My Solution

Forgot my red footage projects are all on Mac os formatted drives so I couldn't get them to mount : ( gonna have to transfer those to another formatted drive.

First some good news:

I just tested it with 5d footage. I stacked 5 layers of native 5d footage and had them each set at 25% opacity and it didn't flinch, just fluid playback- no rendering (my Mac would have never done this). I then added multiple color adjustments to each layer, rgb curves, color balance, fast color corrector, as well as noise- still fluid playback with out rendering (occasionally it would hop over a frame but quickly pick back up)

I exported that strange 5 layer- 1 min timeline to 720p apple tv preset and it took about 15 seconds to render.

Very responsive and pleasant to work on.

Now some possibly bad news but maybe not:

I had the computer completely shut off under high stress a few times and reboot- (no blue screen of death, just strait up reboot) very strange. I checked my win event log and noticed it was most likely CPU related once they hit near 99% the machine cut off.

I noticed then that I had the fan/cooling manually turned all the way down (oops), once I turned the fan up I couldn't get it to crash anymore- I'm guessing this is some sort of safety mechanism that kills the computer if it thinks it's going to work to hot (or maybe it's a bios setting)- but will talk to customer service on Monday anyway. I still haven't gotten it to crash after trying very hard now, but want to be sure that was the problem : )

As long as that was the only problem, this machine is amazing and I actually like using windows 7.
 
Sounds good.... two follow ups:

(1) How is the dual monitor display that you got?
(2) Is there anything you miss from the Mac OS UI that isn't there in Win 7 with respect to video work (I'm not talking about Adobe vs FCP, but just the general operating systems)?

Thanks again Hunter!!!!
 
I'm single monitor for now- still testing out the view sonic to see if it's worth buying another. Video speaking, I don't think there is anything to miss from moving from Mac os to pc, once resolve is out fir pc (is it already?) I don't know what there would be to miss about a Mac,Btw- I did more testing and I think my computer rebooting was directly related to the fan being turned to low, hasn't happened since.Going to give it a real test and cut 4 spots on it this week : )
 
hunter richards said:
First some good news:

I just tested it with 5d footage. I stacked 5 layers of native 5d footage and had them each set at 25% opacity and it didn't flinch, just fluid playback- no rendering (my Mac would have never done this). I .
Click to expand...

Well, you mean your old Mac with FCP7 wouldnt.
Playing 5 layers is also a harddrive speedtask. And you can't compare what FCP7 was able to do against FCPX and CS5. The new tools are just much faster using 64- bit.
While working in CS5 i wouldn't mind being in Windows, but as a OS i never want to go back there.
 
I've never seen any Mac final cut play 5 stacked layers (with opacity on each and effects on each) of native h264- with no rendering. Is this something the new fcpx does?
 
Whoa, it's truly amazing how many people are talking about switching (or just plain doing it!). I know it's just anecdotal, but, it seems like Apple is losing plenty of customers.

Good to see you online, Hunter!

-Andrew
 
What's scary is I've been a Mac (and FCP) user since 2003, and after this whole FCPX debacle plus the obvious lack of continued hardware and software support for the Pro market, I've been thinking of going back to the PC for this. Glad to see I'm not the only one.
 
I guess I'm one of those odd balls who actually likes mac for the OS. We use HP workstations (on Avid) at work... and those boxes refresh my faith in OSX every day when they crash or have random issues. Granted, they bought the lowest end workstation but that should still be very solid...quadro cards too and Win7 64bit. /shrugs
 
Hunter my friend, I could not agree more. Is this FCP's swan song? Maybe Apple has some news of a new editing system that is better, cheaper and just as good as the old FCP 7? I have used Premier years ago, another time another story, it was not ideal. So I have continued with FCP until about a week ago I bought a new Mac Mini and BOUGHT FCPX. What a let down. It truly is iMOVIE PRO. Oh well, the breakup is there, I just have to get out of this relationship. Very sad, time to go out for a beer and remember the good times we had. Like the time me and FCP5 were in San Fran and we got real drunk and we got tatoos. Still can't remember that night too well.
 
I started with Premiere a year ago making the switch from Avid (after about 14 years with Avid) and these days exclusively edit in Premiere. At first I found Premiere to be slower but better at certain things. Now I can't find a reason to edit in Avid unless I'm bringing in MXF files from the old HVX200.
 
It's certainly an interesting time. For the sake of personal preference with the OS, I'm hanging onto my mac platform for as long as I can. I use Avid at work, but more and more am dabbling with Ppro at home. I hope that one day I will get hired onto a show that uses Ppro -- although there's just a few things they need to fix in order for that to happen - but it's close. For most projects at home, the choice would clearly be Ppro right now.
 
Update- cs5.5 is amazing and works great on pc. Never going back to fc- the real native editing is amazing and the mercury engine is mind blowing in action, love the super fast exporting and realtime effects too. With the ssd the pc boots up in about 15 seconds, and pp opens in about 1 sec. Really happy with the machine, saved me a heaping pile of cash over going to a Mac again : )
 
Only negative I have (and this is apples doing) I can't seem to export to prores format, only edit with it. I've been doing 10-bit avc intra for now until I figure something out. Any ideas?
 
Prores is read only on Windows. It can't create a prores file. DNxHD is a good free alternative. Cineform is also a good option.

You mentioned it already in one post Hunter, but how are you dealing with reading Mac formatted drives on your windows box? The biggest pain in the butt I have right now is that data on set is normally done in a Mac environment and when I take footage home it is just a hassle to get it into my windows box. Are you using some sort of software on Windows that allows you to read HFS drives?
 
Great idea, I'll download dnxhd. I'm using a $20 driver from paragon software for Mac drives now- seems to really be working well. Google search" hfs driver windows" and it should be the first one to pop up.
 
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