Complete Post Setup

[Edgar Pitts]

I am looking at all post-production options for our new workflow. We are long time Adobe users in every flavor, and we know it inside and out. We recently
completed our first feature film, Shroud using the CS3 suite and Cineform codec.

We are very pleased with the results, but the road has been bumpy. Premiere does not like extremely large projects, and After Effects playback leaves much to be desired. Most of these issues had to do with 32-bit memory and storage (budget) limitations.

That being said, we love the tight integration with Premiere, AE, Photoshop and Illustrator. I watched the CS4 launch live on the web and was impressed with the new features.

I was most disappointed to learn that CS4 Premiere and AE would not be upgraded to 64-bit. This was a real bummer.

That brings me to the title of my post. We are in the final stages of planning our post-production workflow for our next feature film. We have a budget of $100k and are looking at the following setup (minus mastering and film out tools and expenses):

$16k - (2) Workstations - XP-64, Dual Quad-Core Xeon, 16 GB RAM, Quadro FX5500, (1) Aja Xena 2K
$5k - (4) Dell UltraSharp 3007WFP-HC 30-inch WideScreen Flat Panels
$4k - (2) Cineform Prospect 4K licenses
$4k - (2) Adobe CS4 Master Collection
$20k - (1) Iridas Speedgrade XR seat
$30k - 12 TB SAN - Rorke Aurora IB with (2) cards and licenses.
$4k - Quantum LTO-3 - LTO Ultrium
$10K - Render server - I would love to get some recommendations
$7k - Miscellaneous

Please provide your feedback about this setup.

We plan to have our first Red camera tests in about 6 weeks and this system in will need to be in place by that time. We will use this setup on our project first and then offer some services to companies in Texas and beyond.

I am an avid reduser reader (and have been for a very long time) and I have gained a vast amount of my knowledge about digital cinematography on this forum.

So, hats off to all that relay and if you have any suggestions, please post.

Thanks!

Edgar Pitts
Producer
Jetrefilm Entertainment
http://www.jetrefilm.com

 

[Miguel "Macgregor" De Olaso]

I don´t think you need to spend so much money.

I´d go for:

- mac pro for offline editing in FCP
or
- nice PC for offline editing in Premiere if you want, but you don´t need quadro cards on these machines, nor 16GB or RAM, nor the SDI cards, just the fastest processors you can get

- spend the rest of the money in a Scratch system.

- 12TB SAN? What for?
- Render server not needed
- dell screens won´t be sufficient for color grading. you need to spend a bit more in a nice Cinetal or similar screen.
- Get cheap x2 22" dell screens for your editing computers.
- Cineform is great but i don´t think how you would benefit for this scenario

 

[laguun]

Good setup, among other systems we are running pretty similar stuff here.

cineform is fine, as it allows multi-seat networked online postproduction with AE, combustion etc.

I wouldnt go for an offline system as FCP today. Premiere can both be on as well as offline, an offline is an concept to disappear, the sooner, the better.

The native redcode support in After Effects, Encore, Premiere etc which allows to switch quality and resolution, together with the background/batch rendering of premiere CS4 looks very sweet.

Regarding speedgrade i would negotiate that you are allowed to use it as floating license on both computers, iridas is pretty flexible and helpful.

Regarding the monitors i would also prefer 30´ , but at least add an basic calibration or rather invest in at least one calibrated display.

Having a SAN is a blessing in many situations, however 30K sounds quite expensive for 12TB to me. Also 12TB isnt enough IMHO for 4K fullfeature online, as one typically wants to have different versions (burned in subtitled / age rating etc).



renderslaves (we have lots of them) here are usually designed to be OSX and windows compatible quadcores. If you go for the power of a mac pro quad, such a system is ~400-600€. Q6700 Intel, 35´Intel chipset, 8 GB RAM, 1 TByte Disk and a GF8800 are the standard computing backbone here, be it with OSX or windows.

The AJAs are good products. Xena/Kona are the same boards.

 

[Mohammed El Sharqawy]

Good setup, among other systems we are running pretty similar stuff here.


Having a SAN is a blessing in many situations, however 30K sounds quite expensive for 12TB to me. Also 12TB isnt enough IMHO for 4K fullfeature online, as one typically wants to have different versions (burned in subtitled / age rating etc).

12TB for Cineform workflow is quite fine,,, actually its plenty... a full feature film running 100 minutes in cineform 4K (converted from R3Ds) will have less than 500GBs (based on 70MB/s data rate see cineform posts here)... so you can have 24 feature films on that san... theoritically.. but,you're right $30K for a 12TB san is too much.. see G-Tech's G-Spees eS ... I think its a nice choice but for a single workstation... connected using SATA card...

 

[Alex Carr]

Go For a LTO 4, I just bought one and I can do LTO1,2, & 3.

I got a deal $1250 for a Slightly used Quantum LTO 4 w/ 6 800GB Tapes, + SAS Card

but they are cheaper than $4k w/ tapes & SAS card Brand new.

 

[SalaTar]

"The Galaxy Aurora IB Storage Solution Meets ASSIMILATE'S SCRATCH 4K Workflow Requirements "

"G-Tech"
That was funny

 

[laguun]

12TB for Cineform workflow is quite fine,,, actually its plenty...

yeah, but to deliever to other facilities often requires uncompressed dpx etc.

 

[Edgar Pitts]

Thanks for the responses everyone.

- spend the rest of the money in a Scratch system.

I am interested in Scratch, but I need to do some research into the workflow.

- Cineform is great but i don´t think how you would benefit for this scenario

Cineform opens up many workflow options and performance enhancements in Premiere. Once Red releases their native r3d importer, we can compare the speed of the two products and see if the transcoding time is worth it.

Good setup, among other systems we are running pretty similar stuff here. Regarding speedgrade i would negotiate that you are allowed to use it as floating license on both computers, iridas is pretty flexible and helpful.

Laguun - Thanks for always posting such valuable information - You are a wonderful resource for the Reduser community. I have learned lots from your posts.

I will definitely check into that with Iridas. Can you please go into a little more detail about your Iridas workflow and how CS3 integrates with it. I am confused on how to get the project from After Effects to Speedgrade XR.

Having a SAN is a blessing in many situations, however 30K sounds quite expensive for 12TB to me. Also 12TB isnt enough IMHO for 4K fullfeature online, as one typically wants to have different versions (burned in subtitled / age rating etc).

The 30k figure is high, but I padded it to include any extras such HBAs, cabling and software licenses. $20-25k is probably more realistic.

We will be doing a 2K finish on our next film, and I thought that this amount of storage would be more than adequte. How much would you suggest?

renderslaves (we have lots of them) here are usually designed to be OSX and windows compatible quadcores. If you go for the power of a mac pro quad, such a system is ~400-600€. Q6700 Intel, 35´Intel chipset, 8 GB RAM, 1 TByte Disk and a GF8800 are the standard computing backbone here, be it with OSX or windows.

I see... So the concept is to network some computers and offload the rendering to those stations. Do these computers need to be attached to the SAN? If so, that increases complexity and cost.

Edgar Pitts
Producer
Jetrefilm Entertainment
http://www.jetrefilm.com

 

[Jonas Rejman]

I am interested in Scratch, but I need to do some research into the workflow.

To give you a quick overview of such a workflow, based on my own experience:

1. Put all r3D files on HPFS drive or SAN.
2. Edit the QT proxies in FCP, output an EDL.
3. Open EDL in scratch, usually conform is done in about 10 seconds.
4. Grade.
5. Render out to desired formats (dpx, tiff, 1080p, 2k, 4k)

It is very simple, there is no transcoding, till the very end. The beauty is, that you need only 40MB/s from the drives on the scratch workstation while grading, as the CPU's are doing the heavy r3d to RGB conversion, and the GPU's the grading itself. If you copy only the needed takes, you might only need a software 1TB raid0 on the workstation to grade the feature.
This of course, unless its so heavy VFX, that you need RGB realtime playback all way through.

 

[Edgar Pitts]

What are some suggestions for color-critical monitoring in the $7-8k range? I saw Silverado has an eCinema Pro24 for $10K. Are there any online resources with more affordable prices?

Thanks.

Edgar

 

[Mike McCarthy]

Adobe CS4 will still benefit a lot from a 64bit OS. I am assuming you have been in contact with Cineform about Xena2K support in Prospect, since that is still not standard, but should coming soon.

You should have a color accurate monitor, especially if you are going to use Speedgrade. Being 2K further complicates the matter. The new HP Dreamcolor from HP will be great once the connection issues are worked out, but that is only HD. If they released a 30" version, an HDLinkPro could link it the Xena2K or the QuadroSDI for full 2K monitoring. (But limit you to 8bit color depth) Most other 2K options are pretty expensive, but if HD monitoring is close enough, then there are many cost effective solutions.

Speaking of Quadro, any reason you want the 5500 in particular? The 5600 is 3x more powerful for a similar price. Either way, you probably need the SDI option for serious color work. Speedgrade will not output through the Xena card. There should be an upcoming 5800 with displayport, that may allow you to skip the SDI out, unless you require hardware waveform/vectorscope monitoring as well.

As far as storage, IB is clearly the way of the future, but that price seems high, (Probably due to StorNext). A system with that level of performance is clearly overkill for the Cineform workflow (<100MB/s). If you are planning to finish in 4K DPX that system will be perfect for you, if not that might be a bit over the top. (Might want to look into MetaLAN on IB)

Anyhow, I hope that helps.