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Home Studio Help!

Hey everyone,

I'm wondering if some of you could please help me out with a few things I need clarification on, any and all help is extremely valuable to me. Thank you in advance!

I'm fortunate enough to have a little space in my apartment to build a little home studio, now the "studio" will evolve into more something more "high tech" as time goes by and enough money will be available and so what I have at my disposal at the moment for the studio are the following:

1x 17" Mac PowerBook G4 - 1.67 GHz w/ 2GB DDR2 SDRAM
1x Final Cut Studio Pro 5
1x Old HDV Camera - PAL - That I use as a VTR Deck
1x Adobe Master Collection (Licensed to the company I work for, there is no way I could actually buy this)
1x Spyder 3 Elite Calibrator
1x TV Monitor
1x Wireless Keyboard and Mouse

Now I have some insurance money coming in because my old PC was damaged in a flood and I want to buy some gear for the home studio, my questions are as follow:

1) What LCD screen do you editors out there think are good for editing, I will be editing DV, HD, and film footage from 16, S16 and S8mm stocks - Transfered to tapes. I would like for the screens to be a wide screen. I will be getting two screens.

2) Until I can afford sound monitors of good quality I have some old HI FI speakers that I would like to connect to the Mac, I only have the speakers and the wires from them have to be connected to the Mac somehow. If possible, how do I achieve this? Will I need a converter or can I connect the speaker wires to a plug and this way connect it to the Mac?

3) I'm thinking about making a little ADR and DUB room, what mic's do you guy's think would work best for this and what do I need to record the sound on to my Mac? What I mean is do I need to buy a mixer and if so what kind would be the best option. I was thinking it would be a good idea to buy I mic I could use for ADR in the studio and also in the field.

4) Obviously I need to work with external HD's and here is the dumbest question ever probably, is there a way I can store my post production software on an external HD and this way save the space on my 80GB Mac and so when I need to work in post I just connect my software HD to the Mac and have another external HD for my footage and editing?

Thank you so much for answering these questions, I really appreciate it!
 
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You seem to have a nice set up.

Don't worry so much about having every bell or whistle that is out there. Unless you are independently wealthy, you should be worrying about getting your first subject and creating something as opposed to an ADR room. I don't know anyone who has one of those. As of right now, you are okay and should start shooting something.

Don't put your project on your internal hard drive. Put your software on your internal, put your project on your external hard drive. A serious project is going to take up waaaayyy more room than 80Ghz and you will end up with headaches you can avoid.

If you put your project on the hard drive that the software is on, eventually the software -- for lack of a better way to put it -- will have problems 'running' because the footage you have captured is filling up the hard drive. Its like too many clowns trying to fit into a VW beetle, somebody isn't going to be able to move.

Your external hard drive, and get as many GHZ as you can, won't have that problem because all you will have there is space for your footage.

If you haven't thought of this already, you need a fluid head tripod and a good mic for your camera. Then you will be ready to get started.

-- spinner :cool:
 
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