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Best Mac Pro Upgrade for Final Cut
Help!!!
I am currently using the old Power PC Mac Pro and I am ready to pull the trigger on a new Mac Pro Intel.
Using Final Cut to edit from HD to Dv footage and will be starting to edit Canon 5D Pro res stuff. My question do I go with the single faster CPU processor or do the dual processor 8 core model. I just want to make sure that when the day comes final cut actually upgrades I will be ready. I figure you guys would know. Thanks Robert -
6 Replies
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More cores.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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Current FCP doesnt care about more cores.
I think there will be a 64 bit iPad version before OSX (just kidding)Any intel machine with FCP7 will give you HUGE improvement over your Power PC
Even an iMac will blow your PowerPC away. -
All the standard recommendations:
- Buy an 8- or 12-core Mac Pro
- Install 8GB or more of RAM, but make sure you install even numbers, matching pairs of sticks, best if they’re all the same manufacturer, yada yada yada
- Buy 2 or more fast, internal drives and RAID-0 stripe them for plenty of HD-editing speed. Use a SSD drive for your system drive for even speedier performance.
- Move projects to offline storage as soon as you’re done with them and keep your internal drives clean of clutter.
- Only use your system drive for OSX and FCP. Never copy media to your system drive. Don’t install crap you don’t need. (Keep your old system around for “playing”.)
- Buy a Matrox CompressHD H.264 Accelerator Card if you see yourself needing to compress your footage often to H.264 for web deliver or Blu-Ray authoring. Worth its weight in gold!
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I’ve heard great things about the 3.33GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” MacPro. Less money than the 8 or 12-core and actually faster at a lot of things since the base GHz is faster which is important for Final Cut as it’s still a 32-bit app and can’t access all your cores anyway. And you can use the money saved on more RAM and drives.
tony
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All great advice. I have come down to either the 3.3 6 core single processor or the 2.4 dual 8 core. I have plenty of external storage with Caldigit raid systems. Now I just wait to see if any of these configs appear on the referb apple store. Save some $$. Thanks
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A single processor Mac has zero resale value down the line. Meanwhile, and 8 or 12 -core will be easily salable five years from now.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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