You need one Hell of a computer for 1080

icicle22 said:
However it plays actual DVCPROHD-1080 and 720 all day long with one hand tied behind it's back. If you untie that hand it can actually edit and do transitions and have effects applied to clips in FCP and play them back realtime. I am talking about simple color correction and tweaking...not massive 3d effects mind you.
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I stand corrected... and impressed. Never would have guessed that FCP on a mini could do realtime transitions in 1080p. Great cheap option for people who don't need to deal with compression much. Thanks for the info.
 
The Intel Mac Mini is one of the rumored releases for tommorow so I guess we'll see how that goes :).

I too have a Mac Mini, great little thing for regular DV editing and it has been a good transition setup for when I get a high-end Intel Mac. 720p isn't all that bad if you're playing back trailers and such, but I haven't edited HD on it, I would imagine it would be slow but not as slow as you'd expect. Also, Corsair XMS3200 DDRSDRAM is what I bought for mine, even though it doesn't take advantage of the DDR400 spec. Render times still aren't the best, but then again, what computer doesn't suffer from long render times for one reason or another?
 
If I can run 4 streams of DV simultaneoulsy in Avid on my Athlon 2600, I'm not too concerned about DVCpro.

All that should be learned from the first post is: "Don't use extremely compressed footage in your timeline."

I know 1080p H.264 lags occasionally on my dual Pentium D system with 4 gigs of ram.

It doesn't matter how fast your system is, if your codec is poorly optimized for playback.
 
I've gone the Mac route and as a PC guy it has been no big deal to switch over. I'm about as non a geek as they get and they seem to be easy to learn. So far I have 1 old/new Quad G5 W/2.5g processors and 4.5g of ram, and two old/new G4's with 1.67 processors and 1.5g of ram plus FCP studio and three OWC RAID 500g HD's. It was expensive, $9,000 + but it will handle the workload now from the cameras and for a few years at least. That was for two laptops, most of you won't need to go that route.

David
 
Well, gotta clarify if you're talking about the same platform. On the Mac FCP is the only choice, because Avid on the Mac doesn't support HD yet. That's not due for another four months.

If you're comparing FCP on the Mac against Avid on the PC, that's a different question. And I don't have a directly comparable desktop to compare them with. On the Mac dual G5 2.0, HD flies -- multiple streams of realtime footage including transitions. On the PC desktop P4 2.66ghz (yes it's old) I get about two frames per second, on the laptop (3ghz equiv.) I get about 2.2 frames per second.

Maybe someone here could talk about a Core Duo system running Express Pro HD and say what kind of performance they're getting...
 
I gotta say I was very positively surprised how easy 1080-material was to edit on my Powerbook. Color correction had to be rendered, not sure if this has to do with the 4.5 version I'm still working on.
 
willcprutzman said:
I stand corrected... and impressed. Never would have guessed that FCP on a mini could do realtime transitions in 1080p. Great cheap option for people who don't need to deal with compression much. Thanks for the info.
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Just so it doesn't get misconstrued, some of the transitions needed to be rendered when I was playing with 1080P footage. Simple transitions yes....complex 3d transitions=render first. However I was impressed with how fast FCP rendered the transitions.....5 or six of the Quicktime transitions only took 2 seconds or so to render.

For the person who asked about where I bought my RAM.....I got it at Best Buy. It was a clearance item that was normally $189 marked down. That original price was over inflated anyway. In the real world you can get 1GB of PC2700 Ram for around $90 at newegg.com.
 
I think many hardware problems to edit hdv comes from the software you use, for example, I have an old amd xp 2600+ and I cannot use many pro programs because those programs ask for a higher Pc requeriments , but I can use for example womble mpeg wizard or ulead video studio 9 to edit native hdv very good, better womble than ulead. well, sure that if a i have a better PC the preview and final render task will be better , but I can edit the hdv file.

High computer is needed to use pro programs like avid, is needed to render faster and preview faster ( although in womble editor I can view my file good), but you don't need that computer to work with HDV.
 
i will try to get edius 3 broadcast installed on my main edit system later this week. that system is a dual xeon 3gHz system with 4GB of ram and a 2TB SATA raid. if i have time i will even install it on an ancient P3 700Mhz system and a slightly less ancient 1.4gHz Athlon system.

i dont mean to discount the warnings of the original poster but it seems like bad logic to overreact in worry because raylight wouldn't play something smoothly. but i'll gladly eat my words if for some reason my system can't play 1080p files with Edius Broadcast even running off the IDE drive in my dual Xeon system.
 
Okay, so now things get interesting. Apple just introduced a dual-core Mac Mini for $799 that they claim is up to six times as fast as the current model. icicle22's already getting realtime 1080p performance out of a current mini. It will be most interesting to see if FCP maintains its amazing HVX performance once the transition to Intel is complete, anticipated for sometime around the end of March.
 
You know, that's the first thing I was wondering. If you look at the benchmarks for comparison on FCP on Apple's Universal page, it looks like the new Mini should have zero problem running it. I guess we just need to wait until the new binaries are released and what Apple suggests.

Crossing my fingers... because it'd be perfect for my relatively light needs. Hey, I'm a Windows programmer who wants a Mac. :)
 
Hm, watch out with the mini macs. Apple has a history in slowing down their consumer machines trough busspeeds etc. It will be much faster then previous macminis though. But they where g4's; so no wonder...
For on set ingest these will be nice though. Like the guy with the andromeda dvx on the forum here. (Sorry, man forgot your name...)
 
contentlab said:
i will try to get edius 3 broadcast installed on my main edit system later this week. that system is a dual xeon 3gHz system with 4GB of ram and a 2TB SATA raid. if i have time i will even install it on an ancient P3 700Mhz system and a slightly less ancient 1.4gHz Athlon system.
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I'll be watching to see how this goes for you. I have the demo version of Edius running on a AMD X2 3800 with 2 gig of Ram and it seems to be very solid and very quick. I've been trying to decide if I should pick up broadcast or hold on for native MXF support in FCP 6 and go Intel dual core, being able to edit on a Macbook pro would be suite, even if you need an adapter for the P2 cards.
 
Originally posted by Barry Green
On the Mac dual G5 2.0, HD flies -- multiple streams of realtime footage including transitions. On the PC desktop P4 2.66ghz (yes it's old) I get about two frames per second, on the laptop (3ghz equiv.) I get about 2.2 frames per second
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Gee Barry, I'm amazed there's that big a difference :shocked:. You are talking about DVCPro Hd or if not which type of HD? I can't wait to see what the Quad will handle.
 
Barry_Green said:
Okay, so now things get interesting. Apple just introduced a dual-core Mac Mini for $799 that they claim is up to six times as fast as the current model. icicle22's already getting realtime 1080p performance out of a current mini. It will be most interesting to see if FCP maintains its amazing HVX performance once the transition to Intel is complete, anticipated for sometime around the end of March.
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Barry, keep me informed if YOU actually confirm ths can edit, and display 1080 footage with out dropping frames. If so, I may just jump ship to mac.
 
I haven't kept up with the mac intel thing, what does it really mean. Will all the programs I have now run on a mac? Specifically will dv Rack run on a mac and hopefully the upcoming HD Rack?
 
too bad the mac mini can't take any PCIx cards, I would love to slap a Decklink card or Multibridge adapter into there.
 
Terence Lehane said:
Gee Barry, I'm amazed there's that big a difference :shocked:. You are talking about DVCPro Hd or if not which type of HD? I can't wait to see what the Quad will handle.
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I'm talking primarily about DVCPRO-HD, although it also handles HDV way way way faster than my desktop & laptop.

But with DVCPRO-HD it's amazing.
 
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