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Budgeting for a new FCP system… suggestions?
Where I work, we might be getting approval for a new Mac Pro/FCP setup to replace an older Avid, and as the resident Mac guy (with an old G5 at home) I’m helping pick out what we need. It’ll be used to edit a weekly half-hour show in SD, plus frequent Photoshop and After Effects work. I’m trying to go overboard a bit to give us future expandability (which our Avid did NOT have).
So far, I’m thinking:
-Mac Pro with dual quad-core 2.26ghz (Is this worth the price over the single quad-core for mostly SD work? Can the Intel processors be upgraded later (I know G5s couldn’t)?)
-32GB ram (will order this separate, not from Apple)
-4 1TB internal hard drives (does that require a RAID card or do the new Macs support that many hard drives without it?)
-NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB (is there a big advantage in getting the more expensive ATI card instead?)
-Blackmagic Intensity Pro card (we use Firewire most of the time but would this be a good option for analog capture/preview monitor output?)
-Final Cut Studio and Adobe CS4Anything else I should reconsider?
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10 Replies
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I run 3 internal eSATA drives as an internal RAID. Works perfect, nothing else needed. (You can also run 4 if you get a wiring kit to add the 4th in one of the optical bays.)
Consider a good RAID software like Softraid.
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[Micah McDowell] “-Blackmagic Intensity Pro card (we use Firewire most of the time but would this be a good option for analog capture/preview monitor output?)
“You’re getting a top of the line computer with 32Gb of RAM and buying the absolute bottom the heap I/O card. Every day there are posts here from people who are disappointed with their purchase of the Intensity card, as it is really quite limited in it’s capabilities. Do yourself a favor, consider scrapping 16Gb of RAM and get yourself a Kona LHi from AJA. Trust me, you will never regret that purchase — it will give you excellent analog and digital playback, and it will give you input options and conversion options too that you might not use immediately, but which you may not be doing simply because you don’t have those capabilities now.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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[David Roth Weiss] “Do yourself a favor, consider scrapping 16Gb of RAM and get yourself a Kona LHi from AJA. Trust me, you will never regret that purchase — it will give you excellent analog and digital playback, and it will give you input options and conversion options too that you might not use immediately, but which you may not be doing simply because you don’t have those capabilities now. “
I’ll second that for the reasons David mentions along with the incredible tech support that AJA is renowned for.
32GB of RAM is definitely way way overkill for an FCP system.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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My ideal system is the fastest Mac Pro, 8 to 16B RAM, AJA Kona LHi or Kona 3 card, MaxxDigital Expendo SAS-SATA chassis running RAID 5.
You can click on my Profile and see the three different systems we run here in the shop to get an idea of what we have.
Also, if you don’t have a quality broadcast monitor, look at the Flanders Scientific models. We have three of them in here.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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[walter biscardi] “32GB of RAM is definitely way way overkill for an FCP system. “
Yes, at least for now…
Someday, if we ever see a version of FCS that is truly optimized for the 64-bit operation systems of Snow Leopard and beyond, there will come a day when there will never be too much RAM. However, I suspect that will day will not arrive for quite some time even after Snow Leopard is released.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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[Micah McDowell] “Can the Intel processors be upgraded later”
No they can’t.
[Micah McDowell] “4 1TB internal hard drives (does that require a RAID card or do the new Macs support that many hard drives without it?) “
You need to keep in mind that your system drive should be separate from your media drive so if you plan on raiding all 4 for a media drive then you have no internal system drive.
As far as raids go there are 2 main types. Software raids and hardware raids. While setting up a software raid is cheeper they are not as stable as a hardware raid.
There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity! -
You could also look at the CalDigit RAID card. This will allow you to use the 4 drives as a RAID 5 and puts the system drive in the second optical bay.
-Russ
Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net -
People always forget monitoring gear:
Broadcast Video Monitor
Studio Audio Monitors
Very important!Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro -
take a look at the MXO2 series for video I/O. nice metal boxes instead of pigtail breakout cables, h264 accelerator….. and the Rack version has 8 real XLR analog outs + digital outs. stable drivers that have been adding a couple of new features in each release.
as for FCP, it only uses 2.5G of ram, so going to 16G for now would be fine. it’ll be cheaper to add more a year from now anyhow **if** FCP does grow up to be a 64bit app and can actually use it for something.
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My ideal system is the fastest Mac Pro, 8 to 16B RAM, AJA Kona LHi or Kona 3 card, MaxxDigital Expendo SAS-SATA chassis running RAID 5.
But what is the fastest Mac Pro for FCP?
Is a One 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro faster than a Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro seeing that FCP doesn’t use all the cores at this time (and who knows when it will?)?
This is what I’m asking myself…
Sean McPhillips
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