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New FCPX user, what’s all the hate about?
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[Tim Wilson] “I really do think that more people saw the lack of meaningful updates to FCP, the arrival X, and delays to a new Mac Pro as a handful of straws…but the Mac Pro was the final one.”
Indeed. A wonderful product … for somebody else.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Sebastian Alvarez] “Apple dug themselves their own grave with these new MacPros.”
I’ll pull back a little from “dug their own grave,” but when we talk about various debates, I don’t think we give this one nearly enough wait.
Well, yes, maybe the term “dug their own grave” is a little exaggerate, but they certainly alienated a lot of companies that needed a tower format with a lot of expandability and compatibility with some of their existing equipment. For example, for a small company that I worked for, which had about ten users each with their own MacPro tower, each with a $1,000 Fibre Channel card, to go to the new MacPros where they can’t use those PCIe FC cards and have to spend tens of thousands not only on the new machines but also on the accessories needed to connect their fiber optic network to the new Macs (and just by doing a fast Google search I can tell an FC to Thunderbolt adapter is almost as expensive as the old card), I know they won’t do it. They were very happy with dual Xeon CPU Mac towers that they were getting on eBay for $2,000 each. And I’m guessing most companies, unless they have a non-stopping flow of cash and the will to spend it, are on the same boat.
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[Sebastian Alvarez] “no matter how much more advanced OS X is.”
Gadzooks…are children allowed to play with matches here? It’s awfully dangerous. They could get their skin scorched off.
David
https://AllinOneFilms.com -
I am (somewhat) amused by people who misrepresent a poster’s words in order to further an old argument.
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[Herb Sevush] “for somebody else.”
Like me. 😉
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[Sebastian Alvarez] “For example, for a small company that I worked for, which had about ten users each with their own MacPro tower, each with a $1,000 Fibre Channel card, to go to the new MacPros where they can’t use those PCIe FC cards and have to spend tens of thousands not only on the new machines but also on the accessories needed to connect their fiber optic network to the new Macs (and just by doing a fast Google search I can tell an FC to Thunderbolt adapter is almost as expensive as the old card),”
This is exactly what we did, and did not lose one lick of performance, in fact we gained performance.
You can buy a really old machine for $2.000, or you can buy a PCIe extender for $480 to get you over the hump of whatever comes next, and will work on any new mac that the company purchases, from MacMini to MacPro Tube. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=1007816&gclid=CO6CsoD2rcYCFQYJaQodSeUBGA&is=REG&m=Y&Q=&A=details
The Thunderbolt fear is unwarranted, in my personal opinion, unless of course you need to push around 8k DPX frames or something crazy, but for shared HD or Compressed 4k editing, it’s a breeze, and opens up a possibility to working on less powerful CPU machines, with great performance.
There’s no doubt that the new towers benefit FCPX, and they don’t benefit an Nvidia workflow. The MacPro comes with TWO GPUs that work really well, but your software has to know to take advantage of this.
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[Jeff Markgraf] “Like me. ;-)”
As my mother used to say, in a very different context, for every peg there’s a hole.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Jeremy Garchow] ” you can buy a PCIe extender for $480 to get you over the hump of whatever comes next”
Unless the prices have changed, that get’s you 1 PCIe slot, which won’t cut it if you have an I/O card and a raid card. It was around 1K for a multi-slot extender if I remember correctly, and that’s per workstation. Which still leaves you with a single CPU machine and no flexibility for GPU. Which will work fine for a great majority of the users but has left others out in the cold.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
Hate to say it, but I really like the new Mac Pro. And FCPX. I am a one person producer/shooter/editor and they fit my needs quite well. A powerful computer with a small form factor, with software I pay for once that does everything I need. I also have the ability to run more than one NLE when necessary. There is a change in thinking required for FCPX, so I sometimes fall back to legacy software.
Unlike many here I no longer work at a large facility or with big budgets (though I certainly have, PBS Chicago, NBC/KRON and One Pass Video in San Francisco) but am at a point where I have the luxury (finally) of doing my own work. Have shot two decades of cultural footage in the Pacific Islands and video art pieces that date back to the mid ’70’s. Doesn’t pay much, but is work that needs to be done. Have one nice contract that pays the bills and a wife that actually directly benefits from that work.
There are people here who have a large focus on compositing and effects, and for that a tower is certainly going to be potentially more powerful. But they get very expensive as well. I don’t have that need. I have enough documentaries to put together to keep me busy, and they don’t need multiple GPU’s to render dissolves and titles. I have an OWC Helios Thunderbolt 2 chassis for the times I need PCIe cards. Two 1TB SSD cards in there now. Blackmagic rack mount I/O and Teranex for format conversion, all Thunderbolt. Three OWC Thunderbay 4’s for fast RAID 5 storage.
Also hedged with a 2012 Mac Pro tower with AJA I/O and NVidia GPU. Can boot into everything from 10.6.8 to latest Yosemite. My insurance system with the yearly OS software updates, my only big gripe with Apple. But I have had much bigger gripes with Microsoft (OS) and lately Adobe (rental). I can’t be in servitude to rental to revisit and re-edit my projects. I object to it strongly for practical, budgetary, and philosophical reasons. Hence FCPX meets that requirement, Resolve on the horizon, and yes, Media 100 in the short term.
I have a feeling there are a lot of one man bands like myself that have similar requirements. YMMV. One size does not fit all. There are more than enough of us who like our Mac Pros and the software they run.
Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD -
[Herb Sevush] “As my mother used to say, in a very different context, for every peg there’s a hole.”
I think I recall my mother saying, in a similar context, “My, what a lovely thing to say.” Or something along those lines…
But then, she never visits the COW.
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