1080p workflow and all the other stuff

[Thomas Mark Schaefer]

I'm planning my purchases to support my prosumer 1080p workflow when I get a Scarlet. The question is whether to switch from Sony Vegas on PC to an iMac or not.


Starting from the end, I'll need a good SATA BluRay burner that is compatible with Sony DVD Architect. I figure this will run me about $230. Store.apple.com doesn't discuss BluRay burners as an upgrade to an iMac. Maybe they are included?

I'll get a second monitor for preview, 1920X1080, and use my current monitor for the UI. I figure this will run me about $200, but I wonder if this is a point where the 27" iMac would really shine. I'm not sure if the iMac supports a second monitor (DVI or HDMI), but there are enough pixels that maybe a second monitor isn't necessary.

The plan is to get a new NVIDIA or ATI graphics card with 2 outputs, but I'm waiting to see if Vegas 9+ or Premier are going to support CUDA or DirectCompute, so this will probably be the last decision that is made. I estimate $200.

I want to get an external eSATA RAID enclosure that supports 1 drive failure (I've got horror stories to justify this). I saw a 4-bay by StarTech that looks like it will work well with the green Western Digital 1TB drives. I estimate $240 + 4*$80 ~= $600.

I'm thinking about a fast solid state system drive. This machine will be dedicated to video editing, so a 64GB one will do. ~$250.

An upgrade to 64 bit windows 7 on an I7 with 8 GB of RAM seems justified. Do Apple's iMac RAM upgrades seem pricey to you? I estimate $150(Windows)+$200(motherboard)+$350(I7 Prcessor)+$200(RAM)+$50(anti-virus)+$50(case) ~=$1,000.

I'm running Sony Vegas 8, so I'll upgrade to 9. ~$300 on sale.

All together, the Sony Vegas-driven PC alternative will cost ~$2,800. Call it $3,000.

I'm going to compare this to Premier on iMac, but I don't have enough information to price this or make the decision yet. I'm hoping things will become clearer and the beta users will provide more insight before I get my Scarlet and need to make a purchase decision.

 

[David Rasberry]

Seems like a lot of people that use Vegas are quite happy with it. If you are, why not stick with it? Imacs don't have a lot of I/O support for raids or high speed external hardware. Biggest difference moving to a RED workflow is you will need a lot more proc power and storage space. So far Nvidia cards seem to work better on PC. There has not been good support for ATI with RED native software yet. Maybe this will change with the new ATI Firepro GL series though.

 

[Nigel Wallace]

blu-ray isnt supported on iMac (last time i checked). Though through bootcamp you can run windows and use an external... thats the only way to do so on an Apple that I'm aware of.

 

[William Dempsey]

Blu Ray internal drive is not offered on Mac yet but Toast software on Mac claims to allow Blue ray burning as long as you get the special Blue ray plug in. This plug in is extra on the basic version of Toast and included with the Pro version. This way you do not have to use bootcamp if you choose not to.

Bill

 

[Thomas Mark Schaefer]

Seems like a lot of people that use Vegas are quite happy with it. If you are, why not stick with it?

I spent some time at the Adobe booth at NAB in April and was sold/blown away with some of the Red-centric workflow and tools they were showing off.

blu-ray isnt supported on iMac (last time i checked).

That would be a show-stopper then.

 

[Rob Gardner]

We have been burning blu-ray discs from Red footage for projection with an external drive and Toast on a Mac. They look great.

 

[David Rasberry]

I spent some time at the Adobe booth at NAB in April and was sold/blown away with some of the Red-centric workflow and tools they were showing off.

I am planning on going with Adobe on the PC. Mainly because my wife is an artist and we will share the workstation. May add Vegas to the mix too though. It seems like a very efficient end to end desktop finishing solution for a very modest price.

 

[Carlbattreall]

I have almost exactly the setup you want to create and it works great. Vegas 9 is more stable then 8 and haven't had any problems burning Bluray from DVD Architect, just did it for a festival yesterday. I have 16 GB of RAM, which is probably over-kill for Windows 7 but I think its needed for Vista 64 (I will probably upgrade to 7 soon). I built my rig myself and it was under 2000 (not including monitor or external Raid setup).

Shoot me an email if you want more specs on my system.

Cheers,
Carl
www.indieakfilms.com

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Apple doesn't officially support Blu-Ray. However, it's possible to encode for Blu-Ray out of Compressor. Blu-Ray authoring is also supported in Adobe CS4 on the Mac as well as in Toast. I have an LG Blu-Ray drive in a Mac Pro and it works just fine. I also have an external Blu-Ray I put together with USB2, FW400, FW800 and eSATA connectors for hopping around to any system I want. BD media, even double-layer 50GB discs, are supported in OSX for writing data, even directly from finder or disc utility.

The only drawback to using Blu-Ray drives on the Mac is there's no Blu-Ray player software right now. So you have to boot into Windows to test your disc. But I find it easier to just throw it into a BD player and check it out. Most software players, as well as the PS3, are too forgiving and will play erroneous discs that many standard players will not. Best to check in a real player.

 

[Russ Blaise]

Apple doesn't officially support Blu-Ray. However, it's possible to encode for Blu-Ray out of Compressor...

Jeff, I haven't tested this yet due to that I do not have a Blu-Ray drive in my Mac Pro, but I heard that the new Snow Leopard OS has the components to play BR movies as long as you have a BR player hooked up. Have you heard that or tried that yourself?