Mac Pro for Final Cut Pro X

[Peter Cramer]

Hello,

I'm looking to get a new mac pro to run final cut pro X hd. I need hardware that can handle 1080p HD. I also want to run boot camp and play Skyrim at its highest graphic settings. Suggestions for a mac pro model?

Also, any suggestions for HDSLRs that work well with pro x?

Thanks.

[Nate Haustein]

I'd maybe....wait.

There's SUPPOSED to be a new model coming soonish:

Apple Says New Models, Designs for Mac Pro In Works, Due in 2013 (Update) - Forbes

That being said, you don't need a MacPro these days to edit 1080p video. I daresay a brand new iMac or MBP would be even faster than the current-gen MacPro. Any HDSLR is fine. Pick your favorite.

[Craig Seeman]

As I understand it, FCPX takes advantage of AVX technology found in Sandy and Ivy Bridge chips not found in MacPros (yet). I think that's one reason why people seem to report MacPros as "slower" with FCPX than Thunderbolt Macs. Right now I'd say your best bet is the new 27" iMac BTO with i7 and 2GB VRAM GPU. Otherwise I'd wait for MacPro Replacement coming in 2013 which I suspect will at least have Sandy Bridge XEON. Of course maybe the speed of a 2010/12 12 Core MacPro might outperform a Quad i7 Ivy Bridge but given the price difference and the changes I suspect are coming, I wouldn't think it was worth it.

Apple - Final Cut Pro X - All Features
Grand Central Dispatch
For even more speed, Final Cut Pro utilizes the AVX capabilities of Intel’s Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors.

[William Hohauser]

Quite frankly, my 8-coore 2009 MacPro is sometimes slower than my quad-core 2010 MacBookPro despite the better video card. However overall, it's better for processor heavy tasks like burning BluRays and effects heavy projects.

[Larry Huntington]

Do I dare trade in my Mac Pro 3,1 (2008) for a new pimped out late 2012 27" iMac? I edit in FCP X, FCP 7.3 and game in Windows (BF3)..
I simply could not afford the new thunderbolt mac pro which is in theory coming out in 2013.

current mac: Mac Pro 8 core 3.2Ghz, 10GB ram, ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB...+ lots of hard drives and a blu-ray burner

[Dave Partington]

We had an i7 iMac for a while and for most things it easily kept up with my Mac Pro (8 core, 2.8Ghz, 2009 3,1).

The ONLY reasons I'm personally still running with my Mac Pro are:

1) I like my 30" monitor for screen resolution - though I prefer the look of the iMac screen
2) I have 5 hard disks inside (one is in the second optical drive bay) with 3 configured as RAID 0
3) I have a SAS card connected to an LTO drive
4) I have an Intensity Pro Card for external monitoring

Now, as for the screen, I could swap and still be happy I suppose. You just use what's in front of you.

As for the hard disks, I suppose I could go external thunderbolt, or even USB3 on the new iMacs. Not quite as nice as having them inside, but then I wouldn't have the big tower sat under my desk, just lots of HDDs sat ON it!

The SAS card is a little more tricky. I believe a thunderbolt to SAS adapter is now available, but it's seriously expensive and I'd have to check driver compatibility with my software. It's almost half the price of an iMac just to buy this adapter, so I'd end up keeping the MacPro just for archiving!

The Intensity Pro can be replaced by the external thunderbolt unit (again, more crap on the desk) but I'm likely to run out of thunderbolt ports pretty quickly because to many of the devices are input only and don't have through connectors.

If thunderbolt is going to take off we need a lot more ports or a lot more devices to be 'through' devices.

As for the graphics cards, well, that's another thing I've upgraded over the years while keeping the base Mac Pro. Currently running a GTX285 for Premiere Pro (CUDA) but thinking about putting the HD5770 back in for FCPX.

My 17" MBP (i7 2.4Ghz) currently kills the MacPro for FCP X speed. Lots of things run in real time on the MBP but the MacPro is a little sluggish. My guess is it's the video card, hence thinking about putting an HD5770 back in.

If I were starting from scratch the iMac would be a no brainer - especially if it's for FCP X.

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

We had an i7 iMac for a while and for most things it easily kept up with my Mac Pro (8 core, 2.8Ghz, 2009 3,1).

As for the graphics cards, well, that's another thing I've upgraded over the years while keeping the base Mac Pro. Currently running a GTX285 for Premiere Pro (CUDA) but thinking about putting the HD5770 back in for FCPX.

My 17" MBP (i7 2.4Ghz) currently kills the MacPro for FCP X speed. Lots of things run in real time on the MBP but the MacPro is a little sluggish. My guess is it's the video card, hence thinking about putting an HD5770 back in.

If I were starting from scratch the iMac would be a no brainer - especially if it's for FCP X.

Believe me, it's the video card slowing FCPX down.

[Nigel Barker]

Is the GTX285 so bad for FCP X? I am just dabbling with FCP X at present as I am using Premier Pro & as the GTX285 is a CUDA card it really aids Premiere Pro performance (& After Effects & even Photoshop) so would be very reluctant to give it up.

No matter how fast the current iMac is it is still only a single quad core CPU. I see all eight cores of my dual CPU 2008 Mac Pro maxed out grinding away exporting in Premiere so I cannot believe that any iMac can compete in this operation. Surely it's the same with Compressor?

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

3) I have a SAS card connected to an LTO drive.

I just spotted this. What SAS card are you using & what software are you using with the tape drive? I just got a IBM LTO-5 drive cheap on eBay & put it into a HP Microserver (£120 after £100 cash back) with an IBM SAS card (about £100) as it was cheaper than buying an ATTO SAS card for the Mac Pro & I am in any case short on PCI slots. I haven't yet got into a regular backup regime but have been using LTFS to dump files to tape. I copy files to a 1TB DISK on the Microserver then when that is full I write to tape. I have had several trial versions of backup software but none seem particularly fast or friendly.

[Dave Partington]

Interesting solution for SAS. May look in to that. I'm using the ATTO card and Bru Producer for the software. It's never let me down and I archive / restore pretty much at will.

HOWEVER, my drive is only LTO4 so doesn't support LTFS - which I would like it to do. I've been looking at the LTO6 drives recently but they are expensive. LTO5 would be a nice in between and would at least still read the LTO4 tapes.

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

Is the GTX285 so bad for FCP X? I am just dabbling with FCP X at present as I am using Premier Pro & as the GTX285 is a CUDA card it really aids Premiere Pro performance (& After Effects & even Photoshop) so would be very reluctant to give it up.

Actually, no it's really not that bad..... it's just not quite as snappy as the ATI cards becauze NVidia's Open CL drivers are not as optimised.

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

No matter how fast the current iMac is it is still only a single quad core CPU. I see all eight cores of my dual CPU 2008 Mac Pro maxed out grinding away exporting in Premiere so I cannot believe that any iMac can compete in this operation. Surely it's the same with Compressor?

My MacBookPro is still only a single quad core i7 running at 2.4Ghz, compared to my 8 core Mac Pro at 2.8Ghz. Even so, it's snappier when editing,and rendering colour corrections etc on a long export is also marginally faster. Both have 16GB ram, so I'm assuming it's because FCP X is better using the GPU in the MBP - though I could be wrong ;)

I don't see as much CPU load from FCP X as I do in Premiere Pro, even though FCP X can export an un rendered sequence to a ProRes master file faster than Premiere Pro can.

Both can do an excellent job and right now we're so lucky we have these choices. Back in the 80s and 90s we weren't so lucky.

Media Encoder is still faster than Compressor for most things, though which does the best job of encoding depends on what you encoding to. Adobe uses a lot of third party codecs that aren't always the best.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

Interesting solution for SAS. May look in to that. I'm using the ATTO card and Bru Producer for the software. It's never let me down and I archive / restore pretty much at will.

HOWEVER, my drive is only LTO4 so doesn't support LTFS - which I would like it to do. I've been looking at the LTO6 drives recently but they are expensive. LTO5 would be a nice in between and would at least still read the LTO4 tapes.

I've been doing it on the cheap so the price of BRU PE put me off although it does look to be the most suitable for the job. I found on eBay a brand new sealed IBM internal LTO5 drive for $900 (£600) delivered from Cyprus of all places. I also subsequently found on eBay a brand new sealed IBM external enclosure for just £60 delivered so was considering hooking it up to the Mac Pro but that would require a SAS card. I like that currently tape system can be hidden somewhere instead of whirring away under my desk. LTFS is pretty neat but does mean that you need to keep a separate record of which file is on which tape. Good for backing up whole projects or whole disks though. You realistically get nearer to 1TB than 1.5TB per tape so LTO-6 would be a big jump in capacity but also in price as I again look on eBay & pick up batches of tapes at about £20 each when I see them.

[Dave Partington]

I thought LTO5 was 1.5TB native and 3TB compressed?

LTO4 is 800GB native and 1.6TB compressed. Using Bru Producer I'm getting around 725GB(ish) of footage per tape. 1TB would make things more comfortable (occasionally 725GB is a squeeze), and when projects are more in the 450GB range (which they often are) then I could get two per tape instead of one with lots of spare space.

LTO6 would be even nicer, but is beyond the price range at this time.

If you see another LTO5 for £600 let me know!!!

[Nigel Barker]

LTO5 is theoretically 1.5TB/3.0TB but when the tape is partitioned for LTFS there is an overhead plus that capacity is measured with 1000 bytes per MB as storage people usually do to make the numbers look bigger. The actual capacity when you look under Windows or Linux is under 1.3TB (measured with 1024 bytes per MB). In addition while the tape looks just like a disk from the OS point of view when you write it is still tape & new files get tagged on the end & the directory in the header partition gets updated. If you delete a file it just gets marked as removed it isn't actually gone. The only way to reclaim the space taken by deleted files is to re-initialise the tape which deletes everything. The advantage is that you can roll back if a file is accidentally deleted or you want to revert to any earlier version of the tape. This is why I find the best workflow is to copy all the files that I am going to write to tape to a 1.2TB disk partition & then dump that partition to tape. I could squeeze a little more on but 1.2TB is comfortable. When dealing with video file the compressed & uncompressed tape capacity is going to be the same as the files are incompressible.

[Craig Seeman]

Nigel as to 2008 8 Core MacPro compared to the current iMac I'd have to disagree with you.

Compare the results using Motion 5 comparing 2012 15" MBP Retinal and 2010 6 core Mac Pro
2012 Macs > Aperture and Motion

Processor technology has come a long way since 2008.
Of course it depends on whether the software takes advantage of this technology.
2008 MacPro didn't have virtual cores. I believe the 2010 MacPro does as does 2012 Ivy Bridge i7
2008 MacPro 8 Cores. 2011 and 2012 iMacs with i7, 8 Virtual Cores.
I suspect you'd find the new BTO 2012 BTO 27" iMac will be more or less equal or faster than a 2008 MacPro in many tasks.

One thing people may not be aware of is that FCPX takes advantage of AVX technology in the Sandy and Ivy Bridge chips that don't exist in any MacPros to date. That may be why many people say FCPX seems to feel faster on Thunderbolt Macs as per Dave's comments. 8 Virtual Cores and AVX support. When it comes to Premiere, time and testing will tell but if Adobe takes advantage of the 2GB VRAM nVidia GPU for CUDA (Adobe not yet certified), I'd think the 2012 BTO 27" iMac may well outperform 2008 MacPro for both Premiere and FCPX.

I can say that my 2011 15" MacPro seems to be faster than my 2008 MacPro 8 core for many FCPX tasks.