This week I thought i’d redesign my desk setup since I spend so much time editing and
making music here.
Now, the goal is simple - it needs to save me as much time as possible, while taking
up as little space as possible.
So let’s quickly run through the setup, and then i’ll get into how it actually saves
me time.
We start with this desk - it’s 31 by 31 inches, which is pretty small so that I can
free up space in the rest of the room - the challenge is to fit everything on it.
So, I screwed some legs onto a piece of scrap wood, which will give me some extra storage
space underneath.
I also added a little eye bolt and cable clip on the underside of the desk, we’ll use
those later.
For the computer I’m using a 2013 iMac, but obviously it’s all the same no matter
what machine you’re using.
And for speakers i’ve got these M-audios, definitely not the best but still decent.
Next we’ll add an audio interface, and a microphone that clamps onto the side of the
desk.
(all the products are listed in the description by the way)
So then i’ve got a jack cable hanging on the door, a MIDI controller for percussion,
and a keyboard which i’m leaving on the side, because my rule is it can only live
on the desk if I use it more than once a week.
Then I made this weird thing which is just a cheap spice rack, that can actually hold
two hard drives as long as we use zip ties to keep them in place.
Now remember those screws?
That’s where we can hook in the spice rack, meaning the drives don’t take up any precious
desk space.
Then we’ve got this 6big 48terabyte drive which LaCie sent me, and I use that for the
main media storage.
Next up is this pen tablet which I use for graphics, a card reader to bring in new footage,
and a USB hub for some extra ports, I’ll also sit some SD cards within reach.
Then we’ll add a keyboard, a trackball mouse, and a fire extinguisher which i’ve heard
is worth doing when there's all these electronics about.
And last of all a wireless charger for my phone.
So now we have to plug everything in.
And the quickest way to demonstrate this is with a big diagram, feel free to pause the
video if you care about this stuff, because I’m getting bored of it.
Okay, so here’s the thought behind why it’s been set up like this - it’s all about time:
I spend most of my day writing, editing or handling emails about future projects, and
I can do all of that with the set up as is - harddrives and speakers, everything’s
all plugged in and ready 24 hours a day, even the card reader which is in constant use.
But I can also just pull the mic into position so I can talk, and in a couple of clicks change
the audio output to these earbuds so that I can hear, which is good because I usually
have at least 3 Skype calls per week, Then I can grab the pen tablet and turn it
on, which happens about twice a week when I’m doing drawings or animations, so it’s
good have that really quick to access.
But there’s some stuff that doesn’t need to be so readily available - so I don’t
mind moving these out the way, to bring in the keyboard from the side, and using the
cable from the audio interface, when I want to record music, cos that only happens about
once a week.
And it's the same reason why I keep the midi controller underneath the pen tablet, because
it gets used maybe once a fortnight, when I want to record percussion.
And finally, the most time consuming change is if I want to to go and get a guitar and
cable, and then I can record electric guitar which only happens once a month, so I don't
mind that I have to actually get up and plug a lot of stuff in.
The point is, that anything I need to do everyday is set up to go, and then the less often I
use something, the more time i’m willing to spend setting it up.
It’s a case of priorities, and it means everything’s purely functional, it has a
purpose, and nothing extra, for me that’s much more important than like whether i’ve
hidden all the cables and made it all symmetrical.
Now over the past year or so, I started keeping all of my projects and files rather than deleting
the old ones, cos you never know when they might come in handy.
But of course that can eat up a lot of space.
So at the moment, I store my project files & OS on the internal drive, which backs up
to a 4TB external drive (sitting on the spice rack) and then I store all of the media on
the drive that LaCie sent me, which is in RAID 5 meaning it’s fast but if one drive
fails I can replace it without losing data.
And for now, that’s backing up to a 8TB USB drive, but obviously I will need to get
a bigger backup drive once I’ve get close to 8TBs of media.
Now it goes without saying that plenty of this is expensive stuff, and I’m really,
really not saying that everyone needs this.
Plenty of editors will be fine with say four terabytes of backed up storage, and a less
powerful computer - it really just depends on how much work you’re doing and how much
you’re earning from it.
I’ve slowly upgraded this stuff over the years, for ages I was using a really cheap
pen tablet, USB hard-drives and a crappy mini keyboard, but as I found myself using them
more often, and actually earning money from them, it eventually made sense to upgrade.
But even so, the computer and speakers are four years old, and i’ve been using that
card reader for 5 years, the table was second hand, and I literally found the chair in a
skip.
So obviously your own setup will be tailored to your own budget and your own needs, but
hopefully this might have given some ideas for how to think about prioritising the things
that you spend the most time doing.
My name’s Simon Cade, this has been DSLRguide and i’ll see you next week.