Feb 10, 2011

Upgrading Your Personal Edit Studio

After over six months of juggling several different corporate editing projects, I've finally found some down time.  The pressure that my editing suite was under became apparent when the delays on existing edits started but the projects didn't stop coming in.  What's a guy to do? Space, organization, and flexibility are key to keeping the ball rolling - time for upgrades!

The bones of my existing PC are great.  Two large 23 inch monitors, a powerful video card, and a diverse range of custom editing tools through Pinnacle, Photoshop, and Premiere provide a sturdy backbone.  It seems there's never enough space for video though.  My solution to this was a USB hub and new hard drives to divide various elements.

This is how my edit suite stacks up after upgrades:

My main drive is now treated just like a home page - main operating functions, final edits awaiting delivery, main software, and several personal details.  My secondary drive is now a personal extension - iTunes library, financial backups, and lots of free space for games, personal edit space, photos, etc.  In addition to this: 

  • One hard drive for personal video editing - general archiving.
  • One hard drive purely for Flip video storage and backup / homevideo.
  • Two hard drives strictly for corporate edits, backup, and archiving.

This provides me with 6 different drives, roughly 5TB of current working space, and a very structured layout of how the drives are used and organized.  The biggest difference here is that I won't have to stretch projects across different drives anymore (with the exception of key backups) and this makes the raw elements easier to catalogue and store.   Not to mention, it's also easier to have more projects on the go and as things progress, dedicate large projects to their own drives.


My focus has always been on the creative end of editing.  What I mean by this is that I'm not always swayed by the most expensive technical tool, but instead by how I can achieve a certain look or effect. My edit studio is far from the most expensive, but it is versatile and modern enough to tackle most of what I want and need to be able to do at this point.

My current setup has probably been about a $3000-$4000 investment over the last three years, and that seems minor when considering the amount of projects, both personal and corporate, that I've completed in that time.  It's kind of amazing how accessible the technology has become actually. 

Next on my list - software.

1 comment :

Angry Charlie said...

Well done! I know from personal experience how hard it can be to get organized with shit like this, and I'm glad to see you have! Also, on behalf of all of us PC users, thank you for not feeling the need to Mac-ify your editing setup.

I friggin' hate Macs....