[Shawn Malone]

Thanks for the great info! I realize that its the syncronization creating the gaps, I just meant that labelling them allows them to be grouped as one angle in order for them to be synced in the proper positions with gaps. This is great news. The client’s footage of one angle was for some reason spread across several files with gaps in time. This makes it so much easier. Thanks for the replies and explanations. I appreciate it.

Shawn

[Shawn Malone]

Thanks for the replies! So is it the labelling of the non-continuous clips that enables them to be synced to the other continuous angle clip as one angle? Also allowing those non-continuous clips to be synced with the appropriate gaps?

Shawn

[Shawn Malone]

Thanks for the suggestion Doug. You are correct, my OS drive is in the motherboard SATA port. My other SSD is in an Apricorn Velocity PCI card. I planned on getting larger SSD drive (1TB) swap it for my PCI 500GB and make that my OS drive which is only a 160GB. I had also kicked around the idea of getting another PCI card to do just what you said. The Velocity does have another SATA port also for another drive. I thought about trying that out first before I got another PCI card. Thanks for the reply!

Shawn

[Shawn Malone]

Joe, thanks for all this great info and comparisons. All very useful and important stuff that I can use when I’m in the market for a new setup.

I think what my friends were saying was that the 2009 MacPro I was looking at could generally perform close to the newer Macs and wouldn’t be a slug…also none of them are video editors, but they are Mac enthusiasts, so I don’t think they have any of that detailed knowledge related directly to handling video. And I am very happy with the Pro, but I didn’t have the detailed CPU/GPU info you’ve given me. Very cool to know! I did know about specific GPU enabled FX and that it sometimes it is not doing much. I don’t really use/own any GPU intensive FX packages. I just don’t need them yet. I have some extra transition and title plugins, that’s about it. All of my work as of now (and for the last year since I got the Pro) is simple stuff that is all relatively the same episodic style/content that the client likes to keep unrefined and fairly basic. It only requires a lot of different transitions and titles to spice it up…so no looks, styles, or compositing and I never have to do any noise or stabilization stuff. Not to say that that will never be the case…just not required right now.

So it appears that I have to get the iMac factory configured with certain GPUs. Correct? Do you ever feel restricted by GPUs that are available with the systems? Or does the CPU efficiency just make up for any shortcomings?

For now, I’m going to roll with the MacPro and optimized media. That seemed to work like a charm…and now that you’ve planted that seed in my head about a newer setup, I’ll be watching for some deals! But I feel much clearer about what’s going on with the system side of things…very cool!

Thanks again!
Shawn

[Shawn Malone]

Holy macaroni…switching back to the motion templates folder!

Again, thanks for the help!

Shawn

[Shawn Malone]

Thanks for the reply! Would this be the only reason to keep them in the Motion Templates folder? I’m a one-man operation so there’s no sharing of edits/machines. I realize that could happen at some point though. I figured it was a good thing to keep the OS drive (where my motion templates folder is) from doing another activity.

Thanks again,
Shawn!

[Shawn Malone]

Thanks! I will give both of these options a try! As far as the library/footage location, I figured it would be less work per drive if they were separated. Does having them together make it easier/faster for the library to access the footage?

Thanks again,
Shawn

[Shawn Malone]

Wow, thanks for the CPU breakdown. You can read all this stuff online, but sometimes you just need a specific succinct explanation and that was it! Financially, I need to stick with this system for now, and I was just trying to see if there were any tweaks I could do to help it along…again, I am not unhappy with it as of now, just trying to smooth it out as much as I can with what I have.

The reason I went with this MacPro is that the PCI slots were appealing, and my peers all said it will perform great compared to more recent Macs, with the added expandability being a plus…but I’d be willing to investigate more on newer systems for the future. If I go with an iMac or newer trash can MacPro, what is the GPU situation? Does the better CPU negate having to have a massive GPU? Being unfamiliar with anything but PCI cards, if I would still utilize a hefty GPU, what is the connectivity? Is it external? Or are they sold with custom configured GPUs of your choice?

I want to eventually go that way, but this seemed like the best way to go at the time, financially and upgrade-wise. When I bought the system, I had almost no edit work (I was just jumping back into it after doing mainly audio for years, having started video editing back in the analog age!). Now I have basically around the clock edits, so I am very happy with the MacPro and that I am making a living with it, but I would like to upgrade when I can afford it. Any other tips on upgrades would be appreciated and thanks again for the valuable info!

Shawn

[Shawn Malone]

Thanks for the great info! Never knew about Quicksync. Actually, when I first started using FCPX, I was unknowingly optimizing all of my footage. As I continued to research while using FCPX, I found the large file sizes with optimized media and turned that off except for 4k stuff. Now that I think about it, that’s about when it seemed like FCPX started having hiccups. It definitely appeared to run smoother and quicker on my first few edits before I switched that (it especially seemed much more responsive than Premiere!). Space isn’t too much of a concern right now so I don’t think it’d be a big deal.

Thanks so much for the help!
Shawn