[Elijah Lynn]

Wierd. It works now. I enabled whole words only and then disabled it and it works wonders with quotes!

[Elijah Lynn]

Hooray! This worked! The render to in and out is now available in FCP!

Why is this? What does Command SHift A officially do in final cut pro?

[Elijah Lynn]

Thanks for the quick reply Matt!

It just will not render in and out points. However your tip on getting the “range select” tool by hitting G 3 times works great!

Would still like to figure out how to render in and out but this works great in the meantime!

Thanks

[Elijah Lynn]

I have two folders in my /var/spool/qmaster/ I guess I will delete contents in both.

Brand new mac pro 8 core with FCS and been having a ton of compressor issues.

[Elijah Lynn]

Intro
I just read this whole thread and there is some wonderful advice in here and I am amazed at how helpful everyone has been and hasn’t been bashing you like some other forums do. There must be a lot of really great people here who have been in your/our situation at one time.. I have just spent the past few weeks dealing with the horrid premiere pro on a bloody 32 bit XP PC that crashes frequently (large renders). Originally it was just to shoot our talent on a green screen and make webclips. Well after hours of frustration and research I learned that no one uses premiere for keying and it overall is very clunky in it’s UI (user interface) design. Premiere Pro (PP) doesn’t do many things, it isn’t intuitive and the keying SUCKS. I despise it, it cannot even move layers up and down. I don’t ever want to touch that software again.

I have been working with PC’s for about 10 years now, I have built 5 workstations and have been playing with Ubuntu Linux for the past year or so. I have always heard good things about Mac. Never more than in my last months researching video editing platforms. We almost went the AVID route. It was nice and ships with PC and Mac versions and probably is a great software but has a steep learning curve.

What makes a really great software though? The ease of use and how intuitive it is. People get paid big bucks for UI design and I keep hearing apple has great UI AND workflow down pretty well. We finally made the decision to go with FCS (Final Cut Studio). FCS has pretty much everything you need to truly get started and start focusing on the video. It comes with Primatte RT which is supposed to do a ok job keying but I hear DV Matte Pro and Primatte are much better. I can’t wait to see how much easier it is to use than PP.

Now here is why I posted

Raid – I highly disagree with those recommending Raid 0. Especially for video and any data you can never get back if it is gone. What I am planning on doing when I receive my components is running a Raid 0+1 OR Raid 5 array. The advantage of Raid 5 over Raid 0+1 is it gives you a bit more storage space if you are using 4 drives. Raid 5 is supposed to suffer from worse write performance in “certain” situations. Raid 0+1 is supposed to be a bit faster. If you really want to do it right get the raid card from Apple. Get 4 drives from newegg, I got Raid 0+1 is most likely the way I will go but we will see if there is any significant performance difference.

Do not ever use Raid 0 for any thing remotely important. Anything on Raid 0 should be easily re-installable or downloadable etc. If a drive fails you are in for a big headache you will wish you paid the extra money for. All hard drives will eventually fail. You need to PLAN on every hard drive failing at some point in its life cycle. Period.

The Velociraptor – A Velociraptor is the HDD that currently has the highest performance/price ratio in the industry right now, nearly twice as fast as your average HDD. Use the uberfast velociraptor for your boot drive using a 5.25” bay adapter and one of the two internal sata ports. Your VelociRaptor boot drive will also be good for a cache folder for Final Cut Studio and other programs, this will help speed your system up even more. The drive that comes with the Mac Pro (300 GB 7200 rpm) “could” be used if you some how made room for it however you can just pop it in an eternal enclosure and use it as a time machine backup for your Velociraptor which is what I plan on doing. You CANNOT use a Velociraptor in the HDD bays of the Mac Pro as they have a style that requires no cables and the Velociraptors SATA port is in the wrong place, it WILL NOT work.

The Machine – If you call the Apple business division on the phone they will give you a very nice discount on everything. Don’t order from the web. Get the warranty as it supposedly includes 3 years of phone support for OS X AND FCS.

I plan on adding a eSata PCI card to run multiple Raid 1 arrays for backup of projects that I am done with but need online access to for future projects. Either that or a much larger storage server on Fiber.

Get the Nvidia 8800 GT card as driver upgrades will eventually be released and it will be like it should have in the first place. In other words just get it and it will get faster with time..

Get your Windows Fix too! (pun intended) – WVmware fusion will be used to run Windows XP “inside” the mac, on a second 20” monitor. Newegg sells it for $60. You can hook up a second LCD (we have a few extra) and run all your wonderful XP programs inside Mac OS X, it even supports graphical acceleration. You can dedicate 2 cores and 2 GB ram just for XP if you want. You can drag and drop files and all that good stuff.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832331002

The Machine in Detail
Here is “exactly” what I ordered after a ton of research. If you can afford it go with it. You may be able to afford cheaper raid but I want my raid to be rock solid AND supported by Apple.

Power
Don’t skimp, you may not do HD today, just like me, but when you do you will be glad you did!
8 core 3.2 Ghz, at a minimum get a 2.8 Ghz 8 core. Rendering is a bitch and it will never be fast enough.

Graphics
Nvidia 8800 GT

Memory
2 Gb stock ram + 4×2 GBDDR2 800 ECC Fully Buffered Dual Channel Kit Ram totaling 10GB (will have 5 of 8 slots taken now)
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820349019

Input Devices
Stock Wireless Mouse from Apple (Shuttle Pro should be better but… everyone needs a wireless mouse)

LogicSkin Final Cut Pro M89 Alu Keyboard – Product # LS-FCP-M89-US (This is only $50 compared to the full $100+ for the hardcoded FCP keyboard, it is removeable for those who don’t use final cut and it is effectively spill sproof)
http://www.LogicKeyboard.com

Shuttle Pro V.2 Multimedia Controller (It Jogs! And it has a buttload of other programmable buttons, get one!)
http://www.LogicKeyboard.com

Screen Real Estate
28” Hanns-G for $550 (It comes with HDMI → DVI adapter cable)
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824254026

Raid and Disk Storage
Stock Raid Card for $800 for use in Raid 0+1 or Raid 5 (still deciding which one I will permanently configure to based on the benchmarks I get from testing)
4 x 640 GB (they had the best ratings on DOA). $95/HDD
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

Velociraptor 300 GB HDD (use this as a boot drive and get ready for a uber-fast OS X!)
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136260&Tpk=VelociRaptor

Drive Bay Adapter
https://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2704

Keying best for last
I am going to give Primatte RT a try but am thinking DV Matte Pro or Primatte Keyer Pro 4.0 will be the best in the long run, likely the latter. One click keying sure would be nice! (Primatte)

There may be some cables I don’t have or some small stuff I missed but this machine is going to rock!

Closing notes
Data is just too important sometimes. Don’t learn the hard way!
Friends don’t let friends use Raid 0 for real data!

I arrived at this conclusion with a PC background of 10+ years and one day I tried doing video production that involves a lot of keying on a windows box with Premiere Pro and found my way to this as being a solid beginner machine that has room for a ton of growth!

My name is Elijah Lynn, I have never used a Mac or Final Cut Pro/Motion before but am going to tear it up when I get it all put together!