Effect handling with hardware – what card?

[John Fishback]

My only thought was for a couple hundred bucks now, you’re future-proofed.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 2 (FCP 6.0.5, Comp 3.0.5, DVDSP 4.2.1, Color 1.0.3)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Erik Lindahl]

No, that’s exactly what I mean, FCP should become better at working with it’s CPU and GPU. Motion’s realtime engine is far more powerful than FCP’s for instance. No, I don’t want FCP to do everything but some things are much more flexible to do in the editor.

Having dedicated hardware is a solution but I understand Apple doesn’t want to go down that road since dedicated hardware very fast get’s obsolete. This is why you want flexible hardware and the GPU is the solution there. Apple has however always been lagging behind in this area, going with 1/2 to 1 generation old GPU and not offering true high-end solutions (and Final Cut wouldn’t utilize it that well either from the looks of it anyhow).

And yes, I’m the one guy that makes, dubs, edits, color corrects, animate, motion track, scene-replace… Hence I want my tools to be the best they can be and I feel Apple is trailing.

Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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[Andy Mees]

The MXO2 is great Jason, works a treat… I’m using the bigger box, not the Mini, but the functionality is primarily the same. I believe Shane Ross, might be able to comment to the Mini specifically as he has one.
There’s a table with the user documentation that shows what formats it can and can’t handle … its not a small document tho, about 5MB, the format info is on page 94: https://www.matrox.com/video/media/pdf/support/mxo2/doc/en_Matrox_MXO2_Installation_and_User_Guide_1_4.pdf

The faster than realtime H264 encoding in the MAX hardware is great … creates BluRay compatible encodes too if thats your bag (although no word yet on if it’s Compressor 3.5 ready, in that regard … certainly the official FCS 2009 driver release is not out yet)