HD Pro Res doesn’t work on G5 Quad.

[Shane Ross]

[David Roth Weiss] “[Borjis] “Nice of apple to let us know AFTER the fact… GGGRRR.”

Yes, it occured to me that perhaps this should have been noted in bold letters somewhere in all the pre-ship documentation.”

And this would have changed things….how? You’d still have bought Studio 2. You STILL not be able to capture ProRes with a non-intel.

OH…but you’d know instead of trying and trying with no success. I get ya.

Well, to tell you my thought…I didn’t think Apple really thought about testing or mentioning that UNTIL everyone tried. Then they went…”oh, yeah. We’d better say something about that.”

I myself, working with DVCPRO HD, would rather capture at DVCPRO HD resolution (much lower data rate) then transcode to the 10-bit proRes 422 for color grading…then output. I have no need to capture it on the fly.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Dom Silverio]

[Shane Ross] ”
And this would have changed things….how? You’d still have bought Studio 2. You STILL not be able to capture ProRes with a non-intel.”

It is a bait and switch. It is rather silly to go through a dog and pony show about the *technical* greatness of a codec and yet fail to mention that the *technical* requirements for it. There is also the fact that probably most people buying the product DO NOT have a Intel based G5 :/

Obviously it mattered to Apple that people knows ProRes is great but only useable with Intel Macs.

Oh well… time to get the Io HD.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Chi-Ho Lee] ”
But you can still use a G5 to transcode to ProRes right? I know it’s double the time of real time capture but for people on the cheap, that’s a viable solution right?”

Sure and why not capture native but then edit in a ProRes timeline to make your graphics and filters cleaner on final render? Makes sense to me.

We’re going to test the workflow I described above and see how it works and I’m fully expecting that our DVCPro HD projects will have cleaner graphics and color grading if we edit in a ProRes timeline on the G5’s.

So you can’t capture to ProRes on a G5, nothing that says you can’t work with it on a G5.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Sean Oneil]

[Michael Belanger] ”
Can we assume that once footage has been successfully digitized with Pro Rez that there is no further requirement to used a Mac Pro? Is the strain on the CPU consistent throughout the usage of this codec or only during digitizing?”

No. Decoding is also pretty hard on the CPU. Not as bad as digitizing, but I wouldn’t count on Edit To Tape with HD ProRes using a non-Intel Mac.

Sean

[Michael Belanger]

That is quite a remarkable turn of events. Essentially Apple is forcing people’s hands to upgrade, in some cases just cross grade, to a new chip set. I find it quite hard to believe that a quad G5 doesn’t have enough muscle to do a capture to Pro Rez and a Dual proc Mac Intel will be able to do this. Sounds like they have written something into the code.
Does this mean that the lowest end Mac Pro will achieve what the highest end G5 cannot.
That seems incredulous to me. Apple must resolve this somehow . No one is asking them to make a G4 single processor work miracles but when a quad G5 cannot do this capture something is wrong indeed.

Mike B
Dandelion Editing
Toronto Canada

[Walter Biscardi]

[Michael Belanger] “I find it quite hard to believe that a quad G5 doesn’t have enough muscle to do a capture to Pro Rez and a Dual proc Mac Intel”

There’s no such thing as a Dual Mac Pro. They’re all Quad processor machines minimum.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Gregory Dillard]

Walter,
thank you for your response to me on a previous post regarding my KONA LHe and XL H1, but i must say (for whatever it’s worth), that this is really not fair (APPLE) that a Quad Core G5 can’t handle ProRes and correct me if i am wrong, but the requirement information was recently given to us after so many of us have made these purchases assuming (never assume) that we would be okay with our Quad Core G5’s and the new Final Cut Studio 2. After already plunking down$600.98 for the AJA KL Box for the LH and the KONA LH Box cable kit plus $1644 for the KONA LHe, which totals out to $2,244.98 i basically have to spend another possible $4,000 on a 8 core machine to use PRO RES when my Quad Core G5 can’t handle it?
Where is the protection from APPLE in this in regards to saying that their LOYAL customers have invested A TON of money into our products…..oh hell, let’s just bend them over again and add sand for texture!
This isn’t right, and this is my opinion only, but being a business owner i do understand that APPLE is in the business of making money so i guess that we have to keep up or hit the road. Does anyone else out there feel the same way? By the way, my $4,000 figure was incorrect as i have to add another $3,495 in there for the AJA i/O HD when it comes out.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Gregory Dillard] “By the way, my $4,000 figure was incorrect as i have to add another $3,495 in there for the AJA i/O HD when it comes out.”

Or you can purchase a Mac Pro and let it do the conversion.

The thing about ProRes is that it is NOT a must to do production. It’s just another option. Everyone on these forums are making it sound like ProRes was the ONLY reason for the upgrade. If it was, then ask Apple for a refund.

I’m just glad to have multiformat playback in a single timeline. THAT was a basic function that should have already been in Final Cut Pro which I used to be able to do with a CineWave 4 years ago.

Personally I’m not concerned about the ProRes issue. We have two G5’s and one Mac Pro so the Mac Pro will have the option of ProRes and the G5’s won’t. We haven’t used ProRes for the past 5 years and I don’t really see the need to jump right to that codec just because it’s the latest thing. We’ve delivered over 50 HD Broadcast masters using DVCPro HD on G5’s and the Mac Pro so that codec is very clean.

ProRes is just another option. But it’s not the only reason to purchase FCS 2.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Sean Oneil]

I have to relate to the people who are upset. When I was at NAB, I specifically asked two people at the Apple booth if a G5 was good enough for ProRes and mixed formats. The answer I got was “I’m sure it will be fine”. I looked on the hardware requirements page and as everyone knows there were no specific requirements for ProRes.

ProRes is a big deal to me. For almost 2 years we used PhotoJPEG for everything. ProRes is a significant upgrade in quality. It’s YUV, it’s 10-bit, and it’s closer to being lossless. And I don’t have to hack Final Cut in order to get RT effects with it.

Nobody’s stopping me from asking for a refund. And of course I’m not. But it was a sleazy thing to do IMO. And I can’t help but wonder if ProRes could have been optimized to work well on a PowerPC chip. Its certainly possible they could have made this a non-issue.

Sean

[Gregory Dillard]

Thank you Walter. I know that the Canon XL H1 doesn’t embed the audio through it’s HD-SDI, but i know that the solution is the Convergent Design piece. We will purchase that as well, but if i am only looking for video can’t i just use an uncompressed codec besides the PRO RES and still capture it via the KONA LHe without worrying about dropped frames? We have the XSERVE RAID and it’s connected via a fibre channel card. Not to sound redundant, but i will have a better image capturing via the HD- SDI into one of the HD formats as opposed to firewire which is HDV correct?