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Seriously considering going from Mac to PC for my edit machine after 12 yrs, any big hurdles I should consider?
Hi all,
I’ve been running strong on an octo 2.93 2009 mac pro w 32 gb of ram and a gtx 780 for a long time now. Everything runs pretty well still and 4k prores lt footage plays back great but r3d 4k files can be sluggish and I know my system is long in the tooth. I care most about real time playback more than the bleeding edge of export times. I know its time for an upgrade soon and I had been sitting waiting for the mac pro update, and waiting, and waiting. It gave me a chance to consider why I was sticking with a very expensive apple mac pro – I no longer cut in fcp7 and rarely need to open old fcp7 projects (once a year maybe), and all clients give me the choice of Premiere or Avid (90% of the time, im cutting from home and then a client flies me out for picture lock to wherever the agency or production company is, cutting on an edit facility machine – which have always been macs, never seen a pc in that situation). Im an iphone user but dont care THAT much about texting and siri built into my os. So after 12 yrs loyal to apple desktops, I’m considering a switch to a very fast PC custom built by Puget System or someone similar who has an eye for build quality and offers support just in case.
My big question is, whats the biggest hurdle? Is there a challenge Im not considering? I assume that I can cut a project in Premiere or Avid on a PC and then still fly with my media drive and project and pull it into a mac system and it’ll still open properly? Is there a reliable / quality hackintosh builder out there? I guess staying mac os would be ideal but this waiting for a new very expensive mac pro to magically surface with a premium being paid for sleekness, sucks. Im quickly falling out of love with apple desktop hardware.
Thanks all.
EDITOR
Features : Television : Commercial
http://www.BryanRobertsEditor.com -
6 Replies
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1 .alternate software like compressor not available, some plugins are mac only
2. no prores without buying a license for pc
3. hard drive swaps from mac to pc not same formatting unless exfat
4. possible windows 10 issues
5. hakintosh is not supported in tech support and needs drivers that are hard to find
6. r3d 4k playback could be from slow disk access speed not a slow computer
7. premiere supports native proxies now
8. mac pro trashcan can’t playback very well. it uses slow video card and slow hard drives. and low clock speed.(there’s many posts on adobe.com about this)a new computer worth upgrading would probably cost $5,000 for anything decent:
xeon’s are clock limited so go i-7
i7-6950x 10 core.
supported overclock motherboard
fast ddr4-3000 speed memory 64GB
huge psu
good cpu cooler
several SSD’s, one or more perferably m2.x4(sm961) or 4TB samsung evo sata 3
large hd’s for storage
gfx card like 1080 or quadro(10 bit)
10 bit monitor
output card blackmagic 4k -
After using Mac only for over a decade I switched to Windows 8.1 Pro last year. I ordered the parts and put the computer together myself (which was straightforward and done in a couple of hours after watching a couple of youtube videos).
The reason for this is I had waited forever for new Mac Pros to be announced and the new ‘trashcan’ ones didn’t meet my requirements in terms of upgradeability.So far I’m very happy and hardly notice much difference at all. I think the only drawback I can think of is no ability to export and convert to ProRes in Windows, so I’m still keeping a Mac around just in case I need to deliver something in ProRes.
I format my external drives in exFAT which so far has worked perfect for me so there is absolutely no problems exchanging files between Windows and OS X.So going on for just over a year now and I’m still very satisfied with how the switch to Windows has worked out for me. I guess whether switching to Windows is successful depends on each individual and their needs/preferences though, but for me at least it’s worked out perfectly so far.
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Thanks guys. I hadnt considered the no prores export thing. That could be a major issue as almost every final delivery I have is ProRes or someone is requesting assets in ProRes. Hmmm… that’s frustrating that it’s the only major issue I see as an issue. Perhaps I should seriously look at upgrading my processors with one of those tray swap out programs and consider upgrading my GTX780 to one of the new GTX’s that were just released (as soon as Mac OS supports them)…
[EDIT] – Nevermind, SATA II is going to really hurt me getting the drive speed I need for great RED 4k or similar type playback speeds… damn…
EDITOR
Features : Television : Commercial
http://www.BryanRobertsEditor.com -
Just out of curiosity, did you end up making the switch to a PC?
I Hate Television. I Hate It As Much As Peanuts. But I Can’t Stop Eating Peanuts.
– Orson Welles -
I didn’t. I upgraded my cpu tray to a 3.46ghz 12 core for $400 and got a gtx 1080 ti – it screams and can get me by until the new new Mac Pro. Glad I waited.
EDITOR
Commercial / Feature / Doc
http://www.BryanRobertsEditor.com -
fair enough. If by chance you wanted to spend less on your upgrade down the road and, there are plenty of PC configurations that will allow for a seamless Red 4k workflow and the pro res issue seems to be waning since DNxHD is an equal or superior master delivery format.
I Hate Television. I Hate It As Much As Peanuts. But I Can’t Stop Eating Peanuts.
– Orson Welles
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