Chris Gordon
Forum Replies Created
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When you say crash, is this the entire OS or just FCP?
From reading your other posts, I’d suspect the following:
– Bad memory (OS X will log DIMM Parity corrections in /var/log/system.log, so you may want to look there and see if anything shows up. You may also just try reseating all of your RAM).
– Power supply or just poor power signal in. Are you using a good UPS or similar solution?
– Drivers for your RAID controller. You may want to make sure you have the most recent and correct drivers. -
The common solution for odd things often seems to be to trash your FCE preferences and try opening the file again. Have you given that a shot?
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What are you thoughts on Bonnie++ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie%2B%2B, https://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/)? It’s very popular in the open source unix world and is in Macports. On quick inspection, it looks like it’s only linked to standard OS X libraries, so you could probably just copy the single binary around and use it on systems without the rest of Macports on it.
I’ve also done some simple benchmarks as they are with dd and reading from /dev/zero and writing to disk (typically a file of at least 2xRAM to make sure I’ve blown through any cache and buffering in at the vfs layer), or vice versa depending on what I wanted to test. The basic number from this and watching iostat can give you some decent insight into your storage system.
This is what it is– simple and quick — and like any benchmarking you need to understand all of the layers of your storage system to understand what any number or test means.
On the network side of things, I’ve found ttcp (also in Macports) to be very useful.
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Yeah, you need Exchange 2008 for everything to work “magically”. I’m stuck in the same spot at work. The exchange servers have been scheduled for upgrades for a number of years, but I guess a couple of thousand mail boxes and various corp acquisitions and divestitures keeps it on the back burner.
On the alternatives to Outlook, I’ve had great success using IMAP against exchange (assuming you can get that turned on) and have found it often to be faster than Outlook over MAPI. For the address book, it’s just simple LDAP and I’ve had luck with both Thunderbird and Evolution when I was on a Linux workstation (before I was able to get a Mac at work). Calendaring is the one real challenge and forces me to Outlook via RDP or just using Entourage (currently).
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I personally prefer Apple’s built in tools (Mail, iCal, Contacts). I suggested Outlook for the Mac since that seemed to be exactly the solution the original user seemed to be looking for. As for price, I agree that it’s a bit pricey for what you’re getting, but if someone has a lot of data tied up in a PST it can be very tedious to convert to another format and the time spent doing the conversion (assuming you could otherwise be billing that time or doing other productive work) could offset the price of Office.
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It may be a bit pricey, but what about just using Outlook? Office 2011 for Mac now includes Outlook (replacing Entourage). It looks like you can even just copy your PST files over to your Mac.
https://www.microsoft.com/mac/outlook
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Mine are a number of years old — a 2405FPW and an 1905FP. Look at the different models and read the reviews to decide what you want. There is nothing different between a “PC monitor” and one sold/badged by Apple. There are a very small number of companies that actually make the LCD panels and everyone else OEMs from them. The differences besides the case the monitor LCD sits in are typically the connections to it and which specific LCD panel is inside (there are various different ones of different quality and cost). In short, any monitor will work fine on your Mac. The ATI 5870 on your Mac Pro probably only has display port connectors, so you’ll either need a monitor with display port connections or just buy a display port to DVI adapter (typically around $30).
Now if planning to do color grading/correction or want/need accurate replication of what would be seen on a TV, you need a video monitor and output card (AJA Kona, Blackmagic, Matrox) in addition to the graphics display monitor. Remember that a TV and a computer graphics display are very different in how they handle the video signal. Discussions of this are probably better suited for the Final Cut forums here (or the forum for whichever editing package you are planning to use).
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I have a couple of Dell monitors and I know a number of others around here use and recommend them.
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Are you going to edit from this drive or just want somewhere to store the videos?
If you’re just going to store them and not edit from the disk, you can get a USB connected disk. If you plan to edit from the disk, then spend the extra money and get a firewire connected disk. I personally use a number of Western Digital drives for Time Machine and other storage/backup copies of things. You can also look at places like G-Technology https://g-technology.com/) or OWC (https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/) for more Mac oriented drives.
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I don’t understand exactly what you’re trying to do, but you may want to look at Apple Script. There are many aspects of the OS and many applications that are exposed to Apple Script, making automation of the GUI easier/possible.