Parallels Desktop

[13]

I would use boot camp instead of parallels or vmfusion because it will let you utilize the entire power of the computer whereas emulators will not.

[Shiloh Heyman]

Parallels uses a lot of memory, gives you no access to firewire and doesn’t seem to make use of multi processors properly. I always shut parallels down when doing anything of importance. As zrb123 says, I would use BootCamp or go CS3 for mac.

[Tim Wilson]

Herb: Is anyone running Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion and successfully running AE and Photoshop on a FCP Mac. If so, what are your impressions?

Honest? This is the most fun I’ve had on a Mac….and I’m one of those grimy old b*st*rds who got mine in 1984. (Okay, it was my girlfriend…and we got married in 1985, so there you go.)

zrb …utilize the entire power of the computer whereas emulators will not.

Not as much of a factor as you might think. There’s about a 5% processing penalty in emulation, at least with Fusion — about 3 minutes on a 60 minute render, about 30 seconds on a 10 minute render. About one second on a 20 second render.

I can spare that much time.

shiloh Parallels uses a lot of memory, gives you no access to firewire and doesn’t seem to make use of multi processors properly.

True re: fw. No emulators on any platform have access to firewire…but all my FW drives have USB 2 interfaces. Since I’m not capturing to them, I’ve found the *real world* performance difference to be negligible. Your mileage will vary.

For the rest, I suggest the free trial version of Fusion. It has a very small memory footprint, and is just plain faster for the basic operations — open, close, etc. You’ll feel right away how muscular it is. These guys have been doing emulation on multiple platforms (dozens) for a long time. This is all they do, and they’re really good at it.

While it doesn’t take advantage of every processor, Fusion takes the first 2, rather than the 1 that Parallels does.

If you go to the VMware site, there are instructions for how to use your Parallels installation with Fusion, which is awesome –super-easy conversion means no need to reformat and reinstall.

Some other thoughts…

–Even as a Mac guy who started using Windows under extreme duress, running Vista under Boot Camp is a joy. I take perverse pleasure out of running Windows and nothing but Windows on my MacBook Pro. The Vista logo sits maybe 3 inches from the MBP engraving at the bottom of the screen. Sweet!

Performance is outrageous, too — muuuch faster than my desktop running XP with twice as much RAM.

–Best reason NOT to go with Mac versions of software for your FCP machine: no reason to under Fusion. I have a ton of PC software. No need at all to buy the Mac versions when I can drag a PC psd file into an FCP bin.

(That’s another thing I like about Fusion, btw — Windows apps float in their own windows, each able to come forward or not as selected….instead of all the Windows windows coming to the foreground when one is selected. Fusion makes dragging between the platforms easier.)

Having said all that, of COURSE you’re going to want to go with one OS or the other when you’re doing your heaviest lifting. But seriously, try it. Unless you’re capturing ProRes, there’s very little CPU involved…although it might be fun to try capturing with Windows up. Maybe not with a client watching, but it’s now officially on my list of things to try some time.

My point here is that, how likely is it that you’re going to be doing 2 processor-intensive tasks in both OSes at the same time? Not very.

So overall, for the work that most people do most of the time, having both is a gas. Highly recommended.

Did I mention that your mileage will vary? It will.

But my new favorite Mac accessory is Windows. 🙂

Tim

[Mark Palmos]

hi there herb!
so you mean pc versions of AE and PS?
im using parallels, but almost exclusively for canopus imaginate since there’s no better rostrum software i know of, and sometimes canopus procoder (which requires boot camp, it does not work on parallels).
works very well and easily
catcha later
mark.

[Herb Sevush]

Tim –

Thanks for the info. Mostly I just want to use my PC versions of AE & Photoshop without having to upgrade to a Mac version, and without sabotaging my Final Cut workflow. There are, however, many little utilities I can get in the PC world that I can’t get for the Mac and it’s nice to have the access.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions