What equipment and set up is absolutely necessary?

Question

Recently my department acquired a Mac, TV, DVD recorder speakers, etc. from another department, along with transfer of license to Final Cut Pro, along with a professional video camera, headphones, etc.
The department who was using it wasn't familiar with Macs and wasn't making enough use of the video equipment to make it worth their while to hold on to it. So now, while my department is totally comfortable with Macs, we know NOTHING about Final Cut Pro, video capture or editing, etc. Obviously we are going to have to take some classes or hire someone as needed just for the video capture (from real life to camera and then camera to computer).
I asked our IT department to set up the Mac for the use of Final Cut Pro. They set up the CPU and monitor, but didn't hook up any of the extra equipment like the TV, DVD player, etc. My question is--is any of that necessary if I am just going to use a camera and Final Cut Pro to capture our annual meeting, burn it to DVD, and archive it? Do I need all this extra equipment set up?

Answer 1

Okay, good. Training is very important. I still take classes and educate myself as I learn something new every job I go on.
Like I said, you need to read the manual about setting up your editing environment, it does touch upon necessary equipment. Also, there's a thread a week about this very topic.
You need a tv/monitor to externally monitor your video which will be a NTSC format. (Google terms you're not familiar with).
You need audio monitors and a mixer.
You need a comfy chair.
You NEED power protection.
You do not need an IT person messing up your rig.
You do not need residential type DVD recorders unless you want to crash record from the timeline.
You need comfortable indirect lighting.
You NEED to be aware of the technical and mechanical limitations of the video signal itself.
You need extra storage as you cannot store media on the system drive.
You should create an extra firewire bus with a firewire PCI card suitable for your computer.
You NEED to learn to resist temptation and NOT blithely download every software update there is even though Apple says you need it. You NEED to learn to do your research about these software updates BEFORE you install them.
You need an ample supply of coffee.
You need Photoshop or Gimp or some sort of image editor as soon you'll want to incorporate graphix into your productions.
You need to learn how tv works before you take any sort of Final Cut Pro training. FCP is a piece of software, it is not the video itself which can be horrible beast to work with when not treated properly.
Good luck! Personally, I'd run away as fast as possible if I were you but I've been in the live tv world for so long I have no idea what else to do so I'm trapped!
Zeb.