[Dan Preston]

I’ve used v5 (5.0.3) seven times since I “upgraded” a few days ago.
In that time it has:
– crashed (frozen) twice after a successful offload
– frozen 3 times on launch … the “attached media” window remains blank and all I get is the dreaded spinning beach ball.
Running on a 2011 MacBook Pro with OS X 10.8.3
So pretty much unusable for me. Looks like I’ll revert to v4 for now.

[Dan Preston]

Some useful references on this:

MacRumors forum discussing 6 vs 8 core options:
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=989220

MacPerformanceGuide discussion on cores vs clock speed:
https://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-MacProWestmere-CoresExplained.html

I’m still wavering between the two. And am even considering the 3.2 GHz quad and using the savings to upgrade other components.

[Dan Preston]

This is exactly my dilemma.
The upside of the 6-core is its faster clock speed. Its downside is only 4 RAM slots … so to get 12GB of RAM, you’ll need to put in three 4GB RAM sticks (slightly more expensive than buying six 2GB sticks, but buy from OWC or Crucial – Apple’s RAM and hard drive prices are ridiculous).
The upside of the 8-core is the 2 extra cores and it has 8 RAM slots. Its downside is the slower clock speed.

My understanding is that FCP is currently a 32-bit application and able to use only 1 or 2 cores and limited in the amount of RAM it can address. But it’s due for a rewrite to 64-bit, and that should enable it to use more cores and RAM. After Effects CS5 is already 64-bit.

So given current software, the 6-core may have an edge. But given the 64-bit future, it’s a closer call processor-wise. And the 8 RAM slots on the 8-core may tip the balance in its favor. And you can use the $200 you’ll save by upgrading the video card (which Motion will probably benefit from). But it’s still a tough choice.

[Dan Preston]

I was researching so that I could plan my upcoming Mac Pro purchase, and came across this Adobe article about memory usage in After Effects CS5:
link

For optimizing rendering speeds based on your own system, it gives you every thing you need to know about your settings, depending on your RAM, number of cores, etc. It’ll probably take some experimenting to tweak, but it’s pretty detailed about the various tradeoffs. Much depends on the nature of an individual project, so you may have to tweak your setting depending on how complex your compositions are.

It’s also helping me try to prioritize my budget, and how much I spend on RAM vs. number of cores vs. clock speed.

Good luck!

[Dan Preston]

Same problem here: I was given a pair of .mts files (loaded onto my hard drive) and can’t get log & transfer to recognize them. When I point the “add folder” function to my folder of .mts files, i get the following Warning:

“avchd” contains unsupported media or has an invalid directory structure. Please choose a folder whose directory structure matches supported media.

(“avchd” in the above is the name of the folder).
For this test, I’m running FCP 6.0.6 on my Intel MacBook, since I read somewhere that AVCHD support might not work on PPC. My main machine is still a Power Mac dual G5.
Any help on this would be much appreciated.