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Building FCP and AE Workstation
I have been editing on Avid systems for over 13 years now. I have always rented rooms that others have said would “suffice” for my project. I am looking to purchase my own FCP and AE system now. I am not very computer hardware engineering savvy, but I am very knowledgeable with video.
Can anyone recommend a good book or web-site that can walk me through what I might need when it comes to processing power, memory, graphics cards, hard drive requirements, etc. to get me up to speed? I’m pretty confident in the elements outside of the box, i.e. scopes, monitors, and other video hardware, so I’m fine with that.
(The article in the last issue of Creative Cow didn’t really answer any of my questions; it just validated the questions I already had).
Thank you.
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2 Replies
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I am not aware of a book or article that is mac specific because it is generally something that passes via forums like this. The first question to ask in order to really get good suggestions is your intended purpose for the station. What type of work will it be used for? The type of storage, memory requirements, video cards, etc all depend on this answer. In general, most will recommend a Mac Pro with at least 2 gigs of ram and a couple of 500gig sata drives internally. Beyond that we need to know more info.
I will warn you about one thing. Now is a difficult time for doing AE work on the new macs. AE 7 will run on them but it is not native and therefore runs slower than you would like and is sometimes fragile in some operations. Adobe will have a native version by this ummer (in which we will all celebrate) but until then your alternatives are to use Motion or to get a Windows license and use it via Bootcamp.
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I agree, a Mac Pro, with as much RAM as your budget will allow. 3 additional 250gb sata drives,+ a 250gb system drive, (always store your FCP project files on your system drive).
Set-up your additional 3 internal drives as an internal RAID level 1, giving you a whopping 750gb of internal sata RAID storage.
As far as graphics cards go I can’t help, as I’ve never found the need for an additional AE/FCP graphics card. I’m quite happy to wait, and wait, and wait for the renders to be done!!
I moved from Avid around 9+ years ago, and I’ve never looked back. FCP is one of the most cost effective tools on the market, and the hardwares pretty good too!!
I’ll try and find some info on Mac graphis cards, and post it later.Dave
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