what kind of mac is needed to edit red on FCP 2 Studio

[Kreisky]

What is really needed to edit Red files on FCP 2 Studio ?

1) Dual Core 3ghz or Quad Core 3ghz
2) How much memory does my Mac need 2-4-6 ????
3) RAID Card ? is that needed ?
4) graphics cards
2 x NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB
ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI)
3 x NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB
4 x NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB, Stereo 3D (2 x dual-link DVI)
5) Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card (or)
Quad-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card

I know the resolution you need for the displays, and how much hard drive i need ! but what about the rest ?
help please !

[Kreisky]

hey guys ! I would be really thankfull if you could tell me what i really need, or dont need !
thanx
(I dont know if i need a dual or quad channel PCI express card ?
and what about a raid card ????)

[Seung Han]

You should post this in the main page, nobody lurks here :)

I am buying a new mac too but somebody posted specs from hdinfo but I will need to configure things in Seoul so if anybody has looked into this...

[Rob Lohman]

For REDCINE we advice an ATI card on the Mac and nVidia on Windows. If you have multiple cards / screens REDCINE will automatically use the one with the highest resolution

[Roxco]

These are not easily answered. Are you asking for 4K?

Buy the best you can afford with the ATI Graphics Card.

Or talk to a company like ProMax who sells video Macs.

Hope this helps,

Rosco

[Simon Blackledge]

Rob does redcine make use of any video cards? AJA/Blackmagic?

cheers

si

[Rob Lohman]

flameop: no

[Nick Shaw]

Might you consider adding VOUT support at some point? I know having it update continuously while adjusting parameters would slow things down, but it would be nice to have a button we could click just to see a single frame on a broadcast monitor.

[Simon Blackledge]

So we evaluate what a good"flat" export is from just the LCD + Hist ?

[Simon Blackledge]

So we evaluate what a good"flat" export is from just the LCD + Hist ?

[jaadgy akanni]

For REDCINE we advice an ATI card on the Mac and nVidia on Windows. If you have multiple cards / screens REDCINE will automatically use the one with the highest resolution

To Rob, or anyone who can give us a proper explanation:
On their website, Apple recommends both the ATI Mobility Radeon and the NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT, 7800GT ...so can you please expand on why you advise us to go Nvidia on Window and ATI on MAC?
I'm now thinking of making the change from Avid to FCP, or perhaps keep both, and as I wanna continue to work in Avid at least for some time until I get my RED, I know that if I get the NVidia it'll be compatible with AvidXpress Pro and with FCP 2 (according to Apple) So, I'd like to know what the drawbacks of having an NVIDIA card would be when I get to work with REDCine. Thanks in advance.

[jaadgy akanni]

Can someone please answer my question. Thank you.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Can someone please answer my question. Thank you.

Hi Jaadgy,

i'm not an expert but my opinion would be this:
get a computer as strong and as fast as you can afford...
You can edit in SD proxies, but if you begin to collor correct, render effects and stuff, having a horsepower computer will be nice.
I would advice something like 8GB RAM, and a Quad core or even an 8 core (am I right that FCS 2 is optimized for this, and under Leopard, they should work well together?)

Color and Redcine both love ATI graphic cards, so that probably is the best choice.

I have to tell you something elso though:
people advice to NOT buy a Mac Pro at this very moment unless you REALLY need one NOW, because it's expected that there will come out new Mac Pro's with new (better) Intel chips.
No one knows when, but rumors say January or maybe even earlier...

Hope this helps a bit...

[jaadgy akanni]

Hi Jaadgy,

i'm not an expert but my opinion would be this:
get a computer as strong and as fast as you can afford...
You can edit in SD proxies, but if you begin to collor correct, render effects and stuff, having a horsepower computer will be nice.
I would advice something like 8GB RAM, and a Quad core or even an 8 core (am I right that FCS 2 is optimized for this, and under Leopard, they should work well together?)

Color and Redcine both love ATI graphic cards, so that probably is the best choice.

I have to tell you something elso though:
people advice to NOT buy a Mac Pro at this very moment unless you REALLY need one NOW, because it's expected that there will come out new Mac Pro's with new (better) Intel chips.
No one knows when, but rumors say January or maybe even earlier...

Hope this helps a bit...

Thank you Sidderke. I hear what you're saying, but my main concern is that if I go with an ATI, then I won't be able to run AvidXpress Pro, where as if I get an INVIDIA Geforce I know for sure will be able to run Avid. So, the question is, Is an NVIDIA Geforce definitely out of the question for running REDCINE on a Mac or not? If NVIDIA on a Mac is ok for REDCINE, what are the specific disadvantages as opposed to using an ATI? Thank you. BTW, I agree with you on waiting until the new year to get a new Mac. I hope they're releasing a new tower design too.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

jaadgy,

First you have to look at what is available for the Mac. Current options are:

nVidia 7600GT (very outdated, underpowered)
nVidia FX4500 (very outdated, overpriced)
ATI X1900XT (becoming outdated, best performing option right now)

You can't simply buy a PCIe video card like a GeForce 8900GTX and drop it into a Mac, no drivers exist for using it on OSX, not to mention the ROM BIOS on the cards must be EFI compliant for use in a Mac system and most PC cards are not without flashing the ROM with a different BIOS, assuming the proper ROM image even exists.

If I were buying a Mac Pro today, I would equip it with the X1900XT.

New Mac Pro systems are due real soon. It's pretty much a guarantee... Intel will be shipping updated CPUs with unified quad-core designs, faster speeds, updated host chipsets, etc.. Apple has been very good at releasing new systems with Intel's new offerings nearly as soon as they're available in the quantity that Apple needs. Apple sometimes seems like they are a bit slow in releasing new hardware, but in reality, they're not slow. It's just they don't advertise and take pre-orders several months in advance like most PC vendors do. Apple also landed the 120 day exclusive deal with Intel for the 3GHz quad-core Xeon CPUs. That was a nice touch. Anyway, we can expect new Mac Pro systems just as soon as Intel ships new product -- like within a week or two, maybe three of when that happens. Don't watch Apple for clues, you won't get any (they keep their secrets better than anyone). Watch what Intel is doing.

That said, I wouldn't buy a Mac Pro right now unless I absolutely needed one. I do kinda need one and will want a new one for use with RED, but I'm planning to buy the next major model. I'm expecting that we'll see the new models unveiled at MacWorld.

Also, if you plan to continue running Avid and other PC software, I would recommend maintaining a PC workstation for that. Booting Windows on a Mac is nice, but there are compromises to be made when doing that. I keep my Macs as Macs, with the exception of my Macbook Pro.

[jaadgy akanni]

Also, if you plan to continue running Avid and other PC software, I would recommend maintaining a PC workstation for that. Booting Windows on a Mac is nice, but there are compromises to be made when doing that. I keep my Macs as Macs, with the exception of my Macbook Pro.

Thanks Jeff. I must clarify though, that what I want to do is run both Avid and FCP on the same Mac-not the windows version of Avid, but the Mac Osx version. In fact, if I can help it, I never wanna do anything on Windows after this. I'm selling my intel Xeon 3.6Ghz PC to my brother. I'm done with Windows and PC's. Actually, I've always been a MAC guy(at least 12 years now) which is what my Protools HD studio runs on.
But like I said, the reason why I ask about ATI on a MAC versus an NVIDIA is 'cause I wanna be able to continue to use the MacOsx version of Avid on the same computer as FCP...and since the NVIDIA is the one recommended for Avid, I wanna know the specifics why ROB LOHMAN is advising us to go with an ATI.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Rob is advising us to go with ATI on the Mac because that is currently the best choice on the Mac. It most likely works best for REDCINE. I would still choose the ATI X1900XT if I were buying a Mac Pro today because it is the overall best video card option. And the Mac version of Avid Xpress should work fine on it. I don't run it myself, but I haven't heard any complaints from a few I know that do.

[Rob Lohman]

There are problems with the nvidia driver in 4K under OS X. It works, but is a lot slower than the ATI. Maybe Leopard will change it.... we'll see

[jaadgy akanni]

There are problems with the nvidia driver in 4K under OS X. It works, but is a lot slower than the ATI. Maybe Leopard will change it.... we'll see

Thanks Rob

[Jim Arthurs]

Booting Windows on a Mac is nice, but there are compromises to be made when doing that. I keep my Macs as Macs, with the exception of my Macbook Pro.

Jeff, what compromises are you speaking of?

I use my Macbook Pro with XP under Bootcamp and it lives booted up that way 95% of the time. Every piece of windows software I have works perfectly on it, the same as it would on an equiv. PC laptop.

I run HDRack for recording HVX200 footage and that's an extremely good test of compatibility. All other devices work as expected, including my SATA Expresscard adapter and the PCMCIA to expresscard adapter. Heck, that one works BETTER than it does when booted as a Mac, the drivers seem more stable.

The only thing I've yet to discover is that there is no good drive clone software on Windows that will clone just the PC partition. On the desktop macs that isn't an issue, as I understand it, as you can put your PC OS and files on a completely different drive...

At the moment, my plan is to get whatever new dual quad core desktop Mac comes out at the time I need it for my RED, but I see no possible hang-ups using it as good Windows workstation as well...

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Jeff, what compromises are you speaking of?

I probably should have been more specific, but mostly hardware related issues. Or should I say annoyances? Not really from a Windows point of view, but if you want to use additional hardware under windows, and then boot into OSX, you may have unsupported devices. Current video card options on the Mac just plain suck and there's no video card available for a Mac Pro that I would choose for Windows use. But in the Mac world we live with that every day. There's also the issue of accessing data between different drives/partitions on the system -- can't write to NTFS from OSX for example. I've found that for workstations, it's far more practical and functional to simply maintain individual systems. Get a DVI-DL video/USB switch like the one from Gefen and you're good to go.

I'd only consider dual-booting on a Mac Pro if budget or space constraints forced me into it. So for me, it would be a compromise.

Notebooks are a completely different story. That's why I do run Bootcamp on my Macbook Pro and I probably spend 40% of my time in Windows on that system.


The only thing I've yet to discover is that there is no good drive clone software on Windows that will clone just the PC partition. On the desktop macs that isn't an issue, as I understand it, as you can put your PC OS and files on a completely different drive...

You can load bootcamp partitions onto other drives from a Macbook Pro as well. I know of people using external Firewire drives and such for this. Haven't tried it myself.


At the moment, my plan is to get whatever new dual quad core desktop Mac comes out at the time I need it for my RED, but I see no possible hang-ups using it as good Windows workstation as well...

I plan to get the new dual quad core Mac Pro as well... But for me, I don't know if I'll put bootcamp on it with Windows. I'm thinking of getting an AJA card and they don't work between both OS's right now due to the different ROM images. I'd have to flash the card every time I boot from one OS to the other if I wanted to be able to use it in both Windows and OSX. So, minor annoyances or compromises.

[Jim Arthurs]

Interesting points Jeff, I'm sure we'll all have to revisit these topics when new systems are announced and available. I will go whatever way the smoothest, easiest path to RED editing develops... the camera wags the dog, so to speak...

[Sanjin Jukic]

"Product Mac Pro

Recommendation: Buy only if you need it - Approaching the end of a cycle *
Notes * The last Mac Pro updates only introduced an 8-Core Mac Pro, leaving the rest of the line untouched since August 2006.
Last Release April 04, 2007
Days Since Update 208 (Avg = 210)"

MORE>> (http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/)

RUMORS:

"Apple to fire up Penryn-based Mac Pros

For the second time in as many years, Mac maker Apple Inc. is awaiting the official nod from chip supplier Intel Corp. before
announcing a brawny update to its Mac Pro workstations aimed at media professionals."


MORE>> (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/18/apple_to_fire_up_penryn_based_mac_pros.html)

[dylancarter]

So if I were to get a Mac with the ATI card, I still need a Kona 3 or something to output to HD or 2k, right? I mean let's pretend I can play the 2k r3d QT wrappers back in realtime, what good does that do me if I can't get them to tape?

[Cüneyt Kaya]

i think you need a kona 3 for (2k) monitoring as well...or hd decklink.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

So if I were to get a Mac with the ATI card, I still need a Kona 3 or something to output to HD or 2k, right? I mean let's pretend I can play the 2k r3d QT wrappers back in realtime, what good does that do me if I can't get them to tape?

The ATI card (or any of the standard video cards offered by Apple) will drive VGA and DVI based displays. What sort of inputs are on the tape deck you want to output to? If it's SDI, component or other video input, you will need a card like the Kona or BlackMagic. Or you can use the AJA IO-HD Firewire 800 box.