hello,

i am currently trying to determine what i/o card/box i need to purchase, as well as a jbod drive system capable of playing back high res files. as such, this is my situation:

i need to take a series of images(stop frame animation) that are 2k scans(35mm) ... not telecine, but actual sequencial RGB files(raw or tiff). these files will be individually edited(special fx, compositing, etc.) and then they will need to be downsized to hd so i can play them as movies and view the quality of the footage itself, and the footage/frame/sequencial images with compositing/fx added to them. the final product will be a DVD, and a digital intermediate 35mm film print. therefore, it is extremely important i am able to edit these 2k image files so they can be output back to film, as well as be downsized to hd, sd, and dv for dvd and tape output.

can anyone offer some real world, sound advice as it relates to being able to do this realistically and without a great deal of problems? i have a dual g5 2 gig computer with 8gb of ram.

i am considering the decklink hd card and the xraid from apple. perhaps 8 u320 scsi jbod drives in a dual channel casing with dual channel card. i have looked at cinewave, pinnicle, aja, etc., but really cannot determine which setup will best serve my needs. any help is greatly apreciated.

eric

You should look at the compositor "Shake".
It will handle the 2K scans just fine, and allow all the resizes, and compositing chores.
Aftereffects might work as well.
If you want to price out the DI 35mm scan & record , let me know.
-Les

ok, so shake will handle the software side of things with respect to working with large files and downsizing them for hd, sd, dv, dvd, etc. so of the cards that exist on the market, which one would be best suited for playing back the highest quality files/sequences as animations/video? the declink? cinewave? aja?

again, my eventual movies wil start their life as 2k or 4k images(raw or tif). these will then be assembled(sequencial frames) and edited accordingly(color effects, cgi, etc.) as high res files. then, i will need to be able to downsize to hd/sd/dv so i can play the edited files as animations/movies to check the results of the editing ... the quality of the compositing/images. when completed with all of these images/sequences, i will output directly to dvd. for film festival submission, some will require video tape for entry/qualification. if for any reason my movie warrants output to film, i will have the 2k images that can then be printed to film using a digital film printer.

so finding the best hardware/software solution for this will be ideal, especially for batch processing these sequencial images.

eric

For smooth playback, an AGP card with the 8X speed is best.
Do you really need real time playback of the final res material?
I would work in 1/2 res proxy, then final render at full res.
I have a lot of experience in this, I've been doing digital film since the 80's when I started at ILM.
I helped comp the *first* full res digital live action comp on any feature film, some wire removal shots on 'Back to the future II'

-Les