DIT - To go mobile or the PC tower route

[Richard Strong]

Hello,

I'm currently in the process of trying to set up a business offering on-set post / DIT services in the UK and I can't settle on whether to go for a mobile Apple based workstation, or a heavier more powerful Windows tower that could power through hours of 4k footage.

My first thought was to go the mobile route with a Macbook Pro Retina + Pegasus2 M4 (with 2TB 2.5" HDDs x 4 in Raid 5 - which will give me 300-350 MB/s) + sonnet expansion chassis + a bunch of I / O stuff stuffed into a Pelican case. Then I thought about replacing the pegasus2 M4 with an Areca 8050T2 but realised that might be too heavy for a mobile solution, and with a laptop I likely won't be doing a whole lot of ArriRAW transcoding (which I've been asked to do before).

So, if I was going for a powerful machine then I could go for a x99 based Windows tower with all the goodies stuffed inside. That way I'll get full PCIe 3.0 speed and maximum performance. But with such a big machine I'll lose the portability factor and miss out on the mobile documentary work that I want.

After that little dilemma I then thought to myself I could opt for the mobile solution and then build a more powerful workstation in the meantime. But I don't really want to invest money into little thunderbolt RAID systems and low powered equipment if they're going to be dropped in favour of more powerful alternatives.

Anyway, I was wondering if any seasoned veterans had any ideas of how I could approach it. I don't have a massive budget (£7,000 maximum - which includes any software) and I've got to be careful with regard to which production niche I step my toe into (serialised television and feature films vs documentary/commercials/music videos, etc).

Thanks.

P.S. Ideally I'd like to offer the full on-set post services for documentary and short-form content (some live colour grading, data management, QC, dailies) but alternatively I could just specialise in data management and archival for low budget independent features (of which there are many in the UK).

 

[Richard Strong]

After a bit of thought I’ve decided to go for this option (there’s more to it than this but these are the most expensive components):

Computer: Macbook Pro Retina
Storage: Promise Pegasus2 M4 + 2tb 2.5” HDD x 4
Chassis: Sonnet Echo Express SE II + ExpressSAS H680
Case: DigiPlate Pro Ultra Bundle

The above case bundle is actually a Pelican 1510 that Nine Volt has modified to fit its Digiplate product (essentially a tripod mountable laptop shelf). You can see it here: http://www.nine-volt.com/digicase/

I want to emphasise portability and low power because I’d like to take the entire setup around the country, and potentially around the world, on documentary shoots. Which is why I want a case (the 1510) that I can carry with me on the plane.

It’d also be nice if I could hook it up to a portable battery pack (like this one: http://www.renesola.com/renesola-220v-50hz-350w-800wh-lithium-ion-off-grid-storage-system-693/) so I can get a few hours of work when I don’t have access to a power source.

I think what I’ll do is use this set up for DIT work on short-form content and documentaries, and then at my earliest convenience purchase the Areca 8050T2 so I can at least perform data management duties on larger productions. That external RAID could then later be hooked up to a larger Windows workstation that’ll house the beefy component cards that I’ll need for the big jobs.

 

[Nick Pasquariello]

My DIT gear sorta has two "modes". On commercials, I have my MBP, card readers, cables, and a few other oddities (drive dock, 1x4 SDI splitter, LUT box, etc.). I recently put my backup power supply into a rack with my scopes, so depending on the job I may bring it, or I may just bring a smaller UPS. Oh, and my 17" Flanders, unless production is providing a monitor.

On larger jobs, like features, I have an Inovativ DIT cart [side note: it's built SOLID, love the damn thing], a tent, but most relevantly: I have Production buy a RAID depending on the job. The pros to this are big ones. First, while it provides me with a copy of all of the footage for the duration of the project, it also provides Production with one, unified copy of the footage that they can walk away with as soon as the shoot is over. No need to buy it from me, reimburse me then, or anything like that. This is yours, take it, and begone. Second, if more drives need to be bought for it, and an array swapped out, I already mentioned this to Production when I signed on, 3 weeks before we even started shooting. "Well, most productions shoot X. We'll have room for 1.5X. If we shoot 2X, which can happen, you will need to purchase another array of drives for the RAID, and it will cost around this much." followed by, a week or two in, "Hey, just a heads up, we're shooting around 2X right now. I'll keep you updated, but if we keep up this pace, we will need to purchase more drives in about 3 weeks."

But the most relevant thing, is that I tailor what I have to the job. I haven't done any documentary work. I assume that most docs are shot on lower resolution and higher compression cameras than RED. I know there are docs out there shot all on RED or Alexa or the higher end Sony's, but the average doc is not. If you are working on those, I doubt you will need SUPER HORSEPOWER in a computer. But you will likely need to be SUPER MOBILE to keep up with the camera crew moving all around from location to location.

Which means that computationally your head is in the right place. I have 4 features and a couple dozen commercials under my belt in the past 2 years, and I don't own a RAID. In my market, this is the norm, this isn't an issue, and for every feature a RAID was purchased by Production.

 

[Jon Mendenhall]

After a bit of thought I’ve decided to go for this option (there’s more to it than this but these are the most expensive components):

Computer: Macbook Pro Retina
Storage: Promise Pegasus2 M4 + 2tb 2.5” HDD x 4
Chassis: Sonnet Echo Express SE II + ExpressSAS H680
Case: DigiPlate Pro Ultra Bundle

The above case bundle is actually a Pelican 1510 that Nine Volt has modified to fit its Digiplate product (essentially a tripod mountable laptop shelf). You can see it here: http://www.nine-volt.com/digicase/

I want to emphasise portability and low power because I’d like to take the entire setup around the country, and potentially around the world, on documentary shoots. Which is why I want a case (the 1510) that I can carry with me on the plane.

It’d also be nice if I could hook it up to a portable battery pack (like this one: http://www.renesola.com/renesola-220v-50hz-350w-800wh-lithium-ion-off-grid-storage-system-693/) so I can get a few hours of work when I don’t have access to a power source.

I think what I’ll do is use this set up for DIT work on short-form content and documentaries, and then at my earliest convenience purchase the Areca 8050T2 so I can at least perform data management duties on larger productions. That external RAID could then later be hooked up to a larger Windows workstation that’ll house the beefy component cards that I’ll need for the big jobs.

I've never seen that case design before, looks interesting. Reminds me of the Rogue 4 (http://www.ditstation.com/rogue4/) but allows you to customize it yourself. I have two 1510s as my lightweight kit. They hold my 17inch, battery backup UPS, various thunderbolt devices and gak. The Sonnet Echo Express II fits nicely in the 1510, but there isn't room for much else. I would recommend the Akitio thunderdock (http://www.akitio.com/accessories/thunder-dock). It's my workforce. I would have two but already invested in the lacie esata thunderhub and cadigit usb3 thunderbolt hub. The Promise will not fit in the case with everything else. Keep that in mind. Also, check to make sure that you can fly with that battery pack, and keep it separate from the drives (but I'm sure you know that).

 

[Nikhil Kamkolkar]

Is anyone using a PC based laptop with USB drives for purely RED-based footage DIT work? Anyone willing to share some of your config details? I'm still trying to avoid a macbook pro purchase and spend the differential money on other things.

 

[Jon Mendenhall]

What's the price difference on the laptops? I'm assuming you're wanting to deck it out and with macbook pros ranging from $1099-$3199, there should plenty of room in there for your budget. I only say this because out in the field, I'd rather have a macbook because the performance, build, and support is great. Not to mention official ProRes support (most of my jobs ask for those renders) and mac filesystem access (although you can get emulators, but I don't like the idea of 3rd party filesystem programs on critical data).

 

[Nikhil Kamkolkar]

Hope I'm not taking this OT - but my editing setup is all PC + Adobe Ppro. I'm trying to avoid the thunderbolt-only route on my peripherals as my PC tower only has USB 3. Is thunderbolt a necessity for DIT carts? Is no one using a PC setup with USB 3?

 

[Chandler Tucker]

I know this isn't directly in relation to your question, but I was checking out your option for the battery backup and I don't think it's going to work quite the way you are expecting. You most certainly won't be getting a few hours of work out of it. I use an APC 1500 Backup Pro since I only need it in the event that power gets disrupted or I need to move my cart while I'm still dumping footage (which is never a good idea unless you have no other option). That has a bigger battery than what you are looking at and I'm lucky to get 30 minutes off it. Granted I have an additional monitor I am powering, but even so I don't know if you could get a few hours out of it. If you are doing work that allows you to roll the battery around on a hand truck or something like that and don't have to carry it by hand everywhere, a car battery actually works really well. Put it in a safebox and hook it up to a DC power outlet. You can then get an AC power inverter to power your equipment. I used those when I did video assist when we were shooting in the middle of nowhere and I could power 2 17" broadcast monitors for a few hours per battery.

 

[Chandler Tucker]

Nikhil, there isn't much of an issue if you use USB 3 for dumping footage if you have the time to do it. If you are on a shoot with 4k or 6k footage, shooting multiple cameras and at high frame rates you might be able to dump a little faster with the Thunderbolt, but again it all comes down to the speed of the media the camera is writing to. If you are working with SxS cards or SSD's that only have a USB 3 drive reader, then you aren't going to get the 20 GB/s out of the Thunderbolt anyway. The big benefit that most people use Thunderbolt for is the fact that you can daisy chain multiple devices and it also transfers video and data over the same line. So this allows you to hook up RAID, LTO backup and a monitor all off 1 port. It has potential, but unfortunately there aren't a lot of motherboards out there with Thunderbolt support and the devices available for Thunderbolt are lacking as well.

 

[Nick Pasquariello]

Hope I'm not taking this OT - but my editing setup is all PC + Adobe Ppro. I'm trying to avoid the thunderbolt-only route on my peripherals as my PC tower only has USB 3. Is thunderbolt a necessity for DIT carts? Is no one using a PC setup with USB 3?

Depends on what you are writing to. The fastest spinning-disc hard drive out there has a write speed that is less than half of the bandwidth of USB3.0. If you RAID that with another HDD, it's still less than what a USB3.0 connection can sustain. Even a single SSD drive won't be able to write faster than what a USB3.0 cable can carry to it.

Oh the other hand, it is useful to have different buses. For USB, if you only have one controller, but you're reading and writing to multiple locations, even though they are plugged in to different ports on your computer, depending on how the internals are set up, they could be bottle necking each other. If you throw Thunderbolt into the mix, you know that it's a separate bus from the USB controller, so you won't be impacting one with the other.

Can you DIT on a PC? Abso-fucking-lutely. But no matter what computer you're using, if you want to be really efficient at the data transfer part of the job, you have to learn what will and won't bottleneck you. Drive speed of what you are writing to? Drive speed of what you are reading from? Connection type? Internal buses? Temperature? Workflow? Nosey PA? If you always know what your current bottleneck is, you'll know what gear to get next. If you know what your next 3 bottlenecks are, you might even be able to stay ahead of the game. It's a moving target though. 2 years ago, everything was eSata or Firewire 800. Now, eSata is still around, but pull out a Firewire cable and even the 2nd AC will laugh at you.

 

[Nikhil Kamkolkar]

Thanks Nick and Chandler for the insights. I see more research in my future.

2 years ago, everything was eSata or Firewire 800. Now, eSata is still around, but pull out a Firewire cable and even the 2nd AC will laugh at you.

lol