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If you were to build a new edit suite for 2013 and beyond…
…what would it be?
I’m part of a small production company that makes documentaries, electronic press kits and promos/commercials. Currently we are entirely mac based and edit with FCP7. Mostly we shoot on the Canon C300, Sony EX3 and Sony F3. At times, we inherit ongoing projects/edits from other firms and these also tend to be FCP7.
We have reached something of a crossroads… We are ready to invest in two new edits this year, but choosing our new hardware/software is quite a dilemma. It does not seem realistic to continue with FCP7 as our primary edit software and FCP X does not convince for broadcast spec. I have a lot of experience with AVID so that is tempting, but I am wary of discounting Adobe Premiere without giving it a fair crack of the whip. Obviously, the new Mac Pros will ship late this year, but are they – with their price tag, prescriptive ways of doing things and connectivity headaches – really what’s best for us? Should we suck it up and go for the HP/Avid set-ups? At least we can trust they will not stop caring about editors and pro users overnight…
I would love to hear from anybody in a similar situation who has worked through their options. Any anecdotal advice would be really helpful. This is a decision that we will have to live with for a good few years and we’d like to make the most informed decision possible. Thanks very much, Matt
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16 Replies
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[Matt McNally] ” and FCP X does not convince for broadcast spec.”
Please define what you mean, as I deliver a fair amount of broadcast stuff cut on X.
[Matt McNally] “but I am wary of discounting Adobe Premiere without giving it a fair crack of the whip”
Adobe CC apps, especially Premiere Pro CC is pretty much where the bulk of the FCP “legacy” refugees are headed. You’re going to need After Effects and Photoshop anyway.
[Matt McNally] “the new Mac Pros will ship late this year, but are they – with their price tag, prescriptive ways of doing things and connectivity headaches”
Aren’t you making a price assumption, since no one knows what Apple will decide to sell these for? A decked out HP workstation is definitely not cheap either. I work in both Mac and PC environments. I find that if you are strictly in the PC world, there are more headaches than if you are mainly in a Mac configuration, simply because you’ll get a lot of Mac-originated material.
You could also consider a fully-loaded iMac as a transition workstation. It may well outperform your current systems and still get close to what you would get out of the new Mac Pro – at least for basic editing. And at a more affordable price (TBD).
FWIW – Avid MC7 is out today. If you like Avid, you certainly can’t go wrong with that choice and it’s cross-platform. Plus you’ll OWN it 😉
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I have the least amount of experience cutting Premiere but with my limited knowledge of the program I already see one big plus and another minus of using it for documentaries.
The plus is that it can deal well with mixed sources and the logging process can be quick. The downside is that it doesn’t have the incredibly robust media management of Avid, and most documentaries I’ve seen come with countless hours of dailies and I think Avid, for now, is the most reliable and battle tested piece of software that you can have, as long as you don’t mind being a little more disciplined with your prep. But like Oliver says, CS6 would give you easy integration with AE and Photoshop and all the other pieces of great software. The plus side to CS6 is that you don’t have to commit to it.
The Mac Pros that are coming out will use AMD cards and I don’t know how that will work with Premiere’s mercury playback engine that relies exclusively on Nvidia CUDA technology. I’m sure apple consulted with all major developers and they’re aware of this going forward.
I outfitted a 2013 iMac that has every available upgrade and I think it would do well, but I don’t know if you guys plan on working in 4k. I’m not sure that the mobile GPU in the iMac, even with all its CUDA cores, will be able to handle it. A fully outfitted iMac is going to probably be above 3 grand, if you get an SSD which these days is becoming more standard, and I don’t think you could get a second one for the cache like many people like to do with CS6.
If the budget is there, I’d probably wait for the Mac Pros because of the expandability, but I’ve heard of several people being quite successful just with the new iMacs.
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[Pieter Viljoen] “The Mac Pros that are coming out will use AMD cards and I don’t know how that will work with Premiere’s mercury playback engine that relies exclusively on Nvidia CUDA technology.”
That’s not entirely true. The MPE is Adobe’s branding term for a mix of technologies. Only part of that is CUDA acceleration. Specifically, CUDA-enabled NVIDIA cards accelerate some scaling and color correction functions – not the entire application, nor all effects. If you have a non-CUDA card (could be NVIDIA, ATI or Intel), then Premiere simply operates in a software emulation mode. That’s quite fast on a good card.
In addition, the MPE in Premiere has now been optimized for the OpenCL in certain GPUs used in the MacBook Pros. This means performance on the new Mac Pro “tube” should be really good with Adobe CC apps.
I have an older Mac Pro and normally use the AT5870. It works well for all applications, including CS6 and CC apps. I have at times installed and tested it with the Quadro 4000 card (a CUDA-enabled card). This gives me somewhat better performance with Premiere and Resolve, but often worse performance with other apps, like FCP X. Other Adobe apps don’t benefit from a CUDA-enabled card at all.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I definitely did not know that. I knew about the Open CL but wasn’t sure how it would work.
If Premiere will allow me to switch between source and record in my timeline I’d like it even more. But thanks for educating me about the CUDA acceleration.
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[Pieter Viljoen] “But thanks for educating me about the CUDA acceleration.”
You are welcome. It’s a common misconception, because NVIDIA has obviously played up the marketing on their side of the partnership 😉
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
let’s just say that one of our machine room guys who handles a lot of the buying nearly crucified me for wanting to try an iMac. He probably has his reasons but I definitely drank the Nvidia kool aid.
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The decked out iMacs are decently performing machines, especially with local Thunderbolt storage, like the Promise arrays. Connectivity would be the concern, which means you’d need some Thunderbolt-to-other adapters or docks.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Yes, G-Raid only makes thunderbolt drives, but also a lot of pro users would be on ISIS or some other kind of shared storage anyway.
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I freelance at a shop that has 3 Mac Pros connected to a SAN via FiberChannel and 1 iMac connected to the same SAN via an ATTO Thunderbolt-to-FC adapter.
This seems to be the preferred local storage for standalone iMacs:
https://www.promise.com/storage/raid_series.aspx?m=192®ion=en-global&rsn1=40&rsn3=47
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Do you find you have problems there with the new iMac?
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