[Craig Alan]

HFI 580 which got mentioned in another thread?

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

sorry I meant:

does an increase in cache from say 32 or 64 or 128 mean anything significant when it comes to using 7200rpm drives in raids or as bare drives for backing up projects?

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

I know I’m late to this thread since you’re happy but thought I’d add this:

I use P2 cams and they record the external mikes and internal mike as four mono or two stereo which appear in FCP X even though when you play it back from the camera you do not hear the internal mike channels.

But they do play back in FCP X which can save you on occasion but mostly the internal mike channels ruin the sound.

Easy fix:

I know the screen grab only shows two channels but it will display four for P2 footage.

You can now select the configuration and use the check boxes on each channel to deselect the unwanted channels.

So I pretty routinely uncheck channels 3 and 4 (or the 2nd channel of stereo) which are the internal mike tracks.

I can do this clip by clip or select the entire timeline and then do it all at once.

The on-board mike can come in handy for room tone or just a clip with problems with the recorded external mike.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

I have those units and they have been giving me trouble connecting to 2011 iMacs. It may be just be a bad batch but I have not been able to isolate the problem — intermittent crashing. They will crash the Mac itself – rebooting itself and then the raid will be off line and it will remain off line no matter what I do – but then reappear later on a different iMac. It might be bad power supply they have those converter type power cords. But regardless they get good reviews so it might just be a bad batch or problems with this particular gen of iMacs.

All that said :

they do connect via usb 3 or thunderbolt but cannot mix and match. Meaning you can’t daisy chain by thunderbolt and usb 3 in the chain. Its one or the other. They are a hard raid and it would seem a bit limiting to use raid 1 on a two drive raid. You would essentially end up with a single drive speed which is not a raid but would get auto backup.

My point in all this is that thunderbolt seems to be the new standard for investing in external storage on a Mac and that to me may be a deal killer for updating my MacPro as opposed to investing in a 5K iMac or just waiting it out to see what’s next.

The GPU would be about $500, the USB 3 card would be about $150, Adding a SD system drive doesn’t factor since a new Mac would mean buying from Apple which is overpriced for the SD drives. I already have a IO back magic for my broadcast monitor. My problem is I have Pegasus raids that will not work with the MacPro and I can’t see investing in usb 3 drives.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

[Joe Marler] “Well, you’d think OWC would know, but I asked Lloyd Chambers who wrote this review and has extensive experience in system-level I/O. He said you can mix and match freely in the Thunderbay 4:”

Yeah but my drive is a Mercury which is a 2 drive hard raid not soft. And my Pegasus is a hard raid as well. I’ve heard this before that the drives need to be the same in these.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

I made the switch from FCP 7 to X a while back. I am a generalist and do not look for free lance gigs as an editor nor do I devote the majority of my time to editing. I like being in production more than editing.

I find that X, after the initial learning curve, is a joy for rough cuts. I like having connection points and find I can experiment on the timeline faster than I was able to do in 7 without getting things out of sync or results which were not my intent. In 7, I needed to concentrate harder on each individual edit.
But once I have my rough cut finished, I find the opposite is true. I start thinking about X’s interface and overlapping connected clips and the different rules for the secondary vs the primary timelines and what should I compound and is that the best option. ETC. What I did for the previous project doesn’t necessarily work for the this one.

That said: I liked the 3 way color in 7 but am now very comfortable with color in X. Love the transform tool in FCP X. Gotten used to X’s key framing ability with audio and visual. A bit tough ergonomically but the auto key frames are cool but at times feel hit or miss.

Now I’ve worked with editors that were full time pro editors and watched them touch type there way through edits at will, whatever they imagined they created quickly both in 7 and AVID. I’m sure there are X editors who are like that.

In my mind, I would love a marriage of these two approaches: magnetism, connection points but (like the position tool) have the option to organize elements in tracks.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

I’m debating these options currently – including throwing in the maxed out iMac which at close to $4000 is hardly cheap and is plenty powerful depending on your needs. Not thrilled with paying for a 5K monitor that will last only as long as the IMac. But perhaps target display mode will be supported for the 5k monitors as the next gen iMacs or Mac Pro add the ability to power it. It’s frustrating even though all options will “work”. The iMac and now aging nMP have basically non-updatable graphic cards and thunderbolt (which would not be an issue except that thunderbolt 3 is around the corner, not just a rumor. The old Mac Pro Tower can be updated and is very end user friendly BUT no way to add thunderbolt drives. Can’t imagine investing heavily in older tech for external drives.

What do you MacPro users use for raids??? USB 3 with usb card? That’s a no brainer to add anyway but do I really want to invest in usb 3 raids?

Imagine if the nMP had upgradable CPU and graphic cards and thunderbolt 3/usb-c. If Black Magic can design a camcorder that can be upgraded to a (4.6K sensor upgrade) …. come on Apple, feed the niche that made you famous.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

What would you recommend for this MP if anything to give it some more life for FCP X and other pro apps?

I assume I need a usb 3 card and maybe a different graphic card.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

You do have the option.
Just use the position tool – clips will stick where you put em. The insert edit will put a clip where the playhead is.
Connect edit will put a clip where the playhead is connected/not on the primary timeline.

In no way do you not have command of where your edits should go.

And magnetic alignment is very ergonomic for a very high percentage of rough cut edits.

Tracklessness has its pros and cons and for me was the much greater learning curve.

Snapping was more or less a form of magnetism. When I’m doing a rough cut I pretty much want the timeline to be a unified sequence and magnetism makes it really easy to change the order of that sequence. If I want to leave a gap I just use the position tool.

I find any interface frustrating when I don’t know how to use it. Particularly if i already knew how to navigate using different software that had the same purpose. And the constant learning curve I think is becoming counterproductive.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Yes we are on the same page. I had hoped that it would be supported before I invested in my next Mac.

Just feeling that based on the release of Intel’s latest chips that it might be a short time before the next gen of iMacs/MacPros are released with significant improvements.

https://www.macrumors.com/2015/08/19/intel-skylake-three-4k-monitors-60hz-details/

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.