FCS2 on G5

[SashkaMish]

Did anyone try FCS2 on Macintosh G5?
I wonder if this upgrade is worth the money as I have three G5s which are working with FCS1 with no problems.
But, yesterday I've attended a presentation of FCS2 and Color looks impressive enough to buy the whole suite just to get it.
Also, I asked the guy who was presenting FCS2 about his setup and when he said that it was 8-core with 8Gb of memory my enthusiasm washed down a bit. If I will have to buy a whole new hardware just to run Color and ProRes then it is just not worth it.

[Eirik Tyrihjel]

Did anyone try FCS2 on Macintosh G5?

...the box is on my desk, waiting for me to finish what I am doing before I install...

[David Battistella]

Hey,

the answer to this is right on the Apple website. here:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/specs.html


David

[SashkaMish]

Hey,

the answer to this is right on the Apple website. here:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/specs.html


David

I know all the theoretical details but there is a difference between software working on minimum requirement computers and working on a computer that can be used for work.
I really wouldn't like to kill my perfectly nice FCS1 setup for a barely working FCS2 whatever the advantages are.
So, all reports about FCS2 on G5 are welcome.

[Charles Perkins]

did you go to the final cut studio tour in london?

i was there also. The color demo was awesome! and the motion 3d stuff is also amazing.

I cant wait to get my Macpro and get to work on it.

[SashkaMish]

did you go to the final cut studio tour in london?

i was there also. The color demo was awesome! and the motion 3d stuff is also amazing.

I cant wait to get my Macpro and get to work on it.

Nope. Zagreb, Croatia.
Color demo is very interesting, but I have to say that I was unimpressed with Motion. Looks to me that it is all looks and did not see much of use. It is far beyond what I expected when rumors came from Apple that Motion should become new Shake.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

All working here on a G5 quad. I haven't had much time to dig into Color -- just installed it all about 12 hours ago. But it seems a bit sluggish compared to what was shown in their demo video. Granted, they were running on a 3GHz (quad or 8 core) Mac Pro with X1900XT video card. I'm running a G5 Quad with 8GB RAM and FX4500 video. The FX4500 is a dinosaur compared to the X1900 when it comes to shader and texel performance, this is why Apple recommends the X1900XT video card.

[SashkaMish]

All working here on a G5 quad. I haven't had much time to dig into Color -- just installed it all about 12 hours ago. But it seems a bit sluggish compared to what was shown in their demo video. Granted, they were running on a 3GHz (quad or 8 core) Mac Pro with X1900XT video card. I'm running a G5 Quad with 8GB RAM and FX4500 video. The FX4500 is a dinosaur compared to the X1900 when it comes to shader and texel performance, this is why Apple recommends the X1900XT video card.

Thanks for info.
I have a feeling that I will buy FCS2 as it is not such a problem. But I also have a feeling that I will not use it much.
Is there any info on possibility of dual system (FCS1 and FCS2) on same computer? Could be nice to have speed of FCP5 for editing and Color for final touch.
Well, it seems that I will have to try it.

[Chris Armstrong]

Just got FCS2 running on a dual G5 2.7 with Kona 2 and Nvidia 6800 Ultra DDL. ProRes runs great in everything except the 1080 Kona 10bit output. Unfortunately that's too much to handle smoothly. (Will run fine if the Kona is not outputting).

Color on the other hand is a different story... Color has "some issues" with Nvidia cards apparently. I can only run Color in 8 bit mode and it gets like 8 fps. From what I've read though, this is entirely an Nvidia card issue and it should/would run smoothly on an ATI card.

[SashkaMish]

Just got FCS2 running on a dual G5 2.7 with Kona 2 and Nvidia 6800 Ultra DDL. ProRes runs great in everything except the 1080 Kona 10bit output. Unfortunately that's too much to handle smoothly. (Will run fine if the Kona is not outputting).

Color on the other had is a different story... Color has a "some issues" with Nvidia cards apparently. I can only run Color in 8 bit mode and it gets like 8 fps. From what I've read though, this is entirely an Nvidia card issue and it should/would run smoothly on an ATI card.

So it looks like we will all have to buy new Intel based Macs.
Do not see it as very nice move from Apple, especially when you count all the costs and the fact that no existing hardware from G5s will work with MacPro.
MacPro 6k, extra disks at least 2k, HD SDI card about 2k (3.5k if you like IO HD to convert all to ProRes), computer monitors at least 2k, video monitor up to 5k...
All in all, moving to FCS2 will cost you about 20k (USD in US or EUR in Europe as prices are not the same). Moving from FCP4 to FCP5 (in fact FCS1) had a cost of about 0.5k for upgrade and that is it.
From this point of view I can say that I will not move to FCS2 very soon.
Thank you all for info and help.