John Rofrano
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Another place to look for good deals on Mac’s is Other World Computing (OWC). I have bought several Mac’s and a lot of Mac accessories from them. Right now they have a sale on refurbished MacBook Pros. Here is an Apple MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012) 2.5GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 Processor, 4GB RAM, 500GB 5,400RPM HDD, Intel HD Graphics 4000 with 1GB of VRAM that originally sold for $1,199.00 for only $579.00 USD. I don’t know what your budget is but they have a wide variety of used Macs at all price points. They have 2009 Mac Pro’s starting at $459 for a 4-Core, $975 for a 6-Core, or $1089 for an 8-Core. I myself edit on a 2010 Mac Pro 12-Core and it is still going strong.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com -
You’re welcome. I’m glad that it will work out for you. I find it indispensable.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com -
My guess would be a corrupt file system. Boot into Recovery mode and use Disk Utility to run First Aid on the boot partition. If you get errors, run it again until there are no errors left.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com -
[Kyle Le] “Are i5 good enough for video editing”
It depends on what kind of video you want to edit. For HD the Core i5 fine. For 4K, I would go with an i7.
BTW, Apple is about to come out with new MacBook Pro‘s based on the Core i9 6-core. You might want to wait for one of those or wait for sales on the i5’s. B&H and Best Buy have been having sales lately.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com -
[Ken Bennett] “If I have a HDV or DV tape and capture that footage via Component into my editor, is there a quality difference?”
Yes, there will be a quality difference because HDV and DV are not a “capture”, they are a 1-to-1 digital transfer with absolutely no loss (like copying a file from one folder on your computer to another). The digital bits on the tape are the exact same digital bits on your hard drive.
Component will have some quality loss by definition because it is converting the digital signal on tape to an analog signal for component and then you need and analog-to-digital convert on your Mac to translate it back to digital (something like a Blackmagic Designs Intensity).
So yes, there is a quality difference in the Digital-to-Digital transfer of HDV/DV vs the Digital-Analog-Digital capture of Composite.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com -
I don’t know of any way to do it with two MacBook Pros but I have used Duet Display on my MacBook Pro with Duet running on my 12.9″ iPad Pro and it provides a great secondary display experience considering the iPad Pro is almost 13″. The cool thing about using Duet is that it can show the touch bar from new MacBook Pros at the bottom of the screen (which my older MBP doesn’t have).
This is a screen capture of me using Duet with my iPad Pro as the secondary Viewer screen in Final Cut Pro X:
Notice the Touch Bar from FCP X at the bottom of the display. The display is also still touch activated so you can just press on the screen and the cursor jumps there and whatever is under the cursor is selected. BTW, it also runs on any iPad or iPhone so in a pinch you could use an iPhone as a secondary display. Very cool technology from an ex-Apple engineer.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com -
[Kyle Le] “Is it possible to preprogram keyboard keys for splicing, ripple edit, cut, paste, etc? sometimes I edit videos with 500 tiny clips. “
Yes, the keyboard is fully programmable in FCP X. You can pretty much make whatever short cuts you want.
[Kyle Le] “Do you think switching from vegas to final cut is a bigger step than vegas to premiere? Which of the two big apps are closer to how vegas would work?”
That depends on your personal cutting style. If you love 3-point editing with tracks and want to put clips in exact positions that don’t move, then you will love Premiere. If, like me, you just throw clips onto the timeline and start trimming away like I did in Vegas Pro, then you will love Final Cut Pro X. FCP X has a lot of direct manipulation on the timeline like Vegas Pro. I found Premiere to be more about finding the correct menu item and dialog boxes. Not my style of editing at all.
[Kyle Le] “Im just afraid of the growing pains period since I am so used to Vegas.”
Growing pains are relative. I can only relate my experiences. I owned Adobe Creative Suite until it went to Cloud subscription. I used Vegas Pro as my video editor with Adobe Photoshop, and After Effects from the creative suite. Every time I would upgrade from Adobe CS2, to CS4, to CS5, to CS6, I would try Premiere Pro and every time I would go back to Vegas Pro. When I moved to Mac, I tried Final Cut Pro X (there is a one month free trial) and purchased it after only a few days of using it and I never looked back.
If you are really hung up on tracks and bins you might not like FCP X. But if you just want to concentrate on cutting the story together, FCP X will keep you focused on telling the story and not managing a timeline full of disconnected tracks. But it’s impossible for me to say if you will like it. I happen to love it! You couldn’t pay me to use a track based editor again. IMHO, tracks are the wrong paradigm for video editing. Magnetic storylines are the way to go.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com -
I answered your Vegas Pro question over on the Vegas forum so I won’t repeat that here:
As for switching to a Mac, I did that several years ago and don’t regret it one bit. In fact, I have to chuckle when I read posts on the Vegas Pro forum with people agonizing over what video card to buy, or what CPU, or how come I bought all this expensive hardware and my 4K video still stutters when I am editing… and I think to myself, “…if you had bought a Mac you would be editing your 4K video by now”.
I used a Windows PC for 30+ years. After switching to Mac, you couldn’t get me to use Windows again if you paid me. MacOS is just so far superior to Windows in so many ways.
For example: When applications lock up on Windows you almost always have to reboot the machine because Windows can’t kill the process. I’ve opened the Task Manager many times and selected the process and press Kill Process and nothing happens. I press kill again and nothing happens. Finally I have to reboot to get the hung process out of memory. In the past 5 years since I’ve been using macOS this hasn’t happened to me even once. Whenever I need to kill an application that is not responding, I go to the Apple Logo and select Force Quit and within seconds the application is gone without a trace. Windows is so sad, doesn’t seem to be capable if killing processes that it created. And any time you install new software it seems you need to reboot Windows. I haven’t rebooted my Mac in months. MacOS is built on Unix which allows subsystems to be updated and restarted without the need for a reboot.
Another example: I was editing a Keynote presentation this morning and I exported it as a PDF and reviewed it for submission. I opened it in Preview to check the quality and saw a typo so I want back to Keynote, fixed it and exported it again and switched back to the Preview app and the changes were there already. Not in Windows! Windows would have stopped me cold from exporting the PDF the second time with an error “file is open in another program”. Windows is also too stupid to recognize when a file gets moved. In macOS you can open a file that is in your Download folder, then while it’s still open in an application, move it to your Documents folder without any issues. Not Windows! Windows would give you an error again when you try to move it that it’s “open in another program” (without telling you which program as it open!). There are so many other examples of how the user experience on macOS is far superior to Windows. Need to look inside a file as you browse a folder? on macOS just press the space bar it will show you a preview. On Windows, you must launch the program that opens the file (time consuming and then you have to close it when you just wanted to peek at it).
I just hate whenever I have to touch a Windows computer because it’s interface seems clunky and awkward now I’m using macOS for so long. You will have to unlearn some things which are done differently on Mac but in the long run, it’s a much better user experience IMHO. Listen to your friends. ????
BTW, I’m editing with FCP X on 2010 Mac Pro 12-core/24GB memory. That’s an 8 year old computer and it runs as fast as the day it was built. I wouldn’t recommend doing anything on an 8 year old PC. Mac’s last a long time. It’s a worthwhile investment.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com -
[Kyle Le] “Should I consider switching to Premiere or Final Cut? What is closer to Sony Vegas?”
I moved to the Mac several years ago and I only edit with Final Cut Pro X now. I haven’t touched Vegas Pro in over 4 years (since VP12) but learning Final Cut Pro X after using Vegas Pro was a very easy transition for me. They both gave the same organic way of working. I have found Final Cut Pro X to be an extremely productive editing experience and, IMHO, is light years ahead of everything else on the market. But that’s just my opinion… your mileage may vary.
As you might know, FCP X has no tracks! The FCP X magnetic storyline is pure genius. You never have to worry about clips covering other clips as you move them about the timeline or moving a clip and leaving anything associated behind (like a lower third or sound fx clip). As a package, FCP X has everything you need without having to buy a lot of 3rd party tools. Need audio noise reduction? It’s already there on every clip and FCP X will analyze your footage as you import it and correct common audio problems like hum and background noise automatically if you want it to. Need color correcting? It’s already there on every clip. Need image stabilizing? It’s already there on every clip. Want slow motion with optical smoothing? included! Need to Match color between clips? it’s there. Optical flow between clips to avoid jump cuts? gotcha covered! Need to match the external audio with the video from your DSLR? In Vegas Pro you need Plural Eyes. In FCP X, it’s already built-in and it works really well! (I use it all the time to match recorded songs with the live audio from stage performances). Pretty much everything you need is in-the-box.
FCP X also has tons of useful content. Need lower thirds? They’re included and they are very high broadcast quality and usable (you know Apple would accept nothing less). Need motion backgrounds? They’re included too and they are very high quality and include particle effects (something Vegas Pro doesn’t have). Need high quality 3D text? it’s natively supported with textured faces and environments and it performs great. Need sound effects? they are included in the package.
Oh, and editing 4K video on MacBook Pro with FCP X is a very smooth experience. Apple has fine tuned FCP X to its hardware and the two work extremely well together. Here is a comparison with Premiere Pro on exporting a 2 min 4K clip (4.5 min vs 80 min! no contest!!!):
I could go on but suffice it to say that you will be pleasantly surprised at all that is included with FCP X. I purchased training videos from Ripple Training and I came up to speed very quickly.
Here is a good article with several videos on using the FCP X magnetic timeline. It will show you how productive the workflow is:
https://jonnyelwyn.co.uk/film-and-video-editing/understanding-the-fcpx-magnetic-timeline/I’m not saying that anyone should jump ship on Vegas Pro, but if you are moving to the Mac and are deciding between Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro X, there is no doubt in my mind that Final Cut will appeal more to Vegas Pro editors than Premiere (and it certainly performs way better).
Final thoughts on FCP X vs Premiere: I paid $299 for FCP X 4 years ago. Apple has updated it with major new features every year for FREE. I haven’t spent a penny more. Had I started paying for Premiere Pro 4 years ago I would have spent $2,352 for the same time in subscription fees ($49 x 12 x 4). It’s not to hard to identify the price performer. ????
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com -
[John Nelson] “My question is: which card is normally installed in a 2010 Mac Pro? This one was a four core, 32gigs of ram. Don’t know if that’s enough information.”
That was plenty of information. According to everymac.com the 2010 Apple Mac Pro “Quad Core” 3.2 (2010/Nehalem) Specs contained a ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory which sells today at OWC used for $217.75.
It’s kind of hard to go back after months but perhaps it was an honest mistake and they took the card out for testing but never out it back in? Otherwise they stole your graphics card and charged you the price of the card on top of that! Ouch!
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com
