Gabe Strong
Forum Replies Created
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[Shawn Miller] “I think it depends on who you buy your PCs from… they’re not all the same. ☺ I have two SuperMicro kits assembled by an integrator 8 years ago and they’re still chugging right along after years of doing 10+ hour 3D renders.”
Shawn, I totally agree. There’s a ton of options out there on the PC side. The one’s that I helped
my clients put together for their ‘in house’ production team, were still running last I knew.
Of course, they cost similar to a MacPro to instead of the ‘Costco special’ price on whichever
PC was on sale.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
[Andrew Kimery] “For a self-professed cheapskate I’m surprised to hear you say that $1000 falls into the ‘just testing the water’ category. ????
Especially for a narrowly focused piece of hardware the only drives one application (which was most likely downloaded for free by the majority of the user base). I think a ‘test the waters’ panel is more like the Ripple at $350.”
Wow, not sure how I missed that one! $350 for a panel, I didn’t know you could get one
that cheap! I will say, I use a Mac computer so I obviously will pay money for some things ☺
When I bought it, in 2009, I’m sure it was more expensive than a PC. Course I’m still using
it so maybe the ‘Apple Tax’ was worth it after all.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
[Tim Wilson] “I don’t have any comments on the performance or requirements, but among the predictions I’ve gotten wrong is that Resolve would be an NLE player. I think Resolve definitely IS a player, for a lot more reasons than price. As I’ve noted many times, I’m a long time gone from actual NLE’ing myself, but the new Resolve Mini control surface would be a slam-dunk for me. The easy integration of truly robust color grading with editing was always my holy grail, and I think Blackmagic is going to gain a BUNCH of new customers with an affordable control surface that really lights that up.”
Yeah, they are doing some great stuff. That $995 panel is going to get them
a whole new crop of people jumping into color correction, in a ‘test out the waters’
manner. Some of those customers will maybe even upgrade to the more expensive
panel as their CC skills grow. And that’s not even counting what they are doing with
cameras. The new Ursa Mini 4.6K? That thing is looking better and better.
Built in ND? ISO, Shutter speed and white balance switches right where you used
to find them on broadcast cameras? Interchangeable lens mounts? Raw or Pro Res
10 or 12 bit files? $5995? Shipping now? Just give them a couple years. These guys
are doing amazing things. I said it a few years ago, and I’ll say it again…… they
are a force to be reckoned with.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
[Tim Wilson] “You know what, it’s clear to me after the last several generations of hardware that Apple’s priorities and my priorities are irreconcilable. I no longer find Macs to be delivering the performance, scalability, or compatibility I require.”
You never said that. You said FCPX sux, oh wait now Adobe sux worse, oh wait, FCPX is pretty good now. LOL Sorry, not meaning to diminish your pain, just playing — but that’s about it, right? Apple’s development or non-development of Macs wasn’t the prime mover in any of your decisions. Your story has played out EXACTLY the same way for people who simply also used Macs when they were checking out Avid, Resolve, Smoke, and whatever else they were checking out.
I still stand by my contention that once people CHOOSE to leave MAC because of Apple painting a clear picture of a likely future of increasing divergence of priorities, they’re less likely to come back.
“It was more like FCP X sux…..Adobe doesn’t but ‘their payment model and my
business priorities are irreconcilable.’ Dang it, this means I have to learn an entirely
new NLE. And there is 4 feet of snow outside to shovel. And I have to walk to work
in it. Uphill. Both ways. And someone will take video of everyone walking to work
in the snow with their stupid phone and want to hire me for $15 to make it look like
a Hollywood film. Why am I doing this job again?But yeah I guess I’m maybe just not as concerned as everyone else here on the
‘newest, most powerful computer.’ I’ve got a six core CPU witha 6GB GPU a few
SSD’s, andI really don’t see any reason to spend thousands of dollars on upgrading
a computer that really never makes me wait. Motion graphics, editing, whatever I’m
doing, it just powers right through it. Would a newer computer be faster? Yeah, I’m
sure it would be. Is it worth me spending a few thousand on? How much faster will it be
really? I’m kinda thinking we have reached a point of diminishing returns here. Of course,
I’m the guy who won’t spend $50 a month on a subscription because buying a different NLE
once at $300 is cheaper (not to mention my beater old car and so on.) So it’s probably just
that I’m a cheapskate. On a related note, I am still in business. Try and search for video production
companies in Juneau, Alaska and see how many you can come up with……..Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
[Tim Wilson] “The people I was referring to Apple never getting back are the people who left the Mac platform for Windows. Although you’re right, I probably rhetorically overreached there (WHO? MEEEEEEEEE?????). ????
But I certainly don’t feel locked out of buying a Mac. I just can’t imagine a scenario where Apple would release something compelling to me anymore. If they do, I’ll buy it. My prediction is that it won’t happen, but that’d be one of the few predictions I’ve made in this forum that came to pass, so we’ll see. ????????????
There are plenty of other folks like me re: leaving MAC, and THOSE folks are ones I’ve not seen come back yet…but again, who knows? “
Well, I didn’t entirely leave the Mac platform…..I kept my 2009 Mac Pro around because……
well because it was paid for, it would still run FCP 7……and because it was paid for. No
subscription or anything on it ☺ But I DID move over to the PC for editing mostly.
If I was going to use CS6 anyways and all…..why not go to a platform that moved
much faster with it? Same arguments many here are still giving for moving over to PC…..
if they are going to use Adobe anyways, may as well switch platforms to the one that runs
Adobe software faster. Once you are in the program (Premiere/AE/Photoshop) it all looks the
same anyways. During this time, I also served as a consultant to 2 different corporations, sourcing
them PC’s (from Safe Harbor) with high powered CUDA cards and the works, then buying each
component and putting them together. I would then help them buy all associated other gear (audio mixer,
monitors, capture cards, and even cameras) and hooking up all the other gear for them to have an ‘in house’
edit bay and production studio. Spending other people’s money….great fun!! But as you can see, I wasn’t
really ‘staying with Mac’. I kept my old Mac around and would work on old client projects that were on
FCP 7, but if it wasn’t an old FCP 7 project, I was on a PC with CS6. Now as I said in another post, my wife has
gone through 6 PC’s since 2009. So I didn’t have some huge investment in hardware, which may have been the
difference…..easier for me to move back to Mac. But I am EXACTLY ‘that guy’ that you refer to….having
mostly moved from the Mac platform to PC. And I moved back…….because I hate subscriptions. My choices
once Adobe went CC were to either learn another NLE or pay subscriptions. I wasn’t going to do the latter,
so I was going to have to learn another NLE no matter which platform I was staying with, Mac or PC.
My wife’s PC was down yet again (PC #4 I think) and she was shopping for a new one. I still had my 2009 Mac Pro
which was working great. Looking at their respective reliabilities, I chose to go back to Mac and learn FCP X
instead of trying to stay on PC and learn Vegas, or Avid, or Edius, or ? Maybe FCP X has my wife’s ability to
pick out crappily built PC’s to thank for my conversion? Well, that and Adobe’s ‘subscription only’ business
model.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
[Andrew Kimery] “Except you need a computer from Apple to use it. Preferably a newer Mac (at last going by your praise about how much better your experience is using a newer MBP vs an older tower). Apple, like BM, can afford to give away the software because it’s tied to their hardware. Adobe can’t adopt that model because they don’t sell hardware.
“Well……you don’t really need a newer Mac. I’m using FCP X on a 2009 Mac Pro (yeah, that’s
an 8 year old computer) and I get a Bruce X score of 23…..which hangs fairly well with the newer
computers. Granted, I tossed in a hex core CPU and a 980Ti GPU, but it’ll handle everything up to 4k
without problem. Meanwhile, since 2009 my wife has went through 6 different PC’s. Coincidence?Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
[Tim Wilson] “Even more than FCPX, the trashcan was the straw that broke so many’s people Mac-loving backs, and I suspect that not one of those people will ever be back. After building my business a large swath of my career not just on Macs but on very specifically Mac ADVOCACY, I certainly can’t imagine anything that Apple could do to win me back.
Nobody’s locked into nuthin’.
“I’m having a bit of a hard time understanding. So you suspect that ‘not one of these Mac people
will be back’ and you ‘can’t imagine how Apple could win you’ (or presumably them) back?
Yet nobody’s locking into nothing? Sounds like editor’s being ‘locked’ into using a PC to
me ☺In all seriousness, you may say you have never met one, or suspect none of those people who
left Apple, will be back. I’m one of those people. I was not happy to say the least with FCP X.
Man, forget that, I was PISSED! Totally ditched them and went to Premiere CS6. It was like
FCP 8! What was Apple’s problem anyways? Redesigning an NLE…..just idiotic and I couldn’t
stand FCP X. Then Adobe went to the subscription only ‘Creative Cloud’. And to me, that was like
saying:
‘I will see your piece of dog poop Apple, and will raise you by a barn full of manure.’
Done, done and done…..see ya. Funny thing was, when I went back to Apple…..I found
out that they had done a lot to FCP X. It was actually getting pretty good. And since then,
they have done even more. I’m plenty happy with my decision and I know plenty of other
people, like me, who left FCP for Adobe after the FCP X introduction……only to run from
the ‘rental payment’ of Adobe right back to FCP X. Believe it or not, it happened quite a bit.
Maybe not in the high altitude arena of LA film production. But among the thousands of small
video production companies, who are constantly being squeezed by lower client budgets, every
dollar counts. Which is why Resolve will be a force to be reckoned with, once they figure out how to
actually have decent performance, without requiring a GPU that could fly a jumbo jet with it’s fan.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
[Oliver Peters] “So no external io hardware. Yes, I see good performance with HDMI, too. But that ONLY works well for FCPX.
“Sorry, I was thinking of the external monitor as ‘external hardware’. I see what you
are saying here, a different ‘external output’.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
For me, no optimizing media or generating proxies.
Monitoring via HDMI on my 2013 MacBook Pro and
via my 980Ti (6GB) GPU (flashed for Mac) on my 2009
(flashed to 2010) MacPro. In both cases I go to a
42 inch Vizio screen for full screen monitoring.
And in both cases its way, way, way, WAY faster than
trying to do the same thing in Premiere Pro.
But I’m not using hugely complex video files, just AVCHD
from FS700/100, and VG20, some XAVC from mirrorless A6000 series,
some GoPro footageand so on.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
[andy patterson] “It will be interesting to see if anyone has added a Blu-ra burner or SAS RAID controller card. I don’t doubt some one has went from a quad core CPU to a six core CPU.
“Forgot to mention, I also added a Blu-Ray burner as well as going from a quad core to six core and from a 512MB graphics
card to a 6GB graphics card. It works great! I can burn Blu Ray disks directly from FCP X, or use Adobe Encore CS6.
The quality of the Blu Ray disks is amazing (footage from a FS700) on every Blu Ray player I have tested them on.
You can also use the Blu Ray disks to archive footage on…..just drag the camera native files to the disk, using Toast Titanium.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com