HDV on a Mac Pro

Just finished my first HDV job - what a mission!
In fact the final result is a standard DVD but the client was unsure of what shots they wanted so I suggested we shoot HDV with a wide frame so they could pan & zoom a little in post. It was all done on site with a rented Mac Pro, which by accident only had 1GB of RAM, we shot with a HVR-Z1P.
Captured to ProRes422, a mission in itself as the machine crashed 4 times and lost the captures each time - 2hrs of footage took 6 hours to get in - everything took forever, renders were painful and QT exports took 8 to 10x the exporting clip's length. It felt like I was trying to edit a DV job on a clamshell ibook, it was so unworkable I ended up doing a hack encode of all the captured source to DV, did the job, then re-did the job by timecodes in the HD timeline, then to export this 1hr timeline was going to take 20 odd hours to create a reference movie, I cancelled that & used Compressor straight off the timeline for the M2V - this took over 8 hours.
Is this normal for HDV on a MacPro - or was I subject to a serious RAM issue?
I will probably know this answer in a couple days when I get back to the studio and try the project on a machine with more RAM.
Is the idea not to try HD editing on a bare machine, should I have hired an AJA box or something?
Cheers for any insights.
H.

Your settings look fine except for the Render Codec under the Render Control's tab, that should just be set to Sequence codec ... given your sequence is already ProRes422 then there is no need to specify the Render codec as such.
It seems either there is a spanner in the works somewhere or it's simply the processing of the renders that are bogging down your machine. Given the situaltion, I would suggest a few suck and see qualitative tests to see if "Best" of everything settings-wise is overkill, and whether some more processor friendly settings might work better and yet still yeild satisfactory results.
Here's what I'd do:
Under the Video Processing tab, choose "Render in 8 bit YUV", and change Motion Filtering Quality to "Fastest"
Select a small but representative section of the timeline and run some speed and quality tests to see how these new settings affect the rendering speed and quality of the output. You may discover an acceptable compromise.
Hope that helps some
Andy

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IMac or Mac Pro for iPhoto albums and home movie editing?

I have a Mac Pro OS X 10.6.8 with iPhoto 7.1.5. This system is now obsolete for ordering iPhoto albums. I need to upgrade to iPhoto 9.5.1 to buy a Mac produced photo album. To upgrade iPhoto I need to buy a new Mac as my 2004 Mac Pro with 2008 Snow Leopard can't be upgraded. I will use the new Mac for email, web surfing, iPhoto, and weekend video editing. I use Final Cut Express on my current Mac Pro. I will also need to transfer videos and about 20,000 photos from my current Mac to a new one.
So, here's the question: For my needs (listed above) which is better,
(1) iMac 27" or (2) new Mac Pro? Then, with the one chosen, how should it be configured to do my basic video editing? I have 100 hours of family video on Hi8 and VCR tapes and will edit these on Final Cut and burn them to DVD's. (I understand both iMac or Mac Pro now require an external DVD set-up.) So, which computer and how should it be configured. Looking to pay between $2500-$3500. Thanks for your help!

What video formats are you talking about? DV, HDV, etc?
Mac Pro is a better solution, regardless. Here's why: Simply upgrading an iMac HD is not enough. You do not want to capture your video to the boot drive. It's too much to ask the drive to manage the OS, your editing software, AND your media. This scenario might work - but is certainly prone to dropping frames. Ideally, you want one drive for OS + editing software & a separate drive to capture media to.
Now, since you can only have a single HD in the iMac, you're demoted to using external capture drives. So let's say you get yourself a FW800 drive for capture and then hook up your camera/deck to an available FW400 port. You'd think you're safe - and again, you may be. But the problem now is that the iMac has ONE and only ONE FireWire bus. So in theory these 2 devices: HD & Camera are battling for the same bandwidth. So you've still got a bottleneck happening.
So DV only would probably work. But it may have issues that the expandability of the Mac Pro can conquer. Hope this helps.

My 2008 Mac Pro running Lion will not play HDV1080i60 footage in FCP 7. When I open the sequence settings, all HDV codecs are hdv1, hdv2, hdv3, and so forth. Anyone have any idea how to fix this?

My 2006 - 2008 Mac Pro running Lion will not play HDV 1080i60 footage in FCP 7. When I open the sequence settings, all HDV codecs are hdv1, hdv2, hdv3, and so forth. However, when I open the project on my other Mac Pro running Snow Leopard and FCP 6, the footage works fine as it does on my newer Imac running Mavericks and FCP 7. I have tried a Quicktime update on the Mac Pro that the footage doesn't work on but it says that I already have the newest version of Quicktime installed. I have also tried reinstalling the Final Cut Pro Studio twice, still no fix. I'm completely out of solutions and need to be able to edit HDV footage on this machine. Any help would be great. Thanks.

there was a recent software update that seemed to screw HDV up. Do some searching here over the last month or 2 and you'll find a bunch of posts and some possible solutions.
Worst case scenario, do as Shane suggests. But might I suggest you take a look at the user tips section of the forum. there are some great tips on how to prevent these sorts of problems by cloning your startup drive, etc.

Mac Pro, FCP and HDV, I look for info about RT.

Hi, dor HD editing I now use Canopus Edius 4 and Edius NX card with satisfaction but now I'd like to try with Mac and Final Cut Pro. With Edius I work in real time, can you tell me if I will use Mac Pro, Ram 4Giga, FCP if have I do rendering often? I'm sorry my inexperience but I like to understand. I like to know if for normal editing (I make documentaries only) I will works fine.
Thanks a lot
Intel Windows XP

It won't have as much RT playback of unrendered effects as DV would, but for documentary work, I'd think you'll be happy with it.
Jerry

New Mac Pro 2.66 Ghz Nehalem Quad and FCP and Compressor

When something goes well for a change it deserves its rightful place in the posts of this discussion forum. I just completed my hook-up and an initial test on my new Nehalem quad Mac Pro, and I must say that once in a while things do work out.
1. The noise level is non-existant. I literally had to check to make sure that the unit was on. This in comparision to my G5 which sounds like the SST on take off. I might now actually hear the audio on my video monitor.
2. The speed is INCREDIBLE! Prior to shutdown, I ran a test by sending an hour's worth of mixed XDCAM EX/HDV footage to Compressor on my G5. At the highest quality 2 hour setting for DVD encoding (double pass) it took the G5 12.5 hours to encode. Running the same clip through the same version of Compressor in the Mac Pro took approximately 45 minutes. This roughly translates into a 16.5X increase in speed over my dual 2.5 Ghz processor G5. I'M SOLD! And for now, the Honeymoon continues.
The only drawback (besides the price) is that I had to buy a $100 adapter/power supply to enable my old 25" Cinema screen run on the new video card.
Thanks
fastfreddy

Mac Pro 1,1 (all Mac Pro models come with Xeon).
What matters is cleaning the X1900 of dust and from clogging intake and exhaust - every three months.
Run Apple Hardware Test from your OEM DVD.
Install SmcFanControl 2.x and keep the fans rpm to 800-900 instead of 499-599 base as minimum at least.
Monitor temperatures with Hardware Monitor or similar.
Have you been looking to see in System Profile: Memory if there are any errors?
Normally, clone backup update weekly and running Disk Warrior at the same time should be done to spot disk directory and file system problems before they get worse. Or any time your system freezes.
Freeze... and what you have 90% of the time is a corrupt directory and other errors.
At which time you may need to restore if you can't fix the problem. And don't rely on only Apple DU First Aid to find and repairs any and all errors.
For Snow Leopard maybe a flashed ATI 4870 to replace the X1900.
You may need to start over from scratch to get things stable once you find what is happening, and work with a test system until then with some trial and error. Format/initialize and clean install of 10.6.x for the OEM 10.4.7+.
At nearly 4 yrs now since it came out, not sure if you have plans for a new one.

Mac Pro for Final Cut Studio -- The Buying Guide

I am starting to think about upgrading my "old" Power Mac G5 Quad system to a Mac Pro system. As you might expect, this raises several issues.
What I do: I edit DV and HDV on FCS2. My specs are below. I am looking for the best speed (especially for rendering), stability and video quality I can afford (between $5,000 and $6,000).
Question 1: Is it true that Snow Leopard and FCP 7 are about a year away? If so, please assume for the following questions that I would be working with the full complement of FCS2 applications on the Leopard OS. (How worth waiting for do you think these are?)
Question 2: Without directing me to the various benchmark and testing sites (which I’ve already looked at), can you suggest the actual performance differences I would see (again, using the whole range of FCS2 apps) in the following:
Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors
Two 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors
Question 3: I have heard that (with the exception of Compressor) FCS can only use a maximum of 4GB of RAM, and that the 6GB that the Mac Pro ships with are already more than it can use. Is this true? Is it true that Snow Leopard would allow FCS to make greater use of more RAM? And would this show up in the programs’ performance?
Question 4: To get the best video performance with my various FCS2 applications, is there a significant quality improvement in moving up from the NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB to one of the other video cards? How would I notice a difference in the quality?
Question 5: Are there any other purchasing considerations I should think about when configuring a new Mac Pro?
Thanks a lot.
Giraut

Well, well, well, you make me think more about my last upgrade of an ATI Radeon 2600 to the latest ATI Radeon HD 4870!
I was looking on the Final Cut Pro thread to find one answer and look what I found, your questions!
Since yesterday night I was seeking the Apple Support threads just for fun and I now have doubts.
I am a Mac Pro (earlier 2008) owner. I upgraded it to 4 x 1.5 Tb Seagate hard drives and 10G of RAM from OWC (Other Word Computing). First let me tell you NOT to buy from Apple Store for your hard drive and/or memory upgrade. They are totally out of price list. I got my Mac Pro first with one 500 Gb Seagate drive. Then I added 2 x 500 Gb hard drives from Apple. I payed them 199,00 $ each
Last September, I upgraded the drive bays with 4 x 1.5 Tb from OWC. I paid them 229.00 $ each!
199,00 $ for 500 Gb or 229,00 $ for 1.5 Tb (that"s 3 times 500 Gb) which one would you take? And we are talking about two models from Seagate running at 7200 RPM, with 32 Mb of buffer.
I mean... What is that?!!?
And the memory! Don't even think about it.
I got first 4GB Matched Set (2 x 2GB) for 147,99 $ in September from OWC and my second order was 4GB Matched Set (2 x 2GB) for 132,79 $ in October.
I payed a total of 280,78 $ for 8GB of RAM while the price for this upgrade on Apple Store woul have cost me 1998,00 $
*+Source Apple Store :+*
*+Apple Memory Module 4GB 800MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM ECC 2x2GB $999.00+*
Multiply that by 2!
Now how much memory would you need?
I am not a Final Cut Pro user, but I use Final Cut Express a lot, with animation QuickTime movies exported from my Astronomy software Starry Night Pro Plus.
Yesterday I posted this into a thread to answer a user :
+Every morning I have my preferred applications started: Mail, Safari, iTune, Aperture and Final Cut Express. I just did a test for you. I started Mail, Safari, Aperture, Final Cut Express, Starry Night Pro Plus (OpenGL Astronomy Software), Terminal, Quicktime, TextEdit and NeoOffice.+
+With all these apps running, I still have 6.48G of Free RAM out from the 10G installed!+
+It's when I start hungry applications like VMWare Fusion running Windows XP, or Quicktime with a lot of movies opened that I could see the memory level going low!+
+Your bottle neck in video editing will probably be the video card, after the disk speed. Be sure to use 7200 RPM disk and eSATA for your video plans if possible. Firewire 800 will works fine on external drive but it could giggle. I had an ATI Radeon HD 2600 that I recently upgraded to an ATI Radeon HD 4870. the drivers aren't ready yet from Apple. We are all waiting for the next OS X release 10.5.7 for the drivers! For now, I am running on Beta drivers.+
+It's hard to say by now if I have better performance into Final Cut Express because the movie I was working on was an animation movie using plans exported from Starry Night Pro Plus via Quicktime and "animation" codec without any compression. As soon as I make a modification, I still have to render the output for smooth playing.+
Now, after some test with Starry Night Pro Plus this morning, I can safety say that Starry Night Pro Plus with Open GL does use my video card extra speed and that my experience navigating into the Universe is much better and smooth.
But honestly, even if I have to admit that I am using the Beta drivers for the HD 4870, I must say that I have very big doubt that Final Cut Express does use the extra power of the HD 4870 compare to the HD 2600!
In fact, I am searching the support thread for this answer.
Does anyone can say if Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro does make use of the extra hardware feature of the ATI Radeon HD 4870 or not?

Any need to partition hard drives for FCS or CS4 on my new Mac Pro?

This is my first post here but have learned a lot recently just by visiting various threads. I'm new to Mac and Final Cut Studio so I have a few questions about setting up the system and hard drives. I've read about partitions on hard drives on various sites but I wonder if that is outdated advice at this point. I will be learning FCS and CS4 by working on various SD DV and HDV/AVCHD projects so I want my system flexible but as high performance as I can muster. I will be working mostly in FCP and AfterEffects for a while and do intend to burn blu-ray discs eventually.
My system is a current Mac Pro quad core with 8gb RAM with current versions of final cut and adobe suites. I will do a clean install with snow leopard. I have a 640gb main drive and I've purchased three 1tb Western Digital black internal drives. I am wondering if I need to partition my main drive because I may want to also run a windows OS eventually for blu-ray playback. The other 3 drives are intended for project files, media/capture and back-up respectively. I don't have the budget for a RAID at the moment. So my questions for this thread are:
1. Do I need to partition the main drive now or should I wait until I need to do so with boot camp/windows installation later?
2. If I should partition main drive now, how much should I dedicate for the second partition on the OS drive for eventual windows 7/blu-ray playback?
3. Should I partition any of the three additional drives?
4. If I should partition any of those additional drives, how many partitions should I make and what sizes should the partitions be for each drive?
5. Is my plan for my four drives a sound one for my purposes? (os, projects, media, backup)
Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi, and welcome.
1. Don't partition your system drive until you need to. If you choose to run Windows via Bootcamp, you'll have to, in which case, 150GB will be plenty if all you want to do is playback (may even be overkill). However, you can probably do just as well running Windows under Parallels or VMWare, whch would be my recommendation. Performance is very good, and the ease of moving from OSX to Win makes them very convenient. Parallels (which I know better) automatically resizes the amount of space it needs to meet your usage. You can also run your Parallels virtual machine from somewhere other than your system disk. I imagine VMWare provides similar features. Both are well thought of.
2. Your disk use plan is OK, with one caveat - if what you're working on is critical to you, you should also have an external backup. With backup on an internal drive, there's a (very small, but definite) risk that, if the Mac Pro hit a disaster, your backup would be lost. I'd suggest an external Firewire 800 or eSATA enclosure and, either another drive, or just use one of the WDs there instead of internally.
3. Don't partition the other disks either. Just make sure they're formatted MAC OS Journaled (do this via Disk Utility). Another benefit of Parallels/VMWare is they allow Windows to read/write Mac formatted disks.
Hope that helps

FCP Uncompressed Editing on a new Mac Pro

Hello everybody,
I too am about to empty my wallet into Apple's bank account.
I am upgrading my editing capacity and have the following wish list in order to edit compressed and uncompressed 8 or 10 bit high definition video shot with HDV and DVCPro HD camcorders:
Mac Pro - 2x 2.66GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon Processors
2 GB RAM
ATI Radeon X1900 XT graphics card
1 x 250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA (as boot drive)
3 x 500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s (as striped footage drives)
Apple Cinema Display (20" flat panel - as main FCP screen)
Apple Cinema HD Display (23" flat panel - as HD monitor)
I already own Final Cut Studio and run FCP 5.1.1
My questions are:
1. Is the above hard drive set up fast enough for 8 and/or 10 bit uncompressed HD/HDV editing?
2. Will I need any extra hardware - besides the graphics card - in order to see every single pixel of 1920 x 1080 footage?
I know others on the Apple Discussions forums have asked similar questions but I am still not certain which set up is best for me.
Thanks in advance.
P.S. Dear Mr Jobs. Thanks in advance for allowing PAL users of FCP to edit 720 footage from Panasonic's HVX-200 camcorder.
Charlie
G4 PowerBook, 1.67GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6) Long-time FCP user
G4 PowerBook, 1.67GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6) Long-time FCP user

I have just found out that my plans for a Mac Pro with 4 internal drives (one as boot drive, the other three striped as footage RAID) will NOT be fast enough to edit uncompressed HD material.
I have just read this on the Black Magic Design website:
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test reported about 170 MB/sec which was easily fast enough for HD uncompressed 10 bit. However this three-disk internal solution is more suited to people needing simple capture and playback of HD, such as designers and effects artists. They just want simple clip capture and playback and the built-in three-disk array is a great solution for them. There are also newer 750 GB disks, which are faster, and so performance could increase further.
For editors who have hundreds of cuts and/or effects in their projects, we would strongly recommend an external disk array with multiple disks.
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=60#intel_tiger
An external RAID system will have to be the way forward for me for now. Thanks to you all for trying to answer my questions.
Charlie.

CS4 Premiere locking up royally on little mts files on Mac Pro Lion 10.7, is CS5.5 any better

Sorry for long title, got the boxes mixed up.
Having trouble working with HDV mts files in CS4 Premiere on a new 12 core MAC Pro with Lion 10.7 OS
Have used Adode CS3 and now CS6 at my office regularly. CS6 can work with about any file type.
Found this ClipWrap program on online and have re-wrapped these mts files into .mov files. They do open and must be each rendered out and do so slowly. Scrubbing the video doesn't do well - locks it up.
Very certain I have plenty of Computer power, is CS4 a dog? It will open CS6 projects that I bring home from work and do basic cutting on with M2T files and MPEG2 HD video.
I also do not see near as many Transition and Effects options for Audio or Video in CS4 as I had back with the old CS3 when I use it - very puzzling.
Would CS5.5 give me more optimal performance with this MAC? Do I need a third party card? We now run full HD on CS6 at work without using the Blackmagic card I have. Should uninstall and re-install the software? I am a video editor, just doesn't seem to perform like it should.
I am considering looking into the Final Cut X after this. Thoughts on this subject welcome.
Thank you.

Anything??

Final Cut Pro laggs my mac pro???

Hey guys wats up...Well im new to Mac/Video I have a Mac Pro and using a Canon XH-G1 and I just got final cut studio 2 last week just getting use to it... Im an absolute newb to all of this. Im just wondering, when i shot my HD footage and was editing i noticed a little lag and got the "lost frames" message every 5sec of video when i would try to play it back? Now it bothered my but I moved on...but now..I sent my project over to color...Fixed it how i wanted it/ rendered/ and sent it back to final cut studio and when I play it...It'll play about 2 to 3 seconds of video then it lags and all i can hear is sound and see the spinning beach ball of death...
I never thought i would see it with my Mac pro? Please help....

OffRoadMacPro wrote:
Cool Thanks...how about that IDK what its called but whatever I need to transfer it to the computer without being compressed with fire wire...u know for the HD/SD SDI out thing....That would also help out alot right?
1. Firewire doesn't compress anything. It is a simple data transfer. The only way that you could get your HDV footage out of your camera without it being compressed is to capture it live out of the HD-SDI port using a Kona or Blackmagic card. Once your footage goes to tape it is compressed, firewire does not increase or decrease that compression.
2. Welcome to the forums. Hang around, learn a lot and contribute. However, lose the "text message" (IDK) language. Folks here shouldn't ahve to go to wikipedia to figure out what you are saying.
K

I don't have clean ideas about Mac Pro and FCP in RT

Hi, I hope you can clarify my ideas about editing in RT.
I will purchase a HDV camera and I'd like to work in RT with FCP and Mac Pro.
Many people tell me I don't need any additional card and even I don't need RAID. Can you tell me if I can work in RT with FCP, Mac Pro and 4GIGs RAM only?
thanks

When I have to export the film from Timeline will I have to do rendering?
RT editing in FCP, for the most part simply means that there are certain things you can see happen in the timeline without rendering... a certain number of simultaneous streams or tracks, certain transitions/effects/titles etc.
How much you can do RT is determined by a number of factors... the speed/power of your computer and drives, the video format your cutting... you'll get less cutting HD than you will cutting HDV or DV25. With the type of timeline you're describing you shouldn't have any trouble seeing what you're cutting RT.
However, regardless of how much you see RT, any effects, transitions etc. have to be rendered in order to output or export. In other words, even with DV footage, unless you've got a straight cut timeline with no titles or effects, you're always looking at at least some render time to get things finished. And as David has said, HDV also requires conforming (the whole timeline, not just effects) which, depending on the length of your show can take some time.
rh

Planning on editing two 1080p Cams on Mac Pro

I've decided I want to invest in a Mac Pro to edit HD for a short film. I don't have much money to spend and am wondering if a Mac Pro (1 X 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon) would be able to handle two camcorders with 1080p24 through firewire with 8GB RAM(I'm planning on shooting with Canon HV30's).
Should I upgrade to the 2 X 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon at 8GB RAM just to be safe? Is two 1080p signals too much for the 1 X 2.8GHz Quad-Core? What do you think? Am I being too optimistic thinking this system or any Mac Pro could handle two 1080p signals for multicam editing on FCP6?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

It's only hdv- not a problem.

About to purchase new Mac Pro - Need Advice

I am about to purchase a new mac pro and have some questions
I am planning to use final cut pro as well as Edius on Boot Camp.
I intend to edit footage in HDV from a sony Z1 and also from the new sony - pmw -ex3 which i will be planning to edit in HD and 24p.
1) the default config for the mac pro is dual 2.8.ghz processors, what advantage gain will i get i upgrade to 3.0 or 3.2, is the extra power worth the money? will this give me more real-time editing
How many layers of HD 1920 x 1080 from the sony pmw-ex3, will i be able to edit in FCP 6.0 without any problems? would you advise more ram
2) i prefer to work from RAID 5 drives and keep system drive separate, this is how i have worked on in PC/Windows environment. Can anyone confirm if i can have one JBOD drive for the system and 3 drives configured as a RAID 5 drive?
Will i be able to use a boot to run windows and also be able to use the RAID 5 drive on windows side?
3) Is anyone using the 3ware RAID 5 side car? what is experienece is this compatible on the windows partition from boot camp
4) How will i be able to preview HD footage?
5) Do i need to invest in a better Graphics
Thanks in advance

Hi,
Here are a few answers.
1. The Mac Pro 2.8 GHz model performs so well that it is difficult to justify paying 28% more for 7% of additional processor power in the case of the Mac Pro 3.0 GHz or 56% more for 14% additional processor power with the Mac Pro 3.2 GHz model. You might see a small 5-10% increase in performance when compressing video with the 3.2GHz model but it certainly would not be worth paying 50% more to me. In addition, Amazon has the 2.8 on sale for $2599 after an easy rebate:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000VR4F2Q/arizomacinusergr
That is a $200 savings off the retail price.
2. If you want to use boot camp I would NOT recommend the Apple RAID card. Boot camp does not work with this card which leaves you wondering why you bought the card and how to get around this HUGE limitation. Instead, I would recommend the Areca ARC-1221x, HighPoint RR 3522 or the ARC-1680x if you want a SAS card. All of these cards have new firmware available that provide awesome performance and boot capability with the Mac Pro 2008. I would also get a SeriTek/2eEN4 4-bay and 1TB Samsung HDs. This gives a solid, quiet 4-bay enclosure that can support RAID 5 with any of the cards and you can add a second enclosure later if you want to use all eight external ports with RAID 6 (for added redundancy and increased volume size). This leaves the internal bays available for Boot Camp, Mac OS X, backups or mirrors and provides RAID 5/6 capability that can be configured to perform almost twice as fast as the Apple RAID card and provide double the redundancy with RAID 6. Links with more information are found here:
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata2een4.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152102
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/3522/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/areca/1221x/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/areca/1680x/
3. The 3Ware RAID 5 card is not a top pick in the Macintosh market. The options outlined above will provide much better performance and RAID 6 capabilities.
4. You can view the the HD footage on the monitor.
5. You may want a better graphics card but I would try the stock card first. I was surprised how well the ATI radeon HD 2600 XT card performs with Apple applications.
Have fun!

3 GHz Mac pro vs 2.66 base configuration---your recommendations please

Hello: I'm going to upgrade soon to the Mac Pro and I wish to know whether there is sufficient performance improvement when using the 3 gig machine to run Final Cut Studio that would justify the $800 price difference over the 2.66 GHz machine? Is the application optimized to really utilize the quad processor array in the first place? If you were making the purchase decision, which would you choose? if your answer is no, what other apps would change the answer to "yes"? Thanks for whatever insight you can offer.
Richard

seth22007 wrote:
Hello: I'm going to upgrade soon to the Mac Pro and I wish to know whether there is sufficient performance improvement when using the 3 gig machine to run Final Cut Studio that would justify the $800 price difference over the 2.66 GHz machine?
If the decision is between the 2.66 and 3.0 quads - and the 8-core is not even an option - I'd actually argue that most folks would be better suited to the 2.66 Ghz model. As mentioned by others, use the $800 to buy RAM from a 3rd party (at least 4 GB) and some internal or external storage.
As of now - with Tiger, at least, - FCP does not make use of all 4 cores (when rendering or exporting) but Compressor 3 does (it can make full use of an 8-core box, in fact). So, if your plan is to, at some point in the future (if you aren't already), move into HD production, Compressor's ability to speed along might justify the $800 upgrade. The idea being that, in most HD post-production worflows, there is a awful lot of transcoding going on (SD -> HD, HDV -> DVCProHD, XDCAM -> ProRes422, etc).
My personally philosophy is to buy the baddest box I can afford, mainly because I tend to keep them for a while (had my previous G4 for 4+ years) and, at the rate that our apps are becoming hardware dependent, I might be forced to upgrade earlier than I'd like (if I was a bit more frugal at purchase time). Either that or be stuck with out-of-date tools (and that so ain't my style).
And, yeah, get the x1900 graphics card...

Editing hdv on new mac mini?

hi, i want to buy the new 599$ mac mini but first,would anyone know if it can indeed edit hdv? im thinking of buying it with final cut pro/studio. (not long movies, just less then 10 minute hdv clips)
im very new to the mac world. im use to windows pcs, but im hoping to pick up my first mac soon. as a hs student, i can't afford the current or older mac pros, but i can afford the new mac mini at 599 (i could afford the upgraded one, but im going to save that part for maxing out the memory and some software).

Hi,
The Mac Mini and any other Mac that has a Shared Video Card are not qualified to run and will not run Final Cut Pro. One of the requirements for final Cut is to have a non-shared Video Card. Check the Specs, a Mac Mini, a couple of the laptops and the lower end iMacs have shared video cards and are not capable of running Final Cut Pro.
However, Final Cut Express is designed to run on these machines and will edit HDV, but you will have to check into the limits of Final Cut Express to see if this is an Editing environment you would like to use. the Editing interface is basically the same, but some of the more involved aspects have been disabled. Primarily, the ability to use any type of capture card, like a Kona or Black Magic card. But if you are truly only going to Edit HDV footage, FC Express might be a good option.
Hope that helps.
Kalagan

HDV on a Mac Pro

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