[Ben Holmes]

I’ll have an imaginary $10 on that…

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[Ben Holmes]

Manufacturers of cards have had the software for some time – don’t forget there have been post-houses testing FCP X for months, it was mentioned in the sneak peek as far as I remember, and talked about by other industry bods as well.

I’d be very surprised if there aren’t drivers at launch for X. Seriously.

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[Ben Holmes]

I already told everyone when FCP X was out – no one listens.

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[Ben Holmes]

[Craig Seeman] “Since we’re talking about case design, it’s conceivable that at some point there can me a “slotless” MacPro with multiple Thunderbolt ports rather than PCIe slots. Such box could be rack mountable as well.”

Nice idea – not sure we’ll see this until Thunderbolt 2 – Beyond the Thunderdome is released…

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[Ben Holmes]

I love the fact that on this forum, this counts as news!

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[Ben Holmes]

Yup – as noted, no new processors, and I’d discounted any refresh this year except……

1. These supply rumours often come to something – Apple can’t hide when stock is being run down, although the timeframes are often longer than people seem to think. It’s pretty thin, admittedly.

2. Mac Pro graphics need updating (you can get a card, albeit mobile, with more RAM in an iMac at the moment)

3. Seems like a good time (without new processors) to refresh a line in form factor to grab back some server sales, and boost things along for a few months until they hit.

4. The last Mac Pro case design was launched before a big processor change – don’t forget the original ones were Power PC, then the first Xeon used the same design (it’s been around since 2003!!) and it doesn’t strike me that the Q4 chips would require much in the way of case changes, being similar power chips.

5. Although less useful in a Mac Pro, Thunderbolt is a ‘pro’ feature, and I don’t think Apple will want their pro machines going without for long – even if you and I know it’s not a gamechanger, it’s still the kind of design consistency they, and their peripheral makers like.

Anyway – food for thought. Honestly, I wouldn’t care so much except I have a looming deadline to purchase new gear, and right now I think I’ll wait a little longer before I jump. Once that deadline hits, however, I’m in whatever, and won’t be THAT disappointed if there’s a new model – although my gear travels a lot, and a rackmount unit would save me a fortune in flightcases!

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[Ben Holmes]

Whilst you can run AVID on Mac Pros, almost no one does in my experience – also I’ve spoken to a number of shared storage vendors who do not support AVID filesystems on Mac, although I’m sure there are some. If I was switching to AVID I’d go PC, because I know I’d get much better reseller technical support.

I’ll admit – I always thought the HP workstations were cheaper in quotes I’ve seen for configured systems, interesting to hear that they are not, but I suspect deeper discounts are available to resellers for PC gear.

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[Ben Holmes]

[Shane Ross] “What? The cards have been reformatted? Dude…bad bad bad. That’s like capturing tape, and erasing the tape. KEEP THAT STUFF. You backup the P2 contents to hard drives at least”

In live broadcast environments, this is more common that anyone would like to admit. P2 cards are expensive, and ingest to a RAID is the best most people manage due to time constraints. It gives me the willies every time. When what you got is irreplaceable (covering a live event) I much preferred a growing shelf of 30 min tapes….

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[Ben Holmes]

I still deal with senior production staff every day in broadcast who deal with PAL and NTSC HD all the time. You get bored of saying “1080i50 and 1080i60” – it doesn’t roll off the tongue as well. You and Walter are both right in which case – if you’re dealing with non-technical staff, which includes management and purchasing for equipment too…

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[Ben Holmes]

If you’re working in HD or SD timelines, just use standard ProRes – you will not see any quality improvement over this codec, even for broadcast.

Graphic elements from Motion or AE are best rendered out as ProRes 4444 if it has any transparancy (alpha channel) or plain old prores if they’re full frame (or rendered against a background).

All of your attempts to maintain quality will be mostly wasted anyway when you make a DVD – the compression is far worse than any editing codec FCP can muster.

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