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Filed under: *VIDEO* •CS4 •Editing •Hardware •Post Production •Software •Tips •

Breaking The First Rule Of Non-Linear Editing, Part Two

Our story so far:  Our intrepid editor and geek just spent about $7000 on a new editing computer.  To try and save money, he bought the HP Z800 without a DVD drive or video card.  When he finally tries to install the BluRay burner…)

“bump.”

Whaaaat?

The drive can’t slide all the way into the slot, because it makes contact with the RAM sockets!

It took me about ten minutes of head-scratching to figure out that I could just use one of the lower drive slots, which - while still positioning the drive very, VERY close to the motherboard - doesn’t have direct interference. 

Ever had that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach?  Luckily, a little clear-headed thinking fixed that.

Once I had the BluRay burner installed, it was time to manage my existing hard drives.  To save money (something I’m sure I will regret in the near future) I went with a 160Gb boot drive, with Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate preinstalled on it.  When I was editing on the Dell I had invested in a three-slot SATA drive cage that takes up only two spaces. 

I had to take a Dremel tool to the Dell’s case to remove some plastic, but on the whole it was an easy job.  As I mentioned before, the Z800 has a four-slot internal SATA drive cage, which would be a waste to not use, but I still thought I could make use of the three-drive rig.  Wrong. 

For one thing, the Z800 external drive cage has bent-metal ears to support a drive when in place; I would have to either saw away or bend these out of the way, neither of which seemed like an appealing thing to do to a brand-new computer.  Secondly, while the z800 mobo features all kinds of connectors, only six of them are SATA; there are five more for a type of hard drive called SAS, which stands for “Serial-Attached SCSI.”  I don’t have any SAS drives, so those ports remain empty; my six SATA plugs are taken up by the four hard drives, BluRay drive and an external SATA port.  I’m already maxed out.

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Fun to read about hacking together your new high-end system. 

What also sounded interesting were the many $700 PC editing workhorses you have put together.  If you were building one today, would it be?  What’s needed most for an effective, low-cost Adobe or Vegas edit box?  (Might be a popular article.)

Thanks.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/29  at  01:42 PM

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