[John Rofrano]

It could just be getting old. DVD drives do fail over time. Check to see that it isn’t loaded with dust. Try blowing it out with compressed air and see of that helps.

If you do decide to get a new one, it may be hard to find because the 2008 Mac Pro uses IDE/ATAPI connectors and not SATA connectors so you need to find an older designed drive that supports IDE/ATAPI connections.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Leonard Frankford] “I need to upgrade to El Capitan or Sierra. But the Apple website says those OSes are only for Mac Pros 2010 or later. “

Where did you read that? Here is the specifications for El Capitan directly from Apple:

https://support.apple.com/kb/sp728?locale=en_US

El Capitan supports Mac Pro Early 2008 or newer so your 2009 is well within the recommended hardware.

Sierra is another story. It DOES NOT support your 2009 Mac Pro. The requirements for Sierra are Mac Pro models from 2010 or newer (Mac Pro 5,1 – 6,1)

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Caio Simbula] “I’ve tried searching the forums but didn’t find an answer to my question: Will an EVGA Nvidia GTX 980 Ti work in my 2009 MacPro 4,1? “

Try searching YouTube (lol): ????

GTX 980 Ti Install in Mac Pro 2009 Tower
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7FoB-bSNV0

As you can see from the video it is not plug-n-play because your 2009 Mac Pro doesn’t have enough power to satisfy the cards power requirements with just the stock cables, but it is doable with some workarounds shown in the video.

Here are some things to consider:

Would you put a Ferrari engine in a Toyota and expect it to handle like a Ferrari?

I make this analogy because computer systems are a finely balance set of components. The key word here is balanced. Adding components that offset the balance and you create a bottleneck and don’t get the full benefit. Here is what I know:

The Nvidia GTX 980 Ti is a PCI Express 3.0 x16 card and the 2009 Mac Pro only has PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots. So don’t expect the card to perform at it’s peak because… (you guessed it… you are putting a Ferrari engine in a Toyota!) ???? It will still perform great but not as good as a computer with PCI Express 3.0. (I have the same problem with my Radeon HD 7950 which is also PCI Express 3.0)

The PC based card will not show you a boot screen (i.e., no Apple logo). You won’t see anything until the operating system loads the graphics drivers so you will not be able to (for example) hold down the option key and boot from another hard drive because the screen will be black while booting. That is true for all graphics cards that are for PC and not Mac compliant.

As you an see in the video, the Nvidia GTX 980 Ti requires two power adapters, one with 6-pins and one with 8-pins. the Mac Pro only has 6-pin adapters. The 6-pin Mac connector is rated for 75 watt max, and the 8-pin is usually 150 watt so if the card trys to draw 150 through it then there is a risk of damage to the mac’s logic board. I would strongly recommend that you follow the advice in that video and find an alternate power source to make sure that the card is getting the full power it requires for maximum overall system stability.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Nino Pericoli] “I’m searching for a great transition automated plugin like mtransition Zoom (for final cut) for Sony Vegas”

Use the built-in Cross Effect Transition with the Cross Zoom A/B preset.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Len Wasson] “*also* wtf does that mean “be sure your back up is good?” omfg – why wouldn’t it be? “

If you were using a backup program that backs up your files into it’s own proprietary format, then there have been times when these backup files have become corrupt and cannot be restored.

For example: Apple’s Time Machine uses it’s own format. Have you ever looks at the files in a Time Machine backup? It bears no resemblance to the files on your hard drive. You would never be able to manually decipher them if, for some reason, Time Machine said that it could not restore them. Why would a Time Machine backup become corrupt? The most likely cause is that the drive wasn’t ejected properly and some files weren’t completely flushed to the drive. This may cause the files to become corrupt over time.

If, however, you cloned your drive, and you plugged the drive into your Mac and can see the files, then you already have made sure that your backup is good. Usually cloning a drive is the safest way to backup. I do both. I use Time Machine for daily backups but once a month, I clone my drive to an external disk just to be safe. This gives me two chances at restoring my files.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

If you are doing a clean install and then restoring your files, I would use the Migration Assistant. It should restore all of your personal documents which should include Thunderbird email but I use Apple Mail so I can’t say for sure. Even if it doesn’t you can always copy them off of the backup drive later so you shouldn’t loose anything but I’m guessing that when Migration Assistant moves Thunderbird as an application, it will move it’s data files with it (which are your emails).

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Al Bergstein] “The machine boots up fine to about the 50% point, then something it’s loading causes it to stall for a long time. It does get through the process eventually. “

What I have noticed is that the 50% point is where the graphics drivers get loaded. My 2010 Mac Pro has 2 monitors connected to my Radeon HD 7950 via DisplayPort cables and it boots on the first one, then at about the 50% point it pauses and the second monitor lights up, and then it keeps going. Based on this behavior, I would suspect your graphics card drivers. Maybe they need updating for El Capitan? (just a guess but it’s the best one I got) 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

Not yet but we are working on updating it.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Lutz Godau] “Anyway, may be I am just doing something wrong and somebody can help me. Can I upload my own files to the layer deformer ? I have tried to load all types of files like mp4, jpeg, avi in the preset menue. It allways says “not supported”. I can only use those bsp-files. I read somewhere, that all videos accepted in AE are usable in BBC Layer Deformer. Am I so restricted in Vegas ? I hope it is just my inexperience.”

There are no limitations in Vegas Pro. It sounds like you’re just using the wrong parameters.

Drop the BCC Layer Deformer onto an Event on the Timeline. Then open the Video Event FX window and under Front Material look for Front Texture Layer and select Source Layer. That’s it! Do the same for the other sides.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Tobias von Brockdorff] “Is your Mac able to play back everything fluently, without any stuttering?”

I assume you are asking me since Steve doesn’t have a Mac. (he is thinking of it)

[Tobias von Brockdorff] “My questions are about videomaterial straight out of the camera like mxf FullHD 50p or ProRes mov QHD 25p, edited with Vipes, disolves and colorgrading effects like vegas color curves …”

Final Cut Pro X was designed around ProRes. That’s the native format so it edits ProRes like butter. It can also edit MXF natively. I haven’t had any issues with playback. I mostly edit HDV and AVCHD so I’m not really stressing the system. No 4K or anything exotic like that but color correcting doesn’t slow me down at all. I can even add animated 3D Text and it plays back very smoothly.

[Tobias von Brockdorff] “Where is the limit for your Mac System, when it begans stuttering?”

The beauty of FCP X is that it doesn’t stutter for long. FCP X has background timeline rendering. So, for example, you can create an extremely complex transition or add very heavy FX to a clip, and FCP X will gradually render it in the background so that your timeline is always playing back smoothly. This is one of my favorite features of FCP X.

[Tobias von Brockdorff] “Wich system do you use”

I have a 2010 Mac Pro 2.93GHz 12-Core Xeons, 24GB ECC Memory, 512GB SSD RAID 0, AMD Radeon HD 7950 GPU, Apple 8TB RAID 5 (4 disks)

[Tobias von Brockdorff] “and do you use GPU axelleration and/or Dynamic-RAM-Preview in Vegas on Mac or not?”

As I was saying, FCP X will background render the timeline so that playback is always smooth. It uses OpenCL so it takes full advantage of my AMD Radeon HD 7950 GPU and anything that can’t playback in real-time is background rendered so that I’m playing back ProRes files that are smooth. This is far better than Dynamic-RAM preview in Vegas because once rendered, it always in effect unless you modify the clips and then it automatically renders again in the background.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com