[Ryan Holmes]

Dell makes a some decent monitors in that price range that I’ve heard good things about, like the UltraSharp U2412M.

At these resolutions (1920×1080 and greater) I’d stick to DVI or HDMI. Stay away from VGA connections.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

Have you tried creating the new preset directly inside of AME? Instead of doing in PPro do it in AME. In the Preset Browser tab click on the “+” and setup from there. Once you’re done, save it and verify it shows up in your list of options.

Quicktime is available inside of Premiere. Once you create a new preset a dialog box will pop up. Under the Format” drop down menu choose Quicktime (you can also do stills, mp3, wav, etc from here), then choose your codec of choice (DV NTSC, ProRes, DNxHD, Uncompressed, etc.).

If you’re on a PC make sure that Quicktime is installed on your system.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

You’re welcome Bill. I also agree with Stephen though – you should have a look at Premiere Pro. Since FCP 7 is EOL (end of life) you’ll need to move on at some point. Premiere Pro CS6, or as I affectionately call it FCP 8, is very similar to FCP and easy to pickup. It’s worth a look (or even FCP X @ $300)!

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

You cannot “upgrade” an Academic license to commercial. You just have to buy another version of FCP.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

Are the transcoded ProRes files at the same frame rate – 23.98? You’ll need to look directly at the newly created Quicktime files and verify that you transcoded correctly.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

FCP 7 is a 32-bit app and as such can only utilize up to 4GB of RAM. FCP X, Adobe CS6, Media Composer 6 are all 64-bit apps and can tap in and utilize far greater amounts of RAM, up to about 192GB. So adding RAM to your current setup (or a new setup provided you stay with FCP7) won’t do you much good.

As for buying a “new” Mac Pro that’s a hot mess. The “new” Mac Pro you can purchase is technically about a 2.5 year old machine (ignoring the ever so minor speed bump that Apple tossed it last year). Essentially the tech inside the Mac Pro is from 2010 and behind the curve of currently technology (graphics cards, processors, RAM speeds, etc).

With that said, if you need a new machine today then your options for a Mac Pro are what they are. Nobody knows (or if they know they can’t say) what the timetable is for a Mac Pro update from Apple. According to Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, last June he said that an update was coming for the Mac Pro sometime in 2013.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/12/tim_cook_confirms_updated_mac_pro_coming_in_2013

There’s much speculation about what that means. Will they still be towers? Will they have PCIe slots so we can expand with additional cards or will they forgo that in lue of Thunderbolt ports? Will they be smaller and less user modifiable (Apple’s overall push with MacBook Pro, iPad, iPhones, etc.)? How much will they cost – cheaper/more expensive?

My advice, if you can hold off and wait you may want to. The caveat here being that since you are running a “dead” NLE the next update of the OS from Apple (likely due out this summer if their recent track record is any indication) could quite possible break your NLE. FCP 7 is no longer supported by Apple. There will inevitably come a day when the OS cannot run FCP 7 (legacy code base). The last supported OS for FCP 7 was 10.6.8. Anything beyond that and you’re taking your chances (most have success in 10.7.X and many report fine usability in 10.8.X). I mention this because any new computer you buy will have the latest OS pre-installed. Apple typically “locks” their hardware to their software so you can’t install an earlier version of an OS than what the hardware shipped with. So if it ships with 10.8 that’s the earliest software you can install. Fine if it works with FCP 7; deal breaker if it doesn’t. So if they roll out a new OS, 10.9, in June and the Mac Pro’s follow after that then they may or may not run FCP7.

So like I said originally….buying a new Mac Pro is a hot mess, especially if you are wanting to stay with FCP 7. Buy today = old technology. Buy tomorrow = don’t know if it’ll work with FCP 7. Moving forward, I would highly suggest you take a look at the other NLE offerings out there. FCP X is gaining many features, Premiere Pro is very similar to FCP 7 (I call it FCP 8), and Avid always remains a consistent offering.

Sorry I can’t give you a straight answer. It’s a tough predicament that Apple has placed its high-end users in. Maybe they’ll make an announcement around NAB about the Mac Pro….or maybe they’ll wait until the later part of this year to make an announcement! 😉 It’s a guessing game….

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

[Kris Phipps] “Any other option in Quicktime for 2k export?”

Pretty much any codec you want! Comparable to ProRes HQ, you could use DNxHD 220x or DNxHD 4444. Depends on how space and how fast your hard drives are.

https://www.avid.com/static/resources/US/documents/dnxhd.pdf

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

Just export out an XML from FCP. Open Premiere and import the XML file.

The bins, media, and sequences will be laid out in Premiere the same way you laid them out in FCP. Simple as that.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

[Thomas Henry] “I know you CAN export without rendering, in the same way you CAN put Premiere CS5 on a 2006 iMac, it just won’t work well.”

We are in heated agreement then! 😉

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Ryan Holmes]

[Thomas Henry] “My problem was that I didn’t know I had to render everything first and check the “use previews” box when exporting.”

You aren’t required to render before you export. If you render before you export and use previews then Premiere will use those render files in the final export. It’s completely plausible to export without rendering and let Premiere build the file from scratch.

[Thomas Henry] “It’s ridiculous to say that your computer isn’t fast enough to edit SD video.”

And it’s not at all ridiculous to say that his computer is slow. It’s likely a 2006 or 2007 model iMac with less than ideal RAM and probably an ATI video card. So he’s working on a computer that’s 5-6 years old, with insufficient RAM, a video card that doesn’t take advantage of the CUDA technology (which was in it’s infancy in CS5 which he’s running), and the wildcard is what type of hard drive setup he’s using to edit video from. Plus he’s doing FX work on the timeline – color correction, scaling, etc. This takes processing power. Granted DV video is not terribly demanding, but his gear can easily be creating a bottleneck in the process.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes