Is this enough computer for AVCHD footage?

L Train

L Train

Active member
I have a 3 year old MacBook Pro and recently picked up an HMC-150 and dealing with the footage has been a pain to say the least. I have an option to pick up a used Mac Pro and I wanted to know if it's going to be fast enough to tolerate my HD footage.

dual 3.0ghz quad-core Intel Xeon
Nvdia Graphics
12gb of ram

Not sure about Hard drive space or other specs that's just what he told me for now. But I can get that machine for $800 will it do what I need it to?

- Logan
 
I'm not a Mac person, so take what I say with a grain of salt. BUT, I have a nearly 3 1/2 year old Intel quad core Q6600 2.4ghz, and under CS5 it runs just fine, so I would imagine dual 3.0ghz Quadcore Xeons would be more than enough horsepower. The question is, what program are you editing in? CS4 was a pain on my same rig, but CS5 has been a night and day difference.
 
Dual 3ghz quad xeons? That 8 cores. That a heck of a machine and with 12 gigs of ram under the hood you should be fiiiinnneee. now to edit HD i'd recommend a raid for your media or at the least a hard drive separate form your OS drive for your media. (external raid work great). Also you wanna check the gfx. Make sure they are supported by the software your using (guessing final cut?) Make sure the comp is in good condition...800 for dual 3.0 quads seems a bit cheap.
 
Mike Harvey said:
I'm not a Mac person, so take what I say with a grain of salt. BUT, I have a nearly 3 1/2 year old Intel quad core Q6600 2.4ghz, and under CS5 it runs just fine, so I would imagine dual 3.0ghz Quadcore Xeons would be more than enough horsepower. The question is, what program are you editing in? CS4 was a pain on my same rig, but CS5 has been a night and day difference.
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I got a 6600 on my old work computer. Great CPU in it's day and it still edits fine. My home comp has an i7 950 and it it does out preform the 6600 but it doesn't blow it out of the water.
 
I think it really depends what you're looking for. I have a very similar setup (Dual Quad Core Xeon 3.0Ghz E5450, 24GB RAM, GTX 470), but I'm running Windows 7 x64 / Premiere Pro CS5...

It's not enough to fluidly scrub AVCHD footage. I find myself transcoding to either AVC-Intra or ProRes LT (on my hackintosh -- only reason I have it) and then editing that instead. I just don't get smooth enough, frame-by-frame scrubbing and if I add effects/coloring it gets even worse.

Don't get me wrong...it's ok and works fine for smaller sequences, but when trying to put together a 1.5 hour wedding Bluray project it's just not good enough without transcoding.

As far as drives are concerned, I have 15k and 10k SAS drives on a Dell Perc 6i RAID controller.
 
David S. said:
Convert the footage to pro res LT in FCP 7, and that MacPro will be fine.
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I'm trying to avoid any type of conversion with the upgrade.

I'm currently still on CS4, but I would upgrade to CS5 by the time I got that machine.
 
Phil1076 said:
It's not enough to fluidly scrub AVCHD footage. I find myself transcoding to either AVC-Intra or ProRes LT (on my hackintosh -- only reason I have it) and then editing that instead. I just don't get smooth enough, frame-by-frame scrubbing and if I add effects/coloring it gets even worse.

Don't get me wrong...it's ok and works fine for smaller sequences, but when trying to put together a 1.5 hour wedding Bluray project it's just not good enough without transcoding.

As far as drives are concerned, I have 15k and 10k SAS drives on a Dell Perc 6i RAID controller.
Click to expand...

I thought you're supposed to be able to scrub through AVCHD footage really well with CS5. What would you need to add to your computer to be able to scrub through the footage?
 
You will edit just fine on this machine using cs5! I use i920 and it is ok with some minor issues, but a xeon with 12 gb ram will indeed do the job with no pain! Happy editting!!!
 
L Train said:
I have a 3 year old MacBook Pro and recently picked up an HMC-150 and dealing with the footage has been a pain to say the least. I have an option to pick up a used Mac Pro and I wanted to know if it's going to be fast enough to tolerate my HD footage.

dual 3.0ghz quad-core Intel Xeon
Nvdia Graphics
12gb of ram

Not sure about Hard drive space or other specs that's just what he told me for now. But I can get that machine for $800 will it do what I need it to?

- Logan
Click to expand...

Im not so sure that you've accurately stated the type of computer you are working with here. A macbook pro rarely comes with two quad core processors. A mac pro would. Is your computer a desktop or a laptop?
 
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