Help With Editing Configuration [Archive]

Levis Minford

10-26-2011, 06:26 AM

Hello,
First post here. It's amazing to see the sharing of info and interaction among you all; the forum is a great source of information and truly a humbling experience for people like me.
We want to set up an in-house (footage, not sound) editing configuration around Mac Pro for 2D and 3D features shot on our Epic Ms. I have scoured the forum pretty well and gleaned as much info on the subject as I could find. The result is that I have only a rather vague idea of what is needed, particularly as far as hardware is concerned. I think CS5.5 and Final Cut Pro looks to be the answer on software.
I would greatly appreciate some idea on the hardware front. If this has been addressed somewhere on the forum already, my apologies.
Cheers,
Levis

Brian Merlen

11-02-2011, 12:09 PM

FCP needs everything converted to prores, which is sort of a pain for some. CS5.5 is great because you can work with the data natively in R3d itself without needing to transcode. That being said FCPX is currently lacking many of the features FCP7 had in it. There are many threads on many sites that detail what is missing, the recent update helped get some of the missing features back, but not all, people are essentially still not on board with FCPX yet. So FCP7 is more useful then FCPX at the moment features wise, but FCP7 is only 32 Bit, which basically means your mac pro will be using like 1.5 cores and 4gbs of ram ONLY when using it, which is rather silly to do. There is a free trial on both CS5.5 and FCPX, so I recommend you try both of them prior to purchase but from my own tinkering CS5.5 is my preference. Feel free to try both of them though and decide for yourself.

Getting back to hardware CS5.5 will run best if you use a CUDA enabled video card, though it will function without one too, just not in real time. Quaddro 4000 for Mac is your best bet, you can score them for like $800 to $1000 depending where you look online.

If you go with the FCPX/7 route a Red Rocket card would be useful for transcoding to prores in real time. You will find yourself probably using Red NLE programs to do prores transcodes too, they are free from Red.com. The Rocket isn't really needed for CS5.5, more so for if you go with FCP.

No matter which NLE you use, buy OWC or Crucial third party Ram to avoid spending a small fortune on Apple Ram. Same with hard drives, SSD's or GPU's. Apple charges way too much for pieces you can buy else where easily.

PS a Mac Pro can cut R3ds without getting a Rocket or 4000 GPU, all they do is speed up the process. You can get away without using them but render times will be really long. If you can afford an Epic M chances are the GPU or Rocket is in your budget too, and it will speed things up dramatically.