[Kevin Patrick]

At first I thought about pointing out that the title of this forum is Apple FCPX or Not: The Debate.

But then I realized that you are actually debating the point of debating FCPX in this FCPX debate forum.

So, I guess all I can say is …

Nice post!

[Kevin Patrick]

[Juan Morales] “new details about the new, yet to be released Media Composer 6 which got on the Avid website erroneously last Friday.”

If you posted information and/or screen shots of a product that has not been officially released, then that’s probably why your post was removed. There are some sites on the internet that post information about company’s products that have not been released to the public. They justify doing so by saying someone gave them the info and therefore should not be violating a companies confidentiality terms.

Perhaps the Creative Cow removed your post either to comply with Avid’s request or simply because they felt it was the right thing to do, knowing the information (however you came across it) was not meant for public view.

Consider if someone posted something about you or your company/business that you wouldn’t want posted. Specifically something that you had determined to be confidential. Something you didn’t want consumers or your competitors to know about.

If this is the case, then I applaud the Creative Cow for having what at least I would consider to be appropriate business practices.

Sorry that you felt it was censorship. It doesn’t sound like it was, since you point out, several times, that the information was yet to be released by Avid.

[Kevin Patrick]

One thing I recently noticed is that Inactive memory usage slowly starts to climb up.

From a fresh reboot:
Launch Text Edit
Launch Activity Monitor
Launch FCP X

Once again, I went back to assigning Keywords to my media. No editing. Nothing even in the Timeline. Just going through clip after clip, adding Keywords. Over time, the FCP X Real Memory grew up to, but then hovered at just over 7 GB. As it has before.

During this time, the Inactive memory usage climbed up to just over 5 GB. My understanding of Inactive memory is that this results from memory being used by an application after you quit the application. The OS keeps it reserved, for some period of time. I’m guessing if you relaunch the app, it will get this same memory back? Not sure.

Either way, if my understanding of Inactive memory is correct, I’m not sure why I would have any in use, let alone gradually gowing in size. I launched only three applications and never quit one of them.

I could skim a clip, arrow down to the the next clip, skim it, arrow down, over and over. Each time I did this, I could watch the Inactive memory usage grow.

So, is FCP X is consuming and then giving back memory to the OS?

I also noticed that somewhere along the way my skimmer started to skip. You can see it skip in the viewer and in the frame info for the skimmer. When you skim back and forth, you can see it’s skipping anywhere from 1 to 3 frames.

Perhaps these two issues are related?

I wound up quitting FCP X after Inactive climbed to over 5 GB. Rebooted and started over.

Very odd.

Also, I sent Apple feed back on this issue.

[Kevin Patrick]

Craig,

What’s the difference between conforming and retiming?

When I take a 60 fps clip and drop it into a 24 fps timeline and choose conform, it appears to simply retime the clip to 40%. If I open up the Retime Editor, that’s what it shows, 40%.

How is that different from dropping the same 60 fps clip into a 60 fps timeline and retiming it to 40%?

I’m assuming there should be a difference.

[Kevin Patrick]

[Mark Dobson] “it would be fascinating to here from someone with a brand new iMac with a load of memory on it.”

Seems to be a question that’s not always easy to answer. Especially when you are talking about an applicaiton like FCP X, since there are a number of factors to take into account.

This link has some benchmarks for what they claim to be just CPU and Memory. Note that it’s a long list, with 64 bit starting halfway down.

https://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/mac-benchmarks/

24,218 Fastest Mac Pro (12 core 2.9 GHz)
11,873 My early 2008 Mac Pro (8 core 3.2 GHz)
12,524 Fastest iMac (i7 3.4 GHz)

So, looks like I could double my CPU processing power. But, I have an ATI 5770, which is close to the 5870. So that does help. It’s a pretty cheap upgrade for performance and FCP X uses it. I came from a GT 8800. Certainly a lot cheaper than a new system.

The link below shows the latest (and fastest configured) Mac models running FCP X. Although it should be pointed out that the Mac Pro used here is the 6 core, not 12 core. The 6 core has faster CPU’s, but less of them. Not sure why they didn’t test FCP X with the 12 core. My guess is it would be better, as FCP X seems to do a good job using all cores.

https://barefeats.com/fcpx01.html

Also, here’s a link to graphic card comparisons using Motion 5. Here’s where you can see some differences between the latest iMac and the latest Mac Pro. Playback performance is similar, but preview to RAM is twice as fast on the Mac Pro’s grahpic card.

https://barefeats.com/wst10g12.html

So, to address your question, the fastest iMac seems to hold it’s own with the fastest 6 core Mac Pro. At least for FCP X. You certainly get a lot for the price differential.

Of course, you do loose capability with an iMac.

I won’t get in line for an iPhone 4S. But I might get in line for the next generation Mac Pro. Which I still believe is coming. Otherwise, it would be gone by now. As was the Macbook when the latest Air came out. If iMac’s were to replace Mac Pros, I think (hope) it would have happened already.

(I think I just side tracked my own post)

[Kevin Patrick]

If you go with Premeire Pro …

You might want to look into getting an NVIDIA CUDA card. This provides GPU hardware acceleration for Premiere Pro. ATI based cards don’t.

I use the Quadro 4000. I use it in slave mode, no monitors, just used by PP. I also have an ATI 5770 for my displays and FCP X.

If you get one of these, make sure you get the one for the Mac. Different FW than the non-Mac one. Also, make sure you download and install the CUDA drivers from NVIDIA. Apple provides drivers for the card and it will work fine. But, if you don’t also install the CUDA drivers the GPU acceleration option in PP will be grayed out.

[Kevin Patrick]

David,

Maybe I missed something in your tutorial.

How do you install FCP X on a new partition (boot disk) if you’ve already purchased it? Can you simply enter in your Apple ID into the App store app and it will realize you need to re-download it? It Doesn’t seem like that would work. The App store must have a method to ensure you can’t download multiple copies.

Or is this an approach you need to plan for, prior to purchasing FCP X?

I realize I could simply do this with FCS, but I was considering moving FCP X.

[Kevin Patrick]

Not that I could find.

It appears that the Retime feature (like color correction) cannot be controlled via keyframes. It’s not part of the Video Animation panel when it’s expanded.

[Kevin Patrick]

Glad I could clear it up.

Thanks and take care.

[Kevin Patrick]

[Kevin Patrick] “I certainly meant to disrespect to Ben either.”

It appears that I am also bad at typing, as well as humor.

What I meant to type was …

I certainly meant no disrespect to Ben either.

If I had to mistype one word, just one word, why did it have to be that one?

I think I need to create a Signature that always includes an apology for what I’ve just typed.