[Herb Sevush]

[David Lawrence] “Just FCP7 — there to open and XML export 10+ years of legacy projects when needed.”

What are you editing with now ?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “seriously – hands up who has taken FCP7 off their dock?”

Still using it as my sole editing system. I’m planning on switching next spring, but the way forward is not clear yet. Even after the switch I need to have access to 7 for at least another 3 years for legacy projects.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bob Zelin] “And we have NOT started testing the expansion chassis yet … we will do testing with all the existing RAID array and host adaptor cards (ATTO, Areca, etc.) to see if there are performance differences”

Bob, thank you for posting this. As an owner of both an ATTO and Areca Maxx Digital raid, I will be very interested in seeing those results posted.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Oliver Peters] “While true, this is an Apple-centric forum.”

This is also the “or not” forum. Mac vs. PC is a frequent topic of discussion. When thinking about my next move both software and hardware are up for grabs.

[Oliver Peters] “In that sense Apple has you over a barrel, because, to make a move to a PC, you also make a move to Windows and that’s an anathema for most around here.”

The main thing keeping me on the Mac side of the fence is the ubiquity of ProRes deliverables. Many editors I’ve talked with working with either PPro or Adobe claim that they work better on the PC side.

I’m not monogamous when it comes to operating systems – I can be had, all they have to do is whistle.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Oliver Peters] “I think the only argument is price. There no put in a home-built machine except to save money and induce pain”

But one of the advantages on the PC side is competition. HP is a corporate supplier – great quality, ridiculous prices. There are professional integrators who specialize in the video marketplace who produce equivalent systems to HP and who’ll kill their prices. There is no more “pain” in buying one of their systems than there is in buying a Mac. From what I’ve seen so far the MacPro is priced fairly, but it’s not a bargain, except when comparing it to HP.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Frank Gothmann] ” The shrinkage in size which is directly proportional to the features and add-ons they simply dropped which in turn is propotional to the hidden increase in pricing, the reduced longevity and the super-duper lightning speed of it all. It’s all pure magic.”

It’s hard for the technically limited like myself to do a straight MacPro to PC comparison, but this is what I came up with after going to the website of a very well known and respected workstation integrator.

System –

MacPro: 6 core, 32 Meg ram, 500 gig SSD, 2 X Firepro500 (3GB each)GPU = $4699

PC: 6 core, 32 Meg ram, 500 gig SSD, GTX Titan GPU (6GB) = $5032

If you then switch to the 8 core Xeon, the PC comes out better

MacPro = $6199
PC=$5872

On the other hand when you go to the Firepro 700’s which only add $600 on the MacPro side, but $1000 on the PC side to add a second Titan.

MacPro = $6799
PC = $6872

It’s obvious the prices are close, the MacPro charges a very high premium to go up to 8 cores, but offers a great deal to increase GPU. I don’t know how equivalent the Titan is to the Firepros, so I could be way off on that side of the calculation.

Other things to note:

The MacPro PCIe flash storage is faster than the PC SSD I quoted, although I believe you can get the equivalent on the PC side from OWC for another $400. The MacPro offers 6 Thunderbolt ports and zero PCIe ports, the PC is almost exactly the opposite. If you have an existing PCIe infrastructure the cost of moving to Thunderbolt can be in the range of $500 to $1000. The PC workstation is hugely expandable in terms of additional CPU’s and GPU’s, the MacPro is not – what that’s worth is in the eye of the beholder. The PC includes DVD recorder, card readers, keyboard and mouse, the MacPro does not.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Phil Hoppes] “I suspect it is only a matter of time before there is a Dell or HP cylinder that arrives on the market. But hey, Apple does not know how to innovate right? ;-)”

I imagine there will be a knockoff of the Tube in approximately the same amount of time that there was a knockoff of FCPX. Apple’s recent innovations in the Pro Apps area are interesting in the fact that no other company seems interested in emulating them. They are the wankel rotary engines of the video market.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

Merry Christmas to all,
and to all a good night.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Jeremy Garchow] “What are you doing with your PCIe cards?”

With me it’s still in the contemplation stage, but the sonnet Echo Express III expansion chasis, with 3 slots for Tblt 2 expansion, will be the way I would go, providing all my raid card’s will play nicely with it. My raids cost more than a new MacPro, the main one hums along at around 850/mbs at 80% capacity, and the idea of tossing them out is a non starter.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Tim Wilson] “I’m surely missing someone, but between Mickey and Cal, off the top of my head, it was Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron for me, and that may be it — not as the GREATEST players, but the guys that made you stop and say, wow, I’m not going to see somebody like that DO something like that for the whole rest of my life.”

Agreed on the names you named, but the one other guy that did it for me was Griffey Jr., in his Seattle days. He did everything, he made it look effortless, and then he made you smile as he ran around the bases.

In the ’95 playoffs between Seattle and NY he absolutely killed us. I took my 10 year old with me for game 2 and Griffey had another big hit in the middle innings. When Griffey came back out to centerfield The whole stadium was rocking with a chant, and my son and I were trying to make out what it was. Finally we got it, all the “bleacher creatures” were yelling in unison – “F*ck You, Junior” – more as a compliment than anything else. We could see Jr. looking around as he heard it swirling around the stadium and then he just started laughing. My son still has his Griffey uni hanging in his closet.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf