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Mac Pro Alternatives
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There’s always Cineform. Far better quality than ProRES or DNxHD and cross platform.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California -
Cineform’s great, but that kind of decision is way out of my hands. My clients are divisions of tier one entertainment corps., so there is a complicated set of overlays, ranging from financial to political (and even geo-political), that set what’s what.
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Gotcha – been through that before… though we ended up moving from ProRES to DNxHD for all deliverables because of the cross-platform issue.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California -
[Chris Harlan] “Why would running, say, AE or Pr on Windows be a waste of your time over running them on OS X? Would you actually see a difference? Or is this just another of your hit-and-run blarfs?”
It’s pretty apparent he knows not of what he speaks.
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[Gary Huff] “I would love to have a powerful desktop Mac for home office use, but for the price of the entry-level Mac Pro, I can upgrade my Windows box internals to a Sandy Bridge Xeon (2011 socket) with TWO 8-core Xeons, 32GB of RAM, and a NVIDIA Tesla card.”
If you are comfortable building your own PC, you can, and you can save some money by being your own support.
If you are not comfortable building your own PC, you don’t have to; you can buy a preconfigured workstation from one of the big vendors the exact same way you can buy a Mac Pro from Apple, and you have many more options for warranties and support.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “f you are comfortable building your own PC, you can, and you can save some money by being your own support.”
I’m much better support than any company could ever give me! :-p
Which is why it’s a personal decision and not one that I would lightly recommend to anyone else.
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[Gary Huff] “I’m much better support than any company could ever give me! :-p Which is why it’s a personal decision and not one that I would lightly recommend to anyone else.”
I have no doubt that you are!
I only brought it up because one of the PC myths I hear among Mac users is that you’ve got to be an IT geek to use or maintain a PC, and that if you want a computer that you don’t need to worry about, you must get a Mac.
The idea, for example, that you can purchase a warranty on a system that guarantees an on-site technician visiting your office for problems that can’t be resolved remotely may be surprising to people accustomed to lugging their Mac Pros through the mall to the local genius bar.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “I only brought it up because one of the PC myths I hear among Mac users is that you’ve got to be an IT geek to use or maintain a PC, and that if you want a computer that you don’t need to worry about, you must get a Mac.”
I use to provide Windows desktop support. In fact, I supported myself through college doing that. But these days having an actual Windows problem is so rare, that I’m glad I didn’t have an interest in doing that as a career.
Most “tech support” issues I run into involve either a dead hard drive or someone who just doesn’t know how to do simple tasks.
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[Gary Huff] “Most “tech support” issues I run into involve either a dead hard drive or someone who just doesn’t know how to do simple tasks.”
Yeah I kind of enjoy building my own system as masochistic as that can be. But yeah the number of problems usually isn’t that high anymore. Bad HD, bad power supply, or if something is really odd for software and nothing you try fixes it, start from scratch with your OS. Those probably fix at least 90% of the problems I’ve seen. Only had one or two circuit board type failures in all of the years I’ve been doing this. Have had some bad ram though which can do some really odd things.
Robert Brown
Editor/VFX/Colorist – FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Prohttps://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos
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Gary, thats almost exactly the same system I configured at Puget Systems.
Details here.https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/hello-pc-the-journey-to-mac-and-back
Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.7.3
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3
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