Where to Start
The first place to start is with the end. The best way to help us advise you is to provide us with a big list of everything you would like to be able to achieve with your new systems as an end result. We know that not everyone working in media education is a computer wizard and there’s no need to be. Tell us if you want to be able to produce DVDs, how many groups of students are likely to want to use the systems, what kind of cameras you are using and how long the projects are they’ll produce.
Tell us what you want to be able to do and we’ll tell you what tools will help you to achieve it.
Price is always a factor and under the systems section of these pages you’ll see a number of options for different budgets with comments on their suitability for education. There are several pages of information about each of the systems and it is a good idea to investigate in detail the ones you think might be suitable. We are happy to supply one-off components too and offer the same level of advice. Try our main products pages for detailed information about the different capture cards and software available.
We have a comprehensive information booklet that explains a great deal about how non-linear editing computers work and how the different options stack up but there’s nothing like a first hand conversation. We have sales staff to answer the phone or give demonstrations in Hove (Brighton) and in London on Oxford Street right next to Soho and they are all using the equipment themselves to produce work in their own time.
You may find the Things to factor into a purchase section very useful (we couldn’t think of a better title). It has a list of questions you might need to ask yourself while assessing the options.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Adobe Premiere PRO & Matrox RT.X2
This card offers the best integration with Adobe Premiere Pro. It provides a huge boost to the real time performance of Premiere Pro 2 making HDV editing as slick as DV. The RTX.2 also provides a WYSIWYG output and acceleration for After Effects.Read more about Adobe Premiere Pro.
Grass Valley EDIUS
Grass Valley EDIUS gives you more in SD or HD than anything else. As a fast reliable editor this cannot be beaten. Read more about Grass Valley EDIUS.
Avid Media Composer
Good for students who are serious about working professionally in the media industry as Avid is industry standard. Very good Educational discounts. Read more aboutAvid Media Composer.
Educational Support
DVC offer comprehensive support on systems and a set-up and training service.
All our systems come with telephone support for the lifetime of the system using a normal (non-premium) telephone number during office hours. We also include as standard our remote access support via PC Anywhere. This allows us to take over your systems remotely and effectively ‘see’ your computer screen. We can often carry out set-up changes and installations this way and it saves a great deal of time on the telephone.
In some cases, educational establishments prefer not to have a modem on each system in case the students access the Internet with them. We can easily supply a USB modem that you only attach to a system as necessary.
We also include a 12-month return-to-base warranty so for any problem we can’t resolve remotely we send a courier to collect the system and work on it at our main premises. Our turnaround time for repairs is 3 to 5 working days on average, which is pretty fast for a return-to-base warranty.
We regularly carry out installations for schools and colleges and our training might easily be for a class full of students or one or two teachers that will be passing on what they have learned to classes later. Our training is always discounted for educational establishments.
Working in a group
One of the major issues facing educational establishments when setting up multiple editing systems is that one system is going to be used by a number of student groups or different groups may not always be able to work on the same system. Avid have an excellent solution for this problem called Lanshare. With Lanshare, all of the media is stored remotely in a big server and up to ten editing systems can work on the same video at the same time – or different video of course. This flexibility means that students can work on any system at any time without feeling they risk losing something. The Windows operating system has options for making even the desktop look the same wherever you log on, the students really do feel they are working with the same tools.
Happily, hard drives are not as expensive as they once were and you can easily have 400GB of storage space just for media – separately from the system hard drive – that is over 26 hours of full DV quality video and sound. This makes it far less of a problem for multiple groups of students to work on the same system.
The real hold-up with students sharing systems is the time each group has allocated to it. Adding more systems will help of course but that won’t always square with the budget so trying to stick to using the special effects your edit systems can do without rendering is a good idea.
Sharing Materials
It is possible to have any standard large-scale server keep all the media of the students work but unless the network is designed for the purpose like Avid Lanshare, it tends not to be practical. The enormous video files clog up the network so much they can cause stability problems plus, of course, it takes quite a long time to send and receive that media, so the students will be using up a fair chunk of their valuable editing time waiting for the media to arrive.
We find that a better solution is simply to use removable firewire hard drives. These can store quite a lot of video and the students can lock theirs up in a cupboard if necessary along with all their notes etc. Having a set of lockers on-site is generally a good idea because it saves students carrying valuable work around in a bag.
Realtime versus rendering
A non-realtime system works like this –
Let’s say you have a one-minute piece of video that is a little too dark and you decide to apply an effect to it to turn up the brightness:
- You put the brightness effect on the clip.
- The computer tells you the effect needs to render and you set it off rendering.
- In the background, the computer creates a new separate one-minute piece of video, which looks exactly like the first piece of video but a bit brighter.
Having made the new video, the computer sneakily replaces your original with it on the timeline without telling you. In fact, it goes on calling it by the same name and doesn’t change the way it relates to the rest of your film. As far as you are concerned, you are working with the original clip but it has an effect over it.
- You press play and watch the video with the effect.
- Let’s say you then decide you want to make the picture a little redder to warm it up a bit
- You put the colour correction over the clip, which is already brightened up, and tell the computer to render.
The computer makes a third piece of video, which looks like the brightened version plus a bit more red and does the switch with that one. This means you now have three bits of video on your hard drive – 1) The original 2) The Brightened version 3) the brightened reddened version.
You press play and watch the brighter redder video.
The reason the computer makes different versions of everything you do is that is means you can change your mind at any moment and play the un-modified version. The computer needs pre-made bits of video to play because it doesn’t have the power to apply effects while playing back – on the fly. All it can do is play a single layer of digital video at a time.
A realtime system works like this –
- Let’s say you have a one-minute piece of video that is a little too dark and you decide to apply an effect to it to turn up the brightness:
- You put the brightness effect on the clip.
- You press play and watch the video with the effect.
Shorter, isn’t it.
Let’s say you then decide you want to make the picture a little redder to warm it up a bit
- You put the colour correction over the clip, which is already brightened up.
- You press play and watch the brighter redder video.
Because a realtime system is not generating new bits of video in order to play back an altered version, it does not take up any extra space on the hard drive. You only ever have one minute of video on your hard drive in the example above, not three.
Output formats
Most media production courses focus on producing a final copy of the films produced for assessment. Although it is possible to output to a wide range of formats, many examiners believe the students to be restricted to just one format in order to maintain a level playing field so regardless of the format the project was shot on you may want your students to all supply their work on a universal format like VHS tape. It is fairly straight-forward these days for non-linear editing systems like these to produce video and sound for a wide range of formats from VHS to BetaSP or compressed formats like MPEG2 for DVD authoring or streaming media formats like Windows Media Video and Quick-time. The key thing is to inform us when we are discussing your requirements and we can make sure you are all set up. In most cases options for output can be added later.
Training
It’s a difficult task to teach people things you are not so sure of yourself and non-linear editing is a pretty vast field. At DVC we have been supplying training courses to lecturers and students for years. The courses always vary depending on who is participating and the goals can vary enormously. You might know all about non-linear editing but you need your skills adapted to work with a new system or you may be starting from scratch. It’s worth discussing the options when researching the kit you are interested in because we can include details of training in our quotations.
DVC offer training on a Premiere, Avid, Photoshop, After Effects, DVD Authoring and Edition. These courses can usually be on-site and there are discounts for education. Often we include training with our set-up costs to get you going as quickly as possible. In those instances, we install all the systems for you on-site and then provide training using your own equipment. We also include comprehensive tutorial tapes made in-house with many of our systems. Extra copies of the tutorial tapes can also be supplied.
Take a look at our Training pages for more information.
Our sales staff are experienced in working with educational establishments either through having numerous conversations providing comprehensive system orders or by personally setting systems up on-site and providing training.
Either call our sales office on 01273 707200 or perhaps send us an e-mail at sales@dvc.uk.com. We have a comprehensive information booklet which explains a good deal about how this equipment works and many of the options on offer. If in doubt, give us a call.
Alternatively, send us a fax with your specifications on 0871 5037654. Our full head office address is:
DIGITAL VIDEO COMPUTING LIMITED
Phoenix House
17-19 Norway Street
PortsladeEast Sussex
BN41 1GN
