[Brad Bussé]

Craig, you just rained on my parade.

So, does anyone think that Apple will make this Mac Pro product cycle shorter and announce new ones with Thunderbolt by NAB?

[Brad Bussé]

Hmm, I’m probably putting in my order for a 12-core Mac Pro tomorrow along with an 8 TB RAID. I wish this were already available on the Mac Pro. I don’t see a reason why it can’t be added later via a Lightpeak PCIe card. Does anyone know if it would be possible to hack the current iMacs to have Thunderbolt, like the eSATA hack from OWC?

[Brad Bussé]

I did set all effects to be available. There’s literally nothing in the FxPlug folder. This is a problem that I’ve encountered before. I guess it’s being wiped out by another installation, like a ProApps update, or when installing either Quicktime 7 from the Snow Leopard disc (which I recently did, after FCS was installed), or from installing either Magic Bullet Looks Suite or Trapcode Suite (both of which were also installed recently).

[Brad Bussé]

When exporting to Animation codec, check the resulting exported .mov to ensure that the frame rate is what it should be. I’ve been capturing footage for a 720p @ 29.97 Hz ProRes timeline, and when I tried exporting to Animation, the file only exported at about 15 fps. What I’m doing now, is capturing at 1920×1080 30 fps with the recorder set to save as .avi instead of camrec, and then exporting as the default “Web” profile, which keeps the same resolution and frame rate, and exports as a .mp4. Then I convert that in Compressor to ProRes as 720 or 1080 to work in my 720 ProRes timeline. I tried rectifying the workflow to export in the Animation codec, but the last time I tried it was with a longer file, and Camtasia ran out of memory. My PC is running 64-bit Windows 7, and I think it has 8 GB of RAM for its quad-core, so I’m assuming Camtasia is still 32-bit.

You may find that you may need to do some slight color correction to bring back some saturation since some of the color data is lost in conversion to .mp4

[Brad Bussé]

I’m in Scottsdale (Phoenix). Thanks for the feedback.

[Brad Bussé]

Thanks David, I just may go this route – the link you sent said it comes with a mount – is it a wall mount, and does it tilt down?

[Brad Bussé]

Thanks, seems like a good solution. Why the Panny over Pioneer?

Plasma may not be ideal for my current location though, I have daylight coming in from one side, and I’m a bit worried about the heat they put out, because the A/C shuts off with no override in this office, and it already gets real hot when I work late.

[Brad Bussé]

Thanks, yes I’ve seen that link. I’m just not clear on how much massive RAM helps over less RAM. Obviously AE will probably eat up all of it to have available for ram previews and rendering (allowing for background processes too, of course), but I wonder once you’re above 32GB on a 12-core, how much the general task speeds scale along with the change up to 64GB when working in an AE timeline.

Yes, I have FCP and use it extensively. If FCS 4 w/ 64-bit Cocoa FCS 8 isn’t announced at N.A.B. in April, I’m writing Steve a personal scathing email.

[Brad Bussé]

Thanks. I’m heard others speculate that down the road you can swap out the 2.66 CPUs for the 3.33s, but I don’t know if that would cause heat troubles (otherwise why wouldn’t Apple have offered that as an option)?

Yeah, I was speculating about the real-time speed of working in an app like AE vs. the rendering preview times. I know the 3.33 6-core is probably a lot faster than the 2.66 12-core in FCP (except for rendering). I hope that when FCP 8 is out, that it will be faster on a 12-core for the actual workflow, and not just in rendering times.

[Brad Bussé]

Nope, about to order one for a Mac Pro and then the one for the PC, which will probably be transferred over to a second Mac Pro mid-year. At that point I’ll look at a replacement for the capture bay, which will likely be a Ninja or KiPro Mini (to also serve a dual purpose for an AF100).