PowerMAC and 4K

[Ameer Azari]

Hi,

I've been hearing that one can get a PowerMac G5 for under a thousand dollars, and then add RAM, Memory, Graphics card etc. 30" Dell Screen

and all that will lead to an easy 4K workflow,

I don't know much about the PowerMac's so I had a few questions:

1. What's the maximum RAM a PowerMac G5 can take

2. Will the Dual processor's be enough or will it buckle under 2K in FCP

3. Will it accept the 8800 GT Nvidia graphics card

4. Will it work with the Kona 3 Card

If it can take 16GB RAM, a 8800 GT then you're looking at a system that costs ~$3000 that you can edit 4K with! YIPPEE!!

 

[Cail Young]

REDCINE and REDAlert, the two primary R3D tools do not run on 'G5' class Macs, you will need an Intel-based Mac Pro.

 

[Chris Hagan]

How about, instead of buying an old machine.... you buy an iMac. Now, I understand that an iMac is not the "serious" machine. But judging from your post, you're not serious. Get a 24" iMac, throw 4 gigs of Crucial or Kingston ram in it. Add a G-Tech RAID for your scratch disk and if you think you'll be using the Prores workflow add an Aja IO HD. I have a Intel based iMac along side my Powermac G5 and there is a noticeable difference in performance favoring the iMac. Of course with all that being said, I plan on buying a Mac Pro to replace the G5.

I've been running RedCine on the iMac to familiarize my self with the workflow and haven't run into an hic-ups. Understand that it will be slower then a Mac Pro though.

 

[Michael Schrengohst]

How about, instead of buying an old machine.... you buy an iMac. Now, I understand that an iMac is not the "serious" machine. But judging from your post, you're not serious. Get a 24" iMac, throw 4 gigs of Crucial or Kingston ram in it. Add a G-Tech RAID for your scratch disk and if you think you'll be using the Prores workflow add an Aja IO HD. I have a Intel based iMac along side my Powermac G5 and there is a noticeable difference in performance favoring the iMac. Of course with all that being said, I plan on buying a Mac Pro to replace the G5.

I've been running RedCine on the iMac to familiarize my self with the workflow and haven't run into an hic-ups. Understand that it will be slower then a Mac Pro though.

How much slower??

 

[laguun]

If you want to work with redcode, an IBM PC-compatible system, no matter if OSX or Windows runs on it, is the way to go.

If you want to use OSX, you should avoid the discontinued power pc architecture - many applications only run on intel/amd.

if you are on a budget, the best way certanly is to build (or let built) and osx computer yourself. Intel 6600 Quadcore, GF8800, 8 GB, case and motherboard should be at ~1000 and this system will offer more than twice the power of a comparable imac.

have a look at
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

 

[timecodemultimedia]

How much slower??

iMac = Dual Core
Mac Pro = Octocore

A lot faster!
8 times faster?
Not counting a much much better graphics card, ram, bus, etc, etc.

 

[Ben Holmes]

Add a G-Tech RAID for your scratch disk and if you think you'll be using the Prores workflow add an Aja IO HD.

You can't really do that on an iMac - the IO HD and G-Tech RAID will both have to share the firewire bus, and it just won't work (to the best of my knowledge, although I haven't yet tested it with my iMac or the IO-HD I have knocking around somewhere).

If you want to do this, get a MacBookPro, which has an expresscard slot to run the RAID off. Just as powerful as an iMac in most cases too. I have the iMac extreme and a 2.33Ghz MBP, and there's not much performance difference, none to write home about anyway. Both are slugs compared to my 8-core Mac Pro anyway.

Don't plan to work on 4K footage from a $20,000 camera and skimp on the post - it makes no business sense at all. Your time is (or should be) more valuable than any computer these days.

Ben

 

[Chris Hagan]

You can't really do that on an iMac - the IO HD and G-Tech RAID will both have to share the firewire bus, and it just won't work (to the best of my knowledge, although I haven't yet tested it with my iMac or the IO-HD I have knocking around somewhere).

Ben

I wouldn't say you can't, The G-Raid does have a USB port on it... But I agree you're sacrificing a lot with this solution. I am merely posing alternatives. Alternatives that the budget minded crowd interested in Scarlet may appreciate.

 

[Ben Holmes]

I wouldn't say you can't, The G-Raid does have a USB port on it... But I agree you're sacrificing a lot with this solution. I am merely posing alternatives. Alternatives that the budget minded crowd interested in Scarlet may appreciate.

You can't use USB for ProRes capture or playback - it sends data in bursts, unlike firewire, which is what makes it so unsuitable for video. DV maybe, ProRes no.

A quick check of the IO-HD manual will show you that the iMac is not supported by the IO-HD for this very reason - the only system configs they allow are via a MBP or a Mac Pro.

I was a bit vague before, so I'll be a little clearer: You cannot use an IO-HD with an iMac reliably - if at all. I would not want any readers of this forum making any purchase choices based on the belief this was possible, because it just isn't. Trying to play back ProRes HD off an internal drive or an external USB drive will not work reliably, if at all.

Hope that clears things up.

Ben

 

[Ameer Azari]

Surely you can work with 1080p on an iMac

if you say no, I'm gonna cry...

 

[Ben Holmes]

Surely you can work with 1080p on an iMac

if you say no, I'm gonna cry...

I didn't say that - I said you can't use the IO-HD and a firewire drive at the same time on the same bus - and the iMac only has one bus, so you can't do it. You can do it on a Macbook Pro because the expresscard slot allows you to connect a firewire or e-SATA drive direct to the motherboard (pretty much).

Can you work with 1080p on an iMac? Depends on the codec and the drive array. The fastest array you can connect to an iMac is a FW800 one, and that pretty much limits you to compressed formats, like DVCProHD (which is 720p) or ProRes codecs. You could run uncompressed SD, but that's irrelevant here. I would pay the extra for a G-Tech drive, which I think are the best firewire and e-SATA drives on the market today. Using ProRes rather than ProRes HQ will give better performance on an iMac (as on a MBP) as it requires less decoding, and hence better real-time performance in FCP. Footage imported via log and capture or RED CINE could be played and edited on the iMac once it is encoded onto this drive.

However, without a video output device, what's the point? You can't see your footage at a proper scan rate, or size. Even if you have a 24" iMac, you can't see your footage at full size whilst you edit. So is an iMac pointless? No, absolutely not. I use mine on set as a viewing device for pre-viz and checking quality etc. That's with RED ONE footage. I need to use the Mac Pro when I actually want to work and view it at base.

If you plan on buying a Scarlet, of course you can use it to edit (as long as you have an intel iMac which supports ProRes), but unlike DV or HDV you can't use the camera as a video output device to connect to a TV for low cost monitoring. This is a problem for RED to deal with if it plans on entering the domestic market. Perhaps that firewire connection on Scarlet will support viewing video in this way. We shall see...

Ben

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

I didn't say that - I said you can't use the IO-HD and a firewire drive at the same time on the same bus - and the iMac only has one bus, so you can't do it. You can do it on a Macbook Pro because the expresscard slot allows you to connect a firewire or e-SATA drive direct to the motherboard (pretty much).

Can you work with 1080p on an iMac? Depends on the codec and the drive array. The fastest array you can connect to an iMac is a FW800 one, and that pretty much limits you to compressed formats, like DVCProHD (which is 720p) or ProRes codecs. You could run uncompressed SD, but that's irrelevant here. I would pay the extra for a G-Tech drive, which I think are the best firewire and e-SATA drives on the market today. Using ProRes rather than ProRes HQ will give better performance on an iMac (as on a MBP) as it requires less decoding, and hence better real-time performance in FCP. Footage imported via log and capture or RED CINE could be played and edited on the iMac once it is encoded onto this drive.

However, without a video output device, what's the point? You can't see your footage at a proper scan rate, or size. Even if you have a 24" iMac, you can't see your footage at full size whilst you edit. So is an iMac pointless? No, absolutely not. I use mine on set as a viewing device for pre-viz and checking quality etc. That's with RED ONE footage. I need to use the Mac Pro when I actually want to work and view it at base.

If you plan on buying a Scarlet, of course you can use it to edit (as long as you have an intel iMac which supports ProRes), but unlike DV or HDV you can't use the camera as a video output device to connect to a TV for low cost monitoring. This is a problem for RED to deal with if it plans on entering the domestic market. Perhaps that firewire connection on Scarlet will support viewing video in this way. We shall see...

Ben

why do you think you`ll need the AJA IO HD when working with Redcode footage or Pro Res?

-Pro Res is not a codec you want to finish in anyway
-you cant go far when you try to grade Pro Res footage
-The IO HD is too expensive

 

[ThomtheEditor]

not to kick a dead horse, but the heart of what the apple workflow will be when R3d's work with color, the log and transfer funtion, will not work with anything below fcp 6.0.3/qt 7.4.5 and will not run on PPC Macs