[Petros Kolyvas]

AbelCine has a list of AF100 Scene Files, one of which they called the 5DmkII and I think it gets close to all Canon DSLRs. It could make mixing them simplified. Anyway the list of scene files is here: https://blog.abelcine.com/2011/04/06/af100-scene-files-created-by-abelcine/

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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger

[Petros Kolyvas]

Been done many times, and no chance of damage whatsoever (above and beyond any damage from poorly installed RAM of any size – which is itself exceptionally hard to damage with the simplicity of the iMac upgrade procedure.)

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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger

[Petros Kolyvas]

Any capture card that can handle NTSC (analog) should be able to handle NTSC-J, simply the the black level is different and you’ll want to set it appropriately on capture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC#NTSC-J

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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger

[Petros Kolyvas]

I think it’s important to familiarize one’s self with what CUDA does (CS5): https://blogs.adobe.com/premiereprotraining/2011/02/cuda-mercury-playback-engine-and-adobe-premiere-pro.html

and here (CS5.5/CS6) if you came here looking for similar info: https://blogs.adobe.com/premiereprotraining/2011/04/adobe-premiere-pro-cs5-5-improvements-in-cuda-processing-and-the-mercury-playback-engine.html

Here’s an imporant section (this should be a PrPro sticky because it’s so misunderstood.
Here’s a list of things that Premiere Pro CS5 and later can process with CUDA:

some effects (complete list at the bottom of this post)
scaling (details here)
deinterlacing
blending modes
color space conversions

While this list grew with CS5.5 and CS6, it doesn’t include pure encode/decode operations (yet.) That means AVCHD playback (and encoding in render), the part where video is decompressed (or compressed), is done in CPU (which needs to be upgraded as Jeff noted) before being handed off to the GPU for any acceleratable (is that a word?) effects.

Part of the whole “native workflow” means we’ve shifted the tasks from being predominantly disk-intensive with Uncompressed, ProRes and DNxHD media to being processor intensive with compressed MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats.

When these formats are packing average data-rates that are less than HDV, then there are a lot of calculations that need to occur behind the scenes to render those predicted frames (P), especially when they’re sitting next to bidirectional ones(B)!

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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger

[Petros Kolyvas]

Depending on the wide variety of formats, you could also get a few mini converters (analog to SDI, etc.) and a Hyper Deck Shuttle – each setup will cost about $600 before taxes and shipping.

The Hyperdeck Studio Pro (which has all the inputs you’ll need) is about $2K but not portable like the Ki Pros.

In either of the above cases you could capture to 6G SSDs and use the same drives during editorial/restoration.

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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger

[Petros Kolyvas]

So I’ve probably led your question way off the mark, but I have to take one on the chin here regarding Windows.

Link Aggregation is only supported in Windows 7 by drivers of appropriate hardware. Windows 7 itself doesn’t support Link Aggregation out of the box. As we don’t have actual Windows hardware here I can’t run through the process, although it’s as simple as the OS X one, provided the NIC supports Aggregation or “Teaming.” (See here: https://www.windowsitpro.com/article/network-interface-card-nic/q-how-do-i-create-a-nic-team-with-my-intel-nics-)

Another thing I think I wasn’t clear on is that our setup has one Mac Pro serving three edit stations. I believe Link Aggregation is best used in small shops where each client machine (irrespective of OS) is running a 1Gb/sec link and the “server” can serve each of them at near top-speed. Because GbE is cheap, you can add and aggregate a 4-port card for about $750 and serve multiple clients without saturating a single 1GbE link.

Of course, none of this deals with sharing between Mac and Windows – but it’s something I’m interested in as well since the future still looks uncertain for professional-level Mac hardware in the near-term and coupled with the fact our CS6 licenses are platform agnostic we could move in a heartbeat if we had to.

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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger

[Petros Kolyvas]

I have Windows 7 virtualized on a number of our machines. I’ll see if I can’t do something similar tomorrow. Either way, the same is absolutely possible.

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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger

[Petros Kolyvas]

And here it is: https://slrdwrds.shiftfocus.ca/2012/06/21/link-aggregation-on-a-mac-pro-os-x/

I didn’t have a ton of time today but I did my best!

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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger

[Petros Kolyvas]

I am going to make a very quick “Link Aggregation for Mac Pros” Howto an post a link to that here.

But to directly answer your question…

Here’s what you need:
– LACP-capable GbE Switch
– 2 Cat 5e or Cat 6 cables to connect to the switch

That’s it! OS X has had link aggregation capabilities for a while and it’s a very simple affair as you’ll see in a few minutes!

Regarding the switch we’re using, it’s a basic 24-port managed GbE switch, purchased about 5 years ago because it was pretty cheap and although it sounds like a hairdryer (it’s in a server closet) it’s been trouble-free – not requiring a single reboot.

We’ve since upgraded all other switches to HP ProCurve as they have a lifetime warranty and if I had to buy one today that was a basic, managed switch I’d pick this one up: https://www.cdw.com/shop/products/HP-V1810-24G-Switch-Smart-Buy/1837433.aspx – I still can’t believe HP offers lifetime warranties on networking equipment!

I’ll post a quick video in a few hours.

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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger

[Petros Kolyvas]

The term you’re looking for is “Jumbo Frames.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumbo_frame)

Now, here’s an additional suggestion to take the GbE discussion up in bandwidth. I fully agree, that with the increase in compressed footage acquisition, GbE (single links) are more than adequate for lots of editing requirements these days, especially when coupled with PrPro’s excellent native playback capabilities.

But you can increase speeds further, especially if you intend to keep the files on the Mac Pro and use the storage across multiple-clients. Now, I’m going to ignore file system issues and only talk about network infrastructure here.

The Mac Pro has two GbE ports and they can be aggregated to create a 2Gb link provided your switch also supports LACP. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation)

Until 10GBase T (10Gig over copper) becomes more affordable, LACP is a pretty effective way to increase bandwidth using existing Cat5e LAN infrastructure and GbE hardware, especially on shared storage sources like a Mac Pro (we do the same – though our infrastructure is all Mac at the moment.)

We use a setup like this from one Mac Pro with a large storage array to another Mac Pro and an iMac without speed issues. Currently all the machines use local media caches and preview/render locations to keep that traffic off the network.

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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger