Trying to build the best system for Final Cut

IWhat screen would be best suitable to work on Final Cut Pro? 1 screen or 2? 24 or 30 inch? I'm using MacPro (SAS DRIVES).Primarily I am a musician, and my end product is for music and video clip, mostly 3d and abstract art in motion. I'd be collaborating with other artists(visual) from different corners of the planet. The end product has to be HD blu-ray .I know Apple does is not geared for Blu-Ray yet, but there are ways around it. Is there a preference to the Nividea or radeon graphic card? I was told, to my surprise, that the Radeon has a better performance benchmark.
Hence , my questions are the following,
1-What kind of screen is best to use? I'm looking @ Samsung XL30,or XL 24.Or even an Eizo, however, unless it is absolutely necessary I do not want to squander my money away, I'll get an Apple screen if that would guarantee as good a result. Apple has not updated screens for quite a while, I'm sure something is coming down the line. However, time is money!!!
2- Which will be the bets graphic card to use for HD end product?
3-How much memory is needed? I'm looking @ 8GB
4- is 2.8 duo adequate or shall we go for the 3.2GHZ?
Thank you for your kind patience and precious time.

Two monitors...and go with the Dell 2408. 24", blow the Apple monitors away, and can be had for under $700.
Graphics cards help Motion and some rendering for FCP plugins. They don't output HD. For that you need a CAPTURE CARD. AJA is the best, but Decklink isn't anything to sneeze at. All depends on what your needs are. www.aja.com, www.decklink.com
2.8Ghz is adequate...more than adequate. For FCP only, 4GB of RAM is all you need. More RAM will help with running mulitple applications, and other apps like After Effects love RAM. But 4GB is a good minimum.
Shane

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What is the best workflow for Final Cut Pro X across multiple computers?

I travel on a team that is in a different location every week, so all of our video editing has to be fairly moble. We have 3 macbook pros and would like to use final cut X on all of them. What would be the best workflow for us all to work on the same project and sync it across the computers? (eg, one of us editing the footage, one editing the sound, one working on visual effects?)

My first question would be how well 5.1 would work with SL. People have reported problems.
As far as cameras are concerned, I would guess most any tape-based camera would work and so much depends on the kind of projects you work on that I wouldn't want to start guessing at your needs.
If you want broad access to tapeless and advanced formats try to locate and purchase an upgrade disk to 6 or 7.
Good luck.
Russ

Trying to find the app preference for Final Cut Pro 7

Upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mavericks
running Final Cut ver7.03
Black Magic Design Intensity Pro card in PCIe
26 gigs RAM
Normally if I had an issue in Snow Leopard, I could TRASH the FCPplist and re instate my preferences from the start.
Im having some home made issues due to poor file keeping, changed a few project files destinations and the like and now wanted to trash the
FINAL CUT PREF plist file but its NOT in the Preference file. WHat did Mavericks do with the preference files??? I noticed that Mavericks did away with
the usual System Library and User Library now only having ONE Library folder with preferences. I searched ProApps and did not find a FCPplist only a
RegFinalCut Plist is this the one I want????
ANy help appreciated!!
SHould I go back and buy Mountain Lion and revert my entire system back???
HELP!
Lou

Download Preference Manager from Digital Rebellion (free):
http://www.digitalrebellion.com/prefman/
and it will do it all for you. Your FCP preference will be restored to default the next time you launch FCP.
MtD

Is the 24 inch Apple Cinema Display the best choice for Final Cut Studio 2

I'm about to order a Mac Pro and Final Cut Studio 2 and have a question about monitor choices.
Is the 24 inch Apple Cinema Display the best choice are there non-Apple monitors that will do as good or better job with HD editing and output?

COMPUTER MONITORS bear very little on HD editing and output...especially output. They are just the monitors you use to look at your clips and your timeline. THey work for SD and HD. You really only use them to, well, as I said, see what you are doing. It would be nice to have GOOD ONES so the image looks decent. I use the Dell 24" monitors. The current one is the 2408. Nearly half the price of the Apple 23" displays...and really, the only Apple 23" that exists connects via their new connector, so you need a new MacPro or MacBook pro...or some adapter, to get it to work. And they are not worth the extra money, in my experience.
Samsung monitors are also good.
Shane

What is the best camcorder for final cut pro 5.1.4

yes i know it is an older program i am having problems uploading video from certain cameras to final cut pro. i was told it was a software problem with certain cameras and i cannot find any cameras that have firewire anymore that are not really expensive. just need some ideas guys thanks

My first question would be how well 5.1 would work with SL. People have reported problems.
As far as cameras are concerned, I would guess most any tape-based camera would work and so much depends on the kind of projects you work on that I wouldn't want to start guessing at your needs.
If you want broad access to tapeless and advanced formats try to locate and purchase an upgrade disk to 6 or 7.
Good luck.
Russ

While downloading the free trial for Final Cut Pro X my internet has dropped out many times. It does however seem to continue ok each time it reconnects. Will this affect the software when it finishes? Is this a problem? Any advice please?

While downloading the free trial for Final Cut Pro X my internet has dropped out many times. It does however seem to continue ok each time it reconnects. Will this affect the software when it finishes? Is this a problem? Any advice please?

This has happened to me with a few downloads without any upsets.
You should be OK.
As I recall the download is around 1.2 gig so it takes a bit of time and effort to get it to your system.
Al

I shot video on a Panasonic P2 and I'm trying to import the MXF files to Final Cut Pro but when I try to import, the only thing that imports is a blurry image of each clip. There's no audio and no video...how can I import MXF files into Final Cut Pro?

I shot video on a Panasonic P2 and I'm trying to import the MXF files to Final Cut Pro but when I try to import, the only thing that imports is a blurry image of each clip. There's no audio and no video...how can I import MXF files into Final Cut Pro?

at the end, you say "import preferences", which program are you describing?
So im safer using footage that is remotely being pulled from iphoto...
vs
using footage that is imported into FCP from imovie?
Is there anything i can do in fcp to make this footage more reliable or safer or more stable as i pull remotely from iphoto?
All the footage, and all the libraries to all programs, or on a new pegasus 12tb raid 5 setup fyi.

What is the best system for editing HD in Adobe Premiere CS4?

I’m a Portuguese video enthusiast since the linear editing times. I’ve been reading this forum from some days with special interest, cause I want to build a new HD workstation.
My video productions are with AVCHD material and Adobe CS4 Master Collection. My old workstation – good enough for DV and HDV material – can’t now efficiently handle the original footage and editing work.
So, I plan to build a totally new workstation, probably with the following components:
– Board: ASUS P6T Deluxe V2
– CPU: Core i7 975 (3,33 Ghz) Extreme
– RAM: triple channel 12Gb 2000Mhz OCZ Blade series
– VGA: Nvidia Quadro CX 1,5Gb DDR3
– Storage: 4 x Seagate Barracuda ES.2 500Gb 7200 3Gb/s
– Optical: Plextor BD-R/RE reader/writer
– Power supply: Corsair HX1000
– Case: Antec Twelve Hundred
– OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64bits
Any suggestions? Any changes needed/recommended? Any money spent for nothing?
Another question: how do I configure the 4 Barracuda ES.2? My idea is 2-500Gb drives splited into a Raid 1 array for the OS+Apps and a Raid 0 array for page file and media cache and the other 2-500Gb drives in a Raid 1 array to store the original footage. I never have more than 2 hours of video to edit, so I don’t need lots of space for the original footage.
Is it better 2 1Tb disks instead of the 4 500Gb? Do I need the RAID arrays? These are the points where I have more doubts.
I will appreciate some opinions and recommendations.
Thanks a ton!

You may have a look at this:
How to get the best from a PC
From the looks of it, budget is not so much a problem. However I would not opt for the i7-975, but for a simple 17-920 overclocked to 3.6 GHz. With the money saved from that move alone you can get an Areca ARC-1680iX-12 raid controller with 2 GB cache for some more disks. I would not choose Seagates, but either the cheap Samsung Spinpoint F1 or the WD Caviar Black disks. With current prices I would only choose 1 TB disks, but would not go for less than 4 disks for the video part, and a separate WD Velociraptor as boot disk for OS and programs.
OCZ Blade 2000 MHz is a waste of money. 1600 DDR3 is quite enough and a lot cheaper. As stated in one of the guides linked to above, it makes more sense to get memory with the lowest CAS at the normal FSB frequency than to pay extra for higher frequency at the detriment of CAS.
I include an overview of my system, maybe it gives you some ideas on components.
Hope this helps.

HT1553 What is the best system for a real time cloud back up of documents? My MacBook crashed, and I lost 2 hours of writing and could not find a way to restore it.

My MacBook Pro crashed while I was rewriting a book, lost more than an hour of work and could not find a way to restore it. Did not have Time Machine set up, but it appears that Time Machine does not have Real Time back up and documents must be manually stored.
I need an automatic, real time back up to keep this from happening - I'm not happy my MacBook has crashed twice now. What is the best cloud system for Real Time backup? Thanks to anyone who can help me, I'm not the most astutde computer guy... James

One way would be to use Dropbox, or a similar sync service, and just keep your critical documents in the appropriate folder. Dropbox, at least, keeps a local copy of everything and syncs automatically to the cloud whenver a change is made. Dropbox is free for up to 2GB of data.
There are also true backup services such as CrashPlan+:
http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/crashplan-plus.html
which provide automatic backups whenver a change is detected. It's not free, but usually such services aren't too expensive unless you need to back up a lot of data.
Regards.

Trying to find the best format for an external hard drive

I have a new iMac 20", and I am now converting an external hard drive I had on another computer to be compatible with this one. The ext. HD was formatted as NTFS, and I would like to make it much more easily read/write. I've tried using various tools to enable write support on the drive, but I'm giving up on that, instead opting that I just format the drive to something else.
Disk Utility doesn't really offer me a comprehensive comparison of UFS and Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or any of the OS Extended derivatives.
Since Everything is either:
a) Mac OS Extended
b) MS-DOS or
c) Unix File System
What are the differences between a) and c) and why would I choose UFS over the others? For the time being, I just want to set up the drive as a backup, but I may use it for more than that, since it has a Firewire connection to it, enabling much better performance than USB.
Thanks in advance,
Nick

File system formats and partition map schemes are two different things.
OS X requires the Mac OS Extended (HFS+) file system formatting scheme. Details on file format schemes are in http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/FileSystem/Artic les/MacOSXAndFiles.html
ICBMs (Intel-chip-based Macs) require the GUID Partition Table scheme. Details on partition mapping schemes are in http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/universalbinary/universal_binary_tips/chapter_5_section10.html and further information on GUID is in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUIDPartitionTable.
Erasing. When you erase a volume, you delete the volume's file directory (when you erase a disk, you also destroy its partitions and directories); and, when you zero out the data, you write 0s and 1s to the disk and map out bad blocks.
So, I suggest using Disk Utility and erasing, zeroing out data, Mac OS X Extended, and the GUID partition scheme.

What is the best system for HD Video Editing?

We are planning to upgrade our system for HD video editing and I am looking for a system that will perform better with Adobe Premiere CS6 and CC. These are the options that we have:
PROCESSOR : 4.3 GHz Intel Core i7-4960 OR Dual 2.6 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2630 (both with 6-cores and 15 MB cache) - Which is more powerful?
GPU : Dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 w/ 6GB GDRR5 OR Dual 3GB NVIDIA Quadro K4000 - Which is more stable? more faster for rendering?
Both will have 64GB of RAM and 512GB SSD 6Gb/s MAIN + 3TB 7200RPM Storage. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks.

First read Tweakers Page and all the articles there.
Then you will understand why it is better to opt for an i7-4930K and a single GTX 760 with that disk setup. Otherwise you will end up with a convoluted, unbalanced system, spending money unwisely.

What's the right mac for Final Cut Studio?

Hi, I am a cameraman who wants to start learning final cut pro 5 to at first get a dvd together of my work (about 10 mins)and then maybe do some professional editing down the line. I am a bit lost with what mac I need to run studio on as I'm hearing conflicting voices. I can afford to buy an iMac G5 with 1.5 gig of ram. Will all the applications in studio run on this machine? should i bump up the hardrive to 250? Worst comes to worst should i wait and buy a power mac? Thanks for any help.
Imac g5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Let's get serious. You are trying to put together a short reel, not edit Cold Mountain.
If you believe you will make your living from this machine, get a professional grade box and all the bells and whistles to go with it.(max ram, multiple internal SATA drives, big monitors, etc)
If you want to get your feet wet, develop an understanding of the program and its basic operational structure, most anything that meets the minimum configuration will do. (Heck, you can edit on a powerbook...)
In the first case, (the professional box) if you spend 5 minutes rather than 15 minutes waiting for a render, it makes a differnece, time IS money. In the second case (learning curve), it doesn't matter. It's your time.
Cheers,
x
Do your part in supporting your fellow users. If a response has been Helpful to you or Solved your question, please mark it as such as an aid to other lost souls on the forum.
Also, don't forget to mark the thread Answered when you get enough information to close the thread.

Which system for Final Cut Studio upgrade...iMac or MacBook Pro?

I am currently using FCE on a Powerbook G4 and am considering upgrading to Final Cut Studio. Which system would give me better performance: New iMac 24" (2.8 Penryn processor) or MacBook Pro (2.5 Penryn processor)? Does the NVIDIA graphics card for the iMac upgrade significantly improve editing performance.. or is the AGI 2600 Pro card sufficient? Anything else worth considering when comparing these systems?
Any input is appreciated... thanks.
Message was edited by: Jeff Morgan1
Message was edited by: Jeff Morgan1

FW 400 is enough to deal with DV footage,
Not all HD formats require eSATA drives, DVCPRO HD for example can be handled by FW 400 or FW 800 drives and HDV streams pretty much the same DV does.
Things change if at some point you need to deal with Uncompressed SD or HD, ProRes etc.
eSATA then would become mandatory.
If you'd like to set up a desktop then MacPro is what I suggest.
If you don't make a living from editing then I guess an iMac will do for a while.
A MacPro allows you to host/replace multiple internal drives, host/replace capture cards or GPUs if you need for business purposes.
Increase RAM up to 32GB etc
iMac does not offer such options.
Your call,
G.

Downscaling a movie from 1080 to 720 the best way in Final Cut Pro?

Which way is best to achieve the best quality in this procedure? I was hoping to be able to do this using the Final Cut Pro application, hopefully not the compressor or any other application if possible.

Does hardware affect quality that much?
Yes, it does.
Is it not a matter of converting 0 and 1 anyway?
Yes, but some things do this better than others. Hardware is best...then the Terranex...then the other hardware. Then After Effects which does this VERY well. FCP is low on that list. Putting the 1s and 0s in the right GOOD order. I'm no engineer, so I can't say specifically what it happening. I can say what my experience has shown.
I think Terranex is about 60K$?
You don't buy one. You take your tape to a post facility that has one and pay them to do it. Or you buy a capture card. Yes, the Mini will upconvert DV to HD, and it will do a decent job. THe Kona card does it better, but the Matrox isn't too far behind. I have both the MXO2 and the MXO2 mini..plus I have used the Kona 3. The Kona is slightly better, but you can't go wrong with the MIni. Real time conversion as you capture, plus the ability to monitor out to an HDTV...bonus!
Shane

What is the creator code for final cut pro x?

Final Cut Pro 7 has creator code "KeyG" but the trial for FCP X has creator code "????" (according to the .plist). Does the full version use "KeyG" like previous ones, or a new code?
Thanks
Marc

My first question would be how well 5.1 would work with SL. People have reported problems.
As far as cameras are concerned, I would guess most any tape-based camera would work and so much depends on the kind of projects you work on that I wouldn't want to start guessing at your needs.
If you want broad access to tapeless and advanced formats try to locate and purchase an upgrade disk to 6 or 7.
Good luck.
Russ

Trying to build the best system for Final Cut

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