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Best Upgrade for FCP
Hello,
I have been through film school and know FCP fairly well enough to be hired by a company to do conference recording and making dvds for their company. They haven’t done this for a few years and the equipment I am working with is old FCP 5 on a G4……even though I’m shooting in SD it still takes forever to render things.
They want to buy a new computer and was asking for specifics on what would improve rendering speeds the most CPU speed, RAM, graphics card or disk speed? I already plan to get them to buy me a external drive with 7200rpm but when we go looking for a computer it’s going to be for a used one……a Mac Book Pro or Mac Pro, what would be the most important thing to look for to improve rendering speed?
Right now it’s taking 3 hours to convert a 7 minute clip into a QT….and they want to put out many hours of material. -
20 Replies
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Go with the Mac Pro 12-Core with at least 8 GB of ram, but 16 GB if you can. Mac Pros are also better for future expansion & storing multiple hard drives in the tower.
Runner up would be the iMac i7.
Kenny Miracle
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Crikey- if the budget allows it NEVER get a macbook pro. I dont understand this at the moment- people all over the place getting Macbook Pros for editing, and they dont even need portability. NO! Get a Mac Pro- FAR faster. Or an iMac i7, FAR faster. Macbook pros IMHO should be used only for ‘on the field’ editing stations (when needed), or as secondary work stations or capture computers.
But yeah, going back to the original post, a G4 with FCP 5 in incredibly outdated hardware and software. Get the latest of everything the budget allows for, and everything will be gravy!
😀
Tom Morter-Laing
Freelance Editor
Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
http://www.depictproductions.co.ukSony Z5, with Rode NTG2.
iMac 27″ intel i7 2.93GHz, 12GB RAM, ATI HD5750 [1GB GDDR5], 2TB Int. SATA with 2TB External HDD; (FW800), with Elgato Turbo H264HD. -
3 hours to render a 7 minute sequence? It doesn’t sound like you need a new computer, it sounds like you need to rethink your workflow.
FCP and post production in general is as complicated as you make it. If you’re working in SD for example – shoot DV, edit DV, export DV – make your delverables. If you want a bit more quality – convert your footage to ProRes SD, edit ProRes SD, export ProRes SD – make your deliverables.
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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London -
MacBook pros are at least expandable, while
iMacs are not. I edit on a laptop fairly frequently. Don’t knock it till you try it.MacPro first
MacBook Pro second
iMac only if you have to. -
“MacBook pros are at least expandable, while
iMacs are not. I edit on a laptop fairly frequently. Don’t knock it till you try it.”Ive tried it, and am knocking it- they’re simply not as powerful, and for the same price you can have far superior hardware. The only advantage of the upper Macbook Pro models is the sata connection, and that’s it. How do you mean expendable? Why is something which costs the exact same amount of money more expendable?
MacPro first
iMac second 😉😀
Tom Morter-Laing
Freelance Editor
Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
http://www.depictproductions.co.ukSony Z5, with Rode NTG2.
iMac 27″ intel i7 2.93GHz, 12GB RAM, ATI HD5750 [1GB GDDR5], 2TB Int. SATA with 2TB External HDD; (FW800), with Elgato Turbo H264HD. -
Wrong vowel, Tom.
Expandable, not expendable.
Meaning, you can hook real raids, real capture decides, real
Pcie hardware to MacBook pros which you simply cannot with iMacs. -
Essentially youre still only talking about one external connections, and as I said, the ONLY thing you can use to expand is the Esata connection. Which it has one of. Personally, I would rather edit to an ethernet RAID and have FAR more rendering power in the processor etc than buy a macbook pro. Especially as most camera up until about £8k dont require anything more than a FW800 RAID, if that. There’s always a workaround, and you can now put in a SATA connection into an imac (yes it voids the warranty, but the option is there).
All I know is that rendering is the bane of my existence, and at the end of the day the only thing which really helps is the processor. iMacs have far superior processor power.
😀
Tom Morter-Laing
Freelance Editor
Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
http://www.depictproductions.co.ukSony Z5, with Rode NTG2.
iMac 27″ intel i7 2.93GHz, 12GB RAM, ATI HD5750 [1GB GDDR5], 2TB Int. SATA with 2TB External HDD; (FW800), with Elgato Turbo H264HD. -
[Thomas Morter-Laing] “the ONLY thing you can use to expand is the Esata connection”
Hi Thomas,
You can do more than just expand e-SATA with the MBPs – there are all sorts of cards that fit into the Express-34 slot. We have one that connects to a PCI-e expansion chassis, giving us three PCI-e cards of our choice. We have used it to house a REDRocket, Fibre Channel card and FireWire 800 card simultaneously. Works great, and all on a laptop.
That’s not to say I don’t prefer to work with a Mac Pro! But it’s useful to know you can do all this with a laptop when we go ‘in the field’.
Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
Shot on RED, Post on FCP/Color: Short Capoeira Film -
Tom-
I’m not trying to start arguments here, merely presenting facts so OP can make a decent decision.
iMacs are great computing power to price wise, but the fun stops there.
The express/34 slot on the MBP allows much much more than “an esata port”.
It allows access to pcie capture devices such as the AJA ioExpress. This will allow true monitoring to a professional monitor. At that stage, yes you will need fw800 storage.
You can also use an ioHD for capture/monitoring via fw800 and then have the express/34 slot
for storage whether that be eSata or pcie or whatever.If the OP is going to be runnjng around at confereneces mobility might be a concern. An iMac is not very portable, or expandable. I am not making this up.
OP should and do what is best for them, I’m just pointing out that an iMac is very very limited. If it works for
you, great, but it’s obvious you don’t need professional capture/monitoring in your pipeline. That’s cool too. Everyone has their requirements.Jeremy
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Bingo, Alex. That would be the gold standard for laptop usage and a little much for OPs SD needs, but it does show the capability of a laptop vs iMac very well.
Jeremy
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