If we're serious about working with and serving digital media then we need to have some tools. This following is a modest list of what I think could at least get us started. Please feel free to edit this page or add comments.
Basic Hardware and Software
| HARDWARE | |
| Canopus ADVC-100 Converter | $300.00 |
| Dual 1.25GHz PowerMac G4 with SuperDrive | $2,000.00 |
| ProMax 200GB External Firewire Drive | $500.00 |
| 17 inch Apple Studio Display | $700.00 |
| $3,500.00 | |
| SOFTWARE | |
| Final Cut Express | $300.00 |
| Quicktime Pro | $30.00 |
| Cleaner 6.1 | $600.00 |
| $930.00 | |
| Grand Total | $4,430.00 |
Hardware and Software Notes
Converter
This converter takes the output from an VCR (or other analog device) and output to firewire DV steam. This assumes we'll use and existing VCR. This should allow us to convert existing tapes and cd's. This is really the cheap way of doing this. It may become necessary in the future to purchase a deck for this kind of work
Final Cut Express
After we get our DV stream, wether converted or straight from the camera we will use this software to add simple editing effects. This is not professional quality software but should do what we need to do with a smaller learning curve.
Cleaner Pro
This software *encodes the DV stream for delivery to an output device and media format. The format we want to output is MP4 and the delivery will be streaming for anything longer than 5 minutes.
Apple Hardware
All this runs on a dual processor Macintosh G4 with a modest 17 inch monitor. This just like the set up that is in my office except for faster processor, more drive space. We also need this machine with a super dirve which enables it to write and read DVD.
The external hard drive should allow us some flexibility in moving files between machines (wether on the network or not).
Video Server
This scenario assumes that we will use the open source Darwin streaming server from Apple like that now running on the library server. (the IBM machine in my office). This machine could also be used as a server using Quicktime Streaming Server .
Overlap with Media Services
There is no doubt that there is some overlap between this proposal and what the Media Center has but I think there is a clear distinction in focus.
The library is interested in converting and providing access to digital media while the Media Center's focus is the the local creation of digital media. That does not mean that we won't be creating digital media it's just that it won't be our main focus.
- Want help creating, producing, or editing media?
- Call the Media Center
- Need to purchase, serve, or provide intellectual access to digital media?
- Call the Library
Links
- Promax -- This site had 90 percent of the things that we're are looking for and made getting prices easy.
- The MPEG4 Standard -- You may not want to but you ought to at least glance at this.
- The MPEG4 Homepage -- More than just the standard, links to all kind of stuff.
Brian, 2003/02/05 19:12 EST (via web):
I guess this could go down in the "faculty" room on the first floor but I don't think that we want to get into helping faculty create video.