[Gary Huff]

Definitely avoid anything less than 1GB of GPU memory.

[Gary Huff]

[Bret Williams] “The i7 isn’t just a newer faster processor, it also supports hyper threading, doubling the number of virtual cores. And, apparently, that’s a good thing.”

Absolutely. If you’re doing video editing, you shouldn’t consider any other class of processor under an i7.

[Gary Huff]

[Doug King] “Tried that, it finds the supposed missing files, relinks them but still nothing.. I’m almost certain its human error but what I did, I can’t be sure it was so long ago. “

Could it be that you used a plugin on one of the clips in your timeline that is no longer installed?

[Gary Huff]

[Tim Wilson] “I have no idea how some of you kids are pulling this off…”

Usually with an apartment shared with two others.

[Gary Huff]

[Dennis Radeke] “When I upgrade Mac OS, I NEVER EVER run an upgrade but rather wipe the machine and start building up from scratch. “

I second this. Every single time, this is what I do. I will do it again for El Capitan.

[Gary Huff]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I hear the FCPX using soccer parents love shooting and editing Red footage.”

You should wander over to Reduser and see those doing just that!

[Gary Huff]

[Dave Gage] “My basic question is whether the ClipWrapped .mts files wrapped into .mov files would be any more or less useful down the road then the .mts files themselves. “

I think they would end up being equal, in a practical sense. The benefit of ClipWrapped MOVs vs leaving the PRIVATE folder intact is that if you want to pull a single clip for something later, it’s less of a hassle.

[Gary Huff]

[Rick Lang] “Dwain, if you are not constrained by budget, I’d recommend you max out the iMac to extend its useful life by a few years for your video use. In other words, buy the largest GPU you can, and select the most internal flash storage you can (the whole machine will run faster with 1 TB of internal flash storage, faster than even 512 GB of flash).”

I definitely second Rick’s suggestion here. Back in late 2013, I purchased a 15″ MacBook Pro Retina display and maxed it completely out (i7 2.6GHz, 16GB RAM, 1TB of SSD space, the 750M with 2GB). Now Apple has refreshed it and yet mine is still quite viable as the new one has the same processor family and AMD GPU tech from 2012 (remains to be seen if it performs significantly over the 750M in FCPX).

[Gary Huff]

[Charlie Hughes] “Shooting RAW however, I’ve exhausted the ISO and even shutter angle settings trying to reduce grain.”

Camera noise has more to do with underexposure than anything. You can set your ISO to 100 and if you still underexpose your image, you will get noise. I’d much rather raise my ISO higher than risk underexposure.

Expose properly for the native ISO of your camera (800 in this case). Raw or ProRes will make little difference. If you don’t have enough lighting to properly expose an image in the conditions within which you have placed your camera, you will need to add lighting. If adding light is rarely an option for you, you might want to consider a different camera system.

[Gary Huff]

[Bob Cole] “Why is the 4.6K Blackmagic URSA Mini going to be so much more expensive than the 4K? And is it by any stretch worth it?”

Really should wait until “in the wild” footage starts coming out to say for certain, but it strikes me that the 4.6K version of the Mini is the only one to really consider.