[Joe Mordecai]

i still have the ATI Radeon HD 5870 from when I bought my Mac Pro 5,1 in 2010. The last few months, especially after using FCPX for my work, I’ve been thinking of upgrading the card.

But I’ll be honest, I haven’t yet because 1) I wanted to wait to see what Apple had in store for this new generation and 2) call me sorta GPU-illiterate, but I never quite got a good sense of what the best card to upgrade to would be for FCPX. The Sapphire seemed like a good bet (especially at the price), but then I heard it didn’t offer too much of an advantage. Any thoughts on the best card for FCPX right now?

Alas, FCPX still runs fine with the 5870, but I would be looking for more zip. Considering it’s been nearly three years of totally fine usage, I’d imagine the new Mac Pro’s GPUs would be good for at least the same amount of time if not longer.

Who the hell knows. I still want one.

[Joe Mordecai]

I’m curious about this, too. When I’ve been cutting for a while the GUI gets really sluggy thanks to all that core animation. Whether I’m cutting H.264 or ProRes doesn’t seem to matter. It’s not horrific, but it’s far from fluid. Anyone have suggestions, say, for appropriate graphics card, etc? I’ve already provided feedback to Apple that FCPX needs what Motion 5 has – a memory allocation setting… I have a feeling Final Cut just wants to eat up every ounce of resource the Mac has, resulting in slow interface.

My setup:

Mid-2010 Mac Pro 8-core (2 x 2.4 Quad)
ATI Radeon 5870 1024MB
28GB RAM
OSX 10.6.8
FCPX 10.0.8

[Joe Mordecai]

If you haven’t, make sure you send Apple that feedback! I’d like for a simpler solution to this as well.

[Joe Mordecai]

Thanks for the advice, Russ. I manually rebuilt my timeline… but if this happens again… I’ll keep this in mind!

[Joe Mordecai]

The project exists, but the timeline where all my cuts were was totally empty. Are there an infinite amount of Undo’s? I’ve already started rebuilding what I had done yesterday… but is that “undo” method viable?

[Joe Mordecai]

I was a bit alarmed by that tagline when I saw the commercial as well, and while I still think it’s kind of lame, I don’t think it’s anything to be alarmed about.

First, even back to the legacy 13-inch MBPs… capable machines, of course. But, in the times I’ve needed a MBP for work or spec’d one out, I never considered the 13-inch models at all. The 15’s had larger capacities for storage, memory, processors, and graphics, and in my mind were the only “real pro” notebooks (except the dearly departed 17-inch). The 13’s always seemed Pro in name only… or to simplify the product line.

Now with the 13-inch Retina Display models… even better machines, but much like their predecessors, limited in terms of storage, memory, processors, and graphics (though the graphics are great, of course). Notice in the commercial, all the apps used for the demo are mostly iLife things and Aperture. If you go to an Apple Store to demo one… those are the only apps on it, too. Meanwhile, the commercials for the 15-inch Retina Display models demo the more advanced FCPX, Aperture, Photoshop, etc etc. Go into an Apple Store – FCPX, Logic, and other Pro apps are installed on it.

So while I think “the pro in all of us” line is blurring things a bit, Apple’s also being very clear in both advertisements and floor demo what they’re recommending each product be used for.

[Joe Mordecai]

Thanks for some of the tips…

I just tried sharing/exporting to ProRes instead, and it’s taking just as long. Is it that FCPX uses the GPU to export? I’m using the trial version and haven’t downloaded Compressor 4 – I’m guessing it’s always better to send timelines to Compressor instead of doing it from FCP?

This is very confusing, as FCP7 would have this done very quickly. If this is a transcoding issue because I haven’t optimized the original media, I suppose next time I’ll make sure to transcode to ProRes ahead of time/in the background.

[Joe Mordecai]

I’m sorry – I’m using the ATI Radeon 5870, 1GB

[Joe Mordecai]

i hope nothing too drastic happens to Logic, and as it has already been streamlined since Apple acquired it, I’m going on a limb thinking that there can’t be much more to “revolutionize” about it.

I will say, Logic X being updated to roundtrip with FCPX as a sort of Soundtrack Pro-style replacement sounds like a great possible update, and I hope the next FCPX update is a great one. Could tip the scales. Could.

and for the record, i am serious about recording and mixing. iTunes listed my band’s first EP (recorded in Logic) as one of the best alternative rock albums of 2009. just made another EP in Logic. i switched from ProTools. i think Logic is the best recording software out there, it’s no slouch, and i’ve done great work in it. I know ProTools is the “industry standard,” but so long as Apple does pull a FCPX on Logic’s update, I’ll stick with it for anything I do creatively. So, it’s not just “electronic musicians” who are reaping benefits from this software.

[Joe Mordecai]

i haven’t really posted much at all, but over the past year I’ve been learning Avid, picking at Premiere Pro, but sticking with FCP 7 and waiting for X to mature, to be honest.. I’ve downloaded the trial, watched Abba Shapiro’s tutorials on Lynda, and used it solid for a month… I think it’s great, frankly. But I’m still waiting for that golden 10.0.6 or 10.1 update to make my investment. I want X to be my primary, but I want to make sure my Avid skills are somewhat developed, even though it’s hard to re-appropriate the 10+ years of FCP skills I have into one year of playing with Avid.

In fact, in my searching for new video gigs in the NYC/Boston area, the predominant platform still seems to be FCP7. It’s got a lot of trust, and I think a lot of places (and some I’ve talked to) are holding strong with it until X gets to the right place (and to many, it’s already in that sweet spot). Some folks aren’t really in a rush to switch to anything. It’s hard to beat a $299 (or, $399) price point. I think by virtue of a love of the OSX platform and the price… everyone WANTS to make it work. My 0.02 USD.