[Erik Lindahl]

It\’s hard at the moment to say which machine is the most bang for the buck but I\’d imagine for a lot of task the single CPU 6-core option will be the best option. For apps that are limited to fewer cores it might very well be THE fastest option as it\’s got the highest clock-speed of the lot. 

That said, it could be the dual-CPU machines win on some task due to I presume a dual-memory controller setup and thus higher memory through-put. Still, the 6-core single CPU has faster memory than the dual-CPU 4-core machine so hard to say before some tests are out. 

Aside from this I\’d go for the 5870 GPU. Apps like Motion and Color SHOULD see a boost here. Future OpenCL ready apps will also notice this. General RAM-memory is not to be forgotten. I\’d say a decent figure is 2GB per core in the system. 

4 core = 8-16 GB
6 core = 12-24 GB
8 core = 16-32 GB
12 core = 24-48 GB

These are just rough-takes, but an 8-core system running AfterEffects with 8GB of RAM makes RAM being a limiting factor. Depending on the given work for the machine a faster drive-solution is recommended, even if only using 2-3 internal drives raided (do keep them back-ups running :-)). 

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

It’s hard at the moment to say which machine is the most bang for the buck but I’d imagine for a lot of task the single CPU 6-core option will be the best option. For apps that are limited to fewer cores it might very well be THE fastest option as it’s got the highest clock-speed of the lot. 

That said, it could be the dual-CPU machines win on some task due to I presume a dual-memory controller setup and thus higher memory through-put. Still, the 6-core single CPU has faster memory than the dual-CPU 4-core machine so hard to say before some tests are out. 

Aside from this I’d go for the 5870 GPU. Apps like Motion and Color SHOULD see a boost here. Future OpenCL ready apps will also notice this. General RAM-memory is not to be forgotten. I’d say a decent figure is 2GB per core in the system. 

4 core = 8-16 GB
6 core = 12-24 GB
8 core = 16-32 GB
12 core = 24-48 GB

These are just rough-takes, but an 8-core system running AfterEffects with 8GB of RAM makes RAM being a limiting factor. Depending on the given work for the machine a faster drive-solution is recommended, even if only using 2-3 internal drives raided (do keep them back-ups running :-)). 

[Erik Lindahl]

If you can’t get the speed you need in FCP I’d experiment with other alternatives such as Motion or After Effects. Normally FCP isn’t slow when dealing with simple comps / FX / edits however.

What you might want to check is:

– Sequence settings
– Format of your media

Some types of media and settings will hog your system. Transcoding all HDV or h264 material to ProRes for example will decrease rendering-times a lot. Also rendering in 8-bit instead of 10-bit or greater will vastly improve performance.

As noted above a CAPTURE CARD such as a Kona LHe will not improve rendering-times at all. It’s not impossible different GRAPHICS CARDS affect your rendering but as for now in FCP I think that’s to a minimum. Motion and Color will radically change with a more powerful GPU however.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

That doesn’t quite add up. Just cause you can do something on machine A doesn’t mean it’s the best machine for the jobb. MacPro’s are “over the top” for a lot of situations where an iMac is too limited often (and some of Apple’s hardware choices are just.. meh). An iPhone is awesome for somethings but when talking about editing video..

Apple’s computers are based on “standard PC components” and thus should be able to keep up with the wintel side. They sort of do but some hardware choices are just plain odd. And if I’m aready today feeling my 8-core MacPro is slow I don’t think things would get better on an iMac (or iPhone :-)).

Apple imo needs a “Mac”. An iMac with out the screen and not all the bells and whistles of a MacPro but that has moderate upgradeability. Just look at your irritation of the choice of ethernet hardware. And I don’t see an iPad replacing your iMac any time soon given in the future for some tasks yes, we’ll probably see more a diverse range of devices.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

He’s very true in that I think given that might be 10 years away. And yes, Apple is an awesome gadget company (perhaps even better than a “pro app / desktop computer” company). But Final Cut is for us truckdrivers and Apple seems to have more and more neglected these for.. gadgets. Cool gadgets but still, gadgets and gimicks.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

It’s a bit sad or ironic one of the main guys behind Final Cut Pro ends up doing a crippled iMovie and now does and even more crippled iMovie for iPhone. But it wouldn’t surprice me if this brings Apple some nice $$$ in the pocket.

The last two years have been focus on iOS clearly. I wonder how Apple’s focus on their pro desktop market is.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

Oh, roger. That is a huge limitation. Is there an options for DVCPRO HD? Given not as good as ProRes it’s an HD DV equivalent and was very popular in FCP prior to ProRes.

IF Apple actually wants to make ProRes widely available (as it seems) and IF they actually have a license model for it perhaps Adobe could got that route.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

Right, so the Premier playback engine has similar say limitations to what FCP has (i.e. ProRes, DV or Uncompressed will give you realtime effects but something like Animation won’t).

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

I can’t say anything about the technicalities of how one accesses or optimized for ProRes in an app considering you’re sitting on OSX, however i’d imagine Apple has EVERY intention of making ProRes widely available. Just look at ARRI, AJA and even AVID and products like SMOKE supporting the format – in native QuickTime. This shows Apple is open for it to be more a wide-range codec. Then what they can do is have the best editor in the planet for the codec.

I think Adobe has gone the “native format” road which in some cases is very good but I do reckon they should offer a solid non-native unified format as well. Cineform sounds like a costly solution in my opinion but might be one at least. Adobe has done some work to make ProRes work rel. happily in After Effects, at least on the OSX-plattform, so perhaps there is some hope for Premier too? I know there where some nasty ProRes bugs in the first Windows release (could only read 8-bit and not 10-bit).

Is the issue in Premier that it handles ProRes poorly or that you simply have poor options of transcoding codec X to ProRes?

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

A dilemma with that card is it will accelerate Premier CS5 a lot but compared to an ATI-card it will cripple Color somewhat. Then again it is the prefered card for Smoke so yeah, you can surely sell it to the mac-community I’d imagine.

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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se