building a Mac Pro

[David Roth weiss]

Frank,

You can’t add/change processors.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-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.

[Nigel Beaumont]

My 2 cents and generalising terribly: Any Mac Pro is enough for FCP 7 but aim for 8GB RAM rather than six. Faster clock speed will be more visible editing, more cores and more RAM will be more visible when using compressor and Motion.
If I were buying today with my money, I’d go for an 8 core rather than 12 and spend the difference on RAM, fast internal drives and an SSD for the boot drive. But if money is no object……

Nigel Beaumont

MBP 2.53 FCS 2 FCP 6.0.6, Aja IO, some black cables, shiny firewire drives

“Ofcourse it’ll be finished in time for tx”

[Frank Black]

David, thanks for your answer. This is a big surprise. Can you elaborate please? I can purchase a Mac with one or two processors. Why can’t I get one and add a second later? Isn’t it the same as adding any other piece of hardware?

[Frank Black]

Hi Nigel,
What is clock speed?? And what exactly is a “core”?

And by internal drive, do you mean the hard-drive, as in memory?

And what is SSD?

Pardon the amateur questions, but this is great for me. Thanks

[David Roth weiss]

[Frank Black] “Why can’t I get one and add a second later? Isn’t it the same as adding any other piece of hardware?”

Windows machines work that way Frank, but Apple doesn’t do that. A four core MacPro is an entirely different machine than an eight core machine, and you can’t just swap out procs like you’re hoping to do.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-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.

[Frank Black]

David, are you saying that if I get a Mac with “One 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor” that this is the only processor this Mac will ever have? that I will not be able to upgrade it (in the same Mac) in 3 years when the 2.8 will be nothing compared to the newest models?

And if so, do any other parts of the Mac come this way?

Thanks.

[David Roth weiss]

[Frank Black] “David, are you saying that if I get a Mac with “One 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor” that this is the only processor this Mac will ever have?”

That’s it Frank. That’s all it will ever have. It’s the Apple way of doing business.

And, keep in mind that your machine will have a pretty decent resale value years from now if you put eight cores in it, but with only a four core your machine will pretty much be an ugly stepchild.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-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.

[Frank Black]

ugly stepchild, that made me laugh.

can you suggest anything else I should know similar to this matter.

(it appears to me that it would be a mistake not to get two processors)

and how often does apple come out with a higher standard processor?

[Nigel Beaumont]

Clock speed is processor speed e.g. 2.8GHZ. The higher the number the faster the processor and in theory the quicker the machine performs a task.
Think of a core as an individual computer, so an 8 -core Mac Pro is like 8 separate computers. you can get them all to do one task very quickly, or have them doing separate tasks at the same time. This can be very relevant for video editing, and particularly for rendering effects and compressing video to different formats.
On the current version of final cut studio for example, you can be compressing a video file while working on another edit at the same time.
A Mac Pro takes four internal hard drives, ideally you want one to use just for your applications and the OSX operating system. Use another one or more for storing video and audio files.
You can now buy Solid State Drives for a Mac. These SSDs work faster than traditional hard drives and so by using one of these, your computer has more time to devote to your editing, making actions happen faster.
As with most things in life, cost comes into it, but hopefully this will help you decide where you want to spend money.

Nigel Beaumont

Mac Pro Quad 3.0Ghz 10GB FCS 3 OSX 10.6.6, Aja IO, some black cables, shiny firewire drives

“Ofcourse it’ll be finished in time for tx”

[Frank Black]

Nigel this is awesome information, thank you. I’m glad I know it now. I have a follow up question. You mentioned that SSDs work faster. Can you please explain to me how speed applies to a hard drive. In my understanding, a hard drive just sits there and waits for things to be stored on it. So how is speed related to it?

Also, is there anything else you think that’s vital for me to know about a computer as related to editing?

Thanks.