Computer and other advice
Cooling of computers
For those of us on desktop computer editing, it
is important to ensure that our computers are nice and cool.
1. Fans unfortunately carry
into the computer lots of household fluff and dust which reduces the
airflow.
With the AC mains plug removed and the side access panel removed
do the following. (If you are a person that gets static shocks when you
touch anything metal, it's not a god idea to do this as a static electricity
zap could damage your computer. However it usually helps stop this if you
take your shoes off, especially if insulating rubber soled ones.)
A
vacuum cleaner and paint brush check is needed about every 6 months
(depending how much you use your computer) to check external and internal
grilles, fans and cooling fins are not clogged with dust. (you may need to
unclick the plastic tabs retaining the front panel as well and vacuum behind
there too.
Use the paintbrush to disturb the more reluctant dust.
The
other place that gets clogged up is in between the small cooling fins on the
processor under the fan. (a smaller artist style brush is needed for this)
2. Some computers have a solid front panel, so how does the air get in? You
will find there is a slot in the bottom of the front panel facing the floor.
Now if you put this under the desk on a carpet with a reasonable length pile
the carpet will nicely seal off the hole underneath and starve the computer
of cool air. Suggest put the computer up on some wood under its feet. About
1 inch clear of the carpet is the distance to aim for.
3. Nowadays with
disk drives being cheap, we stuff a whole bunch into our computers for our
video data without giving a thought to cooling them down. Modern higher
speed disk drives will fail early if the running temperature is too high. 35
degrees Centigrade is comfortable, 50 is the max, and 60+ is far too hot.
There is a temperature monitor utility for the PC using the drive's SMART
technology, which has to be (a) available on the drive and (b) enabled in
the computer bios. http://hddtemp.com/. For the Mac see the temperature
monitor widget http://www.bresink.com/osx/0TMonWidget/history.html
DO NOT
run the computer with the side off for very long as the air flow created by
the rear fans will cease to draw air over the front components in the
computer which normally includes the disk drives which will roast.
Going Green
Leaving your computer plugged into the mains supply still has the
power pack running as the power button on the front doesn't turn all the
power off, and the same goes for the video monitor and printer.
Switching
them off at the wall at night is a good idea.
The power smoothing
components in the power supply are called capacitors. They are made of a
rolled up layers of paper, aluminium, paper, aluminium, paper, soaked in an
electrolyte and put in a metal can sealed with a rubber bung and two leads
of the bottom connecting to each of the two strips of aluminium. Well the
seal isn't perfect, and keeping them warmed by other devices that get warm,
by leaving the power on, causes them to dry out over time so leaving them on
all the time may cause you to need a new power pack fitted sooner rather
than later.
Using external drives to store your projects
Now with
external drives relatively cheap its easy to store your project on there by
copying it all across. It means you can update it or go back to it later
turning music and titles off to repurpose the material for something else,
or simply update it.
Now be very careful here. What you want to achieve,
is that you can plug your external drive into any other computer and
everything will be there.
The project has got to have everything it needs
in its folders and not rely on anything else on your computer (which might
get changed since you made the film).
Where did you get that sound effect
from? Where did you download that sound effect to?
The same applies to
Graphics titles and music.
It's ok to copy the sound effects and graphics
off to a central folder before you delete it for common use on other
projects, where these central folders are stored elsewhere on your internal
hard drive.
Do NOT link your project edit to those elsewhere locations -
all material used in the project has got to be stored in the project folder.
Test your backup. Change the name of the original project folder to .old at
the end so that the editing programme can only see the material in your
backup.
If you are happy it all runs ok from the backup and you need the
space you can now delete the .old folder.
Note: External USB drives may
not be fast enough for HD projects (non AVCHD) so the material may need to
be copied across before you can use it. Firewire 800 and eSATA drives are ok
to edit from but not for Uncompressed HD but I doubt anyone wants to use
that.
The last thing to consider is what did you edit the project with?
Have you still got the software?
Most editing software like Final Cut and
Edius and Premiere Pro up to CS4 will read older projects made in earlier
versions of the software but you clearly can't read a newer version in older
software.
If you change your editing software to another make entirely,
you may need to keep a copy of the installation disk and a text file
containing your serial and authorisation numbers to install it on a new
computer as the new software will not be able to read the edit created by
the older software.
Final Cut Pro has so far been backward compatible
with earlier projects, and can take in iMovie projects.
Note: iMovie 6
exported back to tape but iMovie 9 and 11 have dropped this facility and
iMovie 9 and 11 handle the material differently so a version 6 project into
9/11 will lose all its dissolves and transitions.
Note: Premiere Pro CS5
is only interested in 64Bit codecs so will NOT read older material captured
with Premiere Pro CS4. It will of course recapture from tape.
Note: A
number of editing programmes have export to EDL (Edit Decision List). This
is a file containing all your edits, but only that. The file does not
contain all the dissolves and titles you made, just the film cuts. Often too
the titler programme is by another manufacturer, like Boris Graffiti,
Inscriber Title Motion Pro, so won't be available in new software.
It's
also a good idea to keep a folder in the project folder called "exports" and
in there are the versions you made of the final films and the final DVD
image files as well as any YouTube files.
What's on a backup drive? Copy
the list view on the desktop and paste the screen capture of the desktop
into say Adobe Photoshop or any paint/graphics programme, make a jpeg and
save a folder off onto your hard drive containing a pictorial representation
of Backup drive 1, Backup drive 2 etc.
Print the JPEG and put the
printout into a physical ring folder for easy reference. (The paper and JPEG
copy will need regularly updating) Store the drive in a secure place
preferrably a fireproof location.
Very important backups should be copied
again onto a second "grandfather" backup drive incase the first one fails.
(An insurance company project media insurance stipulation.)
Keeping things tidy
Within each project's folder on the hard drive try to keep
all your tape clips belonging to each tape in its own individual folder,
music, sound effects, still photos, graphics, animations, titles, DVD
material all in their separate folders. Its easy to steal something you have
already shot this way for another project.
Name the folder so that its
obvious what the material is about.
Copyright info
Build into the track name a clue as to which CD the track came from, or the download it came from, so if there is any question over copyright or royalties you can simply look at the file name and it will point you in the right direction.
HDV players
These will automatically detect either HDV or DV tapes. Edit systems will not capture from these devices set to Auto. The menu needs to be set for either DV or HDV playback.
DVD's
These are often used for
backups of final films. They haven't been around long enough for us to know
how long they really last.
Using sticky labels is guaranteed to cause
them to fail - so don't use them - either print on them with Ink Jet or hand
write using a marker pen.
DVD's are not as good as the original material
as they are compressed versions of the original video beter to keep the
tapes or files.
There are purported to be some gold reflective surface
disks rather than the standard silver ones to give less tarnishing over
time, which if you Google 100 year life DVD's the topic will come up, but
its early days yet.
You can use a standard DVD to play HD material. By
using Roxio MyDVD on the PC or Toast on the Mac you can make an AVCHD DVD
which the BluRay DVD players are happy to play for a few pence rather than a
BluRay writable DVD at £6.00+
DVD’s for competition entries/playing at club nights.
Please could members note that if you are making a DVD for a
competition entry to be played on the night we receive it, and your DVD
contains a menu button to play the film, please do NOT include a countdown
clock as it could be shown on screen.
The projectionist would like to
assume that the film itself will play after hitting the film (title) button
on the menu.
We only have a small TV for cueing up the DVD’s, and if you
have a multi-button DVD menu, please try to use button naming text that is
not too small to see on a tiny TV.
If you do use very small text, the projectionist may have to put your menu up on the projector to see what we are selecting.
Memory sticks / cards etc
Make sure you copy everything
you need for your project off from the memory stick before you clear off the
memory stick.
From Intergal.com: Memory cards and USB drives are NOT
designed for long term storage.
You should always backup your data on to
another device.
The data will normally stay valid for a period of up to
10 years if stored under normal conditions. The data cells inside carry a
charge which can dissipate over time. The data can be refreshed; copy all
data off card and then format the card or USB drive and then restore all
data to extend the data for another 10 years.
Latest computers speeds and processors (as of February 2010)
There are now dual 6 core processor
Apple Macs and PC’s out there so the two core PC’s are looking a bit old hat
now.
SATA drives are much faster than the older IDE drives. (cable with a
little plug as opposed to a ribbon cable, parallel data opposed to serial
data)
Solid state SATA drives are much faster and have no moving parts
but are much more expensive.
And 2 Terabyte drives, although the spin
speed has dropped from 7,200 RPM to 5,400 RPM, the access time has not
dropped, such as the Samsung 204 SATA drive series.
Windows 7 is much
faster than Vista or Windows XP, and less start-up rubbish loads so the disk
drive tapping stops much earlier after start up.
Windows 7 64 Bit can
address up to 128GBytes of memory, the 32Bit versions of Windows could only
address 2Gbytes.
Only some PC’s are 64 Bit capable.
Windows Vista and
Windows 7 crash to a blue screen if there is a software fault with a
programme to protect windows, windows XP may just freeze the application
usually CTRL+ALT+DEL gets you out of trouble.
MAC OSX 10.6 “Snow Leopard”
is 64BIT but needs a Mac with an Intel processor to run it.
With “Boot
Camp” on a Mac you start up into Mac OSX or Windows 7
Macs are generally
more expensive than equivalent speed PC’s but crash less often and have less
virus problems (In MAC operating system)
I hope somebody finds
something useful in this little lot
Mike Sanders
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