New Apple 12 core Mac Pro and iMac announced

Anyway you can make a long story short?

Edit: it's a freaking movie script you wrote, I know because I lost focus after the second sentence.
 
LuckyStudio,

Nice article but there is some unnecessary rant there in regards to number of available PCIe slots:
Why would a professional editor need to ad Firewire bus and USB3 port onto their Macpro if they are already using sata card(with or without raid controller) and SAS? Overkill.

Strangways gave a more proper example (on page 3) about how to fill those slots but he made a mistake; Macpro has 4 PCI slots, not 3.

So even if you are top of the line editor who uses Da Vinci Resolve u still have necessary expansions:
-One for two esata raid capable controller card.($80) {http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MXPCIE6GRS/}
-One for preferred I/O video card (AJA, Matrox, Blackmagic etc)
-One for resolve
-One for choice of SAS, Red Rocket etc

You still have built in Firewire 800 ports for other needs.
Can somebody give me a real life example of how you'd need an additional USB3, an extra FW800 bus and sata port in the same time?
Better yet, are there any editors whose workflow is crippled due to only having 4 macpro slots? Lets speak in terms of practicality, not theory.

EDIT:One PCIe slot is dedicated to graphic card naturally so Strangway's example was correct {No more postings after midnight ;)) I am still firm on not needing USB3 and additional firewire bus though...
 
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External disk space already competes with bluray space in cost and there are many advantages worth more than 10x the cost of the HDDs. A year from now, even RAID1 will compete.
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Otis,
So far from the research I figured blu-ray cost is half of HDD for archival purpose. (I hope you are adding the cost of a RAID system capable of RAID5) Aside from the cost I believe a disk is much more reliable than a drive and has a minimum of 25 years of shelf life. Archival quality Panasonic Bluray discs (50 years life) are $3/per disk for the discerned.
However, you are right about convenience of using HDDs, so i ll have to think more before making a decision.
 
VGurcu said:
Otis,
So far from the research I figured blu-ray cost is half of HDD for archival purpose. (I hope you are adding the cost of a RAID system capable of RAID5) Aside from the cost I believe a disk is much more reliable than a drive and has a minimum of 25 years of shelf life. Archival quality Panasonic Bluray discs (50 years life) are $3/per disk for the discerned.
However, you are right about convenience of using HDDs, so i ll have to think more before making a decision.
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Yes, it's 3euro/25GB for raid5 gige or about 4USD.

$3/disk=$3+time required for writing + time required for verification + extra time on new transfers due to only 25GB/disk. I believe the time spent in the process is worth more than $1. Actually, I believe having two copies of fault tolerant HDD in different buildings is still cheaper than bluray if you take the required time into account.

I wouldn't trust writable optical media with the density of bluray for 10 years.

The 3euro/25GB 6TB RAID5 will easily transfer to the 0.5euro/25GB 60TB system 3 years from now, which will easily transfer to the 0.1euro/25GB 600TB system 9 years from now. I doubt the total cost of 50 years of storage on affordable computer disks (or future technologies) will be more than 5euro/25GB. And everything will transfer with a single copy command. Compare that to going though 250 or 2,500 blurays and copying one by one. And imagine how heavy the error correction will have to work when the media deteriorates with time and the loss in time in this process. Or discovering 40% of the media is bad due to parameters that were unknown in 2010 or your writer's compatibility/writing quality, or the new readers compatibility, or high writing speed that produced inferior quality in the first place, or specific media related issues, or because the atmosphere in your storage space was not optimal. Even a small deterioration in media quality could increase the reading time to more than an hour. With the online RAID units you are notified of any problem and you can fix it immediately with a spare.
 
Im working on the original Mac Pro Tower with a Thirty Inch Monitor, made in 2006. And I have NO, and I mean 0 problems with HD footage. It is quite Speedy so if you need a new computer buy the new one and you will be set, if you have one that is fairly new why waste your time looking and just go out and shoot something. Cause if all you people need to do is update your facebook status and check dvxuser buy an ipod touch for 199 at walmart.
 
VGurcu,

Filling all three slots isn't really that hard. Fibre Channel card to connect to xSan storage plus an AJA or BM I/O card automatically takes most of the machines at my work down to one free slot. A couple machines are attached to control surfaces that take over the whole FW bus (AFAIK this is true of Avid hardware as well or at least used to be) so if you want to use a FW drive you have to power down and disconnect the control surface because if you do it hot the Mac will kernel panic. The control surface for my machine is pretty much a paper weight because I can't afford to have it tie up my FW bus. I also can't add a FW card because all three of my slots are filled (Fibre, BM, ethernet). Why do I need a third ethernet port you ask? Port 1 is for the metadata controller for the xSan, port 2 is for the network and the PCI card is for my JL Cooper panels I use with Color.

AFAIK, and I this could be outdated info because I don't religiously follow Red, Red Rocket doesn't place nice with other I/O cards so having USB 3 onboard to connect to might by pass these conflicts or at the very least make it easier to disconnect your I/O device when you need to use RR while not eating up a valuable PCI slot.


-Andrew
 
Why do I need a third ethernet port you ask? Port 1 is for the metadata controller for the xSan, port 2 is for the network and the PCI card is for my JL Cooper panels I use with Color.
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Perhaps its my ignorance on the network subject but i'll still ask why you need an additional ethernet port? Isnt your xsan storage the network you are connected to with your fibre channel card? Do you have a separate network you need to be connected???
 
The fibre channel is the I/O for the data and the metadata controller (what's in my port 1) is what coordinates all the read/write requests from all of the clients.

From Apple's Xsan page:

"Xsan includes software called the “metadata controller,” which acts as the traffic cop for the SAN. When an Xsan client attempts to read or write to a file, it gets permission from the metadata controller, then accesses the data directly on the SAN over high-speed Fibre Channel."


-Andrew
 
Firewire 800 is already a dog, it is ok for a Compact Flash Card/P2/SXS reader, but certainly much slower than eSATA . To me this is the thing stopping me from buying an iMac, there is absolutely no excuse for them not to have at least 2 eSATA ports on the 27" iMacs. A second FW 800 port would be nice as well, some drives dont have a second FW 800 port that would facilitate daisy chaining.

The exclusion of eSATA and USB 3.0 ports on the new Mac Pro is inexcusable. For some stupid reason Apple always has a resistance to any technology it did not innovate, I'm surprised they dont still have ADB ports on their Mac Pro.

I have a current Dual 2.93 Mac Pro and I was really hoping that this new one was going to be a huge upgrade. I'm disappointed, but it is pretty clear Apple has their priorities on things other than the Mac Pro.

Like I said , the iMac is the real disappointment, it is extremely limited with only FW800. Besides that they should have an ExpressCard slot on the machine, this would allow you to run something like the Matrox MXO2, read media cards, or at least add the eSATA ports.
 
Firewire 800 is already a dog, it is ok for a Compact Flash Card/P2/SXS reader, but certainly much slower than eSATA . To me this is the thing stopping me from buying an iMac, there is absolutely no excuse for them not to have at least 2 eSATA ports on the 27" iMacs. A second FW 800 port would be nice as well, some drives dont have a second FW 800 port that would facilitate daisy chaining.
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I completely agree with you. Thats the issue that's stalled me from purchasing IMac. Yet I don't really need the Mac Pro. I'm a pc user that wants to get into FCP but I have alot of valuable HD footage (3 TB worth) on drives that I really don't wanna go Firewire with. Not to mention the DVCPRO VTR deck I have that uses firewire, meaning I have to daisy chain all this together. So..the macpro has to be my only option. Use the internal sata ports and do an internal raid or buy and external raid and a raid card (too expensive). I'm just wondering, If I raid 2 drives together in a raid 0 (or raid 1+0 four drives) internally using the macpro drive connections, will that greatly tax/slow down the processing power. I know a good raid card will alleviate this..but again price.
 
Mac Pro's run server grade, workstation motheboards. It's an internal motherboard controller that handles the RAID. Should effect your processing at all.
 
Right now I am running Softraid 4.0 under OSX 10.6.4, and I have been real happy with the performance. website is softraid.com , I know it is not as good as a card, but it has been rock solid and a real bang for the buck for only $120.

these are the raid towers I am buying next, again would have been great if the 27" imac had eSATA............

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/



ohhhh and one last axe to grind with Apple. Enough with dodging Blu-Ray. Give it up, it is the HD standard and here to stay.
 
there's also a great deal of ESATA solutions out there with built in hardware raid, up to raid 5. redudancy, speed, storage. great bang for the buck. nowhere near as fast a a real SAS raid, but really good if you're on a budget and not pushing around beyond HD files.
 
Maybe this is a naive question, but if you are a professional who relies on video editing for your income, why would you buy a pre-configured box like this? Not sure I understand. Wouldn't you instead hand build one to your exact needs and specifications? I built a core i7 machine in 2009 exactly as I wanted it, I can't imagine just buying an off the shelf machine and using it for my income. As a bonus I took the money I saved and put it towards a better video camera. Maybe it's just me, but it seems really strange to just go off the shelf when it's for your main source of income.
 
joker454 said:
Maybe this is a naive question, but if you are a professional who relies on video editing for your income, why would you buy a pre-configured box like this? Not sure I understand. Wouldn't you instead hand build one to your exact needs and specifications? I built a core i7 machine in 2009 exactly as I wanted it, I can't imagine just buying an off the shelf machine and using it for my income. As a bonus I took the money I saved and put it towards a better video camera. Maybe it's just me, but it seems really strange to just go off the shelf when it's for your main source of income.
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It's the only legitimate way to run Macintosh OS X. Thus, the only way to run Final Cut Studio, which is a rather popular NLE suite. Not to mention a number of other editing tools which are made only for the OS X platform.

Also, Apple owners get the benefits of customer service and warranty through a single supplier (Apple) rather than through individual component companies (i.e. Asus for the mainboard, Kingston for the RAM, Lite-On for the drive, etc.). There is also something to be said that the Mac Pros are, in many ways, "industry standard hardware". When I walk into a room and see an iMac or a Mac Pro, I know just what it is and how reliable I can expect it to be. When I walk into a room and see a custom built computer, I have no idea of knowing how well it may work*. The same holds true for clients.

Perhaps another reason is because people who really do some extremely expensive and mission-critical work - Post-houses, DIT companies, etc. - use "off-the-shelf" Macs, often augmented by a couple of PCI-Express cards and RAID solutions. In this way, they appear as very trustworthy solutions, whereas people may doubt the efficacy of something they built themselves.

*I say this with a great deal of experience building my own computers, which were always very reliable - more reliable than my family's "off-the-shelf" PCs. I know that custom PCs aren't inherently unreliable just because they are custom built.
 
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