Exactly 20 years after the first Apple Macintosh computer was sold as a consumer product, a post-production facility has been set up in London based purely on Apple G5s, writes John Oates.
Exactly 20 years after the first Apple Macintosh computer was sold as a consumer product, a post-production facility has been set up in London based purely on Apple G5s, writes John Oates.

Barracuda Media in Portland Mews, Soho will offer online and offline editing plus training services and base its services on Final Cut Pro editing, Shake compositing and Apple hardware. According to the founders, the decision to use Apple kit to halve the cost of establishing the post facility.

Barracuda facilities director Mark Keller, who wouldn't reveal exact costings, said: "There's an advantage in starting from scratch and because all the systems are identical we've got back-up and redundancy."

All edit suites and training desks use G5 Macs and flat screens. The facility can store 7.5 terabytes of data on three Apple Xserve Raid drive arrays. It will offer three fully kitted out edit suites and one support suite available for hire with or without editors. The facility will employ five full-time staff.

The company will also offer training courses in DVD Studio Pro 2, Final Cut Pro 4 and Shake3, and a training suite will have seven workstations. Keller has been stress-testing the systems ahead of an open day on 29 January.

Although figures were not revealed, Broadcast estimates that a fully kitted out edit suite based on Final Cut Pro complete with a G5, software licence and multiformat player would cost over £10,000. An Apple Xserve Raid drive array with 3.5 TB of capacity costs in the region of $11,000 (£6,000).

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