Questions before purchasing…

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Your hard drive system isn’t going to be the bottleneck, nor is your processor.

DNG files are easier to work with than AVCHD or H.264, and you shouldn’t face a major hit performance-wise.

I would upgrade the RAM to 8 GB though, since RAW processing requires as much RAM as you can throw at it.

Take a good look at Da Vinci’s hardware configuration guide. That should answer a lot of your questions.

If you need help rigging it, I’ve written a guide here.

Hope this helps.

https://wolfcrow.com/blog/ – Workflow information and support for filmmakers, photographers, audiographers and videographers.

[Deleted User]

As Sareesh says, your Mac Pro is fast enough to edit RAW CinemaDNG files, but double-check BMD’s info about graphic card requirements for Resolve. If you do need a new graphics card, a basic one that will work with Resolve is relatively inexpensive.

Of course if you record ProRes 422 HQ then that will work great with your system.

However, if your MacBook Pro is an older model (especially one that does not have a Thunderbolt port) there’s a chance its graphics card may not work with resolve. Again, check BMD’s documentation.

My 2 yr. old MacBook Pro 17″ (2.66GHz i7, no T-Bolt) can’t run Resolve because its graphics card isn’t compatible. Not the end of the world because I’ll be shooting ProRes 422 HQ in the BMCC’s “Film” mode for most projects. (I use FCP 7.0.3). Reportedly very high quality results @ 1/5th the file size & data rate of RAW CinemaDNG. We shall see, soon I hope! Cheers.

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https://www.peterdv.com

[David Barry]

Thank you both for your input. I live and work on Maui in Hawaii, and I am very excited about the camera. I think it will be a great next camera for me as I currently work with an HVX200. I will be upgrading my RAM, and I will look into what I can do about a thunderbolt adapter or card for my Mac Pro.

db

[David Barry]

one more question… do I have to use thunderbolt connection to access the footage on the camera, or can I take the SSD drive out and put that into an SSD drive reader and use eSATA to access the footage? Because I cannot find a thunderbolt card, or thunderbolt adapter cable as of yet, and neither of my machines have a thunderbolt port.

db

[Alex Gerulaitis]

eSATA is fine – any way you can read that SSD is fine; Thunderbolt is not necessary for that purpose, and you’re right, there aren’t any add-on Thunderbolt adapters. It’s either built-in or you can’t have it.

Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Integrator
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Unfortunately there are no Thunderbolt adapters or PCIe cards as Thunderbolt requires that it is part of the motherboard largely due to its carrying of DisplayPort protocol. In this way it must be designed in tandem with an integrated graphics processor or even a discreet graphics processor thats on the motherboard, IE a laptop. The Thunderbolt on desktop motherboards has been designed with workarounds. I’m not sure exactly how it’s done in that case but I’m sure a quick google will tell you. Either way I know there are no Thumderbolt expansion cards and time will tell if there will be.

eSATA is actually what BMD recommends for transfers. A SATA 3 card and reader will work quite well.

Panasonic HPX170, Canon 7D
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Production Premium CS6, Avid Symphony 6, Final Cut Pro Studio 3
The College of William and Mary

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Yes, you can use an SSD card reader – mac formatted, of course.

https://wolfcrow.com/blog/ – Workflow information and support for filmmakers, photographers, audiographers and videographers.

[Eric Santiago]

Heck if your Mac Pro is accessible, it takes a min to shut it down, remove a sled and add and reboot.
Sure there is some danger involved but I do it so many times day to day at work (for other reasons) that its the norm.
Cant wait for my BMD version of the REDMAG 1.8 😉

[Marco Solorio]

For my Cinema Camera, I’ve been using this Vantec drive dock that accepts SSD drives that has USB, FireWire 800, and eSata ports on the back. The FireWire 800 port is quite fast if you don’t have an eSata port. It’s a bit plasticy, but it’s been working great so far.

Marco Solorio | CreativeCow Host | OneRiver Media | ORM Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Media Batch

[Deleted User]

The Voyager-Q also gets good reviews. It’s not bus powered, but has multiple ports including eSATA-3:
https://www.newertech.com/products/voyagerq.php

Since I wanted a relatively fast, bus-powered solution for my 2 yr. old MBP (no T-Bolt) that can operate completely off the laptop’s battery when necessary, I bought a small 2.5″ drive enclosure, leave its outer case off, slide the SSD in & out as needed, and use its eSATA-2 connection with a Sonnet dual-port eSATA-3 ExpressCard34 adapter. Works fine:
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MEQM0GBK/
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet%20Technologies/SATA6PRO2E34/

Less-expensive ExpressCard34 eSATA single-port adapters are available from Sonnet & other vendors.

I posted some real-world data transfer times for my 2 yr. old MBP, using various SSD & HDD devices, on BMD’s forum:
https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?p=1169&sid=a0f7d760fc112eb4c5352ed26e77e267#p1169

Cheers.

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https://www.peterdv.com