The New Mac

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

[Ty Vann] “You are going to get the most powerful Mac ever, and you are worried about cables? I didn’t know cables were ever such an enormous problem. Surely, pros have better things to worry about.”

Indeed. But personally speaking I don’t see it as an all or nothing question. I mean, I’ll be very happy to get the most powerful Mac ever once it’s available. Only, I would have been even happier if it came with a couple of PCIe slots to move the e-sata and the real time HD output card I already own, plus some internal storage.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
early 2008 MacPro, BM Intensity Pro, early 2008 iMac, 2011 MacBook Pro, FCP7, FCPX, OSX 10.8.3

[John Davidson]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I’m still hoping for JetPacPro™.

Dual inverted MacPros strapped to the back that provide enough lift to make you believe you can fly.

Flight controllers are Thunderbolt v2, of course.”

Behold the first firmware update!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRVspuAJyAY

This is what happens when you put bootcamp and windows on it.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Precisely, Mr Davidson.

Here it is running Mavericks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F-T2Iw7Dq4&sns=em

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Chris Harlan]

What’s bad for you about Avid and ProRes–that you have to rewrap?

[Andy Neil]

I’ll tell you what I hate about it. Avid’s handling of ProRes 4×4 (with alphas) is absolute sh*t. Now that I think about it, Avid is pathetic with alpha channels in general unless produced in Animation or DNxHD codecs.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Chris Harlan]

[Andy Neil] ” Avid’s handling of ProRes 4×4 (with alphas) is absolute sh*t.”

I don’t think I’ve ever had to transcode 4X4 with Alphas. So, you can’t do it? Or, you can, but it corrupts files? Or, you can, but you have to take five extra steps? “sh*t” doesn’t really explain much.

[Andy Neil] “Now that I think about it, Avid is pathetic with alpha channels in general unless produced in Animation or DNxHD codecs.”

Pathetic? Do you mean an attached alpha on import? I don’t think I’ve had any problems masking with alphas on rewrapped ProRes material. So, how do you mean pathetic? And, is this experience with 6 or 7?

I’m not trying to be a JackA by asking all this, btw. I’m just trying to find out where the walls are. My experience with ProRes in Media Composer has been pretty good.

[Chris Harlan]

I see it was a know bug introduced in 6.5. I wonder if it has been fixed in 7.

[Andy Neil]

Not sure if 7 fixed it or not, but I was talking about 6.5. Imported ProRes 4×4 show no alpha present (there is a separate issue with 4×4 in 6.03). Imported tif image sequences showed the alpha, but changed the colors of the image. Avid doesn’t seem to like pre-multiplied alphas and there’s no way for it to read the alpha differently so renders in other programs have to fit Avid’s narrow guidelines in order to appear properly.

For a program that has 10-15 years experience on pretty much any other NLE, it’s handling of alphas is shockingly poor. Even when it does it correctly, it’s still a poor implementation. You take the same file into any other NLE and it just works. Avid makes you jump through hoops.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Herb Sevush]

Yes the idea of re-wrapping 14 Terabytes of material somehow doesn’t appeal to me.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Bob Zelin]

I am always fascinated by professional people that start to cry when “Apple” doesn’t make everything for them. If it were not for ATTO, Blackmagic, Matrox, AJA, etc., etc. no one would have taken FCP seriously in the first place. This means that THIRD PARTY COMPANIES make an Apple product work for you. It’s always been this way – in every business. When you are a professional – photographer, musician, golfer, etc. you have TONS OF STUFF that is part of your professional package. And amateurs look at “all that stuff” and say “how can you figure all this stuff out”. That’s what we do – we are not on a Mac Book Air with FCP-X and nothing else, and do our job. It’s the same stupid analogy as the guy who says “all you need is a pen and paper to be in this business”. WE NEED STUFF – lots of stuff, that plugs in, and does all kinds of stuff that THE OTHER GUYS don’t have. Big drive arrays, special IO products, special monitors, scopes, outboard audio gear, etc, etc, etc. IT WILL ALWAYS BE THIS WAY, and when it’s not, no one will be making a living at this.

The original AJA I/O came out when the AVID Adreanline came out (same NAB) and that made FCP really take off. (oooh – another box that I have to buy). If you have a Mac Pro right now, you probably have tons of stuff inside it, and outside of it, connected to every port – tons of wires. And for the people that don’t, – -well, you have TONS of plug in’s for AE, etc. that are in addition to your basic Adobe package, so have a “virtual mess of wires” on your hard drives.

And for the genius that said at the top of this thread “just get a Dell” – if you are a PROFESSIONAL PC user, you buy this –

https://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/workstations/z820_features.html

not a toy like this –
https://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-t7600/fs

There will certainly be a rack mount for the new Mac Pro (from companies like Markertek, etc), and no shortage of TBolt2 expansion chassis from companies like Magma, Sonnet, and Cubix. And like always, we will have all kinds of crap hanging off these computers, including big drive arrays, complex networks, fancy schmancy monitors, super duper audio monitors, etc. That’s the way it’s always been, and that’s the way it will always be.

Now get back to work.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
maxavid@cfl.rr.com