we’re gathered around a very small pond.

[Kim Krause]

i have that effect on people…i always get into arguments with most of them. funny thing is, i am usually proven right and your comments serve to confirm what i’m saying…thanks for being open minded enough to see the point!

[Walter Soyka]

[kim krause] “i have that effect on people…i always get into arguments with most of them. funny thing is, i am usually proven right and your comments serve to confirm what i’m saying…thanks for being open minded enough to see the point!”

Let’s debate, Kim.

See my post in the Mac Pro thread, where I outline my business case for high performance, workstation-class machines.

I’ll get a couple points out of the way before we begin.

I agree with you that the Mac Pro may very well be going away. I also agree that computing has caught up with video, and NLEs don’t require advanced workstations anymore.

I disagree with your contention that workstations are relics from the past, and I contend that there are still plenty of users who can actually use all that power, whether you need it for editorial or not.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Kim Krause]

but i’m only talking about your average joe or jane editor who is working on series and conforming and not the 3d super high res 4k file pushers. a very large percentage of what is done in the industry as far as editing is concerned can be done on fairly modest systems. most boutique shops that provide offline services (and are now forced into online as well, but thats a different story) and almost all television news stations and video amateurs downloading stuff on you tube don’t need a huge powerful tower with cards for this and that. they just need to get video into their machine, make it all look good and spit it out. obviously i would never even consider trying to cut a feature film or do 3d compositing on an imac or mini just now. there will always be a market for high end machines that perform amazingly fast. thats a small percentage of the actual people using computers for editing. but just wait a few more years. most people i know are still using machines that are 2 years old or more…myself included. but when it comes time to trade in my old mac pro, it won’t be with another one. i already know that my next machine will be a mac mini server connected to a hi end iMac with a second display and an iPad for a controller. and i’ll be doing it by 2012. best part is it will cost me less than my current system and be way more powerful….

[Gary Huff]

[kim krause] hey just need to get video into their machine, make it all look good and spit it out.

And a powerful workstation will do that a lot faster than a Mac Book Pro or Mac Mini will. Or do you think we should set limits on how long a render-out should take that we should be happy with (“Oh, a 5 minute clip taking 15 minutes to render should be just fine…why would you want it any faster?”).

[Kim Krause]

actually i always render at night. and when i think about time it’s not much different than the old days of tape to tape. i would always have to wait for a record machine anyway and by the time the tape op has everything ready and patched in it would still take 15 minutes then you would have to play it out. in that case a 5 minute clip would take 20 minutes anyway so idont see any time advantage. even in your example if you could render in real time you still have to export it to fcp or avid then make a quicktime master then output that to tape if needed….how long do you think that takes?

[Shawn Miller]

“3d compositing on an imac or mini just now. there will always be a market for high end machines that perform amazingly fast. thats a small percentage of the actual people using computers for editing.”

I think you’re severely underestimating the number of people doing this kind of work. There are millions of folks doing 3D, motion graphics and compositing work… Blender alone claims to have over 2 million downloads a year. I can’t even begin to guess how big After Effects’ user base is, but I would be willing to believe that it dwarfs the FCP user base.

Shawn

[Oliver Peters]

[Shawn Miller] “There are millions of folks doing 3D, motion graphics and compositing work… Blender alone claims to have over 2 million downloads a year. I can’t even begin to guess how big After Effects’ user base is, but I would be willing to believe that it dwarfs the FCP user base.”

And by default the majority of those folks are on PCs.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Craig Seeman]

I’m not sure if Apple ever competed in that market. As much as I love Macs, you can build a PC with much better GPU power (possibly two monster cards).

[Shawn Miller]

“And by default the majority of those folks are on PCs.”

There may be some truth to that. When I first started doing 3D ‘stuff’, compositing and motion graphics work, it seemed that the overwhelming number of my peers were on PCs. Gradually, more and more folks migrated to OSX (after the switch to Intel processors). I always thought this was a good thing, competition and diversity keeps hardware and software developers competitive, hungry and innovative. Now, I have to wonder how many of my peers will migrate back to Windows or go to Linux (assuming Apple kill the Mac Pro).

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

“I’m not sure if Apple ever competed in that market. As much as I love Macs, you can build a PC with much better GPU power (possibly two monster cards).”

Well… that and the fact that most of the popular 3D applications were Windows/Linux only for a long time (3DS Max comes to mind). It seemed like things were turning around though. It’s unfortunate, I would have liked to have seen Apple as a bigger player in that space.

Shawn