Mac book pro or Imac?

[Joel Arvidsson]

Background story
I need a silent computer to use as an audio station with an external sound card (Going for the apollo Twin duo). At the same time Im very curios to try out Fcpx 10.3 wich seams to have matured and become something own. Choosing a mac instead of a pc is not a clear choice since mac are so underpowered in comparison. But fcpx suppose to be so tuned to the hardware so its faster than a lot higher specced pc:s so perhaps its not a problem.



So my question is...

What kind of perfomance do you get in fcpx with Epic Mx 5k or Helium at 8k?

Is your timeline 1080 or UHD?

If you use an macbook pro, do you have a larger 4k screen connected to it? Does it look "crisp" on that?

Do you use Better Quality or Better Performance?

Do you use a proxy worklfow? If you shoot both r3d and proress. Will fcpx automaticly use the proress as the proxys or do you need to connect this manually?

How come that the new mac book pro, can output 5k to two external monitors when it has so slow graphic card?

Can the late 2015 imacs run on or two external 5k screen aswell?

Is the late Imac 2015 much faster than new macbook pro. (Im missing a laptop in the evnings when Im stock with an Ipad).

Is it any point to get an external nvidia gpu to speed up fpcx. Perhaps this would not even speed up fcpx.





Perphaps I should just get a fast pc laptop and forget about fcpx...but I know there are people here finishing project even on macbooks pro on regular basis.

Whats the best online training to get up and running fast with fcpx 10.3?

I know that Intel annonsed "Kaby Lake" at CES but I need to get this going before fast of February.

 

[Adam Rook]

All I can testify to is FCPX. Personally I love it. Mark Toia uses FCPX too so he would be able to give a lot more insight as to workflow but he's on vacation right now so good luck with that.
I'm using a late 2014 MBP and I drop 5K FF R3Ds in a UHD timeline. Recently I shot 2K ProRes for a project in a 1080 timeline and it worked great. My MBP chokes a little on FF5K footage so I imagine a newer machine would be fine. 2K ProRes of course plays perfectly. I'm outputting to 2 Thunderbolt (1) displays and it works just fine. Use "Best Performance" so you can watch your edits and make sure your timing is correct. If you need to see how your footage looks full-res just stop playback. That's what I do.

I don't shoot proxy so I'm not the guy to ask about that, sorry.

I'm sure you other guys can build on what I've said and more but this is what I'm using for now. I'm looking to get an external graphic accelerator so I'd love to hear feedback on those as well.

 

[Eric Santiago]

Background story
I need a silent computer to use as an audio station with an external sound card (Going for the apollo Twin duo). At the same time Im very curios to try out Fcpx 10.3 wich seams to have matured and become something own. Choosing a mac instead of a pc is not a clear choice since mac are so underpowered in comparison. But fcpx suppose to be so tuned to the hardware so its faster than a lot higher specced pc:s so perhaps its not a problem...

I use both Mac and Windows for DAW, CG, NLE, Motion and Color Grading.
My pref is simple. CG (3D Modeling/Animation) I use PCs and the rest Macs.

What kind of perfomance do you get in fcpx with Epic Mx 5k or Helium at 8k? .

I own a RED Scarlet MX so no experience.

Is your timeline 1080 or UHD?

HD and 4K DCI mostly.

Do you use Better Quality or Better Performance?

Depends on the size of the project and which drives Im using.
If Im mostly in RED files, Im set to Better Perf but its moot since Im using original footage.

Is it any point to get an external nvidia gpu to speed up fpcx. Perhaps this would not even speed up fcpx.

Hoping for the day when this is the norm.

Perphaps I should just get a fast pc laptop and forget about fcpx...but I know there are people here finishing project even on macbooks pro on regular basis.
.

You could do that. There are decent options for NLEs out there.
Question is, whats keeping you on either platforms?
Weigh out the odds.
I love using Maya/Renderman/mr on PCs.
Just too fast to avoid.
But for everyting else especially RED related, cant beat my Mac

Edit: There are new iMacs on the horizon maybe closer to summer. I stopped playing the waiting game years ago and just picked up what I can afford.

 

[Scot Yount]

Hi Joel,
I use FCPX 10.3 and I for one, like it a lot. I also have Premier and have lots of experience with Avid, as well as some much less full featured editors from Grass Valley and others. I think the hangup is that people look only at the specs, and make a judgement about what would be best or fastest for their preferred workflow. I have the 12 core, D700 card Mac Pro cylinder with only 32 gigs of RAM, and it works just fine for me when using FCPX. I almost never make proxies. But if you do, it is a simple process of telling FCPX to make the proxy files (or optimized files) and then you can toggle back and forth between the proxies and the original or optimized material. Super simple. One annoyance is that if you are working in proxy mode, and make any kind of adjustment to the .r3d, the proxy of course won't reflect the change (which I don't care about) but for some stupid reason you will no longer have access to that "original" proxy, and FCPX makes you generate another one, which can slow things down. Just something to be aware of. I have an old Scarlet-MX, which plays fine in real time. I had a Weapon Dragon, and 6K files were not a problem, and I have an Epic-W, and even its 8K files play pretty well if you set to better performance. As a previous poster mentioned, that "better performance" is only when the file plays, once it stops playing (say to make a color adjustment) it goes back to full res. Unless you have a 4K display, I am not sure why anyone ever edits anything on a time line that size or larger. The output from the machine is still only HD, (unless you have a 4K display and interface) so it doesn't do much good to waste all those resources when you can just edit. Once you are done editing and want to output, set everything back to the best quality and there you go. I have done projects in UHD and full 4K on the timeline, and for the most part everything works well. The bottleneck in any of these scenarios, is your storage. I am using two of the original Pegasus R6 drives set to RAID 5 (not the fastest by any means) and over Thunderbolt 1. I imagine I would get much better performance over TB2 and especially TB3. As to the sound the Mac makes, it is almost silent. However in my studio, I can't use it to record audio unless I shut down the Pegasus drives, because they are noisy. I don't have a newer laptop, so can't speak to how well they will do the job, but consider this. I have an old early 2011 MacBook Pro (2.3 GHz Intel Core i7) (Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB) with a retrofitted SSD, and even 8K material that is loaded onto the boot drive will play in FCPX. I have tried this in Premier and everything just comes to a screeching halt. No workie. Your mileage may vary.

 

[Scot Yount]

I should also say, the one thing my Mac has not been as good for is 3D graphics. I run Cinema 4D and would like to run Octane and some of the other render engines, but this is not available on the D700 cards. I am also pretty sure After Effects ignores my graphics cards as well and everything is rendered using the processors. Not great. This is a business decision for Apple that must make sense for them, but it does not work for me. But again, with their software, FCPX, Motion and so on, it really does work great.

 

[Chris Kennedy]

I can't speak for FCPX, I edit with Premiere on a late 2015 iMac 5k Retina maxed out specs. And I don't have issues with 6k r3ds (editing at 1/4 resolution), debayering without a RedRocket is another story though. I also tested some 8k Helium footage and it seems to be able to handle it too-won't know for sure until I get allocated for Helium and put it through it's paces.
So I'm sure FCP would run better on Mac. It depends on your needs, if you want something more portable then go with the Macbook. I prefer the iMac out of the two: specs and the 5k monitor.

 

[Sergio Perez]

I would say get the iMac. I own the current 5K one maxed out and have a macbook pro touch ordered. Many users, including Red's very own Jarred Land are having serious issues with the touch. I didnt cancel my order because I really, really need mobility right now and have spent thousands on pluggins and software for the Mac platform. If I was coming from 0 now, I would ratter go PC at the moment, or wait for the Macbook pro refresh end of the Year. Imacs are also very close to being replaced with tb3 enabled ones.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Background story
I need a silent computer to use as an audio station with an external sound card (Going for the apollo Twin duo). At the same time Im very curios to try out Fcpx 10.3 wich seams to have matured and become something own. Choosing a mac instead of a pc is not a clear choice since mac are so underpowered in comparison. But fcpx suppose to be so tuned to the hardware so its faster than a lot higher specced pc:s so perhaps its not a problem.



So my question is...

What kind of perfomance do you get in fcpx with Epic Mx 5k or Helium at 8k?

Is your timeline 1080 or UHD?

If you use an macbook pro, do you have a larger 4k screen connected to it? Does it look "crisp" on that?

Do you use Better Quality or Better Performance?

Do you use a proxy worklfow? If you shoot both r3d and proress. Will fcpx automaticly use the proress as the proxys or do you need to connect this manually?

How come that the new mac book pro, can output 5k to two external monitors when it has so slow graphic card?

Can the late 2015 imacs run on or two external 5k screen aswell?

Is the late Imac 2015 much faster than new macbook pro. (Im missing a laptop in the evnings when Im stock with an Ipad).

Is it any point to get an external nvidia gpu to speed up fpcx. Perhaps this would not even speed up fcpx.





Perphaps I should just get a fast pc laptop and forget about fcpx...but I know there are people here finishing project even on macbooks pro on regular basis.

Whats the best online training to get up and running fast with fcpx 10.3?

I know that Intel annonsed "Kaby Lake" at CES but I need to get this going before fast of February.

Hi Joel - Since you asked...

I only edit with FCPX at this point so I can't speak to relative performance of NLEs but I find FCPX to work quite nicely on my early 2015, 13 inch MBPro (i5) and my 2010 Mac Pro, as well.

My current RED is a Scarlet Dragon so I am not yet shooting any ProRes in camera and don't know exactly how that works in FCPX. I have worked with both 5K Dragon as well as 4K MX footage. I know that others have noted they get good performance with the original footage but, honestly, I usually create proxy footage within FCPX, at least with the clips I know I am going to work a lot with. I can usually arrange to do that overnight or when I am otherwise away from the computer for awhile. I think it has more to do with hard drive speed than with the system itself and I just haven't tried to tweak that as much as I might. I know that Sam Mestman - kind of a guru in the FCPX world - brags about using 6K Dragon footage with ease but he has made a business of creating a fast (shared) storage box that works especially well with FCPX. (It's called the Jellyfish).

With my MBPro, I don't have an external monitor and that, to me, is something of a constraint but the new version (10.3) does allow for more customization in your workspace and I find that I can usually minimize or eliminate what I don't need at a given time.

With my (getting to be ancient) Mac Pro, I do have two old Apple Cinema Displays and that seems to be plenty of real estate. I saw the new LG 5K display at an Apple event and I did fall in love with that. I think I will wait and see what the next iMacs look like before I decide on my next machine but it will probably either be an iMac or a maxed out MBPro with the LG 5K display. I have always worked with a desktop machine + a laptop - almost never editing on the laptop - but with the performance gap closing and with the convenience of "anywhere" editing on a laptop, that is changing.

Bottom line for me is that I am happily married to FCPX and therefore committed (also happily) to the Mac platform. I find the grousing about specs kind of amusing since Apple seems to be focused on optimizing software performance so that hardware specs - over which they have a little less control - aren't as crucial. I guess I am just old enough to have perspective - performance today is leaps and bounds above where it has been in the past and certainly not that much of a bottleneck. I know that is not the case for everyone, of course. But it all works very well for me.

If you want to get up and running on FCPX, I highly recommend Ripple Training but there are also other good tutorials. But I suggest you absolutely do work through a complete tutorial insofar as FCPX really is different and there is no point in getting yourself frustrated by being "caught" between two paradigms. I think that once you learn it and get used to it, you'll never go back. For further information, keep an eye out for articles and information by Sam Mestman, Michael Cioni and look in at FCP.co for ongoing developments.

Good luck!

 

[Steve Sherrick]

These guys pretty much covered everything. The issue Scot raised about having to delete proxies when changing R3D settings is frustrating and there are a few other gotchas like all NLEs but overall I find it has been a great way to edit. Also, I'm enjoying Motion as well and find that if I can't do something in Motion I should be hiring a qualified motion graphics or VFX person. I am also relying a lot more on Affinity Photo and Designer. And for audio there is Logic X, although I still rely on Pro Tools. Also, there are fantastic plugins for FCPX including Color Finale Pro, Colorista III, FXFactory, etc.

The iMac is virtually silent unless you are pushing it hard and you do notice a bit of fan noise but as Scot said, it's most likely your hard drives that will be the sound issue. If possible, the best editing experience you will ever have is getting all of the gear out of the room and into a temperature controlled server room. It really is amazing. But obviously with the iMac you can't get everything out of the edit suite. But even getting everything else into one of those sound dampening, temperature controlled boxes is a huge improvement. I'm currently working out of a transitional office space and have everything in the room with me and hate it.

 

[Drew Thomas]

What issues are the guys facing with the new touches? Just curious as I'm planning on ordering one to supplement my trashcan when working on 8k on the go.

I would say get the iMac. I own the current 5K one maxed out and have a macbook pro touch ordered. Many users, including Red's very own Jarred Land are having serious issues with the touch. I didnt cancel my order because I really, really need mobility right now and have spent thousands on pluggins and software for the Mac platform. If I was coming from 0 now, I would ratter go PC at the moment, or wait for the Macbook pro refresh end of the Year. Imacs are also very close to being replaced with tb3 enabled ones.

 

[Marc Wielage]

What's your reason to go with FCPX vs. Premiere or Avid? From my perspective, I honestly think Premiere is better as an affordable platform with tons of support and a huge number of user resources, and I think Avid is far more accepted in terms of Hollywood studios and the American TV networks. I see FCPX as being caught in the middle as being not fully-featured enough and also being kind of shunned by major shows and films.

There are things I really admire about FCPX -- its metadata handling is second to none -- but the user interface issues are pretty monstrous. I don't dispute that Avid is costly and there's a steep learning curve, but I think Premiere is a fairly affordable ($240/year) alternative. I see only disadvantages with FCPX, not advantages. I concede that any of these programs in the hands of a great editor can still create great work.

 

[Sergio Perez]

What issues are the guys facing with the new touches? Just curious as I'm planning on ordering one to supplement my trashcan when working on 8k on the go.

Crashes, graphic card glitches, monitor light leaks, etc...

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

What's your reason to go with FCPX vs. Premiere or Avid? From my perspective, I honestly think Premiere is better as an affordable platform with tons of support and a huge number of user resources, and I think Avid is far more accepted in terms of Hollywood studios and the American TV networks. I see FCPX as being caught in the middle as being not fully-featured enough and also being kind of shunned by major shows and films.

There are things I really admire about FCPX -- its metadata handling is second to none -- but the user interface issues are pretty monstrous. I don't dispute that Avid is costly and there's a steep learning curve, but I think Premiere is a fairly affordable ($240/year) alternative. I see only disadvantages with FCPX, not advantages. I concede that any of these programs in the hands of a great editor can still create great work.

The reason to go with fcpx is I heard great stuff about it from forums (off course not right after the launch). I used fcp7 before and now fcpx finally it looks like it has matured and looks quite promesing. I will still keep my cc subscription so I can run both fcpx and premiere.
My main concern is that because the specs of macs is much lower, I wanted to hear from Reduser if they were working with native files or raw. To what resolution the editing were super smooth. What is selling me towards fcpx is the smoother and faster editing experience.

Perhaps a strong pc with hackintosh on would be the good middle way. But I think running a mac usally is very solid without hickups. Atleast my old mac pro did run with no problems..very few problems. The mac pro is to old to install and test fcpx on...

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

How often does Apple update fcpx? Does adobe update faster? I feel like Adobe, do like two bigger updates a year. And for each of the two bigger updates they have to release a fix to squaz out the new bugs.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

What's your reason to go with FCPX vs. Premiere or Avid? From my perspective, I honestly think Premiere is better as an affordable platform with tons of support and a huge number of user resources, and I think Avid is far more accepted in terms of Hollywood studios and the American TV networks. I see FCPX as being caught in the middle as being not fully-featured enough and also being kind of shunned by major shows and films.

There are things I really admire about FCPX -- its metadata handling is second to none -- but the user interface issues are pretty monstrous. I don't dispute that Avid is costly and there's a steep learning curve, but I think Premiere is a fairly affordable ($240/year) alternative. I see only disadvantages with FCPX, not advantages. I concede that any of these programs in the hands of a great editor can still create great work.

But this a limited perspective. Trust me, I have been on Avid since 1995. The industry is a lot more than feature films and TV shows. FCPX has some clear advantages over Avid and also some disadvantages. Same with Premiere. But, unless you use it every day, which I'm pretty sure you haven't, then those advantages and disadvantages won't be obvious. I'm still using Media Composer on a project right now because it seemed like the right choice for that project. But for people this NLE fits their needs, you can build a post toolset for under $1000 that you own. It's a heck of a smart financial approach if it works for you. Add Affinity Photo and Designer for a total of $100 and you are really maximizing profit margins. But, this model won't work for everyone. That's why we have options. But to completely dismiss FCPX at this point, I'm not sure why anyone would take that stance at this moment in time. Now, if Apple does sonething reckless, I may change my tune but right now it's the best bang for the buck available, if it meets your needs as an editor.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Following up on this, I want to make sure that I am clear that I'm not seeing the world through Apple tinted glasses.

I think Apple has shown with FCPX, there are other ways to approach editing. Whether their approaches have been successful or not may be less important than the fact that they even attempted it to begin with. I have enjoyed pushing myself to overcome biases I had against some of these new ways of editing. It wasn't easy. And again, I still have some concerns about certain aspects of it.

As much as I have enjoyed editing in FCPX, the reality is that there are still projects that I feel need other tools. I just renewed my Avid support contract. And feel even better about doing it now that they just announced that Scriptsync and Phrasefind are coming back. Anyone that has used these tools knows they can be very powerful and on certain projects I would absolutely reach for MC.

I guess the odd one out for me is Adobe. I still have my Creative Cloud subscription. I still use After Effects and photoshop from time to time, but Premiere has not seen much use. But that does not mean it isn't very viable for other editors. In fact, I would say for some people it would be the appropriate choice. I would also have no problem using it if a project required it. And one of my heroes, Walter Murch has been using it and giving Adobe feedback, so that can only be a good thing. It's just not a tool I have found myself going to at this moment. I even considered stopping my CC subscription, but I think I'll keep it going knowing that there may be times when I find I'll need it.

I would recommend making a list of everything you need to do with your post tools. Figure out what things will take priority. Consider more than one computer, perhaps more than one platform to achieve it. Maybe you will decide that FCPX is the NLE you want to use but you also want to have a powerful Resolve system. Maybe an iMac for the editing, a powerful PC or Linux for Resolve. So many options available to us now, it really helps to get your plan down on paper, weigh the options and then make smart purchases that achieve your technical and financial goals.

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

Done, ordered the macbook pro 2016 and some good tips would really help me get back on a mac and running.

I need a 5 or 10 meter thunderbolt 3 cable so I can have the macbook air in another room while doing sound recordings.
Where and what should I buy. Seams that everyting over 2 meters have to be optical and apple don´t sell this them self yet.

What 4k or 5k display would you recommend? I think I will skip LG's 5k screen tailored for mac since I like to be able to connect it later to my main pc workstation wich does not have thunderbolt.
Also its sad that LG did the same misstake as appel to forget on on and off button. I really think its better to be able to totaly turn of a dipsplay if your going to be rendering a few days than having it on.
Im glad that hdr monitors is coming out later this year like ASUS PA32U but I think its coming only in the end off this year.


What thunderbolt 3 drives do you recomend working off?
I was thinking getting a g-technology like G-Speed studio xl with perhaps the red mini mag reader in one slot when/if they get updated with thunderbolt 3.
http://www.g-technology.com/accessory/ev-series-reader-red-mini-mag-edition
http://www.globaldistribution.com/news/images/news/G-Tech/G-Technology_Evolution_6_2_w450.jpg
https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/535624207.jpg?mw=1920&mh=1080&q=70
But, Im not sure I trust there quality control. I have only one of there earlier drives and that started to sound bad after a few month of use.
Its a bonus if the storage have more than just thunderbolt 3 connections.


With the Epic-w sucking up the mini mags fast I need a easy offload solution. In best case the macbook pro should be able to power both the extarnal harddrive and the red mini mag reader.
Perhaps something like this
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T3-P...om-20&linkId=f48e59ac6be5e38ce2190e2b346370c9
But it had been nice if the mini mag reader would fit inside the same housing as the harddrive and powerd from only one port. But also have an ac adapter for when you have access to ac power.

Also I need some kind of cheaper working disks to start with before getting an 24TB thunderbolt 3 raid. Some thing that is kind of portable and can let me work with 4k proress files in fcpx and premiere. Perhaps something around 4TB.


Software questions.
Do you se any benifits working with logic x instead of Adobe Audition? I have barely scratch the surface of Audition yet as I have been staying most time in premiere.
Can you install fcpx on two machines on one licens or do you have to get an extra?

What software should I use when backing up mini mags? http://hedgeformac.com/ or http://www.redgiant.com/products/offload/

Im going to get foolcontrol finally but im not sure if there is any differnce (eccept platform) betwen foolcontrol-os-x and the ios version?

 

[Mikael Lubtchansky]

...
Im going to get foolcontrol finally but im not sure if there is any differnce (eccept platform) betwen foolcontrol-os-x and the ios version?

Hello basically both apps can do the same things but :

iOS does have a few nice features not on OS X (camera menu, "touch" focus and a couple other, most of them soon to be added with an imminent OS X app update like prores/dnx, clip thumbnail in playback etc).
OS X has video / display in via a thunderbolt mini-recorder and supports tangent panels with full custom config options.

Otherwise most settings can be done on either platform

 

[Carey Lee Coffey]

I have a maxed out 2016 MacBook Pro. I love it. Mine has no graphics issues or issues of any kind. It works perfectly. It plays 1/4-res 5k footage .r3d's with no trouble. Sure it could have 32 GB's of RAM, a Kaby Lake processor and a Nvidia graphics card... But it doesn't. I'm fine with what it is at this moment: the best laptop Mac has ever made.

Having said that, if you want power, wait until March for the 2017 iMac.

 

[Tiana Hall]

Im thinking about getting a Macbook pro. I can get a "used for a few days" one for a reduced price but it has a 2gb graphics card. Would y'all only reccommend getting the higher 4gb graphics card?