Make me convert: is Mac/FCPX a good match for HVX/P2?

Egg Born Son

Egg Born Son

Veteran
I will start by confessing that I am something of an apple detractor. It is hard for me to consider moving to mac but I am trying to power through my prejudice and look at functionality rather than the specs/price. :) I haven't always been a hater. In the days of Wozza (the real steve) I was something of a fan. The later macintosh had dungeon of doom which is still my favourite dungeon hack. But by the time beige was a dirty word they were losing me and by the cooler than cool iPod/iPhone (not to mention the 'pad) I was a full blown hater. However good their engineering department, their marketing guys will always be better. I never thought I would be considering a mac. Yet however underpowered the hardware is, the software is designed for it and it functions well. And when I compare the prices including software it is an increasingly level playing field. Not to mention that the staunchest hater I know, my Dad, switched recently behind my back (though still running windows).

For a PC setup at $4000-5000, around a third of the cost will be software. For a mac at $3500-4500 around 10% of the cost will software. Both will set me back another $1500 or so for external raid array but that can wait. Add the fact eBay demonstrates they hold their value pretty well it is starting to be a favourable argument for the mac. Additionally I doubt I will be tempted to use it for anything other than its intended task. A self-built PC for $3000 is going to be an absolute beast. How could I not be tempted to ruin its clean bill of health by installing games and such, cluttering its optimum operation with a glut of drivers? The mac on the other hand can stay dedicated to music and video production. The more I think about it, the more it seems like a good idea.

So I have been trying to find some specifics on FCPX pertinent to my needs without much luck. I have only been able to find lightweight pamphlet-style promotional info from apple and emotional tirades from the two FCP camps on the wider internet. So I thought I'd give you, the actual FCPX users the chance to throw some more oil on my conversion fire.

I have an HVX200 using P2 cards. I've read varying things regarding FCPX and P2 across the internet (macs and P2 for that matter) but nothing specific enough to place my faith in. I haven't had a chance to work properly with the P2 cards yet because the free NLEs I was using couldn't handle 720p/24pN and then my faithful 2004 PC's motherboard finally gave out on me - a beast in her day, still functional right up to her (un)timely end. I have an old Dell D430 on its way bought purely to function as a field PCMCIA/P2 offload device (a sixth the price of a 2nd hand firestore). Will there be any issue transferring these offloaded files to a mac?

From what I have gleaned about FCPX I don't think any of its limitations are going to bother me as long as it works well with P2. I'm a one man operation at this stage, as long as it wipes the floor with Windows Movie Maker and the free editing solutions I've tried I will be happy (it took only one bite at WMM to realise this hobby was going to get expensive fast!). While it would be nice to have all the professional features available it could be years before I'm ready to utilise them. The ability to composite greenscreen/luma keys, some basic colour grading, audio manipulation, ability to handle 720p/24pN (my preferred format), utilise the P2 workflow and handle a feature length project would pretty much get me where I want to go between now and my next computer upgrade.

Also I've read some generalised statements that seem to suggest macs need an internet connection for some functionality. Not sure what they were on about but that would be concerning. Other than the initial download (obviously) and updates (when I choose) I would not want this computer on the net. It's not about viruses and such (i understand macs rarely get them), I just don't like software that does things behind my back!

So in summary:

1. Is a mac with FCPX a good match for the HVX200/P2 workflow?
2. Will there be any issues transferring files from the Dell to the mac for editing? Surely a LAN connection will suffice?
3. I'm assuming FCPX can handle all formats my camera can throw at it but is this true? In particular 720p/24pN.
4. Are the greenscreen/luma keying functions in FCPX up to scratch?
5. How good are the colour grading utilities?
6. Any issues playing with the audio?
7. Does the mac solution require an internet connection to function? (Other than initial installation)


Thanks in advance for your answers. Kill my prejudices, turn me into a mac user!
 
The one thing you're overlooking is that a PC costing around $3,000 (2/3's of your total) will blow the socks off a Mac costing about the same (90% of your total). Just no contest in performance.

So if you're willing to spend upwards of $4,000, spend $2,000 or so on a real nice, powerful Windows machine, and then another $1700 on the Adobe Production Premium suite. You'll get much better hardware performance, and FAR more capable software.
 
1. Is a mac with FCPX a good match for the HVX200/P2 workflow?
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I would venture that most users here are Mac based from what Barry Green has stated several times. We've used Macs for six years with our 200/170/250 p2 based without issue. FCP X now handles ingest easily and in RT.

2. Will there be any issues transferring files from the Dell to the mac for editing? Surely a LAN connection will suffice?
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It should, plus Mac drives can be formatted FAT32 for file transfer as well.

3. I'm assuming FCPX can handle all formats my camera can throw at it but is this true? In particular 720p/24pN.
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We regularly shoot 24pN without issue.

4. Are the greenscreen/luma keying functions in FCPX up to scratch?
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Recently released 10.0.3 included substantially upgrade green screen keying tools. Check YT for some tutorials.

7. Does the mac solution require an internet connection to function? (Other than initial installation)
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FCP X v.10.0.3 is a $300.00 download from the Mac App store. Upgrades occur there as well. Motion and Compressor also can be downloaded. Other than that, no need for internet.
 
Jim Simon said:
The one thing you're overlooking is that a PC costing around $3,000 (2/3's of your total) will blow the socks off a Mac costing about the same (90% of your total). Just no contest in performance.

So if you're willing to spend upwards of $4,000, spend $2,000 or so on a real nice, powerful Windows machine, and then another $1700 on the Adobe Production Premium suite. You'll get much better hardware performance, and FAR more capable software.
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Meh. If you compare prices of iMacs to PCs, and the PC has a comparable 27" LED backlight screen with 2560x1440 resolution, the prices match up quite closely. This is often over looked when people compare, but screen quality and resolution matters ALOT.

That being said, with After Effects in the Adobe Production Suite, I would say that Adobe's software is more capable because of third party plugins galore. However, for the OPs needs, I would say a 27" iMac with FCPX, Motion, and Compressor will be a great performer and value. The top end iMac with 16GB RAM and 3.4Ghz i7 is $2,800, assuming you buy the RAM at top $ from Apple. That and FCPX suite totals $3200. For the same $, do the math and with the $1700 adobe suite you would only have $1500 to spend on a computer. Unless you build it yourself, the iMac is gonna have the better performance all around.
 
Let's keep in mind the OP's initial request: he isn't looking for pro-PC arguments. In this thread he is asking (perhaps even challenging) Mac proponents to "convert" him.

He sounds very knowledgeable about PCs so no pro-PC arguments here are necessary.
 
But I have bought iMacs in 2009 and 2011 because they are pretty much the same price as a PC with a comparable monitor. It's a beautiful machine - quiet, shiny... it has great resale value.

One tip: buy Apple refurbs - they're a lot cheaper. You can actually get Apple to send it directly to OWC and then OWC can put a SSD in it for less than Apple charges - and they can give you a 3 year warranty on any modifications they do. The only bad thing is that both iMacs I bought developed a dead pixel. You hardly see it on the massive screen though.

There are some issues:
1. It's slightly more expensive to expand storage (you can't just stick drives in the machine). Worse - if the main drive inside the iMac dies, your computer is basically out of action until you can get it serviced.

2. It has a laptop graphics card in it. This makes it really slow for GPU-accelerated stuff. Our GTX285-powered Mac Pro DaVinci setup at work is realtime and can also handle non-realtime 4K (real 4K image processing not "Adobe Premiere tells me I'm editing 4K so I must be") whereas my iMac is just sluggish at 1080p.

I thought you'd be able to stick in an external gfx card via a Thundebolt enclosure but unfortunately:
- Apple has to write drivers for that to happen (they probably will since it would make so much sense for their laptops)
- Thunderbolt PCIe enclosures aren't out yet
- All of the enclosures currently announced don't support the beefy power requirements of good graphics cards (hopefully Cubix will launch a REAL PCIe expander)
- For the price of the Thunderbolt expander ($1000), you could by a PC

3. You can't use the iMac as an external monitor for a non-Thunderbolt computer. I was actually going to get a PC for DaVinci, then I remembered that I'd have to buy another 27" screen as well because although you can use the iMac as a monitor via passthrough mode... it can't take DisplayPort. It only works if you have a Mac with Thunderbolt attached to it. Hopefully stuff will change this year (will PCs with Thunderbolt be able to work with the iMac as a monitor? Apple or 3rd party may release a good graphics card as an expander?).

4. The Thunderbolt external video output card I have (Blackmagic Ultrastudio 3D) has an extremely irritating loud fan, whereas Blackmagic's internal PCIe solutions are much quieter. So this kinda negates the whole "my iMac is quiet" thing. And you can't put the Ultrastudio far away because the max length of Thunderbolt cable you can buy is like 6.5ft.

Personally, if I was to buy now, I'd get a fast gaming PC. When I bought the iMac, there was no PC version of DaVinci, so that wasn't an option. But now - free DaVinci coupled with a cheap gaming GTX580 (or whatever nVidia releases this year that's even better) just rocks.

Maybe the 2012 iMacs will have significantly better gfx cards, maybe Adobe CS6 will have a nice version of SpeedGrade, though.

Color grading on FCP X is nice (basically it's a floating point 3-way color corrector except they stuck everything inside of a rectangle for some reason, coupled with basic secondaries and power windows) but not as good as Color. I've heard it said that FCP X has the same technology as Color. That is like saying that a toy Ferrari has the same technology as a real Ferrari because they both have Ferrari stickers on them. FCP X's color corrector is most similar to Colorista, really. It's not in the same league as DaVinci and nowhere near as fast, capable or smooth for large projects... but it doesn't have to be to get the job done.

Are you serious about being on Windows Movie Maker and/or free NLEs or was that a joke?

To me it is insane to spend $3000 on a computer and $1500 on an external RAID array and not enough on software. Also, you need a backup solution. So I'd say your options are:

1. Get an iMac, FCPX, plus two OWC QX2s for external storage - one for backup, one for storage. I have 4 - they're decent if a little loud and limited to FW800 speed since iMacs don't have eSATA unless you get OWC to add it manually at great expense.

2. Get a cheap gaming PC, load it up with internal drives, buy an external USB drive or two for backup. This should be cheaper than the iMac and then you can spend the difference on Adobe CS55.5 Or maybe see if you can run the trial, or try the subscription for a month or two to tide you over to CS6... which will likely be released at NAB in April. Add DaVinci (free!) if color grading interests you - I guess it does since you asked about it.

Both will work fine. There you go - my 2c.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
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A second reminder.

As Barry has stated, and as the OP has requested, he isn't asking for pro PC arguments, but has asked specific FCP X and Mac questions. There are seven of them.

Barry_Green said:
Let's keep in mind the OP's initial request: he isn't looking for pro-PC arguments. In this thread he is asking (perhaps even challenging) Mac proponents to "convert" him.

He sounds very knowledgeable about PCs so no pro-PC arguments here are necessary.
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David Saraceno said:
A second reminder.

As Barry has stated, and as the OP has requested, he isn't asking for pro PC arguments, but has asked specific FCP X and Mac questions. There are seven of them.
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I'm sorry. I thought that, having actually bought 2 iMacs, I would be able to offer useful advice.

Focusing on color grading (one of the 7 questions he asked) since I know that well.

You don't have to answer all 7 questions.

He also said "kill my prejudices, make me into a mac user" and I think I offered a pretty detailed, honest listing of the pros and cons.

Egg Born Son - do you think my post was useful or do you want David to just delete it?

David, I think you are specifically targeting me and it's rather impolite.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Jim Simon said:
The one thing you're overlooking is that a PC costing around $3,000 (2/3's of your total) will blow the socks off a Mac costing about the same (90% of your total). Just no contest in performance.

So if you're willing to spend upwards of $4,000, spend $2,000 or so on a real nice, powerful Windows machine, and then another $1700 on the Adobe Production Premium suite. You'll get much better hardware performance, and FAR more capable software.
Click to expand...

I didn't come to the FCPX forum to hear from PC guys. I am a PC guy. I know everything I need to know about PCs and if I do go that way I already know what I will buy. What I don't know about is Macs, which is why I made this post. IF THIS DESCENDS INTO A PC VS MAC THREAD IT WILL BE A WASTE OF EVERYONE'S TIME. Only porn wastes more of the internet than that debate. To be clear I am only interested in hearing from Mac people about their experiences and perceived benefits of the Mac/FCPX combination. I have a list of complaints as long as my arm against Mac I didn't elaborate on in my original post. Just enough to let people know where I'm coming from and what my needs are.

@David Saraceno - thanks David, you've answered all my questions succintly and given me exactly what I needed. I can now make an informed decision.

@The Reverend - those were the lines I was thinking along. Prices about 20% higher in Australia though but that goes for PC too.

@Barry_Green - thankyou for understanding my request.

@bruceallen - I've already looked at the PC options (and the price of premiere is the primary reason I'm looking at Macs, unless I rip it. I'm a hobbyist if I'm being honest with myself, I have to ask myself "am I ready to utilise that power"?). The additional insight into the FCPX tools is appreciated. Your post was helpful and I don't think David is targeting you, Mac vs PC is a tinderbox is all. And yes, I did give WMM a go (with SD tape before I got my P2) and learnt my lesson immediately - even though it had a lot of rendering options including .avi it wouldn't successfully render to anything but a highly compressed .wmv file destroying all my camera work. It was like wrestling a bull trying to make it do anything useful in the editor. I was just having a play while recovering from the cost of the camera and accessories, I never intended to use it seriously. Some of the free NLEs were a little better except I didn't realise before I shot the footage that none of them could handle the formats I wanted to use...then my old girl died and I was down to the work laptop, which I don't even have administrator access to! Oh well, the Dell arrives this week so I can at least free up the cards again while I ponder which way to jump.


I have to say that if I ignore my prejudices, at this stage the Mac is looking pretty good. If I can get over the small stuff (one button mouse, relearning naming conventions) it will certainly suffice for a couple of years until I'm ready to upgrade. And when I do I'll get a decent return on it. The monitors really do produce beautiful images and if the specs don't match the PC, the software is specifically optimised for it so performance has to be acceptable. I'm waiting to hear on a job application on the other side of the country so I've got a few weeks left to think about it. Thanks to all who responded to my questions. Sorry if my thread caused a kerfuffle - I didn't expect to find PC guys in this part of the forum but maybe my title could be considered a red rag to some...
 
I love the Mac os.

It is very well defined and doesn't get in the way of what you need to do.

That being said, if you switch to Mac, I would bet you would be much happier with Adobe's native workflow and it's interoperability with the Suite's other apps.
 
The price of Adobe is the only reason I am even looking at a Mac. Otherwise I'd just get a PC. I may well be happier with Premiere when I'm ready for it. In the meantime I just want the tools to get out of the way while I get a body of work behind me. I'm not going to be the software equivalent of someone who goes and buys a RED for their first camera. I don't want to use tools just because I have them. I want to find out that I need them first. Let's not put the cart before the horse. I tried the free NLE's and they couldn't do what I needed. I bought a follow focus after finding out that I can't focus comfortably or acheive reliable repeatable focus without one. I'm serious about what I want to do and intend to do the hard yards to get there. I've got a good 40 years or so ahead of me to get there.

I'm a hobbyist, not looking for a career - I already have one. I just want to make art for art's sake, without compromise and hopefully until my dying day. I've had an itch to do this for almost 20 years and it hasn't gone away. Technology has finally reached a point where I can afford to achieve my dreams. As long as my editor can stitch shots together, add transitions, composite greenscreen/luma keys, manipulate the audio, grade it so it looks contiguous and render to a useable format, then it pretty much meets my needs. I just want to tell stories. And when I stripped my needs down to the bare basics, to my own surprise Mac/FCPX entered the mix.

If FCPX is iMovie Pro then that's okay. If it's more then that is great. I'm surprised apple doesn't provide more detail in its advertising and website. They should know that pros and tech-minded prosumers are sold on details. And as some have suggested it may eventually be everything everyone wants. It's not even 10.1.0 yet and from the blurb I don't need many of the features it already has. Early adopters may well get some benefits later on with upgrade pricing. At the end of the day a film can be edited with a pair of scissors and some sticky tape if that's all you've got. Any NLE can do that.


I'm inclined towards an iMac, probably the 27". Does the upgraded video card really make a big difference or only for the most intensive projects? I would have thought the RAM would make a bigger difference. I understand rendering doesn't make as effective use out of GPUs as games do. Also don't think I really need to be mobile but just for interest is anyone running FCPX successfully on a macbook pro? I would imagine that a 17" would be required just for the screen resolution but is a 15" doable? And is SSD good bang for buck? Thanks guys.
 
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Glad to know I was helpful!

Egg Born Son said:
I have to say that if I ignore my prejudices, at this stage the Mac is looking pretty good. If I can get over the small stuff (one button mouse, relearning naming conventions)
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Trust me, this is not an issue. All modern Mac programs behave pretty much the same as PC programs in terms of right-clicking on stuff. Only difference is that if you don't feel like clicking the right button, you can hold down control and left click and do the same thing.

Egg Born Son said:
it will certainly suffice for a couple of years until I'm ready to upgrade. And when I do I'll get a decent return on it. The monitors really do produce beautiful images and if the specs don't match the PC, the software is specifically optimised for it so performance has to be acceptable.
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Absolutely. Also - FCP X is best optimized for iMacs and laptops (Apple's best-selling machines), so you're good there. Contrary to popular belief, many things you do in FCP X are not super-multithreaded. This is sad for 12 core Mac Pro owners (hopefully they're doing 3D rendering or encoding videos all day which is pretty much the only thing that uses the cores properly still) but a good thing for you because it means the chance of the damn thing needing 8 cores or whatever in 2 years' time and not working on your still-shiny iMac or MacBook Pro is low. Since computers aren't really getting much faster than about 10% - 15% per core theses days (they're just adding more cores), your computer should last for a while.

Notice that Mac Pro, Macbook Pro and iMac are roughly the same (certain tasks like export are faster when you spread them across the cores):
http://www.barefeats.com/fcpx01.html

Egg Born Son said:
I'm inclined towards an iMac, probably the 27". Does the upgraded video card really make a big difference or only for the most intensive projects? I would have thought the RAM would make a bigger difference. I understand rendering doesn't make as effective use out of GPUs as games do. Also don't think I really need to be mobile but just for interest is anyone running FCPX successfully on a macbook pro? I would imagine that a 17" would be required just for the screen resolution but is a 15" doable? And is SSD good bang for buck? Thanks guys.
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It thrives if you give it 4 fast cores, a decent GPU, and enough RAM and a SSD. Which can be found in both laptop and iMac. 15" is too small for me but some people love it.

I would be on the fence about the better GPU. Folks are going to make some really nifty GPU-accelerated plugins in the future and you might be sad you can't run them in realtime. The GPU will be the first thing to age - and you're stuck with it. Or maybe not - see my first post for the situation regarding Thunderbolt GPU expansion.

Talking of screen resolution, you're aware that the next round of laptops are very likely going to bump that up a lot, right? "Retina Display" rumors have been going around for ages - and we saw Retina Display PC laptops previewed at CES, so you know they're making the panels. So if you really, really want a high-res laptop screen, wait till April?

I suggested OWC because that's the cheapest path - buy a refurb, send it to OWC, get them to stick a SSD in it. You can add RAM by yourself, no problem.

Main worry would remain the hard drive dying - which is not user-replaceable. Consider AppleCare or OWC's warranty because if you come from a PC world you may be surprised at the cost of repairs. My girlfriend's G5 died and thank heavens she had AppleCare because they swapped out CPUs and logic boards in a mad frenzy... and those things were not cheap. Each time I lugged it back to the Apple store they'd hand me a different piece of paper with "oh this logic board would have cost $850 but because you have AppleCare it's free"... etc. You can't just swap motherboards if one dies - and you can't even swap hard drives yourself because taking the iMac apart is scary and Apple has special fan-controller firmware and the thing will probably go to full blast if you put in a normal drive.

For me these are pretty clear reasons for going the SSD route.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
If I may throw in my understanding of the multi threaded thing...each processor has dedicated hardware cores and thru smoke and mirrors (software control) virtual cores. These virtual cores were a sort of free gift the understanding being that if a main core was not working flat out some processing time could be given to another process / application.
A sort of time share that allowed other apps to get more processing.

But if the cores are pretty busy then bye bye virtual core.
But with FCPX it uses all the cores pretty efficiently so there is no down time hence you only see the real cores running and not the virtual cores. Due to the software multitasking control virtual cores would never be as efficient as real cores.
So with grand dispatch etc the macs are very efficient...hope that all makes sense

Wondering thou if some different process in FCPX such as video render and a audio filter might open up a virtual core or two
 
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For the OP. I have an Imac and FCPX loaded and I cut HVX stuff all the time with it and it works great. Runs great on my MBP17 as well.
 
David Saraceno said:
If you are looking at a SSD for MacBook Pro or iMac, here are two articles I wrote for LAFCPUG.org with video editing in mind:

http://www.lafcpug.org/reviews/review_owc_6g.html

http://www.lafcpug.org/reviews/review_owc_electra.html
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Glad we both like the OWC SSD - yes, definitely consider it!

Vultch said:
If I may throw in my understanding of the multi threaded thing...each processor has dedicated hardware cores and thru smoke and mirrors (software control) virtual cores. These virtual cores were a sort of free gift the understanding being that if a main core was not working flat out some processing time could be given to another process / application.
A sort of time share that allowed other apps to get more processing.

But if the cores are pretty busy then bye bye virtual core.
But with FCPX it uses all the cores pretty efficiently so there is no down time hence you only see the real cores running and not the virtual cores. Due to the software multitasking control virtual cores would never be as efficient as real cores.
So with grand dispatch etc the macs are very efficient...hope that all makes sense
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As a programmer, I have to politely disagree with you.
1. Mac Pro and iMac would not be the same speed in so many benchmarks then
2. The Activity Monitor would be at or near 1600% or 2400% on 8 or 12 core (if a core is fully used, it reports 200% if you have Hyperthreading turned on, simple as that)
3. FCP X would smoke Premiere and Avid in terms of speed, which it doesn't.

Compare with DaVinci, which is a proper multithreaded app for heavy CPU functions (watching it allocate cores to decode RED footage is a delight)... and is much faster. You don't need Grand Central Dispatch, you just need code written with multithreading in mind from day one.

Grand Central Dispatch is a nice system (read Ars Technica's explanation - http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars/12) but FCP X doesn't seem to take full advantage of it.

I suspect it's because they didn't have time to re-write the Motion and iMovie parts of the code to FULLY take advantage of Grand Central Dispatch but very likely the cool new awesomeness (all of the database and background task stuff) is written with GCD in mind.

FCP X is a combination of aforementioned cool new awesomeness with: an enhanced version of Motion's render engine (hint: the filters are in fact Motion projects) plus a majorly enhanced version of the interface code and more from iMovie (hint: the behavior of so many things is so similar, many interface tasks match pixel-for-pixel, which different code wouldn't do, plus it imports iMovie projects).

If you really go digging, you'll see that at one point they had a FCP-like multi-track timeline (and multi-user editing, no less):
http://alex4d.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/secret-fcpx-xml-multi-user-editing/
My suspicion is that if this was ever completed in its entirety, yes, it would have been good multi-threaded code. But at some point in the development process they chucked it and built on existing iMovie code instead. Of course there's always the chance that due to the uproar, they might restart development on this traditional timeline and introduce it in a year or two as a new feature...

Anyway, that's why certain parts of the app are well-multithreaded, while others show no improvement on a Mac Pro vs an iMac. They come from 3 distinct codebases.

Sorry for being long-winded but apparently it is contentious to suggest that FCP X is iMovie plus New Pro Stuff, plus Motion render engine - so I have to back it up :)

Anyway: understanding why this is true really really helps when choosing what system to buy to run FCP X. Just like knowing that the earth goes around the sun helps with space travel. Sorry if it upsets people.

Summary: for an editing app this is OK in terms of using cores but not great. Look at it clearly when evaluating whether to get an iMac or a Mac Pro (and if you get a Mac Pro, whether it's worth it to get something with more slower cores, or fewer faster cores - that is a lot of cash you could waste)!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Bruce I doff my cap to your extensive research and knowledge... I really dont know what lives underneath the skin of FCPX

Many many moons ago I used to programme, writing assemble language for simple 4 bit and 8 bit industrial control units, but... its been a while.
 
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