titling and Video Paint make it a much more complete package than Premiere. If you do decide to go with Premiere, however, I would suggest getting Inscriber's Title Motion CG program, if you'll be doing much titling. It's $295 for the Premiere version, I think. If you get the RT2000, which includes Premiere, it now comes with a scaled down version of Title Motion. I'm not sure what the difference is, but it should be nice for basic, good looking titles.

I hope I've helped you. Either way you go, you should be able to build a _nice_ computer for the amount of money you're talking about. The one we got was about $9,200, and that included the Video Toaster ($2,495) 512 MB RAM, 176 GB hard drives (including the system and audio drives), OnStream Echo 30 GB Tape Drive, Sound Blaster Live! Platinum sound card, etc. In other words, I got a lot of expensive stuff that you may not want or need.

I hope I've helped you a little bit. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

David Sheneman
Technology Director
Muldoon Community Assembly
Anchorage, AK
907-337-9495
815-846-8648 (e-fax)
www.mcaonline.org

Posted by David Sheneman on Oct 11, 2000.


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Yes. We just went through all of this a year ago. We ended up purchasing an Apple G4 running Final Cut Pro. We looked at all the systems; Trinity, Toaster on Windows NT, apple and Windows running Adobe Premiere. After looking at all the options and getting some good expert advice from a couple of local TV producers we went with a bundle put together by Promax in Irving CA. There website is www.promax.com. They do a great job of setting up the system all you have to do is unpack it and you are ready to start working. The following is a copy of a couple of their bundles:

$5,495
FireMAX Studio Core/Pro System
Power Macintosh - Graphite -G4/400 MT
256 MB of RAM
19" RGB monitor
14" NTSC studio monitor
45 GB EIDE Drive
Final Cut Pro 1.2.5
FireWire cable
Monsoon MM-700 Speaker Systems
Peachpit Final Cut Pro Quick Start Guide
Smart Sound Professional
Boris Graffiti 2D/3D Title Animation
Final Cut Pro USB Mac Graphite Keyboard
USB Optical Mouse with Scroll Wheel
AppleCare Power Mac G Series - 3 years
Fully tested and configured with 1 year of toll free support.

$11,645
FireMAX Studio Complete/Pro System
Includes FireMAX Studio Core/Pro System
Sony DSR-PD100a
Sony DSR-20 DVCAM Deck
Media Cleaner Pro 4.0 (honestly I am not a sales rep for promax I am just an Associate Pastor in Texas that loves his system)

You can reconfigure these deals just call one of their reps and tell them what you want specifically. There is a real advantage to going this route compared to doing it yourself. I have read on similar boards about folks that know computers and they try to create there own system or piece it togther and waist a lot of time trying to work out the bugs. I can honestly say we have had our system for a year now and it has been very smooth sailing. You get incredible quality and the flexibility to do some dynamic stuff. One great resource on final Cut Pro and the G4 system is a website called www.2-pop.com They have tons of articles on this and the dv world as a whole. The other advantage is promax does back there products with good service I have called about hard issues and just plain stupid questions and have always gotten a nice, polite and helpful answer quickly (I don'e recall being in voicemail pergatory for any real length of time)

I went to their "Video Boot Camp" and learned alot. If you are already famliar with dv editing you can save yourself the cash and just get the "Final Cut Pro Power Start CD-ROM" it is available at 2-pop trust me it is worth the $80 or whatever the cost is it will help you immensely. Since Final Cut pro is growing in popularity there is a good training video that covers all of the material that I learned at the video boot camp called "Final Cut Pro A-Z" I think that is availabel through 2-pop also.

Ok what is the dark side of this deal, I would have to say rendering. When I was in CA last March they were working on this but you do not edit in realtime. So that slows you down to render but that is workable and with more memory and power that you could upgrade too this could be overcome. The dual processor probably should help with that.

Well that is my 2 cents, OK it is more like 6 cents.

Blessings to you
Randy Neary
Minister of Discipleship
Cathedral In The Pines
Beaumont TX.

Posted by Randy Neary on Oct 11, 2000.


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I have produced thousands of commercials on non-linear edit stations. I have built them on Mac and PC. In the price range you mentioned the RT2000 or DV500 are your two best choices. The key is compatible hardware. Buy a pre-configured system designed for video. You'll be much happier. Premier 6.0 is scheduled for release in January and has alot of helpful tools for video streaming. I am available to answer questions.
Posted by James Larrick on Dec 28, 2000.


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I am currently planning on purchasing a turn-key video workstation from a local company that specializes in video. The system will be running Pinnacle's ReelTime NITRO and Premiere 6.0.

Does anyone have any experience with P's ReelTime NITRO? It's quite pricey, so I want to be absolutely sure of this purchase before laying down the $.
Posted by Joe Beard on Dec 29, 2000.