I agree with Bob-- "do it yourself" is a lot of work. I started my little
business by building a high performance (300k/frame, realtime fx) NT-based
system. I had no NT experience at the time, but a lot of experience with
computers and engineering in general. I did work out well in the end, but
it was a LOT of work and, to tell you the truth, pretty hairy at times. (At
the time, the only comparable systems on the Mac were turnkey and out of my
price range.) I now have a pretty good idea how to do it, but I wouldn't be
in a hurry to do it again-- it was really wonderful when I got my Xpress
system and the dealer came and set it up and it worked perfectly from the
first second I turned it on.
If I was starting out now, I'd take a look at Xpress DV, which seems to be
selling for less than $7000. Or, for slightly less money, I'd buy a
preconfigured Final Cut system from ProMax. If you really, really have to
have realtime fx, you'll have to pay more or be prepared to suffer in "do it
yourself" hell. You will learn more than you ever wanted to know about
IRQs. Or you might want to wait for that Matrox board to come out for FCP
on the Mac (is it out yet?).
-----Original Message-----
From: avid-l-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:avid-l-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
Behalf Of maxavid
Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2000 6:35 PM
To: Skelton, Kim; avid-l@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: DPS Velocity - "do it yourselfers"
They also stated that they have turn key systems available and for the do it
yourselfer's the hardware to build your own.
What does the list think?
Do it yourself - I just helped nextbigstar.com put together their Adobe
Premier/Pinnacle DC-1000 edit system, with Adaptec 2940UW SCSI and a lovely
50 Gig Seagate SCSI drive. I HATE NT. Everything is difficult. If you
think that you ever suffer with your AVID, try doing a "build it yourself"
with no factory support using NT as the platform.
We finally got it working (the bums used to use an AVID, and got this
horrible
Pinnacle system). I feel that I practically learned nothing about NT in the
process - a lot of it was guessing, and getting lucky clicking on the right
menus.
When you do a "do it yourself", a lot of manufacturers don't want to hear
why the other companies board or device is not working. A lot of
documentation is outdated (certainly Adobe does not address the Pinnacle
hardware in their documentation, and the Pinnacle Documentation is outdated,
as was the Adaptec 2940UW). Yes we finally got it working - do I feel
good about it - NO - I suffered. It is the year 2000, you should not have
to suffer trying to guess which driver is the correct one, or where they
have buried the menus that are not mentioned in the documentation.
Do it yourself is not easy, especially when you are not on a MAC. That is
why AVID, Media 100, etc. charge lots of money for their stuff - they have
figured it out already, and save you the suffering. And to Media 100's
credit, they have printed a pretty concise "compatable peripheral guide" to
help cut thru the BS.
I hate NT (still ranting about it after all this time).
bob Zelin
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