CS5 PC to Mac Compatibility; also best PC laptop

[Ryan Breedon]

Hello all

I have an amateur question which I'm hoping someone can answer. I'm a lawyer who makes short films as a hobby. I make films for entertainment at legal conferences, so that it has become a bit of a business development tool for me. The films use footage from a variety of sources, including DLSRs and RED.

I am new to CS5, having just made the jump from Final Cut. I am running CS5 on a Mac at home. I had planned to get a Macbook Pro to take on the road, so I can continue to work on projects when I'm out of town. Unfortunately, our IT people don't want to incorporate Macs into our system (bootcamp notwithstanding) and would rather just buy me a Windows machine and another license of CS5.

My question is: are CS5 file formats fully compatible between the two operating systems? ie, if I start working on a timeline on the Mac machine, can I take it with me and continue working on the Windows machine (and vice versa).

If the answer is yes, any recommendations as to what PC laptop would be best?

Thanks

Ryan

 

[Felix K.]

I think that should not be the problem. CS5 doesn't really care what system you are working on. You would have to readress all the files of course, as they might be in different folders on each computer.
Which laptop? The best you can get. Handling 4K material without a REDROCKET is not the easiest task. Especially as the Mercury Playback Engine that allows to use CUDA processing with NVidia graphic cards does not work with the mobile versions of these cards.
2 internal SSDs would be necessary I guess.

 

[Sven Seynaeve]

I think that should not be the problem. CS5 doesn't really care what system you are working on. You would have to readress all the files of course, as they might be in different folders on each computer.
Which laptop? The best you can get. Handling 4K material without a REDROCKET is not the easiest task. Especially as the Mercury Playback Engine that allows to use CUDA processing with NVidia graphic cards does not work with the mobile versions of these cards.
2 internal SSDs would be necessary I guess.

Not working with the mobile ones, with me it's working, just have a look at the patch for this....very easy to get it working , just tube it

 

[David McGavran]

Hello all

I have an amateur question which I'm hoping someone can answer. I'm a lawyer who makes short films as a hobby. I make films for entertainment at legal conferences, so that it has become a bit of a business development tool for me. The films use footage from a variety of sources, including DLSRs and RED.

I am new to CS5, having just made the jump from Final Cut. I am running CS5 on a Mac at home. I had planned to get a Macbook Pro to take on the road, so I can continue to work on projects when I'm out of town. Unfortunately, our IT people don't want to incorporate Macs into our system (bootcamp notwithstanding) and would rather just buy me a Windows machine and another license of CS5.

My question is: are CS5 file formats fully compatible between the two operating systems? ie, if I start working on a timeline on the Mac machine, can I take it with me and continue working on the Windows machine (and vice versa).

If the answer is yes, any recommendations as to what PC laptop would be best?

Thanks

Ryan

Yes we are compatible across mac and windows...

Cheers

Dave

 

[Cory Petkovsek]

I'm editing red footage on a core 2 duo with 3gb of ram, a 5400mb harddrive, and an ATI card in vegas, premier and ae. It is sufficient; not blazing, not amazing, but stable, usable and sufficient. If it's just a hobby for you something like this is fine.

However if you have money to burn on your hobby you want to get as much ram as you can get and as fast of a harddrive as you can get. At least a 7200rpm drive, or an SSD. Fast processor (core i7 if possible; no celeron/duron). Nvidia graphics card. The order of importance for system performance is the harddrive, memory, processor, graphics card (the last two differ depending on what you are actually doing). So spend your money in that order.

Cory

 

[Andrew Salter]

A question David a bit off thread. lm getting really sold on editing on CS5 (just finished a 7 min production using all native files EX1080 25p and P2 HD plus a little bit of DV on a timeline of 1280 x 720 due to the DV footage) mentioned in another thread l have a Mac with the following Model

Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.26 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 8
L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per processor): 8 MB
Memory: 16 GB
Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285

Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme 3D card

two questions

Once l start using Red material once the scarlet and Epic S appear do l need to get a Redrocket card for editing and additionally can l run Da Vinci Resolve from a PPro time with an EDL using any format EX P2 RED.

Thanks

 

[David McGavran]

A question David a bit off thread. lm getting really sold on editing on CS5 (just finished a 7 min production using all native files EX1080 25p and P2 HD plus a little bit of DV on a timeline of 1280 x 720 due to the DV footage) mentioned in another thread l have a Mac with the following Model

Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.26 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 8
L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per processor): 8 MB
Memory: 16 GB
Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285

Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme 3D card

two questions

Once l start using Red material once the scarlet and Epic S appear do l need to get a Redrocket card for editing and additionally can l run Da Vinci Resolve from a PPro time with an EDL using any format EX P2 RED.

Thanks

You won't need a rocket it just makes things snappier....

I am not the one to ask about resolve...

Cheers

Dave

 

[Paul Steinberg]

I just picked up a Dell XPS 15 primarily for data wrangling but I'm keen to see how CS5 runs on it. The price was great when compared against a 15" Macbook Pro with 8Gb RAM and SSD.

Dell XPS 15
Win 7/64 premium
i7-740QM CPU
8Gb DDR3 RAM
nVidia Geforce GT 435M 2GB
256Gb SSD
2x USB 3.0
1x eSATA
Expresscard 34
Bluetooth 3.0
HDMI

It won't arrive for a couple weeks so I don't know if the "CS5 hack" will get the Mercury Playback Engine to work with the mobile nVidia card but it has ports for pretty much every highspeed storage solution on the horizon. I could buy a nice external eSATA RAID and a copy of Premiere CS5 with the $1000 price difference between this machine and the Mac.

 

[Paul Leeming]

I just picked up a Dell XPS 15 primarily for data wrangling but I'm keen to see how CS5 runs on it. The price was great when compared against a 15" Macbook Pro with 8Gb RAM and SSD.

Dell XPS 15
Win 7/64 premium
i7-740QM CPU
8Gb DDR3 RAM
nVidia Geforce GT 435M 2GB
256Gb SSD
2x USB 3.0
1x eSATA
Expresscard 34
Bluetooth 3.0
HDMI

It won't arrive for a couple weeks so I don't know if the "CS5 hack" will get the Mercury Playback Engine to work with the mobile nVidia card but it has ports for pretty much every highspeed storage solution on the horizon. I could buy a nice external eSATA RAID and a copy of Premiere CS5 with the $1000 price difference between this machine and the Mac.

Nice, I'm looking at the same system to buy soon. Let us know how it goes once you get it!

Cheers from Tokyo,

Paul

 

[Ryan Breedon]

I just picked up a Dell XPS 15 primarily for data wrangling but I'm keen to see how CS5 runs on it. The price was great when compared against a 15" Macbook Pro with 8Gb RAM and SSD.

Dell XPS 15
Win 7/64 premium
i7-740QM CPU
8Gb DDR3 RAM
nVidia Geforce GT 435M 2GB
256Gb SSD
2x USB 3.0
1x eSATA
Expresscard 34
Bluetooth 3.0
HDMI

It won't arrive for a couple weeks so I don't know if the "CS5 hack" will get the Mercury Playback Engine to work with the mobile nVidia card but it has ports for pretty much every highspeed storage solution on the horizon. I could buy a nice external eSATA RAID and a copy of Premiere CS5 with the $1000 price difference between this machine and the Mac.

Thanks Paul - that's actually the Windows machine I was looking at also. Please let us know how it works when you get it.

Thanks everyone else for the input.

Ryan

 

[Paul Steinberg]

Looks like some part I put into this system is back ordered a bit and the machine isn't scheduled to arrive until Dec 27. I don't have any Mac infrastructure so getting a machine with all those ports for $2K made this an easy decision over a Mac Book Pro.

 

[sandro-bachmann]

Hi People

So its posible to edit with CS5 on a MBP ?

How long would it take, to output lets say a 50 min. project in 4k?

thanks

 

[Frank Cueto]

in 4k!?

 

[Gautam Singh]

I just picked up a Dell XPS 15 primarily for data wrangling but I'm keen to see how CS5 runs on it. The price was great when compared against a 15" Macbook Pro with 8Gb RAM and SSD.

Dell XPS 15
Win 7/64 premium
i7-740QM CPU
8Gb DDR3 RAM
nVidia Geforce GT 435M 2GB
256Gb SSD
2x USB 3.0
1x eSATA
Expresscard 34
Bluetooth 3.0
HDMI

It won't arrive for a couple weeks so I don't know if the "CS5 hack" will get the Mercury Playback Engine to work with the mobile nVidia card but it has ports for pretty much every highspeed storage solution on the horizon. I could buy a nice external eSATA RAID and a copy of Premiere CS5 with the $1000 price difference between this machine and the Mac.

Hi Paul,

I'm new to this forum, but was searching for discussions on whether one should go in for a PC or a Mac and came across your post. I'm considering buying a Dell XPS, so am eager to know your experience. I'd be loading it with PPro CS5 with the intention of editing HDSLR footage at 1080p natively on it.

 

[Paul Steinberg]

I ended up returning that XPS notebook. When it arrived the expresscard slot that it was supposed to have was actually an SD card slot. Customer service from Dell is a TOTAL nightmare now. Transferred from department to department to department only to reach someone who tells you "you've been transferred to the wrong department you have to call back and start over."

Good news is that the Sony F-series notebooks had all the features I was looking for including Expresscard and you can hot rod them up. I'm not running PPro on mine but I am running RedCineX and Photoshop/Bridge CS5 and they're running smoooooth. Win7/64 is stable, I have a small four-drive RAID connected by either eSATA or USB3 that keeps up with 1/4 res R3D playback so DSLR editing would be cake. They do some with an nVidia chipset so you may get the Mecury Playback Engine working with the 'hack'.

The key for me is expresscard since notebooks only have the one eSATA conector. I have CF reader/2x FW800 port/2x eSATA port expresscards for offloading data. The Sandisk Expresscard CF reader (http://www.sandisk.com/products/readers-accessories/sandisk-extreme-pro-expresscard-adapter) has been offloading at around 85Mb/s from Transend 600x cards.

I really searched high and low for this machine and IMHO it's the most powerful/versatile mainstream notebook out there right now.

Good luck with your purchase.

 

[adam r]

I'm editing red footage on a core 2 duo with 3gb of ram, a 5400mb harddrive, and an ATI card in vegas, premier and ae. It is sufficient; not blazing, not amazing, but stable, usable and sufficient. If it's just a hobby for you something like this is fine.

However if you have money to burn on your hobby you want to get as much ram as you can get and as fast of a harddrive as you can get. At least a 7200rpm drive, or an SSD. Fast processor (core i7 if possible; no celeron/duron). Nvidia graphics card. The order of importance for system performance is the harddrive, memory, processor, graphics card (the last two differ depending on what you are actually doing). So spend your money in that order.

Cory

... what, editing R3D footage on a C2D with PPro CS5? I thought you needed raid 5, and as many cpu cores and as much ram as possible ... ???

 

[Eric Santiago]

I ended up returning that XPS notebook. When it arrived the expresscard slot that it was supposed to have was actually an SD card slot. Customer service from Dell is a TOTAL nightmare now. Transferred from department to department to department only to reach someone who tells you "you've been transferred to the wrong department you have to call back and start over...

yijkes! I feel for you. I guess Steve wasnt kidding when he said "it just works"
dont take that the wrong way but that was a shot at Dell. I was a big Dell fan even though Im pro Mac. Every PC that was purchased at all companies/friends/family I had a hand in was Dell (and the occasional BOXX).
That was over 5 years ago. Now recently a few machines died at work (4 years old) and just dealing with Dell over the phone was enough for me to give up on them for any future Enterprise purchases
I will still use them for home but lately most folks I know have been buying Apple.

 

[Gautam Singh]

Thanks, Paul. Interestingly, I've had a pretty similar experience with Dell here in India. Their call centre has an unbelievingly callous attitude to customers. They couldn't find a person who could give me the information I required on the XPS, and kept on forwarding the call. It's quite discouraging, and its making me reconsider whether I really want to go in for a Dell, even though I'm back to where I started-what's a good, budget PC laptop for CS5?

 

[Paul Steinberg]

I've been a Dell user for about 10 years now but I'll never go back. Took 90 minutes to place my order over the phone, laptop arrives missing components I need, 2x 1 hour calls to tech support to find out that they don't even offer the components I was told I could get, a final 90 minute call to return the machine.

Take a look at the Sony F-series notebooks. Same spec's as Dell XPS. Similar price. Mine has been rock solid.

 

[Nick Burridge]

Not to turn this into a Dell thread, but I thought I'd chime in with a counter-story to some of the negativity for the sake of balance... took a lifetime to get someone on the phone (overheating issues with an XPS laptop) they had a tech over to my office the next day, changed out the motherboard and graphics card on the spot. At no cost. In New Zealand. I can't think of many companies with a support network like that.

But yeah, their call centre is hella awful.