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System spec for FCP
Hi,
Planning on jumping ship from PC edit platforms to MAC – and know very little about Macs…. I want a MAC FCP desktop system that will handle a little HD, some SD, and lots of HDV & DV at the same kind of pace as a PC with Matrox Axio LE…I’ll be needing a Kona card or something similar I guess? Anyone know enough about the Matrox stuff to make some suggestions as to what a Mac would need to match it’s performance / capabilities? If any one can throw a little light on the world of Macs for me I’d be very grateful..
Tim
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In order to discover new oceans, man has to leave sight of the shore. -
2 Replies
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Hey Tim,
For HDV you’ll need at least a Gig of RAM, but if you’re planning on doing HD the I’m sure you’re prepared for RAM costs, and I’d get at least 2 but wouldn’t hesitate to recommend getting at least 6 if you can afford it. You can get up to 16 in the mac pro, so go nuts if you have the funds. You’ll need a Kona 3 or a BlackMagic Design DeckLink HD card if you want to capture HD , but HDV can go through firewire just like DV. To be honest, I don’t know too much about the Matrox cards you mentioned, but I use a Kona 3 every day and it rocks – mostly DVCPRO HD editing, but we have also mastered out to HDCAM with no problems, as well as used the built in down-converter to master to DigiBeta.
Don’t forget, if you’re doing uncompressed HD, you can’t use FireWire 800 drives – you’ll need to spend some money on Fibre or SATA RAIDs and the necessary corresponding interface PCI card. DVCPRO HD, HDV, SD, DV will all obviously work fine through FW800.
Good Luck,
Ben
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Tim,
Sorry for the pun, but you’re comparing Apples and oranges. Axio and Axio LE are hardware-based NLEs, FCP is a software based NLE. What you will find is that computers are becoming so powerful now that the difference between software-based editors and hardware-based editors has blurred somwhat and is not nearly what it was just a year or two ago, nonetheless there is a significant difference.
Realtime performance in FCP means that you can essentially edit several layers of video without rendering while you work, but you must eventually render. Realtime on a hardware-based NLE such as Axio is, for the most part, really realtime, and the rendering is not necessary at all.
What you will find when shopping for a MAC is that, unlike PCs, MACs have fewer options. They are essentially all built as serious workstations, and instead of having to worry which models are capable of running the apps you need, it more of a question of how much you want spend to make it work better. Any modern MAC with dual procs and 4gb of RAM can run FCP well, but the faster the procs the better. In the future, video cards will play a more important role as onboard GPU processing becomes increasingly powerful, but right out of the box every MAC is very capable of running FCP.
DRW
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