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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

FCS2 on G5

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SashkaMish

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Did anyone try FCS2 on Macintosh G5?
I wonder if this upgrade is worth the money as I have three G5s which are working with FCS1 with no problems.
But, yesterday I've attended a presentation of FCS2 and Color looks impressive enough to buy the whole suite just to get it.
Also, I asked the guy who was presenting FCS2 about his setup and when he said that it was 8-core with 8Gb of memory my enthusiasm washed down a bit. If I will have to buy a whole new hardware just to run Color and ProRes then it is just not worth it.
 
battistella said:
Hey,

the answer to this is right on the Apple website. here:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/specs.html


David
Click to expand...

I know all the theoretical details but there is a difference between software working on minimum requirement computers and working on a computer that can be used for work.
I really wouldn't like to kill my perfectly nice FCS1 setup for a barely working FCS2 whatever the advantages are.
So, all reports about FCS2 on G5 are welcome.
 
did you go to the final cut studio tour in london?

i was there also. The color demo was awesome! and the motion 3d stuff is also amazing.

I cant wait to get my Macpro and get to work on it.
 
All working here on a G5 quad. I haven't had much time to dig into Color -- just installed it all about 12 hours ago. But it seems a bit sluggish compared to what was shown in their demo video. Granted, they were running on a 3GHz (quad or 8 core) Mac Pro with X1900XT video card. I'm running a G5 Quad with 8GB RAM and FX4500 video. The FX4500 is a dinosaur compared to the X1900 when it comes to shader and texel performance, this is why Apple recommends the X1900XT video card.
 
chas said:
did you go to the final cut studio tour in london?

i was there also. The color demo was awesome! and the motion 3d stuff is also amazing.

I cant wait to get my Macpro and get to work on it.
Click to expand...

Nope. Zagreb, Croatia.
Color demo is very interesting, but I have to say that I was unimpressed with Motion. Looks to me that it is all looks and did not see much of use. It is far beyond what I expected when rumors came from Apple that Motion should become new Shake.
 
AppliedVisual said:
All working here on a G5 quad. I haven't had much time to dig into Color -- just installed it all about 12 hours ago. But it seems a bit sluggish compared to what was shown in their demo video. Granted, they were running on a 3GHz (quad or 8 core) Mac Pro with X1900XT video card. I'm running a G5 Quad with 8GB RAM and FX4500 video. The FX4500 is a dinosaur compared to the X1900 when it comes to shader and texel performance, this is why Apple recommends the X1900XT video card.
Click to expand...

Thanks for info.
I have a feeling that I will buy FCS2 as it is not such a problem. But I also have a feeling that I will not use it much.
Is there any info on possibility of dual system (FCS1 and FCS2) on same computer? Could be nice to have speed of FCP5 for editing and Color for final touch.
Well, it seems that I will have to try it.
 
Just got FCS2 running on a dual G5 2.7 with Kona 2 and Nvidia 6800 Ultra DDL. ProRes runs great in everything except the 1080 Kona 10bit output. Unfortunately that's too much to handle smoothly. (Will run fine if the Kona is not outputting).

Color on the other hand is a different story... Color has "some issues" with Nvidia cards apparently. I can only run Color in 8 bit mode and it gets like 8 fps. From what I've read though, this is entirely an Nvidia card issue and it should/would run smoothly on an ATI card.
 
I had the beta version of color running on my 17" mac book pro; I was really surprised Monday when my official upgrade came that it won't run on my dual 2.5 G5 ! bummer, guess I have to spend more money.
Aloha
-A
 
I am running FCS2 on my G5 now, so far so good! I just dropped the smoothcam filter on my some of my stock footage shots that were really shaky do to heavy winds, WOw...very impressed how it cleaned it up perfectly!

Running it on my Mac Book pro as well and have not ran into any issues yet but I am sure it will bog it down…we shall see. Will update more soon.

Good luck
 
yeah the smooth cam came from shake and is a welcome addition to fcp. But when you say g5 you mean quad don't you ? Color won't seem to load on a non quad g5.
Aloha
-A
 
ElysianChris said:
Just got FCS2 running on a dual G5 2.7 with Kona 2 and Nvidia 6800 Ultra DDL. ProRes runs great in everything except the 1080 Kona 10bit output. Unfortunately that's too much to handle smoothly. (Will run fine if the Kona is not outputting).

Color on the other had is a different story... Color has a "some issues" with Nvidia cards apparently. I can only run Color in 8 bit mode and it gets like 8 fps. From what I've read though, this is entirely an Nvidia card issue and it should/would run smoothly on an ATI card.
Click to expand...

So it looks like we will all have to buy new Intel based Macs.
Do not see it as very nice move from Apple, especially when you count all the costs and the fact that no existing hardware from G5s will work with MacPro.
MacPro 6k, extra disks at least 2k, HD SDI card about 2k (3.5k if you like IO HD to convert all to ProRes), computer monitors at least 2k, video monitor up to 5k...
All in all, moving to FCS2 will cost you about 20k (USD in US or EUR in Europe as prices are not the same). Moving from FCP4 to FCP5 (in fact FCS1) had a cost of about 0.5k for upgrade and that is it.
From this point of view I can say that I will not move to FCS2 very soon.
Thank you all for info and help.
 
Poi Boy said:
I had the beta version of color running on my 17" mac book pro; I was really surprised Monday when my official upgrade came that it won't run on my dual 2.5 G5 ! bummer, guess I have to spend more money.
Aloha
-A
Click to expand...

I have Color running on my 17" Macbook Pro (1.67GHz) and it appears to work fine (if a bit slow). Not installed it on my dual 2GHz G5 yet as I'm in the middle of a big job.

The Color manual says that 32-bit float processing is not supported on NVIDIA graphics cards, so that's yet another reason not to get the Quadro FX 4500 when I upgrade to a Mac Pro!
 
I haven't tried Color on my 15" MBP... I'm kinda curious, even though it isn't supported by Apple's requirements.

As for my G5 quad, Color runs klunky... I have the FX4500 in mine and I can tell you, if there was any doubt, you should not even consider this card for a new Mac Pro. The FX4500 is a 3 year old dinosaur in the world of video cards. It can't even come close to the shader and texel performance of the newer generation cards by a long shot. Right now, the ATI X1900XT is the way to go. The only reason to consider the FX4500 is if you have some obscure need for the genlock port or its couple additional hardware abilities that the cheaper cards don't have. And I can tell you right now, that you don't need those features. ;)
 
Final Cut studio 2, FCP and Color work(launch) on G5 Dual 2Ghz (first generation system).

I wish they made color a bit more like the rest of the package though, not very user friendly (and not very pretty)- I have to read the manual for this...
 
I have Color running on my iMac G5 20" (2.1GHz G5) - it's not lightning fast, but it is workable. I have found some sort of brick wall though where if I'm working in HD and have a primary in grade, one vignetted secondary, and a primary out grade, I can adjust anything with relatively quick updates. As soon as I enable a second secondary (vignetted or not) it bogs down and runs very, very slowly. My theory is that it is switching from GPU to CPU at that point.

Color is so very different because, like Shake, it is a product Apple have bought and integrated and rewriting the UI would have taken far too long. That said, there is a very good reason why the UI is flat, boring, and grey - so that your eyes aren't thrown off what you're doing. In fact there's a user pref to lower the saturation of coloured items in the UI!

If you watch the DVD included with FCS2 the sections on Color should be enough to get you started. I do recommend flipping through the manual, though.
 
I'm still trying to work my way through a lot of the features and functions of color. I wish it didn't run so choppy on my system... The DVD intro is definitely enough to get you started and working with Color. If you're familiar with nodal interfaces like Shake, that helps too. Overall, it really doesn't seem that complicated, but I'm still trying to figure out just how the 3D scopes are supposed to be used. They're pretty to look at, but I'm not quite sure how practical they are. It's definitely an app that will take some practice and it just shows that while the process isn't that complex, proper color grading is an art just like oil painting or sculpting and some can do it, others can't.
 
Eirik, I'm a bit suprised you get color to work on your g5 dual. I can't even get it to install on my g5 dual 2.5. works great on my 17" macbook pro however.
Aloha
-A
 
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