What Mac for XHA1 HD 25f?

[Giles Buchanan]

I know this isn't the appropriate page to post this but, people usually reply quicker on this one :)

Just looking for some advice on an Apple Editing system. I'm currently on a Dell XPS 2gb ram with Adobe Premeire Pro 2. It took 12 hours to render about 5 minutes of HD footage; this is hopeless for me! SD works nice and smoothly but I need to shoot in HD so I am looking to get a new editing system and I'm looking into getting a Mac.

I have never had one before so I'm looking for advice on what system I should get and at what power, ram, accesories etc...; What will I need to edit HD from my XHA1? (in 25f too! Does FCS support this?)

I'd prefer to get a MacBook Pro (over a MacPro) for the mobility but I don't know if it will cut the mustard, hopefully somebody can tell me that it can.

I will buy with FCS and my maximum budget is no more than £3000

I'd be so grateful for any advice,

Giles B

[Jeremy Naus]

Hi,

I edit my 25f using FCS2 on my MacBook Pro (17 inch) of last year (end 2006).
I have a 100gb 7200rpm hard disk in it and 2GB of Ram.

It pretty much edits smoothly. I've yet to render with it (since I previously did my work in iMovie until I got the money for FCS2), but from my edits I believe it'll normally render ok.
I love the fact that during edit I can see my effects in real time (haven't tried anything fancy yet though).

Since I bought it the MacBook got an update or 2, so those who are now around should be a bit more powerfull than mine.
But also check: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/ which is a great help when someone is thinking of buying a new Mac. Sometimes it really pays to wait a couple of weeks :-)

Welcome to the Mac World :-)

[Josh Laronge]

Giles,
FCS2 does support the XHA1 in 25f. As with any computer, faster processor and more ram is always better. With HDV, any of the MacBook Pros, iMacs or MacPros are fine. Each has their advantages:

MBP = portability
iMac = value
MacPro = expandability

You need to decide what is most important to you and your needs. Remember when pricing to add in the cost of RAM, you want a minimum of 2gb and also, storage drives.

--JL

[Jeremy Naus]

In the meantime I did a render of a 12min 25f clip, including sound and some minor effects (no motion effects yet). I didn't resize the clip.
The total render time was some 50 minutes, which resulted in a 2+GB mov file.

[Greg Joyce]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Naus

Hi,

Since I bought it the MacBook got an update or 2, so those who are now around should be a bit more powerfull than mine.
But also check: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/ which is a great help when someone is thinking of buying a new Mac. Sometimes it really pays to wait a couple of weeks :-)

Welcome to the Mac World :-)

I'm trying to decide this myself. See this thread: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=112276

On the one hand, it makes sense to wait to buy the latest and greatest. On the other, it makes sense to see how the new MacPros and new operating system will work before relying on them. I'm leaning toward buying now because the new machines may not be available until January.

[Alessandro Nucci]

I have an iMac from last year lineup (Core 2 Duo 2 Ghz, only 1 Gb Ram). I edit HDV in Final Cut Pro smoothly and can even make crossfades and color correction in real time (in the canvas window). Final conforming and converting to other file formats are a little slow, it's true, but you can't make them while you are making something else with the Mac... today I was converting a 30min edit to Apple Pro Res and in the meanwhile I had 5 firefox tabs open, iTunes and so on... everything was ok.

Alex

[Giles Buchanan]

Ok cool thanks for the advice. The MacPro does seem to be the most expensive but also the most attractive because of the expandability which would definately pay off in years to come.

Think I'm going to wait a little and see if they bring out a new one though my only fear is that they will be savagely expensive and will be out of my league.

Also, I was looking at a 'RAID' card. I kind of understand what it does, but do you really need one for video editing? If the s*** really hits the fan you could surely just re-capture the footage. And how often do Hard Drives go bang!? That some what frightens me! Do apple HD's do this often?

[Jeremy Naus]

RAID has some advantages other than backup.
* Raid0 actually uses 2 HD's at the same time when saving files. Thus making write tasks faster. Problem is that when one of the 2 HD crashes you loose all your data, since a file is split over the 2 HD's.
* RAID1 uses 2 HD's but they are exact copies of each other, this is only used if you want an automatic backup.

OSX gives software solutions for RAID0 and RAID1

Now the best of both worlds, as far as I found out, is RAID5.

Raid5 uses 3 HD's. The your file is split in 2 and saved on 2HD's and on the 3rd HD a checksum is saved. When one HD goes dead, the info on the other two is used to rebuild the crashed HD. So with RAID5 when a HD crashes you haven't lost your data.

I hope this gives you some info, and I hope I got everything right.

So for video-editing, I would suggest RAID5 or RAID0, as they would give you a faster file access. With the added warning that if a HD crashes with RAID0 you've lost you're data. But at this moment I haven't had a HD crashed in more than 5 years.

[Cole McDonald]

I used to manage a large installation of xServes which were both raid0 and raid1 depending on the (huge) database we had running on it. We had RAID failures all the time with the raid0 drives...not drive failures, raid failures. Always keep backups...the rule of thumb for backing up is "how much work are you willing to redo?" if you're only willing to redo one day's work, backup daily...one week, weekly...etc.

Now you can get a fibre channel card and run an xServe Raid off of a desktop mac with PCI...that provides hardware raid5 with hotswap up to a gajillion TB...um...10.5Tb max. That would hold you for a bit. That way if a drive goes belly up, you just pull it and swap in a new one while you're working. The machine automagically reformats and populates it with your data.

http://www.apple.com/xserveraid

[Roland Oeller]

Originally Posted by Giles Buchanan

...
Think I'm going to wait a little and see if they bring out a new one though my only fear is that they will be savagely expensive and will be out of my league.

... do you really need a RAID for video editing? If the s*** really hits the fan you could surely just re-capture the footage. ...

I am currently waiting for the next Mac Pro iteration. I´d say you can expect a 2500 $ starting price as with the current model. Don´t buy a current Mac Pro! The model has neither been upgraded nor reduced in price for over a year now! The maximum waiting time should be until Macworld in January 2008. Some people think it will come out earlier but I remain skeptical. It is expensive, yes. If I didn´t care about display-inputs, I would probably buy a maxed-out 24" iMac for around 2.200 $. But since I already own a 24" screen and also use that for other things like Blu-Ray over my PS3, I will go all the way with the new Mac Pro. Upgrade the RAM and Harddrives yourself if possible, the Apple-Store rips you off! So just buy the base-configuration with the processor option you want.

I am going to add 2 HDDs to the Mac for editing and combine them into a Software-RAID 0 (striped) so I get more speed out of them.
You were asking about RAID 1 (mirrored): I don´t think you really need it as long as you backup your project-file so you can batch capture again. I am pretty lucky with harddrives, I never had one fail on me. I am currently writing on a PC which is 5 years old and still running on it´s original first harddrive. Unfortunately I don´t know what manufacturer it´s from. I´ll have to open the case and look some day. :)