NYC Production & Post News by Joe Herman

If you are a media production professional, you’ll want to take a good look at the HP Z800 workstation. When paired with a NVIDIA Quadro GPU accelerated video card we’re talking about a system that achieves an outstanding level of performance. Whether you are an editor of motion pictures, a compositor, visual effects artist or create high-end 3D animation, the HP Z800 workstation has a design that’s ideal for the special needs of production and post-production professionals who are searching for the utmost in power and flexibility. As we’ll be discussing throughout this article, this should be especially relevant to video editors who may be looking for new directions in light of recent developments in that field.

Editing’s Changing Tides

Before we go over the machine, let’s elaborate on recent news that has recently made the Z800 much more compelling to a segment of our community, namely film and video editors, who may have overlooked it before. It should come as no surprise that Apple’s recent release of Final Cut Pro X has thrown this group into a frenzy, since the new app throws out many of the pro features and third party plug-ins developed over the years. One company’s NLE is suddenly benefiting greatly from this unease, specifically Adobe Premiere Pro, and interest in this cost-effective professional solution continues to grow as a result. (Read Walter Biscardi’s rather bitter farewell to Apple’s FCP X NLE solution to get an idea of what’s involved in this issue).

Due to the early success of a few key software packages, Windows-based machines have basically become the standard in 3D animation production. The leading computer manufacturer for both Windows and Linux — HP — exemplifies this, as it has built a longstanding relationship with DreamWorks Animation. read more...