Bunch of questions about FCS 2 by a Mac-newbie...

[Kyle Self]

If you wanna use final cut buy a mac. If you wanna stick with what your using then don't. It really is that simple rather than the torture session your trying to create.

Any of the major editing software packages have their good and bad. What makes you faster is how well you know it. most of the software packages want you to work in a specific manner, go with it. Where people screw up is trying to make an avid system work like final cut or vice versa.

Decide whatever "YOU" think is going to work best for you and go with it.

K

[Nate Weaver]

Seems the original question was speed issues on iMac vs. Macbook Pro vs. Mac Pro.

If editing native HDV (which works very well in FCP), I suggest the Mac Pro. Then the iMac. Then the Macbook. The last two will certainly handle HDV, but will be a less sprightly than the tower.

RAM affects FCP in the complicated timeline department. Say, if you have an hour long project with hundreds of cuts, you're better off with more RAM than less. 1.5 or 2 is the minimum these days with FCP6. RAM also, strangely enough, impacts RT effects performance...RT effects can sometimes bog down after a few seconds if you're starved for RAM.

So my executive summary would be, get the tower if you can afford it. You can get by with the others, but you may get frustrated with complicated HD projects.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Thank you very much for the answers.

Michael, indeed, I heard many bad things about Vista too, not that it's maybe a bad program, but it has some serious issues, certainly for multimedia work.
I already know a bit how to work with FCP from past experience, and indeed, online tutorials and books can get you a long way. I'll do some of those too.

Nate, thanks! Indeed, that was more of my original question, with which macs will FCS2 work best considering the material.
Thanks for the information! Comment on Real Time is indeed pretty important if you want to work faster.

[Brandon Whiteside]

Hey.

I understand your feelings of anger to the others. I was in the same situation as you, just about a year ago. I was starting to get really angry with the pc I had; it was crashing, unstable, and overall, just a pain in my ass. I looked into the Apple stuff. It seemed awesome. So, I went into an Apple retail store (I'm not sure if you have those). I played around with all of the different computers. First, I eliminated the laptops. Then I considered my options with the Mac Pro and the 24" iMac. The 20" was ruled out as well, because I didn't want that small of a screen. So after about a month of research, I went with a 24" iMac. With 2 gigs of ram, 256 megs of video ram, 500gigs of HDD, and a 2.4ghz processor. I ruled out the Mac Pro because I didn't have 2,400 to start with, along with another 2000 for a 30" monitor. I have had zero problems with my iMac to date. i run final cut studio, iLife, iWork, Office, CS3, and some older Macromedia programs. Now keep in mind, macs are just computers, and they have their bugs and moments. I can count the problems ive had one one hand, and there was nothing that couldnt be fixed with a simple restart. fcs has had zero problems. i love it and i would reccomend it to anyone.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Thank you Brian.
Yes, it's a bit frustrating, especially because in my 2 or 3 years of posting on Dvinfo, I never had an experience like this thread before. Now there is someone in this same subforum, asking pretty much the same things as I do (thread title: "Potential Mac Newbie - Hardware Questions", also about switching from Premiere to FCP) and everybody just reacts on his questions, no one who told him what they told me - don't get me wrong, I'm happy for the guy :-p. It also seems at this moment, this thread is becoming a bit more useful, some people have commented with nice information which really helped me a bit.
And I'm happy that the good information is coming now, so I'm not going to go back about whining about the first responses :-D (although this is a bit of it, sorry!)
Well, I've talked to someone about it, about the Mac thing, someone who is a pretty well known actor in Belgium, and he has his own production company (very, VERY little at this moment) that he would like to expand with companyfilms, commercials, maybe even weddings, other commercial stuff,...
And if we can get some pretty big projects, he would like to invest (for me) in a Mac Pro with all the necessary bells and whistles.
But this is in a very early stage, so I don't know yet, but I'm very keen in learning more about Mac. He works on a Mac, and if I see it in action, or some tutorials on the Final Cut Studio website, it's really nice to see how things are going on the Mac.
He is serious about doing productions with me though, he already got me 2 jobs. Great guy.
And some things in Final Cut Pro just go FASTER (really, how much times do I have to tell it: why in gods name, in Premiere, don't you have a one-button for unlinking Video and Audio on the timeline?! It saves soooo much time and is so much easier!).
And I consider the Final Cut Studio 2 package a better buy and much more capability then the Adobe Production studio.
That being said, I haven't got many (hardly any) crashes with my PC.

If you have any other experiences from your switch, responses are welcome.
I don't want to make it a Mac versus PC thing, because both have their pro's and con's but from what I've seen (and some experience) I really like Mac more for the kind of work that I do.

Best regards, and thanks,

[Lisa Shofner]

I think i posted in the other thread you mention also. Since this is relevant here, I'll post.

Get the best you can afford as far as processor and ram. I have been using a 20" iMac for almost a year now for Final Cut Studio. The only issues I've had with it so far is runing a little slowly when I used 4 different effects from Magic Bullet, 2 of them customized - then the preview was a bit slow (so i just rendered the clip to save the frustration). I have only editied in SD though, so I can't comment on HDV capabilities.

My iMac is the same basic stats you posted, it's the 20" and does support a second monitor via DVI connection. I didn't see the point in spending an extra $500 for the 24" with the same specs -- i could buy another monitor for less than that (not a Apple, but a Dell flatpanel or something nice).

I'm actually going to look into maxing out the ram to 3GB (thats the max on the white iMac i have). Ram and adding external drives is about all you can do with the iMac which is the only drawback. When I want to upgrade I will have to buy a new machine, by then I'll just go with a Mac Pro.I got the Imact because it was comperably priced to my new PC and comperable specs - because at the time I didn't know what direction I wanted to go with editing.

I have not tried editing on the Macbook Pro because I don't have one yet.

I use Final Cut Pro 5.1 and the rest of FCS HD


Hope this helps.

[Bill Davis]

[QUOTE=Mathieu Ghekiere;733785]Thank you Brian.
Yes, it's a bit frustrating, especially because in my 2 or 3 years of posting on Dvinfo, I never had an experience like this thread before. Now there is someone in this same subforum, asking pretty much the same things as I do (thread title: "Potential Mac Newbie - Hardware Questions", also about switching from Premiere to FCP) and everybody just reacts on his questions, no one who told him what they told me - don't get me wrong, I'm happy for the guy :-p. It also seems at this moment, this thread is becoming a bit more useful, some people have commented with nice information which really helped me a bit.
And I'm happy that the good information is coming now, so I'm not going to go back about whining about the first responses :-D (although this is a bit of it, sorry!)


So Mathieu, here's a gentle question for you.

Since your post DID NOT get the results you wanted.

And Aron's post DID get the kind of results you want.

What are the differences between your post and his?


Here are some observations.

You posted 1132 words.

Your original post was very complex and (I'm sure, unintentially) perhaps a bit demanding in terms of the effort you were requesting of others...

consider this example from your original post:

"- Can you convert to all other options (I take it you use 'compressor' for this? sorry, really don't know so much about mac at this stage) for instance, HDV to Apple Prores 422, DVCProHD, SD,... with either of the 3 above mentioned setups, and how long does it take?"

It sounds like you're asking us to provide specific time benchmarks on conversions to "all other options" on THREE SETUPS. Wow, that looks like hundreds (or even thousands!) of potential combinations - yikes, I'm not TOUCHING THAT!

And as I scanned your post - it seemed to me it entailed a LARGE penalty in time and effort to wade through those 1100+ words to get to what you wanted and to determine if I could help.


Aron's post was 155 words. It was simple and accessible.

It took me a few stress-free seconds to read it and decide if I could help.

Again, I'm not trying to be critical. Just pointing out that when you don't get the help you're looking for - one of the MOST useful things you can do is to ask if it's because others don't WANT to help, or if you're doing something that makes it DIFFICULT for others to help.

I think your original query was so complex that it simply turned people off from trying to help.

Perhaps I could share something that's been very helpful to me in this area - it's a quote from the French Mathematician Blaise Pascal, paraphrased and posted above the computer where I used to write my magazine column.

"I would have written you a shorter letter if I had more time."

I hope this makes sense and it and the observations I made are useful to you.

Take care.

[Ivan Snoeckx]

Great topic you started Mathieu! Lots of good information because I'm also looking into an Apple's Final Cut Studio 2 setup for editing XDCAM HD.

In 14 days we will have IBC 2007 in our northern neighbour country, so maybe it's a good idea to visit it. If the guys on the Apple booth can convince me, I will switch to Apple after working for more then 20 years of Microsoft Windows computer.

[Kalunga Lima]

In reference to the initial quation, I don´t think it's only a matter of comparing editing software. At any given moment, one may have features the other does not yet have (ie Priemiere can now author Blu-Ray while FCP Studio now has Color) but sooner or later one can expect the other will catch up as they all in constant evolution

The more significant issue for me, is that with FCP, you are also committing yourself to a specific platform manufactor/OS environment. As a long time Premiere/Matrox DTV and LE configurator, who now exclusively uses FCP, there is still some things I just like in Premiere, but to me the choice goes beyond the editing software itself. I just plain LOVE working on Macs: I love the way they look, I love the way they feel and I love the software/hardware integration... and consequently have simply adapted myself to the software (and the odd short-comings) .

I'm not sure how how one can begin to quantify this aspect of using Final Cut Studio.

best of luck

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Originally Posted by Ivan Snoeckx

Great topic you started Mathieu! Lots of good information because I'm also looking into an Apple's Final Cut Studio 2 setup for editing XDCAM HD.

In 14 days we will have IBC 2007 in our northern neighbour country, so maybe it's a good idea to visit it. If the guys on the Apple booth can convince me, I will switch to Apple after working for more then 20 years of Microsoft Windows computer.

Hi Ivan, I already have a ticket for IBC, I went last year for the first time, I really found it great to see all those things in action. I'll try to go this year, but I don't know if I'll make it. Anyhow, I already have a ticket.

Originally Posted by Bill Davis

So Mathieu, here's a gentle question for you...

Hi Bill, yes, you are probably right in the fact that I asked too many questions in one thread. It really boills down to indeed hardware questions in relation too Final Cut Studio 2.
I have this problem in general, I often ain't the type of guy who typs short answers or letters...
So indeed, my fault on that one, and wasn't angry about getting NO reactions (although it was a bit dissapointing, but my own fault), I was angry about getting some 3 responses like: "stick to what you got" and "FCP won't make you a better editor". That was a bit insulting to me.
But let's leave it at that, I'm very thankful and in general full or praise of this community, and I did post a too complex thread, although it seems it's catching up now.

Lisa and Kalunga, thanks for your reactions!
I think I would go for a Mac Pro, because now I've gotten a response from someone that he would like to invest in a Mac system once we got the ball rolling with commercial projects. So it's not about 'me buying a mac' anymore, it's now more about 'what, as a production house, will be the best buy, and suits our needs', so the budget is larger now, although first there have to come so good paying projects (we have a good one now, but it ain't enough).

Thanks for the replies,

[Floris van Eck]

I just switched to Final Cut from Adobe Premiere and I really like it so far. Lots of new things to figure out but I am glad I can leave Premiere behind. I really hated the frequent crashes, the troubles with HDV playback and I really hate Adobe as a company lately. Even if you buy legal software from them you are continously bothered with their anti-piracy measures. Like Adobe Updater getting updates to update itself. Crazy stuff.

My advice (for how much's it is worth):

Get a Mac Pro, no iMac. Mac Pro is the most expendable.
Get something like 4GB of RAM. Good enough for HDV.
Get a lot of harddisks (and use a RAID 0 array