Avid|DS HD, page 2
What's in the
Box?
Let's take a look at what you get in this turnkey package. The only
way it's sold is in turnkey form because of tight integration between
boards, software and drivers, making it easier to support, according
to Avid. DS HD ships with an IBM ZPro workstation with dual 1GHz processors,
1.5 GB of RAM, 288 gigs of hard disk space, dual 21" monitors,
Windows 2000, a 3Dlabs Wildcat 4210 graphics card and a remote processing
license for 2 CPUs.
You'll hear no complaints from me about the IBM ZPro, a workstation that's proven to be among the more reliable choices. And, with that one-and-a-half gigs of RAM, well, that ought to be enough! As you'll agree, there's some serious processing power under the hood. And, if you're already among the 1000 standard-definition DS users, Avid invites you to upgrade to the HD version for $150K. In either case, all you need to add is an HD monitor (make sure to get one that supports 601 as well as HD), an HD deck, and maybe tri-level sync if you're going to be doing 24p. By the way, all that disk space will give you about 40 minutes of uncompressed HD footage. According to Avid, by next quarter the company plans to support 240 minutes of total uncompressed storage. That'll be well over a terabyte of disk space.
Driving DS
HD
So what's it like to drive this beast? I like it. It's great the way
this software makes you feel like your video is right there in front
of you the whole time, and you bring the tools to it, rather than
importing and exporting the video all over, switching from this mode
to that. There's a nice innovation called the Swift Menu, or as it's
affectionately called at Avid, "Mighty Mouse," which lets
you hold down H on the keyboard and right click, and contextual options
are presented to you right where you need them. And its Gestural Editing
lets you use a tablet and flick things here or there, draw circles
to move forward or backward, and program anything else you'd like
it to do. It's entirely possible to edit an whole production with
your three hot keys (H, J, and K) in one hand, mouse in the other,
and your eyes never leaving your video. This is especially comfortable
for those who rose up in the nonlinear editing world. Even though
I cut my teeth in linear editing suites, even I got used to this "heads-up"
concept in a hurry. But if you're not happy with DS's choices for
hot keys, go ahead and program your old favorites from GVG, Media
Composer, or Sony editors.
 |
|
|
Feel the Power
Power permeates throughout this application. For example, each layer
has its own color correction, keyers, graphics track and DVE. Not
only that, but each layer has its own effects tree. Introduced in
DS version 3.0 and refined here in the HD version of 4.0, the effects
tree is a great way to visualize layers. It's intuitive to just drag
an effect to the window and twang it onto the tree. "Twang"
it? Yes, there's special lingo that goes along with the effects tree.
First there's Kissing, where you take two nodes and touch them together,
and they connect. There there's Ripping, where you grab the node and
either shake it or hold down the space bar and it's released. New
for version 4.0 is the ability to drag and drop clips directly to
the effects tree, where before you had drag a clip to the timeline.
Like an effect you just made? Copy it (Control-c) and paste it onto
the tree for use with another shot. If you want to do DVEs (digital
video effects), even though they're in HD they still are able to scale
down interactively. Composing three layers of uncompressed HD at the
same time was quite an interesting experience, although I still had
to render the sequence to see them as actual moving video. A great
compositing feature is the ability to add a cache layer, which allows
you to render everything under that, make changes above and not lose
the processing done on that rendered layer. It's like landings for
stairs, so if you fall, you'll only tumble so far instead of somersaulting
all the way to the bottom. With this kind of high-end compositing,
rotoscoping, wire removal and more you won't need to go to third party
effects packages, keeping intact DS's theme of keeping your video
right in front of you.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
