My Mac Pro and what I need

[Jawad Mir]

Hi everyone,
So I have read many discussions on this and everyone have different opinions.

So I am running following

2x2.4 Quad Core Intel Xeon
Adobe CS5 (will upgrade soon)
14 gig ram
ATI Radeon 5770

At the moment, when I play footage, it jitters of course. I am going to be editing 1080p and/or 2k.

Any recommendations

[Charlie Perera]

Hi Jawad

I haven't worked with native r3d's myself in Adobe applications, but have seen it working on a PC.

Here's a link to a video Tom Lowe posted a few months ago demonstrating a 4K workflow in Premiere CS5.5: http://vimeo.com/31104360 (His timelapses are very cool)

Also, here is also a link to an article which explains the benefits of the Mercury Playback Engine + a compatible CUDA Nvidia Card: http://www.cinema5d.com/news/?p=10094

I'm sure a more qualified user could make some useful suggestions, but I would suggest looking into:

1) Your storage performance. A RAID (0 or 5) will give you more hard drive bandwidth for working with files like the r3d's

2) Your playback quality settings for r3d's in Premiere/After Effects. (Even with a compatible CUDA card, it appears 1/2 quality is around the limit for smooth playback)

3) A compatible Nvidia CUDA graphics card

And upgrading to CS5.5 as you mentioned.