Twelve Things Every Geek Should Want for Christmas
by Cutter Stevens

I know you’ve all been hearing a lot about 64 bit these days. I’ve been getting a lot of questions and requests to include it in my newsletter column. Although for right now, all I will say is that for most video editors it’s still a myth.

Yes you can get 64 bit cpu’s and run them on 64 bit OS’s and pack your computer full of memory. Nonetheless there really isn’t an application available that takes advantage of the capabilities. It’s coming. But it's not here now.  

It's the holiday season, so I’m going to talk about what every Geek should want, and CAN get, on their wish list.  By "Geek" I mean, Video/Film Professionals, technical enthusiasts, etc. So don't be insulted. The term Geek, which I am proud to say I am, has gotten an unwarranted bad rap.  So for all you fellow Geeks, here's twelve days of Christmas goodies for you.

On the first day of Christmas Cutter sold to me...

1. A 925 chipset motherboard from Abit.

   Abit has been a favorite of mine for a little while now in the single CPU class motherboards. They have five flavors of the 925 chipset, but I’m only going to talk about two, the AA8-DuraMax and the AA8XE. The other three are essentially the same motherboards with a lot of stuff you don’t need or want for more money than they’re worth. The only difference between the two boards is the front side bus speed and the price. The AA8 has a 800 FSB while the XE’s FSB runs at 1066.

   Though 1066 FSB sounds extremely attractive, you can only attain that speed by using the Extreme Pentium series 2MB Level 3 CPU’s which cost a premium. Unless you’re a 3D animator or compositor it just isn’t worth it for the cache. (Hah, get it, Cash…Cache…haha) I’m sorry, that was horrible geek humor.

   Anyway both motherboard's give me all the goodies I look for in a board (unlike the Intel boards) without the stability issues (unlike it’s Asus counterpart). 

   Here's some of the goodies that stand out on the 925’s:  
   

   • PCI express graphics bus – If you buy a new system without it, you're going to be sorry later. It’s twice as fast as AGP8x and most of the new apps are loving it.
   • DDR2 Memory – Faster, more powerful ram (for the time being)   
   • 4 SATA raid ports 

   I’d prefer six like on the old 875 but four is adequate for the time being. Plus on the Abit, they’re Silicon Image controllers rather than Promise controllers which, in my experience, have substandard drivers.
   
   

   • 7.1 surround audio--you may not need it, but it’s nice to have. 
   • The usual gigabit LAN, 1394 and USB2 on board and in abundance. 

   All in all a great board, I’ve tested it with Matrox, Canopus, Pinnacle, Avid Etc, with little or no problems (relating to the motherboard at least). 

Back to that Christmas list.  On the second day of Christmas Santa gave to me...

2. Nvidia's PCI Express cards: QuadroFX 1400 and 540

   This is the mid-level graphics card I’ll be using on most of my systems in the future.  The 1300 is a great card, but the 1400 is better for a negligible price difference. If your doing 3D or compositing, this is going to be the best price performance card on the market. For those of you with special needs and the money to make me drool, the FX 3400 and FX 4400/g cards are available for uber animators and compositors. Call me and I’ll tell you all about it.  And/or for more info on PCI Express, check out my article, PCI Express the Next Big Thing.

   The second new little ditty I would like to metion is the FX540. This alone is the lowest end workstation card the Nvidia has to offer. Alone the card is really no big deal, but as an addition you can purchase a special little break out box that features…wait for it….

   BNC Component out, as well as s-video and composite.

   Nvidia just sent me a test version of this card which should be shipping before christmas. Basically using any software that uses overlay or direct show will work with it. I personall tested it with Ulead Media studio, Premiere, PowerDVD windows media player and Avid Xpress. Tired of having syc delays going out firewire from you DV app, now you have a PCI express card that takes the place of your parhelia feature display and adds bnc component quality to the mixture.

   We will be offering a number of Graphic card/ Software bundle prices at considerable savings for the upcoming DV Expo West (Dec. 8-10, LA Convention Center). Again, drop me a line, I’ll tell you all about them. 

   Ok, one Last thing about Nvidia. This is for all you broadcasters; I can’t give you really any details until after DV expo. But I am going to say this. At DV Expo go see the Quadro 4000SDI exhibit over at their booth. Then come back and see me at the Ulead booth and I’m going to whisper a few things in your ears that will get you very excited—just trust me.

   As it is, the FX 4000 is going to give full HD overlay output via two channels of SDI. Think about it….You're a broadcaster/compositer/animator , just think about it. 

   I want to take a special moment to tell you about another of our distributors, Jeff Burgess and Associates. These guys have always taken care of me and my high end workstation needs and by trickle down you as well. Ever wonder why it only takes a day to RMA your workstation class graphics card. I’ll tell you why. It’s all these guys. I call and say my client so and so’s card just melted. They say what’s there address We’ll set up a cross ship. Unlike other suppliers they actually believe me when I say somethings broken. It’s that simple and efficient.

And on the third of Christmas Santa gave to me, Apple Stuff.

3. Apple Cinema Displays, MAC G5s
   

   • You've got to love them Cinema Displays, man o’ man you just got to love them. They ain’t cheep ($1300 to $3300) but they are beautiful. Check them out at the apple website (www.apple.com) ohh..2560x1600 and I have confirmation they’ll work with Windows, and Linux too.
   • Bluefish renews its support for MAC G5. So if you want to wait a bunch of weeks (5-7) for a G5 2.5Mgz machine, I can pack it up with the latest and best HD/SD cards from Bluefish 4:4:4. Or, if you want something much more economical, I am happy to configure Decklink and Aurora cards in any G5 system as well.  

On the fourth day of Christmas I got Liquid!!!!!!!!!! 

4. Pinnacle introduces Liquid 6.0 it’s neat and available right now.

   Liquid is as of right now the only app that I can truly stand behind. Whether it’s Liquid Edition Pro or ChromeHD, you are looking at a beautiful application that takes care of all the professional features you need. Yes, yes I can nit pick, but all in all its my favorite.

   Right now Liquid Edition 6.0 software goes for $499, Liquid Edition Pro with the new Component BOB runs $999, Broadcast version with expanded codec support, $2000 and the big boy ChromeHD system, (depending on configuration) starts at about$20,000. Each system runs the same software and has the same capabilities only I/O and codec support changes.

   For those of you who read my article last year, The Truth About Chrome, they’ve added a bunch of new features. 
   

   • They improved the DVD on timeline feature to include, yes, yes…SUROUND SOUND mixing. Right now Liquid is the only affordable app that will allow you to mix Dolby surround sound period. Not Pro tools LE with Avid, not Vegas (without the plug-in, check the price), not Premiere, not Final Cut Pro. That only is worth the price of admission. 
   • There’s even more codec mixing on the timeline. Now you can mix any MPEG including MPEG2 IBP.HDV support!
   • Liquid (including Edition) has full, native support for the JVC 720P camera and the Sony 1080i cam. You can mix it with SD footage on the timeline and with up or down conversion depending on your global settings
   • Multicam!!!!!!!!!! Depending on the speed of your system,  Liquid has the capability of up to 16 multicams..16 !!
   • As you may know Pinnacle bought Steinberg, so now Liquid has full VST plug-in support and integration with Pro Steinberg products. 

     There are of course many hardware differences between the Liquids (Edition, Pro, Broadcast, ChromeHD), which I will be more than happy to answer for you, so give me a call!  

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me… (I wish) Oh my it’s a Sony!!! 

5. Presenting the world’s first consumer 1080i high definition camcorder, the Sony Handycam® HDR-FX1.

   I’m getting excited now. The other day a colleague of a colleague came by with the Sony FX-1 (the consumer level one) and WOW, WOW. It looked beautiful, superior color and resolution and luma. I only got to play with it for a few moments (or what seemed to be) but it’s simply beautiful.

   It’s very light, has 3 1/3 inch CCD’s, a 16x9 LCD and really nice analog out. All for $3695 (our price). We all had our doubts about it at the last NAB, but I’ll have to reluctantly say it was worth the wait. You want it, You need it…so buy it!!! It also make a wonderful holiday gift for your favorite neighborhood engineer =8)

   The Pro version, HVR-Z1U HDV is due out in January and will retail for about $5900. It’s even cooler. You can check out some comparisons on DV411’s website at, http://dv411.com/hvrz1u.html  

On the sixth day of Christmas every geek should want....an HD Link from Black Magic.

6. The HD Link is a neat little gadget from Blackmagic Design. This is a simple little widget that takes HD SDI signal and converts it to DVI.  One of the main complaints that I get about HD is the cost a good SDI monitor. This is what I hear…

   ”Okay Cutter, I can afford the 20 grand for a HD editing workstation. And yes, I can afford the storage to keep four hours of uncompressed HD. I’ve found a reasonable rental house for a “D whatever” or “HDcam” deck. (which could be DV411 btw, we rent too!) Now you’re telling me I have to spend another five grand for an HD monitor or another ten if I want a decent SDI flat panel???!!!! @#$%#$% You Cutter!!!!!!!”  This little guy, (HD Link from Blackmagic), is going to save me from a lot of bad language.

   All it does is take a HD SDI signal from your deck or your I/O card and convert it pixel for pixel, color space for color space and frame rate for frame rate to your inexpensive DVI computer monitor. It’s only $695 and it’s got audio as well. Simple, inexpensive and does the job—which has been the mark of Blackmagic Design, however this little guy is perhaps the best idea I’ve come across in a long time. Bravo to the Aussies! 

On the seventh day the Heavens rained down because Santa gave me VERY, very fast G- Raid.

7. G-Raid Firewire2 800 external hard drives.
   
   G-Raid drives are cool, not so much because they are chrome polished steel or because they look like little G5s, no no no.  I am not impressed with surface beauty or pretty packages (at least, not with my toys, well not all of them, or at least not the one’s with names…lets just drop it!!) No, the G-Raids are cool because they can sustain 60MB/s for just slightly over $1 per gigabyte. That means you can edit multistream DV, HDV, MPEG2 and in some circumstances uncompressed SD on your laptop or anything for that matter. This little guy (around 4 pounds) doesn’t discriminate either.  Its churns out its data on both PC and Mac equally as quickly.  For those of you not quite on the cutting edge...yet, the G-Raids also offer Firewire 400 ports. Once again simple, inexpensive and does the job.

And on the eighth day of Christmas, a very low cost present for everyone--geek and non geek alike, Notebook coolers.

8. Antec Notebook Coolers

   These days notebooks contain desktop processors and multiple hard drives, DVD burners, the works. You can almost have a full workstation in the palm of your hands. Unfortunately they get hot very fast resulting in sub par performance and instability.  This novel little product is a pedestal fan works in conjunction with your notebooks exhaust system to provide significantly lower system temps.  Quiet as a whisper (around 20dB if I were to hazard a guess) and powers it self through your USB. No batteries!!! To make you smile even broader, this product only costs around $40.

On the ninth day of Christmas there were keyboards for all!!

9. WorldTech has just released USB and wireless keyboards for just about everything. 

   They’ve got them for Maya, Photoshop, Premiere, Avid, Edius, Liquid, Vegas, Ulead and more. Their based on the ever popular Logitech keyboards with multi colored laser etched keys. Yeah it’s just a keyboard, but you'd be surprised what a difference it makes when it comes to productivity. You'd be surprised which shortcuts your missing on account of not reading the bloody manual.

   You can choose just the keyboard or wireless mouse combo packages. Once again just drop a line and I can give you pricing and availability for your app.

The tenth day of Christmas rolled around and boy was I tired.  How much holiday cheer can one geek survive?  Then I saw.. Cubes???

10. Cubes are the new cool thing. 

    If you weren't aware, Cubes are the middle brother between workstations and laptops. They’re tiny, but pack the punch of many workstations. You are limited with what you can pack into them, but for software editors, animators and compositors, a Cube makes terrific sense. 

    Our new custom Cubes are now based on the Antec Aria chassis and have everything DV411 workstations have except for memory capacity and storage space.  We also offer systems based on the popular Shuttle Cubes.  As always, whatever you want Dv411 can provide.

    All of DV411's custom Cubes come with 2.8 to 3.6 GHzPci express graphics, 1 or 2 GB of Ram,  36GB 10K system drives, 120 through 400GB video drives, A-108 Dual layer DVD burners, Firewire 800 and all the goodies you know and love.

The eleventh day of Christmas came about, and I’ll have to admit my egg nog hangover was bothering me something fierce. All I wanted to do was sit around and watch home movies with the family.  Luckily....Santa gave me a JVC- SR-MV30 DVD recorder.

11. JVC- SR-MV30 DVD recorder.  
    
    This is for all of us are putting off transferring our VHS collections to DVD. I don’t want to do it, I can’t afford to hire a monkey to do it! What am I going to do?  Some of this stuff I can’t get anymore!  Fear no more, this little product will save you.  
    
    One side SVHS and one side DVD. One button transfer VHS to DVD and vice versa. Your family wants a copy of that embarrassing video of your big sister finding coal in her stocking 20 years ago? No problem pop it in, laugh a bit and out comes a DVD.
    
    More importantly,  DVD’s take up much less space the that collection of 40,000 hours of footage you can’t bring yourself to throw out.  It also has S video, composite and Firewire inputs as well as a TBC.  So everything from U-matic to beta to hi-8 is as easy as pie.  For a paltry $765 you’ve run out of excuses, your assistants are going to thank you when you can buy a big new comfy couch with all the new space you’ll gain.

And finally, on the twelfth day of Christmas, what I want all geeks to get from me, Training DVDs.

12. Training DVDs

    Pick up a copy of Paul Mitton's or Anthony Martorina's Liquid training DVD sets. Got the Premiere Pro blues, we also offer all of the Total Training Adobe sets from Acrobat to After Effects.  I know all you Avid users are befuddled by v. 4’s changes, we offer Avid’s books and DVD sets for Xpress Pro, Studio and Essentials. Whether you're proficient or need help with an app, there's a training set out there for you.

So that’s it. Christmas list, done. If you’d like to take me up on my suggestions, I invite you to come out to DV Expo West, December 8-10 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.  DV411 will be partnering with Ulead (booth #235) featuring powerful and affordable native HDV editing workstations, with Ulead MediaStudio Pro 7.  

And here’s a bonus present, check out DVDWorkshop2. RIGHT NOW!!! Go go go!!! It retails for $499 but there’s currently a promotion for $399. Can’t beat that. You get pretty much all the functionality of higher end packages for 10 times less the cost; CCS encryption, surround sound, DLT and DVD-9.

Call me and I’ll give you a bundle deal with a Pioneer 108 dual layer burner. Just mention, Cutter's Twelve Things for Christmas article.  

Once again we’ll be at DV Expo so come and say hello, pick my brain and have a good time. There is going to be a lot of cool new stuff for both HD and SD fronts. If you won’t be in the LA area, give me a call. I’m happy to answer all your questions and add to this Christmas list.  If you don’t have tickets already to DV Expo, we’ve got several free passes…if your nice, you naughty one’s are on your own. You know who you are!

It’s the end of the year, I don’t think there's a need to be geeky all the time.  So go buy yourself something that doesn’t involve electricity in any way.  I recommend a nice bottle of Napa Valley wine or if you don’t drink, a nice wooden pencil and sharpener (no mechanical jobs) or God forbid a book (with pages you have to turn).  It will help transport you back to those days of yesteryear when you didn’t have to work 90 hours a week.

I’d like to take this final opportunity to thank you all.  This is my fifth year at DV411 and I couldn’t ask for better clients.  I’ve gained many new friends in this industry from clients to manufacturers. And even though I can’t take all of these goodies on this Christmas list home, thank you for allowing me to build your systems which have provided me with enough technology to keep me very happy and content.

So right now  I’m going to take my own advice and sit down by the fire, pour myself a glass of wine and take a sledge hammer to my circuit breaker.

Happy Holidays!

Cutter Stevens
Technical Director
DV411
310-838-9000
cutter ( @dv411.com )