Welcome to the New Geeks-in-Residence Page at DV411!

Cutter's Incite Editor Machine
...that even a geek can afford: pretty far under $30,000.00

Lets start off with the body (chassis). I haven't really been into Supermicro cases very much in the past. There previous series (sc-750) always seemed a bit too big and cumbersome, which need really long cables which caused some bandwidth issues. Their new series the sc742 seems to be a step in the right direction. Though still very big and about as stylish as a Sherman tank it comes standard with a hot swappable SCSI drive chassis and a good size power supply (420W). One nice thing about this series is the fact that you can buy a optional kit to make it rackmountable!  Most importantly it has a case mounted CPU fan assembly which is necessary when using the P4DCE+ motherboard.

The Motherboard

I'm going to have to go with the SuperMicro P4DCE+. Although SuperMicro and I have had our problems in the past (mostly due to a REALLY poor DOA percentage, ram compatibility, $$$$ etc.) I'm going to have to give them another chance. The DC6 is huge.. gigantic even. It gives me everything I need, ultra 100 ata, dual channel 800mhz Rambus, onboard LAN and audio, etc. I could go on but it's easier if you go to the SuperMicro website You may think all this onboard stuff is unnecessary. You thinking "I could probably by a cheaper motherboard and get a regular LAN card etc. and save some money!" Well, you'd be wrong. With all the other cards we are going to have to pack in there, PCI resources are going to become a problem (if not a problem definitely a concern). So we want to keep off board peripherals to a minimum.

The CPUs

We are going with Xeon processors of course, but how fast and what kind do you ask? Well Incite sets in minimum certified systems at 2.0 GHz. I on the other hand am going to recommend the latest and greatest 2.4 GHZ road hog. These are the first of the Xeons to surpass the Athlon in certain key floating point benchmark tests. Though I personally have yet to build a machine with 2.4s yet (you might think about helping me out on that one) the 2.2s remain relatively cool under pressure. There is a really good article over at Tom's Hardware that everybody should real on dual AMD vs. Xeon. Anyway, all arguments aside (and the fact that it's not money I'll be spending anytime soon), I'm going with Xeons for this configuration.

The RAM

Rambus, what can I say, it's fast, fast ram. Way more bandwidth that you actually need; for now.... We are going to start off with a gigs of ECC ram (2x512) which is the minimum recommended by Incite. This gives you plenty of power to enable background rendering and other such features. It will also help with having multiple programs running (after effects, combustion). As well there are two more available ram slots for future expansion.

Storage Controller

For the SCSI card I'm going with the Adaptec 29160. It's a name you trust, works well in both in 32 and 64 bit slots, which is very important when it come to the Digisuite. Unfortunately the Digisuite is incompatible with scsi running through the 64 bit PCI bus. So your not going to get anywhere near true 160 mbs speed, but fortunately your not going to need it. It will handle all you 16 mbs, DV50, DV25/Mpeg2  files with no trouble at all.

Storage

Storage is now becoming an even trickier question these days. It used to home much storage can you live without. Now it becomes a question if redundancy is something you can live without. Generally, my view on the subject was an unequivocal no!. Why the heck do I need redundancy when I have my master tapes and my batch capture lists, EDL's etc. backed up. More and more, though I'm thinking of the time expense and frustrations involved with that solution. Sometimes (Well most of the time) The costs of a redundant array do not outweigh the time loss of a lost strip. I have insurance on everything else, so why not my data. I'm going with the Medea RTR for this reason.  I have always loved Medea. Their products are both durable and reliable.  Since I have started working here we have probably sold a couple of hundred of these units in all sorts of flavors.  I believe we have had about 3 or 4 actually go down.  Now with their new redundant arrays, you don't even have to fret about the 1% chance.  The RTR comes in 160, 320 and 480 GB flavors. As well the units themselves only use a single SCSI ID, so they even stripe together easily.  For this configuration we'll stick in the middle with the 320GB model.  Just as a side note, if you desire, I could build you a swappable RAID0 array that could blow the barn doors off the Medea speed wise.  Alas no redundancy at that price.

For your system drive I think an 18.4 GB cheetah 10k SCSI drive will do.  This will leave enough room for a dual boot system as well as extra storage for graphics, project files, EDL's and other miscellaneous files.  Plus it's really fast so your applications will run smoother and more stably.

Pioneer A04

The Digisuite

For this particular system, I'm going to go with the Digisuite LX Max.  The big main mondo reason for this decision is stability.  The max card works best with a native digital format such as Mpeg2 /DV. The other best option would be the DTV, but alas, it's very expensive and very few of you have use for DV50 (used in DVCPRO50 and D9 formats).  I'm sure you know all about this cardset, but if you don't check out our LX Max page for more info and stats.  One nice thing I will add; on every new Max bundle, no matter what the flavor you get free, yes free A/V breakout boxes.  That's a thousand dollar bargain.  Of course, this deal applies to the system we are building here.  As well, you receive a free copy of Sonic Solutions Reel DVD.

The Graphics Card

All right, no whining.  We have to go with the G550 from Matrox.  No it's not an OpenGL card.  No, it's not overloaded with RAM, blah, blah, blah.  You're not going to need it anyway, because you only using this machine for video, right?  Although this is truly a moot point because nothing else is going to work with the Max card.  Even still, it's a good card, and it's cheap.  I've been using the G series cards for a number of years now and they don't disappoint.

The Merging Technologies Audio Board

This is a new bit of technology for me, although it's not actually new.  Merging Technologies has been around for as long as I can remember, that is to say at least four years or so.  In this current technology climate, that is a particularly long time for a company.  Anyway, Merging has usually aimed it's audio products toward the very high end. Unfortunately, they are still there.  The Mykerinos board (the one that works with Incite and Matrox), will give superior audio quality (analog or digital) with more I/O than I have patience for wiring.  Just to start:

• Handles up to 64 inputs and outputs as well as 64 playback and record streams to/from your PC.

• Extremely low latency processing (typical 2.7 ms at 48kHz), ideal for live events, dubbing, re-recording and voice-overs.

• Runs at 192, 176.4, 128, 96, 88.2, 64, 48, 44.1 and 32 kHz in 16, 24 and 32 bits encompassing all needed formats for DVD, HD-CD etc.

• On-board stereo 24bit / 96kHz monitoring output.

• Highly flexible modular I/O architecture can be tailored to user's needs by the use of dedicated daughter boards including ADAT, AES/EBU, SDIF, TDIF and/or MADI formats.

• Built-in SMPTE/EBU timecode reader/generator including LTC and VITC with timecode insertion in a video window.

• Ultra low jitter clock with lock to Video (Auto detect PAL/NTSC), Audio, Wordclock or Internal answers all Audio for Video requirements.

• Multiple card interconnection through HDTDM (High Definition Time Domain Multiplex) Bus provides 128 bi-directional audio channels and supports up to 8 Mykerinos boards in parallel or daisy chain mode.

• Unique virtual console, freely customizable and fully automated providing mono, stereo and surround mixing. Ample power to manage very large consoles with aux busses, send/returns, monitoring busses, multiple concurrent mix versions and so much more.

• Based on 2nd generation Philips Trimedia 32 bit floating point processing VLIW technology

• High Performance (> 288 MFlops sustained, 576 MB/s SDRAM interface, etc.)

• Support for all sampling rates from 32 kHz up to 384 kHz (needs full version of Pyramix above 48 kHz)

• Open Plug-In (all C-code) architecture supporting  Surround-sound and DVD formats

• Very high performance card capable of high track playback (up to 64 tracks) and vast I/O capabilities (up to 64 channels)

Now the piece d resistance...

The Incite Software

How cool is it?  Though it has been a while since I have constructed an Incite machine, those clients and many others have given me a thumbs up when it comes to the 2.8 version.  Though the max does add a certain unknown quantity to the equation, the folks at Incite, Matrox and a few other trusted sources say all the bugs are pretty much worked out.  Now I could go on for a very long time about all it can do, and an inversely short time telling you what it can't.  So I'm just going to point you to a DV411 Incite page as well as the Incite homepage and you can see for yourself.

The Conclusion

Yes, it's all very impressive, you know you want it, you know you need it, you know its expensive.  Is $28K truly too much to pay for this kind of quality, power and versatility?  Maybe, but $50K was also too much to pay for your car and you did it anyway.  Now, ask yourself this, how much money have you earned with your car?

Now, now brown cow, relax one second.  There are a few things we can do to cut the price down.  Firstly there is a lower end Audio card called the Pro-C which is about $1000 cheaper, of course much less capability.  Or you could choose not to use an audio card at all and stick with the Digisuite audio, that's a good chunk right there.  If you decide to go this route, you can get the lower end IN-Edit Max software bundle, that's about $2000.00 right there.  Now you're under $25K. Yes there's more we can do, but you're going to have to call.

We aim to please and we will try our very best to get you what you need in the budget that you have.

Until next time...
 

That's me: "Touched by a virus, but still standing"

Geeks-in-Residence Pages: Ultimate Machines Geeks Can Afford Created: June 2002  --  Last Updated: July 30, 2004 page views