Advice for new G5 System

D

drjrt

Member
I'm going to switch to Mac and FCP and would appreciate some rec's on a system configuration. I have a few questions. Mostly small projects and all in SD although I don't want to be forced to upgrade anytime soon.

I was going to get the dual G5.

I want as much HDD up front. I assume I will order through Mac and get the 2x400GB drives which I also assume I can set up as RAID 0. Is this correct? On a PC I would typically have at least 3 drives - a system drive and the RAID drives. How do you handle this on the MAC.

I was going to start with 4GB - I assume it isn't hard to add memory in the future.

Which is the most preferred video card of the three options on the Apple site?

Adding more HDD in the future - Firewire external or add internal drives?

Any 'must-have' options or add-ons such as playback monitor, special keyboard, etc?

Thanks for any suggestions!
 
A G5 has 2 internal SATA drive bays. After you fill those, it is firewire time. Some of the G5's have 4 ram slots, and some have 8. I would recommend you get one with 8 slots for expandability in the future. You will pay quite a bit if you buy the drives and ram from Apple. Throw away the craptasic Apple mouse and get one you like. The new mouse does not do it for me because I like tactile buttons. If you are going to do a lot of motion/shake kind of stuff, it would probably be wise to get the best video card they have. You might as well get this item from Apple, because you cannot use a normal (much cheaper) equivalent PC video card in a Mac.

Go for a cinema display if you can swing it. I understand the 30" cinema display makes a really nice HD display. I have a 22" cinema display that is a few years old, but it is still pretty nice. FCP has a mode where it will attempt to simulate NTSC gamma on your display, but I would still say you need a real NTSC display to go along with things.

I would definately get the fastest DP Mac you can afford.


You can do Raid 0 but it seems like a rather bad idea unless you have good backups, as you are greatly increasing your risk of a catastrophic failure :)


Evil side note: It is possible to hack together an install of OSX for X86 now that will run on plain Intel hardware. I may or may not have it running on my PC upstairs. It might make a fine compressor render node :)
 
I wouldn't buy drives as an Apple BTO option... you can get much better prices elsewhere. Get the biggest drive Apple will put in one slot, and buy a second one somewhere else. I'd also recommend partitioning each of these into a few chunks - especially the system drive - the system drive is used for a lot of temporary storage and such, and if you have a few things growing unpredictably there, and go near the capacity margin, you're at risk of crashes. However, it's nice to be able to ping-pong things between the fast internal SATA drives, so a scratch partition or two on the physical system drive enforces a bit more safety to do this. As a general rule, I find that keeping your ping-pong options open makes for more speed than RAID, and yes, generally, more safety. RAID is faster for a single stream being played or recorded, ping-ponging is better for multiple streams and simultaneous playing/recording.

Anyway, I personally keep one SATA drive (three partitions) as scratch and capture, two partitions on the system drive as pure scratch, two cheapo USB2 drives for longer term storage (projects put on the back burner for a while), and (all FW400): two lacie drives for longer term storage and scratch, and two Glyph drives for portable/extra capture and scratch. I also keep a few Firefly bus-powered FW400 pocket drives around for EXTREMELY portable capture and shuttling large files around various systems.


When dealing with external drives, remember that if you have even a single FW400 device connected to your Mac, the whole FW bus slows to 400Mbps. So, if you plan to play back to NTSC through a camera/deck connected by FW, you either lose any benefit of FW800 drives, or should buy a (pretty cheap!) Firewire PCI card to add a dedicated FW800 channel or two. You can also get cards to hook up external SATA drives, and at least one company is selling kits that let you mount up to 5 internal SATA drives, though I wouldn't, due to heat issues.


As for the screen, I'd say a good NTSC monitor is much more valuable than a 30" Cinema Display - frankly, I find the things a little TOO big for comfort. Unless you're really flush, I don't think it's worth that being the majority of your computer investment. You can hook up two smaller screens... get one later if you need to... I think starting out with a 22" (or even 20") could be reasonable... especially if you supplement with whatever you're using now.

Speed? I don't know... Definitely 2.5 or 2.7, but if you fing a great bargain on the 2.5 (there are a bunch around, especially in academic circles) and you're not quite so flush, I don't think there's so tremendous a performance difference.

Unless you're planning on making heavy use of Motion (or AE, I think it's been said), or gaming (but I wouldn't invest in a Mac for gaming!), you'll be fine with the standard graphics cards. If you do care about Motion... well, someone else can better address card issues, or check www.barefeats.com for a nice variety of comparisons.

My main must-have add-ons? Contour ShuttlePRO, a 2+ button mouse, NTSC monitor and good speakers.

tigeba said:
Evil side note: It is possible to hack together an install of OSX for X86 now that will run on plain Intel hardware. I may or may not have it running on my PC upstairs. It might make a fine compressor render node :)
Click to expand...

That may be true, but there's no application software yet, is there? Have they released fat binary or some such of render node software?
 
I would not set up two internal drives as a RAID 0, even though it's easily possible with the system disk utility. For Final Cut the best bet is to keep data on a different drive than system and application. The way I do it is system + apps on the first S-ATA internal, long time storage on the second SATA internal and data + capture scratch on a U-ATA RAID 0, which is pretty Ghetto and old, but does the job. (Kinda like this thing: http://wiebetech.com/products/G5Jam.html). For the future I plan to get a rocketraid adapter which allows for additional internal and external SATA drives. I don't really like firewire drives (other than for exchanging stuff) but that's just me.
I would prefer two 20" cinema displays over a 30" any day, since it gives you more flexibility. Definitely get a video monitor to preview stuff and hook it up through a DV deck, or, if you got some money left, get a Decklink card, which improves audio and video preview quality, gives you the possibility to use your video monitor as a second monitor and let's you capture and play out non-dv material. Oh yeah, good headphones and speakers and a 2+ button mouse.
 
Wow! Thanks for all of the quick feedback.

I've built every PC I've had so I'm comfortable messing with the hardware but one of the reasons I've decided to go Mac is I want as stable, quirk-free system as possible. Do you have specific rec's for drives (names/models), and FW card?

Thanks!
 
drjrt said:
Do you have specific rec's for drives (names/models), and FW card?
Thanks!
Click to expand...

Personally, I have one word in external FW drives: Glyph. Glyph Glyph! I have LaCie d2s, a G-Drive, some cheapo USB2 drives... and they've all had problems or weird behavior at some point. LaCies have died. The G-Drive has some weird firewire interface issues. The little Firefly drives have had no problems, but are too slow (for ProTools, at least) when doing multiple things at once.

And the Glyph drives? The oldest drive I have is a Glyph (5 year old Companion 80GB), and it's never had a problem. My workhorse drives for remote recording are Glyph= GT-050's, which have been carried transported roughly, exposed to all sorts of temperatures, and strained to their limits grinding at multiple tasks for huge amounts of time... and never a problem. Literally! And they're quiet, too. Really, nothing beats 'em. B&H (bhphotovideo.com) usually have the best prices - make sure to get recording drives (e.g., GT-050) and not the NetDrives!
 
ullanta said:
That may be true, but there's no application software yet, is there? Have they released fat binary or some such of render node software?
Click to expand...


In theory all the software will at least run in emulation mode. I installed a couple non-native apps and they seemed fine. I have not tried FCP yet :) Having the compressor grid client, even in emulation mode, would probably be pretty nice.
 
tigeba said:
In theory all the software will at least run in emulation mode. I installed a couple non-native apps and they seemed fine. I have not tried FCP yet :) Having the compressor grid client, even in emulation mode, would probably be pretty nice.
Click to expand...

Interesting... I didn't know that the PPC emulation was working on these versions. Keep us posted... what apps have you run?
 
Well for starters, the OSX installer itself is not a ported app. I have installed iTunes, and that seems to work.
 
To answer the *hacked together* OSX on x86 = The answer is Yes!!

Check www.digg.com for the latest updates, installation Faq's, etc. The last update has it running pretty stable on intel chipsets.

~reservoir~
 
So, how does this sound for my shopping list:

From Apple:
PowerMac G5 Dual Processor 2.7GHz
1x512MB Memory (8 slots available)
1x400GB SATA 7200 drive
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT DDL w/ 256MB RAM
Standard mouse/keyboard
20" Cinema Display
AppleCare

From another source:
4x1GB Memory
400GB SATA 7200 Drive
Firewire Card
2 button wireless mouse (such as AeroMouse)
Contour Shuttle Pro V.2
Glyph Recording Drive (eventually)

Couple of questions:
1) Is the Bella FCP keyboard worth getting?
2) What is the best source for drives and memory for the G5? Do they know
what they are talking about or do I need to know specific part numbers?
3) What is a good source for an inexpensive NTSC monitor? Can I use a PC
monitor?

Again, thank you for your time...
 
ullanta said:
Personally, I have one word in external FW drives: Glyph. Glyph Glyph! I have LaCie d2s, a G-Drive, some cheapo USB2 drives... and they've all had problems or weird behavior at some point. LaCies have died. !
Click to expand...

Did you get any indications that your LaCie was going to die? I have one that is starting to exhibit strange behavior..clicking noise after being ON for many, many hours..on occasion, not showing up for work.. I have TechTool pro..but haven't installed it yet..


drjrt said:
2) What is the best source for drives and memory for the G5? Do they know
what they are talking about or do I need to know specific part numbers?
3) What is a good source for an inexpensive NTSC monitor? Can I use a PC
monitor?...
Click to expand...

I've bought a few drives from zipzoomfly.com and all have worked will. This was after reading up on barefeats.com

I recently got two Maxtor 300 GB SATA drives that are doing really well. They are in an external SATA bay from macgurus.

Do you really want a mouse? I am a pen person all the way..wacom or die :).
 
Pooh, you use wacom pen for fcp work?

drjrt, if you get that system I will be your new best friend and be more than willing to house sit for you and hang at your place on weekends and weekdays, day and night ;)

Wow I was considering a lacie external drive with prices dropping to close to $370 for a 500gb one, I'll have to do some more research on this.
 
Well, the Lacies that failed primarily became very flaky about mounting, and eventually wouldn't mount at all. When mounted, started to occasionally unmount themselves in the middle of use. They were also, by the way, to noisy for my intended uses, which is why I originally went to Glyph...

Your list looks quite nice! I personally hate wireless mice, but I think that's a matter of taste...? Anyway - and don't get scared, I'm just saying just in case - if you get "telegraph" noise in your speakers, look at wireless devices as a potential source of noise...

A PC Monitor is NOT an NTSC monitor... you want something called a "broadcast monitor" or "production monitor" or "field monitor" and they can be quite pricey. This is not a computer monitor, but a very high-quality TV with some extra features, designed to help you adhere to NTSC TV standards and look good doing it. I don't know where you are... but check out B&H (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=NavBar&A=search&Q=&ci=1981), Full Compass (fullcompass.com) or EVS (evsonline.com) for some ideas and prices. Features toi look for are high resolution, blue gun for calibration, a 16x9 mode if you care, and size... it's nice to be able to take it to the field whern you can, but smaller tends to be pricier. DON'T get an LCD monitor... that's what we're avoiding!
 
drjrt said:
So, how does this sound for my shopping list:

From Apple:
PowerMac G5 Dual Processor 2.7GHz
1x512MB Memory (8 slots available)
1x400GB SATA 7200 drive
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT DDL w/ 256MB RAM
Standard mouse/keyboard
20" Cinema Display
AppleCare

From another source:
4x1GB Memory
400GB SATA 7200 Drive
Firewire Card
2 button wireless mouse (such as AeroMouse)
Contour Shuttle Pro V.2
Glyph Recording Drive (eventually)

Couple of questions:
1) Is the Bella FCP keyboard worth getting?
2) What is the best source for drives and memory for the G5? Do they know
what they are talking about or do I need to know specific part numbers?
3) What is a good source for an inexpensive NTSC monitor? Can I use a PC
monitor?

Again, thank you for your time...
Click to expand...

I don't think you need a FW card, the G5 already has two FW ports and a FW 800 as far as I know...

The 20' is really nice as a computer display. The 23' display can double as a low cost preview monitor for HD, so in your future, you can invest in a second 23' display...

I think you will have to loose the 512 memory clip, since the G5 only work in pairs. I might be wrong though. I any case, try changing it to two 256.

memory can be had from kingston, very good source.

Drives can be bought from compusa, they use standard PC drives that can be put in cable select.
 
You can keep the 512MB... it'll be a pair of 256's, and you'll have 6 slots left to add more. No reason to toss half a gig!

You don't need a FW card until you get some FW drives... but remember, taubkin, it may have 4 FW ports, but only one channel!
 
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