Best value in a used Mac Pro combo for heavy video editing (FCP7 + AE)?

Scouting a used system to handle heavy Final Cut Pro 7 editing and After Effects animation -- would like to stay 100% Mac, but need some advice regarding the various models of Mac Pro's, core/ghz combos, video cards, and other specs to consider. Looking for a recomendation for a base model to start with (ex. Mac Pro 4,1 quad-core 2.8 vs Mac Pro 3,1 8-core 3.2) and opinions on the minimum threshhold for RAM and preferred video cards for animation. The system I'm trying to build needs to handle more complicated animation, layers, and larger video and PNG files without lag on playback. Also, it'd be great to speed up render time.
I know there are 8, 12, 16 core systems out there that can dominate these tasks, but general impression is I don't need to go so big to get the performance I'm looking for. For this reason I'm setting a budget of $2,000 for the tower and now it's a matter of finding the best used model for the money, with room to upgrade things like video card, RAM, for optimal performance.
I am upgrading from a 2008 15" MacBookPro with dual core 2.66Ghz, 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 that is slowing to a crawl when I'm animating mulitiple elements in FCP and AE. It's what I learned FCP and Adobe on.
Thanks
Anthony

The processors are fast. And there is still lots of space on the silicon.
But the memory... it's too slow. "Why, in the times we are waiting for stuff from memory, we could practically execute another instruction stream! All we would need is a second set of registers."
So that is what they did. It is called Hyper-Threading. It lets each Xeon Nehalem and later processor (2009 and later) take on an additional thread (not quite a full additional processor's worth of compute power). It makes them benchmark quite a bit faster than the previous generation. Along with changes to memory and Bus Architecture, it is nearly twice a s fast at the same number of processor at same nominal speed.

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Using Macbook Pro to do HD video editing?

Hi all,
I recently purchased Sony's HDR-HC1 high-definition camcorder, and I found out my current computer is way too slow for HD video editing. I want to purchase a brand Mac to get the job done. I am wondering if the Macbook Pro is powerful enough? Anyone has any experience editing HD video footage on Macbook Pro?

Yes it is. I have the HC1's bigger brother the prosumer HVR-A1U and I just received my universal final cut studio yesterday and just played a little, but yes it can. I have the 17" MBP and have both played high def. H.264 quicktime movies on it and have also imported some HDV content and that too plays fine. The only problem I have is that I went with the 7200 RPM drive so that I can edit on the go with just my laptop, but between the system software, and my document from my current machine, I was down to barely any space available. What I'm gonna do now is keep my old machine and the documents on that, and so I can keep the majority of my HDD open for video editing.
-Brian

What is best mac and software for home video editing and creation

I am about to buy a mac to capture 30 years of photos, film, and video (multiple formats).
I want to then edit a series of videos to make movies to capture our family history. I know I will have a lot of conversions to make and will use a local video transfer place to do that.
I am not worried about price.
My goal is to make a series 30 of DVD's each about 1.5 hours in duration.
I have a lot of organizing, editing, publishing and storing to do. I know it will take me a long time.
I am about to purchase the mac and other things needed.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Dave

I do LOTS what you are about to do.
I think I can confidently say I have tried all software and the vast majority of video converters. Here is how I do it.
Computer: Mac Pro
Movie editor: iMovie 06, (more expensive than iMovie 11 but well worth the price) I have iMovie 11, but I would not use it for making DVDs.
DVD authoring: iDVD 09 / 11 ( iDVD has not changed in a couple of years, just make sure you're using iDVD 08 or later).
You will also need a A/D coverter. (Like the Grassvalley ADVC300)
I've played around with countless other conversion systems, ranging in price from $79 to $399. Short verison, this is the ONLY unit to own. No dropped frames at all, even with questionable quality tapes, no jitter, great color, excellent sound quality. Zero setup with iMovie 06 and iDVD 09/11.
This is a prosumer deck. The time code function is alone worth the price if you have old analog footage. Absolutely NO "Out Of Sync" audio.
ADVC300 is for anyone who wants to do editing and is concerned about quality of color and speed, for the novice it is an incredible gizmo that will restore VHS tapes to a state close to the original fixing midtones, highlights and shadows on the fly. Not only can you simply convert analog to digital you can actually manipulate the signal going in (if you want to).
A bit pricey but it WORKS.
http://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc300
The program that comes with the ADVC300 has some nice filters that can improve video and audio of the source material.
I also own an Elgato EyeTV, it's in a drawer somewhere. The ADVC300 gives much better results ESPECIALLY WITH TAPES.
iMovie 06 and iDVD 09 is 100% "lossless" combination and my DVD's look like they came from Hollywood!

I'm considering buying a macbook pro retina for doing video editing, is it worth it to upgrade to 16gb of ram? and how about upgrading the processor? its quite expensive to upgrade, if I musth chose one which is more important. I use imovie/ fcp

buy more RAM or faster cpu for video editing?

Thanks mate but it doesnt, answer the question about performance.
In terms of screen real estate, I don't care much for it as I usually work relatively close to the pixel sizes and I generally work in very dum conditions so the antiglare is something I also dont care for. If mac offered a Matt finish screen again it would be a dream lol.
Retina though sweet is really just a gimmick, stare at one screen, starred at them all, so I'm fine with the regular MBP.
And size does matter.
Back to topic

Best hard drive performance on mac pro for final cut express

This week I'll be setting up a basic 4 core mac pro with 16 gb ram and 2 internal- 2tb WD Caviar Black drives. I'm wondering what would give me the best performance for running final cut express, and I'm considering setting up software raid 0 or using one drive for boot and one for scratch. Or should I set up software raid 0 with boot and scratch partitions? Or other suggestions? Thanks.

My recommendations -
With 2 drives in your Mac Pro, use *one disk for OS X and all of your apps;* the *second disk for data* (including your FCE scratch disk location). Partition each drive as a *single partition,* which will maximize performance over time.
In addition, you should invest in at least 1 external drive to use for backup purposes; if you don't, the day will come when you wish you had.
I strongly recommend AGAINST doing software RAID. Certainly not for your situation with only 2 drives, one of which will be your system HD; but also because hardware RAID is faster, more reliable, and does not require CPU resources to run.
Your internal SATA drives will provide plenty of performance for most video editing needs. You also have the ability to put 4 drives in your Mac Pro, in which case you can utilize the extra drives to provide additional performance if/when you get into serious multi-multi track video compositing.

Upgrade a Macbook Pro, or a used Mac Pro?

I'm a visual artist expanding my media to include sound and motion, so though I'm very well versed in other software and OSX, I'm overwhelmed right now with how to discern what hardware will serve me best for Premiere/Prelude/AE editing and exports.
Specifically, the issue I'm trying to address is long export/ render times on my Macbook Pro 2012. A 15 minute project took 1.5 hours to export, for example.
Trying to determine if it's best to stick with this, and upgrade HDD to SSD and add external striped RAID, (requiring either a TB hub or esata adapter as I also power a second monitor via TB port.) And where does USB3 fit into this, knowing that it requires some CPU resources that FW and TB do not? RAM is maxed out at 16GB.
Or do I consider a used Mac Pro, and add internal drives and upgrade what else I can?
Of course a third option would be to go with a new mac pro, but at a minimum that's twice what my budget allows for now. I suppose a windows box is a possibility but OSX is so familiar that I'd like to stay with it if I can.
I'm working with Nikon D600 DSLR 1080p mov files, but of course want to allow for growth.
I'm primarily exporting to mp4 @ 1080 0r 720.
Currently adding effects such as gamma, b&c, some basic color correction, and transitions. Might include one adjustment layer.
Up to 3 audio tracks, but often just two at a time.
Still early on the learning curve,
thanks,
Lloyd
Specs:
MBP 9,1 10.9.2 16GB RAM
quad core i7
NVIDIA GT650M
HDD/1 TB 5400rpm
external media HDDs/ OWC Elite 3TB 7200rpm, usb3, fw8, es / OWC mini 5400 via es into usb3
PPCC
Prelude

lloydpdx7 wrote:
Or do I consider a used Mac Pro, and add internal drives and upgrade what else I can?
Of course a third option would be to go with a new mac pro, but at a minimum that's twice what my budget allows for now.
I've cut down your choices to these 2. Personally, I think editing, cutting, and exporting in Premiere Pro on a Macbook Pro is just an exercise in futility. Or at least: an exercise in extreme patience. It's not worth the trouble, IMHO.
New Mac Pro absolutely and without question. That assumes a budget. They're not cheap, but they work well with Pr.
Old Mac Pro as a stand-by with the fastest (clock cycles) chip or chips you can find. In this specific case, don't get caught up in the "higher core count" race; look for higher clock cycles. Upgrade the video card to an nVidia 700-series because it'll likely come with a piece-of-junk AMD. And pack those 4 drive bays with SATA drives.
I was editing with a Mac Pro 5,1, which also had 2 extra SATA plugs for the 5.25" bays (CD/DVD). I put a 2.5" SSD in the second bay, with an adapter so it'd fit. Then I put a bunch of 1TB drives in the 4 drive bays. I made 2 2TB RAID0 volumes for media and output files. The OS and apps went on the SSD. It worked fairly well, within the limits of the hardware (Westmere chips) in it.

Recently purchased used Mac Pro, where can I find year/build etc. info?

Recently purchased used Mac Pro, where can I find year/build etc. info?

EZ-under the Apple, then About this Mac, then "More info" . If you check somewhere on your mac you may find a serial number, but the first way works the best, I've found
JB

Best Mac Pro Configuration for Editing

Hey guys. I'm looking to upgrade my editing capabilities from a iMac G5 to a Mac Pro computer system. I pretty much want to go all out on this thing, as I don't look to upgrade again anytime soon. I will be working with a fresh copy of Final Cut Studio 2.
I was wondering, however, about what would be a good configuration for the hardware itself, more specifically the video cards that are available now.
Which video card would be the best for HD video editing and manipulation? I was thinking about just getting the most expensive one, but I have heard some video cards are made for one thing more than another, and I want to make sure that I get the right configuration the first time.
Again, money is not too much of an issue as this will be an expense for my business.
Any help would be appreciated.
Message was edited by: Troy Minassian

Well I'll try not to be too vague here but I think it's going to be easier for me to give you a few hints but mostly talk about where to do more research.
First: Formats -
With good ol' DV, any off-the-shelf, completely stock, Mac Pro will handle it - absolutley NO sweat. Just add 1 (or more) iternal SATA drives for capturing media, and you're off to the races. HDV...this could go either way. In theory, again, a basic Mac Pro can handle this. The format's total throughput is no more than DV. However, my thought is that using straight HDV in it's "native" format can be a real pain in the butt. Cruise over the Final Cut forum and do a search for a phrase like "HDV" & "Yuck" and you'll end up with a big long list of issues. I'll not go too far into detail, but HDV is a highly compressed format with a GOP-structure. Dealing with GOP-structured media in an NLE is not pretty.
The good news is if you're even considering something like an Io HD then the HDV issues can be conquered with it. You would use the Io HD to transcode the HDV to Apple's ProRes codec on the fly. That's what the IoHD does. It's an external capture card whose form factor makes it nice and portable. So you'd come out of your camera or deck - into the Io HD - and out via firewire to your computer. The one "trick" is: you're married to ProRes. That's the one & only codec this box does. (To the best of my knowledge, that is.) Anyway, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Just good to know going into it. Here's a review of the Io HD over at the creativecow.net. And by the way, if you've never hung out over there, note that it's a great resource for help. Tons of in-the-know pros hang out there.
As far as AVCHD, I'm personally not too familiar with it. I know that it too is not very intensive to deal with - per se. But the whole tapeless concept is still somewhat new and as such has it's share of "gotchas". For that I'd do a search over there on Apple's Final Cut forum. I know a search for AVCHD is going to turn up many many posts.
Regarding the RED. Again, it's so new it's got it share of workflow bumps to be aware of. (Personally, I love the concept of what this camera is all about. I checked it out and NAB and was really impressed with where they're going with it.) But for better info on that, I'd steer over to the Final Cut forum here and the Final Cut form over at the COW. Further, the camera has it's own forum over at the COW. And another great source of info is reduser.net. This camera is sweeping the industry. But it's changing the workflow quite a bit too.
Second: Processing -
As far as overall CPU power goes....Sure! A higher clock speed is basically going to be a faster machine. Here's some stats. But what's the cost? The 3.2 is faster than the 2.8. Is this worth $1600 to you? Only you can answer that question. For me: I just spent a month vacillating over a new machine purchase. I had originally "decided" months ago to get a new Mac Pro Eight 2.8. Then I thought I might save some loot and buy a G5. Then I thought, No! That's a dumb idea.... I could spend only about $600 more and get a refurb'ed 2.66 Quad core. Then I figured I could spend $800 more than that and end up - right back where I started - with a new 2.8 8-Core. So for me, the $1400 more, to go from a used G5 to a new 2.8 Octo, just made sense. But the point is: it's a completely personal decision. For me, that overall margin of money/performance made a lot of sense! On the other hand, did it make sense for me to spend $1600 more and get the 3.2 instead of the 2.8? Not at all! So only you are going to be able to decide if $1600 buys you enough of a performance hike.
Then, Extras -
Too, you're going to want to add as much RAM as you can afford. The other big question is storage. You've mentioned a spectrum of formats. On the one hand you've got your DV. Again a single SATA drive will be more than enough to capture to and playback from. But with ProRes HQ you're getting more demanding on the drives. For this, you'd want to now add, let's say, 3 more internal drives and stripe them together into a capture RAID. But you could even go up a few steps and get something like the CalDigit HD Pro and get multiple streams of HD playback with the security of a hardware-controlled RAID 5 scenario. So there's a couple of different ways to go here....However, if you start with very very fast, reliable drives, you're setting yourself to handle higher-end formats. Drive speed can be a killer. But if you start at the top you can basically head off any format woes for the future. (For a while....Nothing's completely future-proof in this game.)
Finally, Monitoring -
You've got to figure out how to look at/hear the media outside-of-the-computer. Meaning - you're going to need external monitoring equipment: Video and Audio. Again this will open more questions for you. But these items are key to your knowing what you're REALLY working with. So you really need a NTSC monitor, an audio mixer/control surface of some sort and some powered speakers. The Final Cut forums will be good places to research what others are using in these arenas.
Anyway, good luck with it all! You've already discovered a great resource: this forum. If I were you, I'd start to spend more time on the Final Cut forums. These types of queries will get solid answers over there. I'd recommend establishing the habit of performing a search when you've over there though. The chances of someone else, already asking the same thing that you're investigating, is quite high. Almost guaranteed. Enjoy!

HI all, i'm using Mac Pro 15" Retina. My screen goes darker and after brighter after a while? How to fix it?

HI all, i'm using Mac Pro 15" Retina. My screen goes darker and after brighter after a while? How to fix it?

System Preferences > Displays.
De-select "Automatically adjust brightness"

I have been using a Lightroom 5 including recent upgrades on my Mac Pro laptop for the past 1 year. This was purchased as an upgrade from Lightroom 4 for which I have a serial number. Today I purchased a new Macbook pro and loaded my Lightroom 5 however i

I have been using a Lightroom 5 including recent upgrades on my Mac Pro laptop for the past 1 year. This was purchased as an upgrade from Lightroom 4 for which I have a serial number. Today I purchased a new Macbook pro and loaded my Lightroom 5 however it is asking for my serial number which I have misplaced. I am unable to trace my serial number anywhere. I have even checked my adobe membership to locate my serial number but it does not seem to have any record which is strange as I have been using this software for over a year now and the previous versions since 2009. Could someone help me in my predicament.

Contavct Adobe support thru chat:
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How can I use mac pro as a server?

I want to use mac pro as a server which 4-5 people can use it at the same time.
Our computers are all macbook or iMac.
I want to share files when I edit videos and photos with my coworkers at a time.
1. Can we connect each mac to mac pro and share our files as a big memory storage?
2. And what can we do with this sharing system as a server?
3. Lastly, how can 4-5 macbooks/iMacs connect to mac pro? Airdrop or other network exists?
Thank you for reading!

The short answer is: no, they can't use the server as a compute server.
That's not quite true, but setting the server up in this way is complicated.
A single user could log on to the Server via screen sharing, assuming that was enabled for them, but only one user at a time could do this.
Many users can log on to the server simultaneously using the command line (using the Terminal and ssh) but they would not have access to any graphical applications, just UNIX command line programs.
There is also a distributed system called Xgrid that ceased to be distributed or developed since 10.7, that allows you to set up particular compute tasks on the server. However, this is not at all like running Photoshop on the server instead of the local machine.

Buying a Used Mac Pro

Hello
Looking for viewpoints on used Mac Pros. I have an opportunity to pick up a 2.66 Dual Core with 12GB's RAM, (cheaply). I realize these are older machines, nevertheless, it will be an improvement for someone with no money using older Dual Core 2.0 G5 desktops.
I came upon this ad for a machine apparently offering several types of Processors. I'm proficient, but never swapped out processors before.
"Available with two 2.66 GHz (5150) Dual-core Intel Xeon "Woodcrest" or 2.0 GHz (5130), 2.66 GHz processors or 3.0 GHz (5160) Dual-core or 3.0 GHz (X5365) Quad-core Intel Xeon "Clovertown" processors, this customized desktop enables faster computing."
I suppose what I'm asking; of the older Mac Pro models, which would be more efficient, easiet to upgrade with multiple esta ports. I'm editing a Hugh project in standard def.
No HD here ...
Thanx
Mike

Thank you Michael
Adding/modifying/improvising; I pride myself in just that. I've rebuilt several G5 Dual Cores, adding faster graphics & esata cards, and maxing ram. But I believe render times and general work-flow will be improved with a Mac Pro and FCP7, (an improvement over FCP6). No not need to go above Lyon. No money here, but a HUGH investment in a standard def. documentary.
No sense investing in $600-800 for a Mac Mini or iMac trying to access multiple drives. The G5 is a longer lasting workhorse.
I've investigated RAID; it won't help in my case. Not with #8 2TB drives maxed with archival footage, and media. RAID means having to reformat all over again. No thank you Nor do I trust a 'bridged' enclosure. Just a 'straight up' esata connection. Been burned before loosing data thru bridges.
I'll try to find a 2008 or later Mac Pro, (no funding), and yes, thanks for sharing favorable comments/configurations about your 2.66 Dual Core. I've read about sneaking that esata cable thru the housing. Will I be able to access all drives thru both a 2 port cable extension as as well as a PCI card with 4 additional esata ports?
Thank youhttp://www.ww2survivorstories.com/previews.html

I'm using mac pro 3,1. can I update processor and ram as sam as mac pro 5,1?

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$2100 for Special 5,1 2.8
pull the 2.8 and slap in a 6-core 3.33 W3680
Wait and save, you will wish you had when Ivy Bridge has PCIe 3.0 and everything
Read what IDF and Intel are showing for 2012
There isn't as huge a jump in 5,1 as I think you assume.
Get some SSDs, RAM, PCIe 6G card
And you should look into 5770 or better which you can take full advantage of.

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404 means the page you are looking for doesn't exist, if you are using a bookmark
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otherwise:
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you should get something like this:

How do I preserve the embedded hyperlinks when printing to .pdf?   I am using Acrobat Pro XI for Mac, and when I export to .pdf the existing hyperlinks lose functionality.   I assume it's just the flick of the right button – I just need help finding that

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I am using Acrobat Pro XI for Mac, and when I export to .pdf the existing hyperlinks lose functionality.   I assume it’s just the flick of the right button – I just need help finding that button.
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Best value in a used Mac Pro combo for heavy video editing (FCP7 + AE)?

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