Imac i7 and G-Drive SD/HD Pro Res User Experiences

[Roli Rivelino]

I think you’re ok right up till the end of your post, where you say “In the future I would also like to edit 1080i and perhaps 1080p footage, again, via Pro-Res probably coming from the canon 7D or 5D.”

For 1080 footage the imac will probably start to struggle, and you’ll find the firewire sluggish as well.

Ideally you want a Mac Pro (or equivalent) with a minimum of 2 internal drives, that way you can take advantage of internal esata connections. Also you’ll be able to add an esata card (if there’s no port) and use an esata external drive as well, which will make a huge difference.

As far as conversion rates are concerned, I’m not sure but I’d imagine with the set up your talking of, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem with SD footage.

I think the main question you have to ask yourself is how much HD footage am I going to be ingesting and editing?

If the answer is a lot, hold out and splash out a bit more money on a Pro. I know it hurts, but not as much as buying an imac then realising it’s not good enough.

good luck.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Mat Rees]

Thanks Roli!

That’s quite disheartening really.

I’m slightly put off by the Mac Pro as I understand an update is expected sometime soon. I was hoping the imac would do what I wanted for a year or two and then upgrade to the pro (and take advantage of the 27″ imac as a screen).

Unfortunately I need a machine by the end of January – rock and a hard place I think.

I may have to look into editing 1080 with a proxy, or down converting with duplicate file names then relinking back to the original material.

Any other opinions or experiences greatly appreciated!

Cheers

Mat

[Zane Barker]

[Roli Rivelino] “For 1080 footage the imac will probably start to struggle”

The i7 iMac has the processing power to handle it thats not a problem. People cut 1080 ProRes on MacBook Pros everyday so the i7 can processor can handle it just fine.

What you will run into issues with are the limitations of how you can connect your media drives. So many people overlook the need of FAST media drives in their video work flow.

The iMac is limited to 3 types of connections, USB, FW800 and Gigabit Ethernet. USB is worthless for video editing as it cannot sustain data raids because it works in bursts of data. FW800 is ok but if your doing multiple streams of video it will easily get bogged down. Gigabit Ethernet is the fastest option as its data rates are just about comparable to esata which is 2x as fast as FW800.

However getting a Gigabit Ethernet raid enclosure that will actually put out those speeds is definitely more expensive then esata or FW800 options.

This website will show you benchmarks on different NAS (Gigabit Ethernet) drives. You can even search by enclosure that will hold different numbers of drives.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/index.php?option=com_nas&Itemid=190

There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity!

[Mat Rees]

Thanks Zane, that’s a great help.

Just for clarification by “multiple streams of video” do you mean multiple layers of Pro Res video or multiple mixed layers of Pro Res / Titles / Effects etc.

I hope that made sense.

Also is there a guide to using Pro Res proxy? If I can’t fluidly edit 1080 on the imac I’ll have to resort to using proxies for my media and I can’t seem to find a good guide on how to use it.

Thanks everyone the mists of confusion are slowly lifting.

cheers

m

[Zane Barker]

[Mat Rees] “Just for clarification by “multiple streams of video” do you mean multiple layers of Pro Res video or multiple mixed layers of Pro Res / Titles / Effects etc. “

Multiple layers of video or doing a multi clip.

[Mat Rees] “Also is there a guide to using Pro Res proxy?”

FCS3’s documentation would be the first place to start, ans Im sure you will find plenty of info by doing an internet search for prores proxy.

There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity!

[Bjarki Gudjonsson]

[Roli Rivelino] “I think you’re ok right up till the end of your post, where you say “In the future I would also like to edit 1080i and perhaps 1080p footage, again, via Pro-Res probably coming from the canon 7D or 5D.” “

I’m not so sure. I’ve been doing a lot of work with convertd 5D cameras on my iMac. It’s fine. I actually used the XDCAM EX codec, blending in with footage shot on XDCAM EX-3, but the ProRes should work fine.

B.

[Kevin Monahan]

If stuck on an iMac, I would edit everything in ProRes LT and see if it would meet the quality expectations of my clients. Think it looks excellent for a low data rate. I use it, myself, for 99% of my deliverables. I dare you to try and see the quality difference between that and ProRes 422.

ProRes Proxy? Nah, don’t bother. Offline/Online workflow is dead as a doornail. Use LT! Proxy’s main purpose is for Final Cut Server, where proxies are used for reference.

I wish everyone would give LT a closer look. I use it all the time.

Kevin Monahan
60 Blu-ray Templates for Final Cut Studio 2009
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro

[Bjarki Gudjonsson]

Funny, I was just talking about this today – saying that I didn’t know anyone that used LT. Thanks for the pointer, I’m going to take a closer look.

B.

[Kevin Monahan]

ProRes LT was designed for broadcast deliverables, such as for material used at a news station. Ideally the station has ProRes proxies of ProRes LT files all tracked by Final Cut Server.

We independent producers can find a nice sweet spot with ProRes LT with our clients. Send ’em a sample.

Kevin Monahan
60 Blu-ray Templates for Final Cut Studio 2009
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro

[Bjarki Gudjonsson]

I just did a job shot on Canon 5D and 7D and converted all the material to LT. It was all cut on my MacBook Pro’s internal drive, more or less on location, and the material was played back on the same laptop at a gala dinner (attended by a wide range of socialites as well as the arguably poppular president of Iceland) being projected by 3 HD projectors.

The point is that I converted all the material to 25fps and comparing the 7D originals to the LT, they looked the same, and it was so light. Thanks for the great tip!

B.