FS7: FS7 and editing workstation discussion thread

P

PMP1115

Member
Hello all, I would like to get an idea of what everyone's editing setups are, and if you have done anything special since purchasing your FS7/ working with the XAVC codecs in 4K/Ultra HD.

I recently moved up from 5DMK3 and a EA50 as my most used cameras, and editing on a 15" Macbook Pro retina Mid-2002 was more than capable for doing quick turnaround edits with minor color correcting, or compositing using standard USB3 drives.

Now that I have made the move up to the FS7, I am trying to configure a new editing system, but looking for ways on how to go about it. I am quite fond of using Macs, but I grew up and learned how to build PCs since I was a teenager and have no problem exploring a custom PC editing workstation.

Mac Pro seems to be very cool, as it can be configured in a number of different ways for performance. With the new release of Premiere, i am excited about being able to handle much of my color correcting needs within one program. But the Mac Pro upgrade cycle seems to be very slow, and I fear that with new standards being released such as new Thunderbolt to work with a potential 5K cinema display, I won't have time to wait around for a new Mac Pro.

I kind of like the idea of being able to build a PC and have the ability to upgrade components over time.

That being said, what is your current editing setup, and what are your upgrade plans moving forward with the idea of 4K/UltraHD in mind?

Thanks

-Percival
 
For a good capable system the processor, video card, ram and disk speed access is most important. (wait a minute, wouldn't that describe pretty well everything there is to a computer anyway - lol)

Now I'm definitely a PC guy, but I also run MAC for showing off in front of clients and looking cool, not to mention having access to the ProRes codec natively with the OS.

Have you considered building a hackintosh (PC components that can run Mac OSX), and with that you can even use the included "boot camp" to have dual boot options into Windows or Mac OSX. Now you have the best of all worlds if you need it.

My 2 cents.
 
Last edited:
I'm in the same boat... my macbook pro sucks when working with AE...

Not thrilled with the new 5k imac for some reason...

been looking at jumping over to pc...

Dennis have you found anyone who has a working hackintosh... keep hearing people have had issues...
 
starcentral said:
Now I'm definitely a PC guy, but I also run MAC for showing off in front of clients and looking cool, not to mention having access to the ProRes codec natively with the OS.
Click to expand...

i do quite a bit of after effects rendering to Prores 422. What codecs do you render to on PC?
 
Ideally if on a PC I would like to render to .mov's so I can go back and forth with the Mac. Nobody renders using an .avi wrapper, do they?
 
I'm trying to decide whether to stick with my current Macbook Pro laptop ( late 2012) pre-retina with 2.7GHz i7 and an Nvidia 1G graphics card , or bite the bullet on a used iMac that is loaded with a 4G graphics card.

i talked to a guy on craigslist selling a Hackintosh and he suggested that unless I was very computer geeky to avoid it. IO'm competent around computers, but not under the hood.
 
Ben Scott said:
I've been editing 4k at home for several years now. Most recent PC is i5820k, 32Gb ram, Geforce 980Gtx.
Click to expand...

Hi Ben.

Any recommendations for where one should buy a PC in the UK? I haven't used one, since I left the Avid tribe in 2005.

I've been toying with the new iMac 5K, but would be happy with a grunty PC for purely editing purposes. My 2013 MBP Retina is starting to wheeze with Prem Pro running LUTs etc.

Did you build your own PC or buy something off the shelf? Which OS do you use, please?

Cheers,

Ben.
 
I built my own using a few different online shops but if you want a good solid bespoke prebuilt, tested and guaranteed system then pcspecialist are very highly recommended.

I'm currently on Windows 8.1
 
I'm learning quickly that 4K 24P requires extraordinary resources. In the planning stages for my next NLE:

Dual E5-2699 CPUs
512GB RAM
2 (upgradable to 4) Titan 12GB GPUs
100% SSD storage and boot drives.

That should be enough to edit 2, 3, maybe even 4 streams of 4K 24P.. now 60P.. is another story.. that will require 2.5X more processing power. This system may only handle one stream at a time, and I may have to accept a dropped frame now and then, if using LUTs during editing/playback.

XAVC-L remains yet another potential obstacle, as word has it over on the Sony forums that no PC has enough umph to play it without serious stuttering.

I heard that there is a new E5 processor that's more powerful than the 2699, but with a $12,000 price tag, a pair of them is into second mortgage territory. We're already looking at $32K for the system, RAM, drives, GPUs, etc. I would choose a motherboard with at least 1TB expansion capabilities. Seeing how application bloating is exponential. I can't believe how much more RAM the newest versions of two popular NLEs use over the previous versions. It's as if the code writers were told not to worry about RAM or performance, that we want to drive the need for more powerful system hardware. They sure did that! I'm pretty sure if an NLE were written in Assembler, it would run just as well on a '486-50 with 64 MB RAM as today's NLEs do on an i7 with 64GB RAM. It was amazing what Wavefront Technologies and AT&T could accomplish on a '286-8MHz PC back in '86. If the code were written that efficiently for today's processors, the things we could accomplish would be unimaginable by today's mindset.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top