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New Mac Pro setup and a question
I am upgrading my edit system at home to a mac pro and Final Cut 7 that I will use for side jobs. Seeing as this is used for side jobs only I am on a strict budget, unlike my full time job where money is not really an issue. Most of the side work I will be doing is editing web content, corporate work, music video, wedding, and some local cable commercials. Nothing for broadcast. The highest level of codec used to edit will be Apple Pro Res 422 HQ HD 1920×1080, and even that will be rare. Looking more at HDV, HDDvcPro, XDCam, and AVCHD. Also, I will be doing most of my capturing at my full time job and just importing the capture files. I will be doing the reverse for printing to tape, or just delivering a file.
This is the setup I am going with:
One 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeo
8 gig 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory
640GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA in bay 1
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA in bay 2 for media scratch disc
ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB grapAs I get more jobs later in the year I also plan to add on the Matrox mxo2 mini mainly for video output to client monitor.
Does anyone see any issues with this setup? I use final cut al the time, but on a much more powerful setup so I just want to make sure that I will be covered for my side needs.
What about a RAID card? I am thinking that a 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA in bay 2 for media scratch disc should do the trick for the codecs I am using, but this is really the only thing that leaves me scratching my head. At my full time job I capture Apple Pro Res 422 HQ HD 1920×1080 straight to external (eSATA) drives all the time. Granted I am not doing layers of video, but I really do not see myself doing more than 4 layers tops.
What are your thoughts please?
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6 Replies
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[Rob McLain] “Does anyone see any issues with this setup? “
Yes! The flaw in your logic is that you’re not factoring in the importance of a raid for overall system performance.
Why buy a high-performance system and cut it off at the knees by limiting hard drive throughput to a single media drive?
Your MacPro has three extra hard drive bays in addition to the system drive, put them to use. 1Tb hard drives are incredibly inexpensive now ( just $75 bucks each), and you don’t need a raid card to stripe them as RAID 0. Just load the three empty bays with three identical drives and stripe them using Apple Disk Utility — that alone will up your throughput from 60 or 70mbps to 180 to 200mbps — that’s a huge increase and it will substantially increase the realtime performance of your system. That extra $150 will make a huge difference.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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David offers a good suggestion, but bad math, 3x$75 is $225, for the drives that is.
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[Chris Poisson] “David offers a good suggestion, but bad math, 3x$75 is $225, for the drives that is.”
Hey there Mr. Buttinski. You’re seldom in the wrong, but this time you’ve stepped in it, and very deep. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Rob stated that he was already buying (1) 1Tb drive, so I suggested he buy two more, and so the math is 2x$75=$150 additional.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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This is a great idea, and much cheaper than the $700 raid card. Looking at Apples website I see they are selling the 1 TB sata drives for the low cost of $300. Likes like I am not having apple ship the drives and buy them elsewhere.
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[Rob McLain] “Looking at Apples website I see they are selling the 1 TB sata drives for the low cost of $300.”
Definitely not a great buy, especially when you can acquire then from Newegg for $79. Here’s a link: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145287&cm_re=hitachi_1tb-_-22-145-287-_-Product
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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Rob,
Seeing that you said you will be creating content for the web, you might want to check out the Mini with the H.264 option built in https://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mac/max/realtime/#max_graphI bought my Matrox MXO2 without the H.264 option (wasn’t out yet) now I added the CompressHD into the Mix on my MacPro… and let me tell you that the time it saved me I was able to book more work and make more moo-la! Do yourself a favor and consider the MAX option.
An Artist At Heart.
Life is made of moments…
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