[Ryan Holmes]

For many editing formats Firewire 800 will provide sufficient speeds. Your local big box electronics store will have plenty of options or you can order from Amazon. If you work in ProRes, DNxHD, Motion JPEG, etc purchasing a Firewire drive to hold your media is a good move. Many people on here like G-Tech drives: https://www.g-technology.com/products

You can also look at Lacie: https://www.lacie.com/us/index.htm?gclid=CJOSwtyWyrYCFQaznQodzBgAxA

Beyond that for your system there’s always more RAM (which Adobe products love) or a more powerful GPU card that is CUDA enabled (Nvidia graphics cards only). The GTX680 for Mac is getting a good bit of love from the Mac crowd right now….it’s on my list of things to purchase (and I think it’ll work in your 2008 Mac Pro, but you’ll need to verify).

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

[Sascha Haber] “the new EVGA GTX 680”

I second Sascha’s recommendation. This card is a CUDA beast (1536 CUDA cores), and it only costs $600! This card is on my “to-purchase” list for sure.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

That’s good about the scratch drive.

As for the GPU, make sure it’s on Adobe’s supported list of GPU’s for CS6. I would try to steer towards whatever they’ve certified as it will run more stably and give you the best performance.
https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/tech-specs.edu.html

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

There’s no one definitive source. It just takes time and lots of reading! 🙂

I use Google Reader (which is being discontinued in July….booooooo) to follow several people’s website that are in the industry. People like Scott Simmons, Walter Biscardi, Oliver Peter, Shane Ross, EOSHD.com, Philip Hodgetts, Tao of Color, Vincet Laforet, Philip Bloom, etc. as they post new blogs I read and learn. You can also listen to podcasts like That Post Show, Digital Production Buzz, The Coloristos, The Digital Convergence podcast, etc. It takes time to absorb all the different information, but as you do you’ll be able to digest more and more.

And also reading sites like the Cow here is a a great resource. Lots of knowledgable people, great tutorials, and lots of news to read through.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

So the MXF’s would not load in Media Encoder when dragged directly in there? That’s strange.

Did your camera come with software to read the cards? Canon XF Utility reads those files, you may try that.

Using Handbrake may get you to a “usable” file but it’s quite a quality downgrade overall. Handbrake is really used for ripping DVD’s off for your computer (i.e. like for a flight or something). h.264 m4v’s aren’t good for editing (long-GOP codec, reduced color sampling, heavily compressed codec, etc, etc.). You can try it….just be warned! 😉

I would try Canon XF Utility, VLC, or maybe even a Quicktime Pro plugin for MXF to see if that would read the files on your card. Use one of those programs to convert the file to something more editable – ProRes or DNxHD or Uncompressed.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

[David Lawrence] “The language in this thread is a bit confusing. We’re discussing two separate concepts that are getting mixed together.

1) Electronic delivery vs physical delivery

2) Software ownership vs software rental”

This is exactly right. I’ve conflated the two incorrectly in my speech as well. Thank you for the clarification.

[walter biscardi] “Apple only delivers their creative software via download. Autodesk delivers Smoke 2013 via download and they have had a licensing model for years. Davinci Resolve delivers via download.”

@Walter I don’t think anybody in this thread is upset with digital delivery of software (i.e. boxes vs download). I know I’m certainly not. There really isn’t any software that I purchase now that I don’t download off the intertubes (FCPX, Adobe, Resolve, Smoke, etc.). I’m not worried about digital delivery. I think people in this thread are apprehensive about how they come to own or lease their software. Much like a car, some love leasing, others prefer to own long term.

In all the examples you sight – FCPX, Resolve, Smoke – all of those are purchased perpetual licenses delivered via download. If you don’t want to upgrade to Smoke 2013, no problem. Stay on 2012 as long as it runs for you (1, 2, 3, or more years). Make a backup of the .dmg file and you can re-install it as long as the system will run it. If you don’t want to upgrade to Resolve 10, no problem. Stay on 9 as long as it runs on your system. You own it.

I like the Cloud as an option, just not as the only option. I am one who tends to upgrade as they come out with new releases, but I realize that that model doesn’t work for everybody. Some people upgrade every other version or every third version. I tend to want the new features but I realize there’s a good portion of the market that either doesn’t need it, can’t afford it, or doesn’t have the system to take advantage of it so there isn’t much point for them.

[David Lawrence] “Here’s a a thought experiment for you. What if FCP Legacy was a subscription service? What if when Apple EOL’d it in 2011, they decided to flip a switch and turn it off?

I think this is an interesting hypothetical. I can only imagine how much worse the backlash would’ve been had Apple de-activated FCP1-7 on June 21, 2011.

[David Lawrence] “Software subscriptions make sense for a lot of situations. But there are also plenty of situations where they are completely inappropriate. As long as we all have a choice, everyone wins.”

+1 to this. More options = more ways to saturate the market with your product. In software licensing more flexibility is a win, in my opinion. I’m sure we’ll know in another month or two what Adobe will do. There seems to be too much FUD going around right now about Adobe, the Cloud, and CS. They have a killer product in CSNext and I’m excited to get my hands on it somehow in the near future. I’m glad to see that on the software feature side, Adobe has listened seemingly very, very well to its customer base. They appear to have a solid feature set headed our way.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Are you editing footage off your internal hard drive? If so then your internal hard drive is running Windows 7, Premiere Pro, and trying to serve up video at 24, 25, or 30 frames per second….and that ain’t a pretty picture! 😉

In your given setup, I would look for increased storage space/speed via an external drive (not USB connected if possible….USB is a slow connection for video editing). It may also be time to look at moving to a more recent CS release to take advantage of more features and better code (better code taps into more of your GPU and processing power).

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Can you navigate into the folder and see the actual .MXF file?

If so, grab that file and drop it into Media Encoder. That’s worked for me in the past. You’ll likely have to do that for each clip on the card (labor intensive).

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

You may be getting the error because the card structure was incorrectly copied.

If you want to transcode the files you can use virtually any program that reads Canon MXF files. Adobe Media Encoder is what we typically use for transcoding. I would look at a mezzanine codec like DNxHD or ProRes for your transcode. If you’re on a Windows box DNxHD is the way to go, if you’re on a Mac you can use either codec.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

[Michael Hadley] “Having at least 3 viable options is good for competition and ultimately good for editors. “

+1 for this.

I don’t understand why people believe the NLE market has to be a zero sum game (referring to the sited blog post, not anybody in this thread). For FCP X to succeed doesn’t mean Premiere Pro has to fail or vice versa. Anymore than for Apple to succeed Microsoft has to fail. Companies can and should carve out their own user-base and support them. These company versus company notions seem repetitive year after:

Apple vs Microsoft
Google vs Microsoft
Google vs Apple
Apple vs Samsung
Apple vs Adobe vs Avid vs Autodesk

For one company to do well doesn’t mean the others dry up and die. It just may be that each is targeting and catering to a different aspect of the market. As a former FCP7 editor turned to PPro I’m glad to see FCPX adding in features so quickly. It’s good for the market. It’s good for the users of FCPX. It’s good for competition. FCPX doesn’t work in our workflow, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for somebody. I don’t need to bash a NLE just because it doesn’t fit my style/workflow. Maybe others do?

Just my $.02

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost