Build a digital red lab on a budget...

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

...on budget of up to 20 000 USD, what would you do - if you needed to build a digital red lab on a budget?

Best regards,
Jon M.

 

[Bing Bailey]

Mac Pro Tower 12 Core $5000
24GB Ram $321
SSD boot Drive $769
12 Terabyte Internal Raid Array x 4 Hitachi 3TB Drives $1000
Esata Card $100
Red Rocket Card $5000
Avid Artist Colour Surface $1500
Studio Monitors $300
Apogee Duet 2 Audio Interface $600
Decklink Card $995
Broadcast Monitor $4995

you could save some money by gettng a battle tested redrocket card. that would cost 3k and a 6 core mac pro tower would cost you $3500

 

[Bing Bailey]

if its a mobile lab for a dit cart you'll need to buy and assemble the cart

 

[Jack Cooper]

Jon,

Where are you located...?

 

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

Thanks for the input Bing.

Jack, I'm located in Norway.

 

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

On monitors...

I only plan to do cinema-grade work. Is there any point in using SDI and broadcastmonitors - when there are fantastic HDMI-self-calibrating displays at a fraction of the cost:
http://www.eizo.com/global/products/coloredge/index.html

?

 

[Jack James]

I would stay away from buying new Mac Pro towers for the time being. The hardware is at least a couple of years old, which means Apple is on the verge of either discontinuing them or refreshing them. That said, you can probably find some good ones second hand.

I would also question whether Mac is still the best platform for Red footage. A lot the tools seem to run on Windows now. That said, this is only speculation on my part as I'm still heavily invested in mac gear for the moment.