new iMac QUAD-CORE & FCP2/3 – Strong enough?

[Walter Biscardi]

[Aviv Vana] “My main questions is how quick will the editing be in FCP when applying effects like Magic Bullet, Twixtor, idustrial revolution’s volumetrix transitions etc etc – will the time line go RED? if so will it take a while to render so I can watch in SafeRT? Is this computer more then competent?”

Pretty much all of those types of filters will require renders. How long of a render depends on the filter itself.

[Aviv Vana] “Thank You for the guidance! love these forums”

There have multiple threads already about the 27″ iMac, especially right after it was announced. You’ll find many more opinions in those threads.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
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[Aviv Vana]

I got an answer from Walter himself 🙂 what an honor!

Walter, would you get the new iMac quad-core? If you were shooting with an xh-a1 and 5d/7d? and planned to do some green screening!?!?

If so would you go with the i5 or i7?

Thanks!

MacBook Pro 2.0GHz – 2GB Ram
AE CS3, FCP Studio 2, Adobe CS3 suite
Canon XH-A1 (soon Canon 7d/5d)

[Zane Barker]

Aviv have you looked at the benchmarks on the new iMacs?
https://osxdaily.com/2009/11/17/imac-27-core-i5-and-i7-models-benchmarks-are-very-impressive/

If you have looked at them then you would see what a big difference the i7 has over the i5, so in my opinion over which one to get if you had a choice, its the i7.

[Aviv Vana] “I know i will be limited to a FW-800 and not have internal RAID”

I’m glad you understand that, so many people don’t, and knowing is half the battle.

I would actually recommend using a gigabit ethernet external raid over using firewire hard drives. a 2 drive gigabit ethernet raid is just about as fast as a 2 drive esata raid. And it would be cheep to put together.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822155009
Just add drives.

Using a gigabit ethernet raid also frees up the firewire bus so that there are no interference when capturing from a camera or deck. But it also lets you connect a AJA IO HD
https://www.aja.com/products/io/io-hd.php

I hope these things have given you something to think about.

I myself plan on getting an i7.

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

[Aviv Vana]

Zane,

Thanks for the good info!

About the gigabyte ethernet RAID, how does that work exactly when you want to also be connected to the internet through that connection?

I’ve never used the ethernet connection for anything other than internet.

MacBook Pro 2.0GHz – 2GB Ram
AE CS3, FCP Studio 2, Adobe CS3 suite
Canon XH-A1 (soon Canon 7d/5d)

[Zane Barker]

[Aviv Vana] “About the gigabyte ethernet RAID, how does that work exactly when you want to also be connected to the internet through that connection? “

Just use a gigabit ethernet hub/switch.

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

[Ben Scott]

was wondering if anyone has much experience with ethernet based RAID disks for reliable data throughput
found this and thought it may be useful
https://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?product_id=211
Ethernet based RAID drive from promise

if you were wanting to online with this imac, ethernet disk and AJA ioHD would it work day in day out is really the question?

[Rick Fetters]

I have been looking into this as well, here is what I have found so far.

1) gigabit ethernet has a 125MB/s maximum transfer speed
2) FW800 has ~80MB/s transfer speed
3) I researched HDD/Raid enclosures that included a gigabit ethernet port and looked for reviews/test of transfer speeds. The fastest ones I could find that were less than $500 for the enclosure (bare, no drives) didn’t have impressive transfer speeds i.e. 350mb/s max, most in the 275mg/s range (this is only 40MB/s or half of FW800).

I am still doing research and definitely might be missing something. I see it as a reasonably good solution if the speeds matched or bettered FW800, but it isn’t looking promising.

rick

[Ben Scott]

Not sure if simple enclosures get near to the larger data rates

think something like final share is needed e.g. Iscsi type solution which is more pricey

most cheaper nas boxes I looked at this afternoon appear to work a bit slow for more than a single track of video in a compressed format

[Rick Fetters]

I looked over the NS4600 literature on their website and couldn’t find any mention of transfer speeds so I called their technical support line. I spoke with human after a relatively short 5 minute wait. He said that is is max 40MB/s read and 30MB/s write for the NS4600. Again, this is pretty slow and not really useful for heavy editing work.

rick