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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 :)

New Mac Pro

Jay Gannon said:
Said with the gusto of someone who does not work as a post production professional on a daily basis.
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Ditto what Jay said...shrewd observations from someone who doesn't have to concern themselves with the actual expense of re-conforming a business to meet changing industry standards. la de dah.
 
"did you guys see the new Apple Display page? Notice what's on the screen of the new 27" LED Display ;-)
http://www.apple.com/displays/"
__________________
Dennis Guskov
www.cinema4k.ca


Ok what?
 
Kris Anderson said:
Oh, sorry, I completely forgot I don't run a 6 Avid, Unity/Interplay SR/XD/RED facility every day.

Way to assume, genius. :thumbsup:
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In that case please enlighten us all on how I am supposed to compose a FCP timeline on a PC system...

Because unlike you I try and come onto here to be constructive and share and learn, not to bitch. If you read back though my posts you would find I also run a multiple suite facility, both Mac and PC based.

And unfortunately FCP is still a major player in the market, and until that is not the case I will have an issue on running sub-standard gear that is behind the market in my facility or on my cart, because my clients rely on me to be up to date. And until Apple release a workstation that is in keeping with current workstation standards from their direct competitors they are failing me as a client and as a customer.

You may run a 6 seat facility but that means nothing if your not interested in keeping it up to date with up to date hardware for your clients. I can point you in the direction of a number of facilities that are still running XW8000 workstations and then wonder why clients complain about slow working speeds. Running a facility and being at the cutting edge are two very different things. I work in the realm of the latter. And my clients prefer that.
 
Likewise, but is a 12 core mac without extra PCIe slots and USB 3 going to make or break a job? Of course not. It seems people are getting upset over things (Apple's policies) that are completely out of their hands. Where is the benefit in making a song and dance about it if there's nothing you can do? Isn't it better to just get on with work... (read: billable hours) than wishing for a perfect machine? Or worse, waiting for said 'perfect machine' until proceeding with work?

It's always been like this. Technology is always a bad investment due to it's ever changing nature. As for Apple and FCP..... that's just how they do things. If you want to play it's by their rules. We all know that by now, surely?

But I am curious, how does a current Mac with FCP fail you and your clients? That's a genuine question. I'm trying to understand completely where you're coming from. Presently I just don't get it.
 
The easiest example is PCIe slots, I dont have enough for my DIT cart, necessitating me to have 2 towers on my cart when I could do with not carting that extra 30 kilo's around.
My Mac cart is more expensive to rent as it has about 15k more of gear on it. That has to be passed onto clients.

Lack of USB 3.0, Hard drives are quickly moving to this standard, both in house and on my cart I would be more productive and provide a better service the more time I spend working and the less time I spend transferring footage.

On our PC workstations we have more PCIe slots, we have easy access to Blu-Ray playback, easier access to USB 3.0, all things that make me more efficient when dealing with a client who is cutting/posting on AVID. But many of my clients post on FCP and therefore I have to use a Mac. I am less efficient when I am doing that as it takes me longer and in my eyes that is failing my clients to some degree.
 
Jay Gannon said:
The easiest example is PCIe slots, I dont have enough for my DIT cart, necessitating me to have 2 towers on my cart when I could do with not carting that extra 30 kilo's around.
My Mac cart is more expensive to rent as it has about 15k more of gear on it. That has to be passed onto clients.

Lack of USB 3.0, Hard drives are quickly moving to this standard, both in house and on my cart I would be more productive and provide a better service the more time I spend working and the less time I spend transferring footage.

On our PC workstations we have more PCIe slots, we have easy access to Blu-Ray playback, easier access to USB 3.0, all things that make me more efficient when dealing with a client who is cutting/posting on AVID. But many of my clients post on FCP and therefore I have to use a Mac. I am less efficient when I am doing that as it takes me longer and in my eyes that is failing my clients to some degree.
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Ok... I see what you mean. I think the biggest part of the 'problem' is that you hold yourself to very high standards... which I think is a good thing. But you can only do what the technology will allow (for now). That's not to say don't pursue that standard at every opportunity, because we all know what happens to guys who start to get complacent, but don't beat yourself up so much... it is what it is and we work with what we've got, despite the fact we know it could be better and/or more efficient.
 
yeah, I was reading to start discussing some productive stuff.. but it seems that everyone is sticking to his beliefs whether its right or wrong.. I just wrote a 5 page post which I deleted coz it seems non-sense for this thread..

everybody knows that each system has its cons and pros.. but, its just becoming as nationality.. no ones nationality is apple neither any other company..
the biggest problem is that its an old time joke that "if you wanna get pro go apple" which brought the market to mostly use apple in high percentage of the facilities.. everybody thinks its the best without knowing anything about it or about other tools..
so, some people here finds some other tools more useful and trying to convince a saturated marked.. and clients who still carries the old concept..

well, what I noticed first when I saw apple's announcement is that they now only support AMD graphics.. bad or good, this not the issue.. it just seems that maybe they're planning their FCP for openCL.. if this didn't happen, then they really might be exiting the video market and having enough out of their wifi video calling market.. or get support for nVidia new Quadro Fermi's quickly and shut down FCP..
 
August 9th?

Hmm.. We should see the release of 10.6.5 as well. Officially adding support for the Intel 5520 chipset, AMD 5850/5870 and nVidia GTX 480 video cards which means individuals adding unofficial support for motherboards such as the EVGA SR-2.

I really wish they could would have slapped one of these into the new Mac Pro's with some F800 ports built on.

http://www.evga.com/articles/00537/

EVGA SR-2;

* Intel 5520 Chipset (Dual IO chips for additional 16 lanes)
* (2) Intel 1366 sockets for up to 12 cores (Xeon 5600/5500)
* (7) Mechanical 16x PCIe 2.0 ports - 4 of which can be running at 16x at the same time. (4x16, 6x8 + 1x16)
* (12) DDR3-1333 DIMM slots for support up to 48 GBs of memory
* (2) USB 3.0 ports
* (10) USB 2.0 ports
* (2) Gigabit Ethernet Ports
* (2) SATA III 6.0GB/s ports
* (6) SATA II 3.0GB/s ports
* (2) E-SATA ports
* 8 Channel HD Audio - Realtek ALC889

And .. it's RED and BLACK! WOO HOO!

Sigh..

After I priced it out (but only with a GTX 480 - waiting to see what prices for Fermi based Quadros are going to be), it's comes out to something like this; (I kept my own Red Rocket, LTO-4, hard drives, DVD/Blu Ray burners, monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.. out of the pricing).

600.00 - EVGA SR-2 Motherboard
2094.14 - Intel Xeon X5680 3.33GHz w/12 gigs memory (bundle at NewEgg) - (WINTEC 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR3 1333)
2094.14 - Intel Xeon X5680 3.33GHz w/12 gigs memory (bundle at NewEgg) - (WINTEC 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR3 1333)
490.00 - EVGA nVidia GTX 480
260.00 - Antec TPQ-1200 PS
420.00 - Mountain Mods U2-UFO Case
80.00 - Modular Tray for SR-2 MB
110.00 - Firewire 800 PCIe

** $6,148.28 US without tax/shipping

You could be safer off by adding two hot swappable power supplies, etc. Mountain Mods have these crazy cases that offer an amazing amount customization. They also offer the 9-10 PCIe port openings on the back of the case - which is not so common.

This is a rough configuration and pricing and certainly isn't an officially OS X supported machine. It's not even supported in the "unofficial clone community".. yet.

I love my Mac Pro and it certainly isn't going to stop working anytime soon (better not - I should be working right now - oops) but it would have been nice to see some of the features of this board in the new machines.

Perhaps they'll get to these features in the next 200+ days or sooner.

Best,

ATF
 
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