What about the used Mac Towers? Power enough for FCP ?

ripupthehwy

ripupthehwy

Well-known member
Hi, I'm an Edius user looking to get into FCP.
In trying to watch my budget here, I'm wondering about the power/abilities of the New Mac Pro systems with the Nehalem Xeon processors v.s. the older dual core Xeons.
I can get into a 2 processor used one on ebay for half of the price of a single processor, Quad Core Nehalem Xeon.
I will be editing in HD with footage from P2 cards mostly, with alot of color correction.
I DO NOT WANT TO END UP WITH ALOT OF RENDERING. I need to be able to atleast play back the clips on the timeline in realtime, and if I make basic changes to the video (saturation, contrast, brightness etc) that it won't force a render to play it back.

WILL THE USED SYSTEMS DO THE JOB OR SHOULD I LOOK AT THE NEWER ONES?

Thanks for any input.
 
Buy a system with the best graphics card you can get. GPU (not CPU) power assists in rendering in most FCP applications.
Most Mac graphics cards ship with the box and cannot be purchased separately as an aftermarket upgrade, so do pay attention to that.

They'll do nothing to speed up render times in FCP, but will speed up most plug-ins (esp blur and color) and dramatically increase the performance of Motion/Color and other apps in the suite.
 
Buy a system with the best graphics card you can get. GPU (not CPU) power assists in rendering in most FCP applications.
Click to expand...

Allow me to be sarcastic here: Oh that's wonderful !! Mac supports such wonderful, powerful, leading edge graphics cards !

But seriously from what I've read, Apple is behind on this with the Mac Pro towers, only 2 or 3 cards to choose from and they aren't very beefy. So should I be worried on the render thing?
 
ripupthehwy said:
Allow me to be sarcastic here: Oh that's wonderful !! Mac supports such wonderful, powerful, leading edge graphics cards !

But seriously from what I've read, Apple is behind on this with the Mac Pro towers, only 2 or 3 cards to choose from and they aren't very beefy. So should I be worried on the render thing?
Click to expand...

You do realize that FCP has been running on Mac Pros (and quite well I might add) before the newest batch with Nehalem chips.
 
If you intend to work with p2 based DVCProHD footage, and use SATA internal drives with an ATI 4870, I don't foresee any issues with "rendering."

However, if you laid down five or six tracks with audio, add filters, grading, FX, and titling just about all NLEs on either platform will require some rendering.

Change your RT settings to dynamic, etc., and the only render is at the end.
 
I spent time at a Mac store in the mall this evening. Two salespeople both told me the I Mac with the I7 cores are faster than the Mac Pro's with the Nehelam processors.
But having the expansion ability of the tower seems (to me at least) to be more compelling. What good is the I Mac with NO esata ports and only one firewire?
I need to hook up a DVCpro VTR via firewire and at least one really fast external video storage drive, which with Imac would have to be firewire or usb (forget that!). So, can I daisey chain a VTR and hard drives via the one firewire and get good results?
 
I bought a used Newhalem in January, with I believe it's 10 GBs RAM dual quad procs and a good graphics card. It works just fine. Playback of HD is just fine. No problems to speak of, but rendering is rendering. Make sure you have tons of RAM, and fast hard drives. I would not buy an iMac for production situations. It might work for you, but is not capable of expansion. Probably throwing your money away, as Apple upgrade paths are notoriously screwed up (just try adding procs to the empty slots on the Newhalem, better buy two procs to begin with, there's no upgrade path!). And don't get me started about having to burn Blu Ray on the Mac and then play it back on Windows (G).

The eSATA and 800 Firewire are the only ways to go. I have one 750 drive for OS and apps, two 1TB RAID 1 for redundancy, two 2 TB externals on FW. It works great. Now if I can only learn FCP! It's a most frustrating piece of software, in that I work with Vegas as well, and prefer it over FCP for most things. Pros and Cons with both packages. I demonstrate Vegas doing something simple like a dissolve, or dragging native formats like AVCHD onto the timeline, to some of my FCP buddies and they are like, "WTF!". But like Windows OS, 80% of our world of video editing is being done on FCP (just making that stat up), so you have to know it. Just be prepared to be frustrated, going in...(G) Buy lots of training videos.
 
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THANKS for all the advice and info.
Yeah I'm still trying to decide whether to get an Imac or a Mac Pro Tower. My money is slim. I think I can get alot more processing power with the Imac and not have to buy another monitor. But expansion capabilites with a tower, yeah that's much better. Knowing my luck the moment I buy a tower, Mac will announce Mac Pros with i7 Core processors. Or the moment I buy an Imac they will announce a new model with eSata ports (that's my biggest beef about the Imac, no eSata ports. So stuck with slower Firewire 800 for Hard drive storage).
Definitely not gonna dismantle my Edius Nle on the PC.
 
ripupthehwy said:
Allow me to be sarcastic here: Oh that's wonderful !! Mac supports such wonderful, powerful, leading edge graphics cards !

But seriously from what I've read, Apple is behind on this with the Mac Pro towers, only 2 or 3 cards to choose from and they aren't very beefy. So should I be worried on the render thing?
Click to expand...

The graphics cards are from ATI and NVIDIA.

As to being beefy, the NVIDIA 4800 is pretty darn beefy, as is the ATI 4870.

Remember the the FxPlug architecture enables filter and plug in developers to greatly accelerate performance and rendering by using the GPU for processing rather than the CPU.

Leading edge for gaming isn't the same as using video cards for filter acceleration.

In that respect there are several video cards for the MacPros that achieve this.

If you wish to learn more: http://developer.apple.com/appleapplications/fxplugsdk.html
 
Hang on to your butts, the iMac/ Mac Pro update rumor mill has been going again. Tuesday's only one more day. if not tomorrow, they will surely be updated before the end of the Back To School Promotion. Late summer is ideal for enticing those new college bounders with new systems.

And the current Mac Pro is just well, old. Even if new ones are not in your budget, you may find some new deals on old/used/ refurbed ones once it actually happens. here's to positive outlooks....
 
It's the third rumored announcement.

However, this one looks like the real deal.

Perhaps newer graphics cards, 1600 FW, Light Peak, the new high-speed optical cable technology, and a new 27 inch LED monitor.

We'll see.
 
I do all my FCP and AE on a dual Xeon (2006 model) Mac Pro with 15G of RAM. I honestly have found no need to upgrade. I did put a newer 8800GT graphics card but other than that the machine has been GREAT.

Maybe I am just used to it, but I cannot see myself upgrading for at least another year or so, or, when they start making better efficient use of the Grand Central multicpu architecture.

I also use a MacBookPro but that is pretty new.
 
Honestly I'm a tad disappointed. With USB 3.0 gaining speed in the aftermarket segments, I'm surprised that it hasn't become standard.

For my own personal machine, I'm really in the need for a new workstation. My only system now is a 2007 MBP and is starting to feel old. Mostly in the RAM dept being limited to 4GB. CPU dept when dealing with anything h.264. It seems every month that goes by I change my mind form the quad iMac to the Quad Mac Pro..... I just can't make up my mind. There is such a trade off of pros and cons.

Price vs. I/O expandability & an included monitor being the hardest to justify either way. I can't stand seeing the iMac only have a single FWport. But I'd love to get that 27" screen, not to mention the cheaper price. If that iMac just had a few eSata ports, it would have made the decision THAT much easier.

Other gotcha's with the iMac include the chipset limited 16GB of RAM. Though I'll have to find out what processor these new ones are to see if they are 24GB RAM compatible... Thinking 3 years from now, I'd not be surprised that 16GB just won't be enough. For heavy Pro apps use, it barely is now. And FCS 64bit isn't even here yet.
 
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