Edit suite upgrade

Posted by Corne Scheepers on Tuesday, December 27, 2011

We recently upgraded our post-production setup and if you’re a client of ours you’re in for a treat in 2012! Having wrapped up the last projects by early December we were able to reformat, rewire and rearrange the current work area to something that is now very close to my dream (home) edit suite.

The new edit suite now features:

A new custom designed desk. This is a huge improvement over the previous.
Mobile HP workstations with the latest versions of Avid Media Composer, Adobe CS Master Suite and a few other software goodies I’m not talking about ;) I firmly believe that the traditional desktop computer has gone the way of the dinosaur.
Apple Mac Mini with OSX Lion for media testing and IM/social networking. Clients can expect more consumer format media in the new year as iPads, tablets and mobile devices become more popular with end-users.
P2 media from my camera is downloaded and stored via an MSU-10 compact storage unit. The MSU-10 is one of favourite pieces of equipment and also travels along on big field editing projects.
All workstations have broadband internet connectivity and are fully networked for file sharing. I’ve always been a supporter of shared media workflows and being able to now run multiple post-production projects simultaneously will dramatically benefit project deadlines in 2012.
We haven’t skimped on media storage either - currently I’m running around 11 terabytes of high speed RAID media storage.
Client preview via a 40” Sony Bravia

Audio upgrade
The biggest change is in the audio department. I’ve been looking for a good set of studio speakers and a compact editing mixer for a long time and our friend Bruno dos Santos from Newsound Productions supplied exactly what I needed.

Above: compact Behringer mixing console. It probably has the world's brightest power LED ever!

The desk now has two Samson Resolv A5 monitors and a simple and compact Behringer Xenyx mixing console. In terms of everyday audio editing I need accuracy more that rock concert power and Bruno supplied gear that fitted my requirements perfectly.