After a year producing some amazing films for some amazing clients, I thought it was about time to give Video Artisan a little New Year treat in the form of a nice shiny new edit suite from those ever so knowledgeable chaps at DVC. Even though my current 4.6 based Edius edit suite has turned out the work without a hitch the workload that looks like it’s going to be landing on my desk this year calls for something that packs a little more punch. That said, the old edit suite is not being put out to grass quite yet as it’s going to be doing some of the lighter work that seems to pile up at the busier times.
Why chose an Edius edit suite?
I am a Grass Valley Edius man through and through these days – albeit that I’ve had varying levels of experience with just about every editing system out there. My first entry into non-linear editing was way back with a Fast AV Master capture card running alongside a very early version of Adobe Premier (I think it was 1.2). However, before that I honed my editing skills on a three machine UMatic edit suite with a load of other electronic gizmos that were needed to perform basic shot transitions and effects. Oh how times have changed! So too have the costs as that UMatic edit suite set us back about £20k which was an awful lot of money back in 1986!
Though I could have coped with staying with the old edit suite for a few more months I really longed for a few of the benefits of the latest version of Edius software and a beefier computer to house it in. For instance, the old system was a little lumpy (understatement) when dealing with the Full HD MOV files created by the Canon 5DMkII. To overcome this I would convert all camera files to the Canopus HQ for editing. Whilst these files were easy to handle the process of having to codec convert the files did slow down the editing process somewhat. It also resulted in using up much more HD space than was needed. The new system will be able to cope with four or five layers of Full HD – in real time. Yum yum! It should also speed up the online delivery encoding process which is another thing that seems to have taken up quite a bit of my 2012.
There are plenty of new tools that I’m going to enjoy playing with too in Edius 6.5 – and probably the most notable over my old software is the new layout tool. But there’s a whole host of improvements that will make the editing process quicker and easier…
- Colour correction tool supports 10-bit colour depth
- Export sequence with alpha channel
- Native RED (.R3D) support*
- Improved XDCAM/ P2 data transfer
- 3D (stereoscopic) editing
- AVCHD 2.0 support
- AVCHD 3D export support
- EOS movie support (ALL-I (I-only), IPB)
- Camera RAW format support
- Filmstrip view in Timeline
- Built-in loudness meter
- Built-in shake stabilizer
- 720p Blu-ray authoring support
- Flash F4V export
- QuickTime HQ/HQX codec (Windows/Mac)
The PC system is based on an Intel® Core™ i7-3770K Processor 3.5GHz with Hyperthreading (8M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz) running the Windows 7 Pro 64 bit operating system. With 8GB of RAM, 8TB of SATA HD storage and a 128GB SSD system drive – the beast should fly and chew it’s way through the kind of video production work I’m attracting.
Why choose DVC for building my new edit suite?
I did weigh up the options and various sources for getting the new edit suite built – and even considered building the thing myself. To be honest, the latter choice went in and out of my mind quicker than lightening. Whilst I’m pretty sure I could put something together after watching a few YouTube videos and reading up on the subject – I’m a great believer in leaving things to those who really know what they are doing. I also value the benefit of having someone to go back to if the thing didn’t work (a distinct possibility with home-build systems). I also really value the kind of support that an experienced NLE system builder can provide ‘post sale’ – and there are very few that have as much experience as the folk at DVC. They also happen to produce some pretty comprehensive user guides with their systems which will no doubt be handy in the first few months of use.
The new system is now in the process of being built and it should be with me within the next 10-days. I’ll be giving you updates on this and a little more background on my choice of system as soon as I’ve got it installed in the edit suite. In the meantime, I’m gagging to get my hands on it and start using it on my next corporate film.