Building Your Flame Business at Home

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Part 2: The Tech

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Not Confidential

All Rights Reversed

v1.1

Welcome

These are the questions you are looking for.

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• Chicago-based VFX Supervisor and Flame Artist

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• The Department of External Services

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• Horizontal Reels

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• Smoke Hotkeys

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• randy@thedepartmentofexternalservices.com

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Randy McEntee

(BC)

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Preamble

pretty much everyone

deliverables in 2020

Pretty much everyone

Problems

your business

your reel

your bills

you

brands

clients

COVID

family

anybody with $

your tech

Perspective

deliverables in 2020

Find all the work

Choose the best projects

Service the project beautifully

Make beautiful pictures

Priorities

CAPABILITY

CAPACITY

QUALITY

PROFITABILITY

(nope!)

(nope!)

(nope!)

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(nope!)

(nope!)

(nope!)

(nope!)

(nope!)

(nope!)

YASSS!!!

Preparation

Pretty much everyone

Pretty much everyone

Your TruthΩ

artist

artist

w/ box

artist

w/ box

w/ company

$

$$

$$$

studios

agencies

(local/pcoip)

studios

agencies

prod co

brands

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anybody

risk

risk

risk

WTF?

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Deliverables

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3840x2160 1920x1080 1080x1080 1080x1920 864x1080 720x486 720x576 23.976fps 25FPS 29.97fps 59.94i 4444 RAW 4444 422HQ FML YOUTUBE VIMEO HULU NETFLIX DCP JPEG 2000 MP4 WAV H264 H265 HD SD NTSC PAL REC 709 REC 1886 REC 2020 SDR HDR 1000 NITS 500 YGTBKM WTF OMG RTFM FIFO FFS

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pretty much everyone

deliverables in 2020

Pretty much everyone

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RTFM

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RTFM

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RTFM

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RTFM

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RTFM

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RTFM

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Linux

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• Do you live in a major market and/or pcoip a lot?
• Do you know what a DKU is and how to install one?
• Do you know precisely who your clients usually are, and are they Linux based?
• Do you know basic networking?
• Do you already have or can you afford a 2nd Mac-based assist machine?
• Do you value capacity more than capability?
• Do you have the space for more than one machine?
• Do you want maximum performance?

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Linux could be a good option for you

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Mac

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• Do you live in a minor market, or never pcoip?
• Are capabilities more important than capacity?
• Do you want one machine to rule them all?
• Do you expect to travel with your machine?

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Mac could be an good option for you

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Affordability

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• Apple Business Account = 3-8% savings
• CIT Lease Options x2 (USA)
• Used
• Refurbished
• CapEx Phases

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Affordability

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Refurbished

Used

Measure

Options

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$8k+

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$6k-$11k

$4k-$10k

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Options

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-Customizable forever

-Cleanable

-Great performance

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-Great screen included

-Good performance

-Costly to max out from Apple

-Portable

-Not great performance

-Cheapest

-Expensive to expand

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• Mac Pro 2019
• 4TB Internal
• 3.2 GHz 16-Core Intel Xeon W
• 128 GB 2933 MHz DDR 4 RAM
• AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32GB VRAM
• Highpoint SSD7101A-1 RAID w/ x4 Sabrent Rocket 2TB NVME SSD
• Pegasus j4i 32TB RAID 5
• Thunderbay 6 48TB w/ Seagate IronWolf 8TB HDD (Primary)
• Thunderbay 6 48TB w/ Seagate IronWolf 8TB HDD (Backup)
• Dell U3219Q 4k monitor
• Wacom Intuos Pro
• Razer Blackwidow Elite
• Logitech MX Master 3

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CPU

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RAM

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RAM

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www.macsales.com

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GPU

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Storage

Storage types

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• System disk / opt/Autodesk (small and fast)
• Framestore (medium and fast)
• Disaster Recovery (big and slow)
• Archiving (big and slow, 2-3 local, 1 offsite)

HDD

SSD

NVME

$

$$

$$$

What is a medium fast animal?

1-14TB

1-4TB

1-8TB

$45-$65/TB (Thunderbay)

$71-$95/TB (Pegasus)

examples

$200/TB +

capacity

speed

Promise Pegasus

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Pros

• most popular
• hardware RAID (plug into any host/dual boots)
• RAID 0/1/5/6/1+0
• it just works

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Cons

• comes with HDD drives
• Expensive
• no encryption

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OWC Thunderbay

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Pros

• ship with hdd or BYOD
• RAID 0/1/5/1+0

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Cons

• BYOD
• no encryption
• SoftRAID is slower

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NVME RAID

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Pros

• highest performance
• silent and cool
• RAID via Disk Utility supports encryption

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Cons

• Expensive
• typically only RAID 0/1

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System disks

4TB

Project files

24TB RAID 5

Framestore

8TB RAID 0

Don’t forget!

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• Bigger hard drives are not necessarily better ($/TB and Hours/TB for rebuilds)
• Prepare for RAID rebuild times (days)
• Prepare for lengthy SoftRAID Certification times (measured in days)
• You need 2 local copies and 1 offsite
• Don’t deploy without testing
• Disk failure is a when, not if!
• Archive vs. Disaster Recovery
• Budget for backup desks, ready, formatted, and certified on your shelf
• 1-5TB/mo, averaging 1TB/mo for archival

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Compression

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• Compress your Flame archives!
• Saves 40-80%
• Approx 1 hour per 100GB
• Saves bandwidth
• Saves storage
• Saves $
• Keka / 7z

Internet

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• Your local ISP options, bandwidth limits and costs (1-5TB/month)
• Measure it!
• Free software is slooooooowwwwww
• Mb/s vs MB/s
• How long it takes you to upload and download 10GB
• Latency to major markets for pcoip
• VPN basics
• Basic home networking and routing
• 5G backup?
• Your typical workflow (EXR, ProRes, 4K, etc)
• Are you sending archives?

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Transfers

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• You need a free, slow way to share small files (WeTransfer, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc)
• You need a fast, slick way to present files to clients (frame.io, Wiredrive, Digital Pigeon)
• You need a fast way to share large files with clients/vendors (WeTransfer, Masv)
• You need a fast way to back your stuff up (Wasabi, Backblaze)
• Very few services max out your bandwidth

Electric

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• 400-1000w average
• I pay $0.13 / kWh
• 360kWh / month
• $47 / month minimum
• You need battery backup
• I like these →
• Buy 3
• Dedicated circuit
• Heat

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Monitors

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• BenQ, HP, Dell, Eizo
• 4K
• Do you pcoip? Care about resolutions
• Laptop? USB 3 is nice
• Built in KVM is nice
• x2 27 or 32inch
• widescreens are popular
• Wirecutter.com reviews are helpful

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Client sessions

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• Zoom, Evercast, Skype, Google, Microsoft Teams, Jitsi Meet, Blue Jeans…
• Blackmagic Web Presenter
• Blackmagic Atem Mini
• Aja U-tap
• Mic / webcam / lights / headphones
• Be prepared to be disappointed (low stock, lotsa 720p limitations, expensive second-hand market)

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Stuff You Should Know

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• Do not install Flame until you’ve read Mike’s Backburner Guide
• Csrutil
• Turn off all OS and software auto updates
• USB...ugh
• Flame versions...just because you shouldn’t, doesn’t mean you can’t
• Learn Install/Uninstall procedures
• Have x3 recent software versions installed/images ready to go
• Teamviewer/VNC/AnyDesk

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Hugo’s Desk

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8j1rTw5XYs&t=2566s

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More

Warning by ChangHoon Baek from the Noun Project,

Cheap by Alice Design from the Noun Project

transfer by Adrien Coquet from the Noun Project

Money by DARAYANI from the Noun Project

Monitor by Flatart from the Noun Project

Macbook Pro by Paola Moreira from the Noun Project

Imac pro by Sriramteja SRT from the Noun Project

manual by Nesdon Booth from the Noun Project

perspective by Simon Martin from the Noun Project

internet by Iconsparks from the Noun Project

Mac Pro by iconfield from the Noun Project

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collision by Peter K. from the Noun Project

stock market by Magicon from the Noun Project

priorities by Phạm Thanh Lộc from the Noun Project

index by Jamie Rothwell from the Noun Project

honesty by Eucalyp from the Noun Project

hard drives by Kero from the Noun Project

Cheetah by Kieu Thi Kim Cuong from the Noun Project

about by MRK from the Noun Project

Hard Drive by Vectorstall from the Noun Project

Sloth by Georgiana Ionescu from the Noun Project

Goals by Tawny Whatmore from the Noun Project

Thank you!