FCP 4 on a new G5

cuello del pollocuello del pollo
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Greetings Everyone,



I?m currently hacking away on a rev. d 333mhz iMac with 160 megs of ram and running OS 8.6. I?ve never experienced the joys of OSX and iLife and am quite eager to jump on the bandwagon.



I?m interested in doing some serious editing on FCP 4 (projects ranging from 5 to 90 minutes), and would like to know how the new Powermacs measure up. I?d particularly like to hear from users who are currently working with FCP on a dual G5. What specs would you recommend? Would a dual 2Ghz machine with 1 gig of ram and the base level nivida card be sufficient? Are external firewire drives a necessity?



Upgrading to a Powermac would offer a significant performance boost from my current computer. I plan on keeping my next system for at least 5 years. There seems to be a general consensus that another upgrade is roughly six months away. Would there be certain advantages to waiting (PCI-E, better video card options)?



Thanks



CDP

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,425member
    cdp



    If you're planning to keep the computer for 5yr buy the fastest one you can get. Think about it. The difference between a Dual 2Ghz and Dual 2.5Ghz is only $500. If you keep the computer 5yrs that amounts to only $100 extra per year. Beg borrow or steal to get to their.



    Buy your RAM from a 3rd party like Crucial or another reputable dealer. You'll save a lot of money.



    Add another SATA HD in the second bay. But do think about getting a FW drive in the future. Internal Bays are nice but FW gives you "plug and go" kind of workflow. In FCP you can save all your Project Files to one area. Perfect when you're working on multiple projects.



    PCI isn't going to be a factor for quite some time. If you augmented your G5 with a card from Blackmagic, Aja or whoever it's going to be PCI or PCI-X. I don't expect many of these companies to move quickly to PCI-E products until any potential kinks are worked out. AGP will have long life it too ubiquitious.



    Hang around sites with Final Cut Pro areas.



    www.creativecow.net

    http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage...age_index.html

    www.2-pop.com

    www.hdforindies.com

    http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/



    You will learn very quickly from guys that use FCP in a Pro environment everday.



    Grab a good book

    Jerry Hofman



    Diana Weynand



    Kevin Monahan





    Upgrade to the 9600 Pro. If you decide to use Apple's Motion you'll need the faster GPU.
  • Reply 2 of 11
    cuello del pollocuello del pollo Posts: 22member
    hmurchison,



    Thanks for the links (they??ll be great resources)!



    As it stands, 2Ghz/1gb ram/nivida, is a bit of a financial stretch for me at the moment. My plan was to buy a mid-level machine and then slowly upgrade it down the line. You raised some valid points though. 100 dollars a year for five years also works out to 27 cents a day! Who could turn that down!



    CDP
  • Reply 3 of 11
    existenceexistence Posts: 991member
    If the iMacs go G5 and have decent graphics (Radeon 9600 or better), it might make more sense to buy a mid-range iMac and keep it for 2-3 years and buy another future iMac that will make today's PowerMacs look like toys.



    Wait until the next iMac revision before you buy anything. Many expect new iMacs within the next 2 months (WWDC a likely candidate).
  • Reply 4 of 11
    cuello del pollocuello del pollo Posts: 22member
    Existence,



    I promised myself I'd never buy another AIO. I love my CRT iMac but expansion/upgrades are near impossible. Of course, Apple might reveal a new design (a "cube" form factor or a mini-G4/G5 tower) at WWDC. We'll see pretty soon.



    CDP
  • Reply 5 of 11
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,425member
    Hell shoot for the dual 2.5 but if you miss that falling back to the dual 2 is fine. I watched FCP 4.5 run multiple streams of HD back in realtime on fast drives. You'll be running DV so the speed is even greater.



    I'm in the same shoes as you though. I have a cheap little JVC minidv and I'm just getting into it. I have to grab a Mac and the software also. Check to see if you have a Final Cut Users group in your area. Try to develop contacts and keep in touch. In 3 years your skills are going to amaze if you work at it. In fact the winner of Sundance for drama left an engineering job decided he wanted to make films and within 5 years his first movie was a winner made for a total cost of $7000.
  • Reply 6 of 11
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by cuello del pollo

    Greetings Everyone,



    I?m currently hacking away on a rev. d 333mhz iMac with 160 megs of ram and running OS 8.6. I?ve never experienced the joys of OSX and iLife and am quite eager to jump on the bandwagon.



    I?m interested in doing some serious editing on FCP 4 (projects ranging from 5 to 90 minutes), and would like to know how the new Powermacs measure up. I?d particularly like to hear from users who are currently working with FCP on a dual G5. What specs would you recommend? Would a dual 2Ghz machine with 1 gig of ram and the base level nivida card be sufficient? Are external firewire drives a necessity?



    Upgrading to a Powermac would offer a significant performance boost from my current computer. I plan on keeping my next system for at least 5 years. There seems to be a general consensus that another upgrade is roughly six months away. Would there be certain advantages to waiting (PCI-E, better video card options)?



    Thanks



    CDP



    you'll be blown away by the G5. Just to give you an idea of speed, I (for the moment) use a dual 1GHz G4 with 1 GB of ram--nothing special--and it holds up extremely well. I'm currently working on a music video that at one point had nearly 40 layers of video. If a G4 can handle tha, imagine the G5.
  • Reply 7 of 11
    cuello del pollocuello del pollo Posts: 22member
    ipodandimac,



    That's what I wanted to hear!



    Are you working on a Quicksilver 2002 (the first to break the 1 gig barrier)? Which video card are you using? How would you rate your system's overall performance on FCP -- poor, medium, or excellent?



    CDP
  • Reply 8 of 11
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by cuello del pollo

    ipodandimac,



    That's what I wanted to hear!



    Are you working on a Quicksilver 2002 (the first to break the 1 gig barrier)? Which video card are you using? How would you rate your system's overall performance on FCP -- poor, medium, or excellent?



    CDP



    I don't know the exact details of the video card, but I know it's 64MB, and I think its a Quicksilver. It's not my computer obviously. I go back into work tomorrow so I'll check on those. Overall, I would give it a 7 out of 10 with FCP. It gets a little bogged down trying to composite 2 or more layers of keyed green screen with real time extreme, and every now and then it beach balls too much for my taste (but no crashes). These are both things that a G5 would take care of.



    As for the new revs, I'm going pretty much all out with everything that can be upgraded, but I do a lot of motion graphics as well as editing. If you only do editing, I think the dual 2 Ghz would even be plenty, and you'll have left over cash for a 23 inch display. I would go with 4 gigs of ram, 256MB graphics card if you can afford it (but 128 should be fine), and obviously tons of storage.
  • Reply 9 of 11
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ipodandimac

    you'll be blown away by the G5. Just to give you an idea of speed, I (for the moment) use a dual 1GHz G4 with 1 GB of ram--nothing special--and it holds up extremely well. I'm currently working on a music video that at one point had nearly 40 layers of video. If a G4 can handle that, imagine the G5.



    40 layers! I have limited video experiance, I have seen 5, 10 and even 15 video layers, but 40



    Thats gotta be something speacial, or is that kind of layering common? I also have read about the limit beng like 99 layers, has anyone ever done a 99-layer project?
  • Reply 10 of 11
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by a_greer

    40 layers! I have limited video experiance, I have seen 5, 10 and even 15 video layers, but 40



    Thats gotta be something speacial, or is that kind of layering common? I also have read about the limit beng like 99 layers, has anyone ever done a 99-layer project?



    well, with music videos, all of the footage for the video must be synchronized, so what I did was take all the takes from all of the good shots and put them in their own layer so I could synchronize before editing. It just made things easier for me. 99 tracks would be very hard to justify I think.
  • Reply 11 of 11
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ipodandimac

    well, with music videos, all of the footage for the video must be synchronized, so what I did was take all the takes from all of the good shots and put them in their own layer so I could synchronize before editing. It just made things easier for me. 99 tracks would be very hard to justify I think.



    Ok, I get it, shoulda dawned on me, I do the same thing in acid/whatever other audio mixer I use



    For some reason I thought you meant 40 video tracks at the same time.
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