[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

Don’t forget, as I mentioned before, I love Macs. I have a 3.5 year old MBP which has served me very, very well. So I would like to think that I’m being objective here as someone who uses both Windows and Mac every single day.

You are quite right and your points are valid, but I’m trying to point out that your Bad Memories are exactly that: Memories. A lot of what you remember is no longer true.

Symantec/Norton Antivirus was indeed quite horrible for a while. I haven’t heard any complants about any
Antivirus/Antimalware software eating your computer whole for the last year. I think they learned their lesson.

The Latter versions of MacDefender did not require a pasword, although the install process wasn’t without user intervention. It’s only a mater of time before a deadly program comes along. As long as Safari defaults to “Automatically Download ‘safe’ Files”, Mac will never be secure. That’s the whole problem. Apple doesn’t seem to care about security. By comparison, IE9 checks all downloads against a white list and black list, blocks anything on the black list, warns you about files not on ether list, and still doesn’t download whitelisted files unless you click “download”.

Updates do sometimes brake things. I personally haven’t had an update brake CS5 yet. Windows does lots and lots of VERY small updates, which tend to fix very very specific things, and since they’re almost all security related they should have no impact on editing software. Turning off automatic updates is far more scary then leaving them on, in my opinion. Just ask the Hospital who turned off automatic updates on it’s surgery room computers, and then got hit with conflicker, a worm which used a long since patched vulnerability.

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

Technically, Mac’s are more vulnerable, but Malware writers continue to focus on Windows cause of the install base.

At some point there will be a massive attack against Macs, and hopefully they learned their lesson from MacDefender and will be ready this time, cause they certainly weren’t ready for MacDefender.

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

I used to have to deal with big slow loading projects on CS3 but CS5 has been fine. Admittedly, I haven’t done a really huge project since upgrading. I’ve never had any of the other bugs you describe.

Couple of other things I should mention.
“Viruses” on the PC. Actual viruses don’t really exist any more, the proper term is “Malware”. I cringe every time I hear a Mac user talk about PCs being inferior because of “viruses”. Kinda like your instructor talking about A/B editing in Premiere.

A Virus is a malicious program which infects a computer interfering with it’s operation or causing a complete shutdown. Now such things are non existent cause the only reason people write Malicious programs is to make money.

So the proper terminology:
Malware: generic term.
Viruses are a subset of Malware which isn’t profitable and therefor have disappeared, (comparatively speaking.)

This has another affect. If you Keep your editing PC up to date and dont use the web you will “never” get malware. That’s because malware basically comes from one of two places: E-mail, and compromised websites. The third possibility, a worm from an infected PC on your network, is very very unlikely if you keep your computers updated.

My point is that you need to forget everything you remember about “Viruses” on Windows cause your information is outdated.

ok, End rant.

A note about the GTX580. It’s a dual processor card, but PP only uses one processor, so a GTX570 might be exactly as fast with PP. I haven’t seen data comparing the two. DiVinci will hopefully be able to use both processors. One thing is sure though, there is no reason to get a Quadro. There are only a few odd circumstances where a Quadro will outperform a GTX do to the extra RAM.

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

I figured you’d ask.

First, the GPU selection. Assuming no other bottlenecks, The Nvidia GTX580 absolutely beats the pants off the Quadro 4000 in PP and costs less then half as much.

Mac Pro’s have never carried the highest bracket of Processors. The current Mac Pro offers the Xeon X5670 as the highest end option. At the time of the refresh there were two faster Xeons available. Now there are four.

RAM. This is easy. You want 288GB of ram? It’ll cost you but you can get it. Realistically, 72GB can be had for $800, (less, if you have a MB with 18 ram slots.) Apple charges $3500 for that. (actually, $3500 for only 64GB)

PCIe slots. With Intel’s next chipset, having 4 or more 16x slots will be common. If DiVinci can make the multi GPU thing work properly on windows the possibilities could be amazing.

You get the idea.

I use a MacBook Pro for my every day computing and a Windows Monster to edit on. I’m very happy with the setup. I love my Mac, and I’ll probably replace it with another one, but with DiVinci coming to Windows I have zero interest in using a Mac for my professional work.

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

One other factor to add to this equation is that you can build much more powerful PP systems on windows then Mac. If you want a real powerhouse, Windows is the only option.

Wait 6 months and you can have Thunderbolt too, most likely.

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

Usually, problems like this are a result of old preview files. I’d suggest clearing those for a start. (If i remember correctly it’s in the Sequence menu.)

When you open the motion properties, PP starts generating the image in the monitor window in real time so that you can see what you’re doing. When you leave the motion tab, PP goes back to the cashed preview, and the problem comes back.

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

Source: Sequence, Sequence 01
1440×1080 (1.3333), 25 fps, Upper, 01:11:57:23
48000, Stereo

Why is your 24p video in a 25fps interlaced sequence? (and then being rendered to 29.97…)

Try rendering a MPEG-2 from a sequence that matches your footage, and up the data rate like Chris Suggested. (for a one hour DVD try a target of 7 and Max of 8)

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

I think he’s talking about DVCPRO HD 720/60p vs 50p
Like I said before… we need more information about the rendering settings she’s using before we can help…

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

Out off all the suggestions posted, upgrading to CS5.5 will have the most affect, even if you didn’t unlock the card. I nearly fainted when I saw the rendering speeds after upgrading from CS3 to CS5

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

To answer your first question,

The file is 960×720, which, when stretched horizontally by 1.3, (actually 1.333 ect. It’s usually just written 1.3) comes out to 1280×720. That’s how the DVCPRO HD codec works. PP is interpreting the file correctly, there’s nothing you need to do.

As for the second problem, I have any ideas at the moment.

Any more info you can provide about the output settings you’re using?