Upgrade Advice?

[Jerry Hofmann]

I think your current Mac is up to the task. I’d work natively in DVCPROHD too. You will need a way to monitor externally though, and I’d look no further than an AJA Io HD when they ship, or a Kona LH or Kona 3. As an alternative to that I’m using a Matrox MXO and 23″ Cinema display right now that seems to be just fine, however still waiting for the Io to ship… The Io will not work with your G5, but the Kona’s would as would the Matrox.

FireWire 800 drives for storage should be OK, SATA would be a bit faster though, allowing for more streams of DVCPROHD to be supported at the same time. That may not be an issue for you… dunno about what your needs would be there…

ProRes is great for many things, however if you are already working in 4:2:2 I don’t see where you’ll gain much if all the footage is DVCPROHD already.

Upgrading to FCS2 though might be a good idea, however it won’t be mandatory in any way from what you’ve posted about your project. Color is worth the upgrade though, and the Matrox will not work with it for monitoring externally.

Leopard may (or may not) make a difference with the new 8 core macs and speed of rendering, so I’d not add that just now into your decision making. A faster Mac will definately render faster, but again, it’s not as if your current mac isn’t up to the task, because it is… You’ve just enough RAM to run FCS 2 as well. It’s probably enough depending on your workflow.

Jerry

[Donald Sellers]

Thanks for your advice, Jerry. From my reading in this forum it appeared that ProRes was the greatest thing since sliced bread but I had formed no clear understanding of when one would want to use it.

I think I’ll bite the bullet and buy a Kona card, as it will probably be useful to me for a while, even with a new Mac Pro (my Mac has PCI-express slots). Do you have a suggestion as to whether I should go with the 3 or LH? It appears that I would benefit from the DVCPRO support that’s in both cards – from reading their manuals I don’t see how the 3 would be worth the extra cost in my setup, but I may be missing something.

I’ll want to upgrade to FCS2 sooner or later, so I might as well make it sooner. Color looks fascinating. That’s something I will use (once I figure out how to use it).

Thanks again for your help!

Don Sellers
https://stourwater.com

[John Foley]

Apple site tells us that ProRez codecs will work best with a MacPro and possibly low enough with a minimum of a Quad G5 tower.

Doesn’t seem that a 2.3 GHz box will do ProRez?

Please visit http://www.thefinalcutstore.com for all your Final Cut needs.

[Jerry Hofmann]

The LH card is the way to go here, however a Kona 3 would add cross conversion to your mix… i.e. take 1080 and change it to 720 etc.. up/down all around conversion… a G5 will need the PCIx versions which will NOT work in the next Mac you buy… an Io HD would also be great but not with a PPC mac like the G5… so there’s those caveats.

I just got an intel tower and gotta say, it runs circles around my old dual G5, but only in render times, and in multitasking chores. You’ll have no problems with that G5 you’re running… Monitoring externally becomes the “rub” though, and there’s little gain buying a capture card to perform this task sans an HD monitor as well.

Matrox’s MXO is a decent solution for this, and allows a 23″ Cinema Display to actually be used as a true video monitor with setup controls and all… pretty cool, and would work with your next gen mac too. It also down converts the HD to SD for monitoring on an SD tube… This is what I’m doing myself while I wait for AJA to ship the Io HD… man is THAT a cool box.

Jerry

[Jerry Hofmann]

My dual 2 gig will play prores but not capture to it in real time… That takes an intel mac.

ProRes isn’t the answer for the person working in DVCPROHD native though I think… you only enlarge the file size and don’t gain anything but a 10 bit sequence setting… good for graphics, but not going to make the DVCPROHD material look any better. It will look the same… You can take P2 native material and drop it in ProRes sequence and then you’ve gained that 10 bit color space.

Jerry

[Donald Sellers]

Jerry,

Thanks for the insights on the cards. It’s always a gnarly decision for me to weigh what I need now versus how I might use something in the future. BTW, my G5 does have PCI express – it was part of the last PPC batch before the switch to Intel and they implemented it there, so I think that helps with future use issues. I think the LH is the way to go now, but I wonder if I need it at all for this project. I figured it was most useful for acceleration in working with DVCPRO in FCP, but maybe that doesn’t make enough difference to be valuable.

The whole issue of monitoring is a bugaboo that seems to have no perfect inexpensive solution, although I’ve appreciated your explanations in various threads on the cost/benefit of the MXO. Perhaps for now I should forget about a Kona and just go with that: I’ve got a Dell 2405FPW that I assume it could drive. Plus I’ve got a Sony PVM-14M2U, which could look at things in SD.

Thanks again for your help.

Don Sellers
https://stourwater.com