You are about 7+ years out of date. We don't capture video from tape any more. The files get imported off the Compact Flash or SD card. A USB3 card reader will allow the cards to be read at maximum speed.
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Mac Pro vs PC.
- Thread starter Snjper
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A 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 will edit HD video OK. I bought one in 2008 to edit HD video & am still using it to edit HD & now 4K video. Originally I used FCP6 then FCP7 then Adobe Premiere CS6 now CC 2015. I have upgraded to 32GB RAM a GTX570 & SSD & it's still a very powerful system for HD video.
An i7-4790 will be twice as fast in single stream CPU performance but a dual CPU 3,1 will have pretty similar overall system throughput in multithreaded applications with eight physical cores.
You can find a MP 3,1 very cheap but only buy one if that is your maximum budget. If you can afford more then you would be better buying a dual CPU 4,1 or 5,1 but they will be at least double the price of a dual CPU 3,1.
This might be true if you were setting up a dedicated editing suite just to run Premiere. However most of us use our systems for other applications too & the OS X environment is just so much nicer than running Windows that even if Premier is a little faster on Windows I would still rather us OS X.
Tape???? Break out boxes, Thunderbolt solutions, and Red Rockets are at the top of the game. You don't want to import 6K RED video of a USB3 reader and your solution does nothing for live edits.
The guy asking the question said that he is editing video as a hobby so I doubt that he is using Red anything.
A key issue is whether he will ever be editing H264 4K video. While having a reputation for being fast, in my experience Adobe's Mercury Playback engine does not handle H264 4K very well -- even on a top-spec 2015 iMac 27. It does fine on 1080P but performance degrades drastically with 4K. Multicam 4K is even worse. This is exacerbated by not having built-in proxy support. If reducing playback resolution to 1/4 doesn't yield sufficient performance the only option is increase the hardware or adopt manual transcoding procedures for proxy files.
If he will never do 4K then he has a wider range of choices. The previously-mentioned pros/cons about the Mac Pro vs iMac are valid. But if he will ever need to edit any appreciable amount of 4K in Premiere I would suggest he either get a heavily massaged older Mac Pro or a Windows machine with lots of memory, a fast RAID array and GTX-980 ti or Titan GPU.
This situation is limited to Premiere -- FCP X is much faster on the same hardware. However changing editing programs is a big step and not necessarily the right move if he already has lots of experience in Premiere or needs the full suite. Maybe Adobe will improve the playback engine in the future.
If he will never do 4K then he has a wider range of choices. The previously-mentioned pros/cons about the Mac Pro vs iMac are valid. But if he will ever need to edit any appreciable amount of 4K in Premiere I would suggest he either get a heavily massaged older Mac Pro or a Windows machine with lots of memory, a fast RAID array and GTX-980 ti or Titan GPU.
This situation is limited to Premiere -- FCP X is much faster on the same hardware. However changing editing programs is a big step and not necessarily the right move if he already has lots of experience in Premiere or needs the full suite. Maybe Adobe will improve the playback engine in the future.
On Certain things ... Yes. The QuickSync will benefit x264. The raw Geekbench is higher. Cost as I have investigated is about the same. I came back home after my Hackintosh experience. Less money afforded me a TON of something I NEVER wanted. Aggravation and time robbing research and configuration. Time I could have spent editing my home Videos and doing fun stuff that plain ol MAC PRO just delivers up by the heap loads. Maybe you like Hot Rodding better than Driving / Racing. To each their own but, as for me ... an AMD 7970 delivered up all the Video editing goodness I could stand tag teamed along with the APPLE software designed to take advantage of it. I have historically been Hod Rodder and an Huge adobe fan. I was also an NVidia fanboy to the death. I had to finally ask myself hard questions though ... like what are the most important things to me. My Music, Home Movies, Pictures, and ... Driving was the answer. So ... I bought a used Mac Pro and an affordable Vette ... LOL. Good luck to you.
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then you say that FCPX is faster premiere pro?
I mean that FCPX richede a less powerful Mac to make video editing?
I could convert my avchd clips 100m / bits in Apple ProRes 422 HQ with MpegStreamclip (I already made some tests) and then import them into FCPX and work well without any problems?
thank you
I mean that FCPX richede a less powerful Mac to make video editing?
I could convert my avchd clips 100m / bits in Apple ProRes 422 HQ with MpegStreamclip (I already made some tests) and then import them into FCPX and work well without any problems?
thank you
He's saying that FCPX handles 4K h264 better than Premiere on a Mac. You would get better performance out of Premiere on a Windows machine. This is also hardware dependent of course.
However, your mention of converting your footage to ProRes is a different thing. ProRes will of course edit well in FCPX as that what it was designed to do. Despite current hardware/software being able to handle it, h264 is still a ****** editing codec. Any lossless format (I know ProRes isn't technically lossless) will edit well in the common NLEs.
I have to agree with Pete here. Hey most likely knows 50 million times more about Video. I do have to ask a pointed question Pete .... LOL and you know know how important this is ....
Adobe on Windows PC - Faster = True being a given ...
How fast is FCPX on Windows ....
Turning to Experts like Pete on Youtube yeilds some surprising results too. I saw a very interesting comparison on Premier VS FCPX.
In conclusion ... I must say that with todays operating systems and Hardware on every side of the fence ... things are really awesome in the world of video these days. One of my boys turned out a killer little video right straight up off of his iPAD with iMovie. Surprisingly fast for that hardware.
Exactly. Therein lies the rub.
So if you need a FCPX editing solution, a PC is out of the question. Unless you're a hobbyist I probably wouldn't recommend a hackintosh as a substitute either. If you're an Avid or Premiere only type of person, unless you're really impressed with the aesthetics of an iMac or Mac Pro, I'd go PC there. You have more options and upgrade paths down the road.
If you're going the PC route, as others have said, the X99 platform may be a nice compromise. 6 or 8 cores, with modern port support and 40 PCI lanes. Without heavy overclocking, the cheapo X99 system that I just bought beats out all but a couple of the 12-core Mac Pros, using the free 32 bit multi-core test. It's not a true Pro workstation, but it was relatively cheap and is very fast. I know, these benchmarks don't mean much, but it's a data point.
Just saying that the Intel Extreme processors are another option, in between the standard desktop lines and Xeon. Should you go the PC route, there are more options than the 4790k.
Just saying that the Intel Extreme processors are another option, in between the standard desktop lines and Xeon. Should you go the PC route, there are more options than the 4790k.
Could be wrong ... but ... Bang for Buck .... FCPX / MAC is Faster than Adobe on Windows. Adobe has a unbelievable full suite of software to go with it though and they most likely will play leap frog with Apple for many years to come. Why limit yourself with one or the other. Enjoy both. Sadly ... Windows / PC doesn't offer BOTH worlds. My Macs run everthing including Linux so even all the OPEN Source tools are right there at my disposal. Me personally ... I'd rather have no limits to what I can run.
P.S. I also prefer no more stinking Hackintosh / Clover / Can't update .... bla bla bla time wasting crap. For the Guys who can build, run, and maintain these beast .... more power to ya.
I think I'm going to try an X99 build over the holidays when I have some time off. I've been waiting around for news on the Mac Pro, but finally decided to bite the bullet, mainly because I wanted a project to work on with my free time. I'll still keep up with the Mac Pro news/rumors since I have no intention of abandoning the apple ecosystem entirely. I'm surely not against adding one as the budget permits.
First, I'm not sure this is true.
I used to have the same feeling (and still do to an extent) but these days I'd rather have the hardware that can provide the best performance for the few programs I use most rather than varying performance on a slew of programs that I use to varying degrees.
That's a different story then. He could even just buy a base model of any Mac or PC.
Yes, generally correct. Transcoding to ProRes or other low-compression or intraframe codec will usually give more responsive performance on most editors. Historically Final Cut required transcoding to ProRes, whereas starting with CS5 Premiere's Mercury Playback engine was so fast it could edit high def H264 with good performance.
However this began to change with FCPX, and for approx. the last two years it has had roughly equal performance to Premiere when editing H264 up through 1080p. It is generally no longer necessary to transcode to ProRes in FCPX -- it is just like Premiere in that sense.
But due to that history FCPX retained a built-in transcoding and proxy feature. By contrast Premiere's Mercury Playback was so fast they did not need transcoding, so it never had this and does not today.
In fact it says on the Premiere overview video it "allows editors to work with 4k and beyond, without time-consuming transcoding", and "never needing to render until your work is complete": https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pr....html?set=premiere-pro--get-started--overview
Unfortunately Premiere CC performance degrades exponentially on H264 4K material, at least on a top-spec 2015 iMac and a 4Ghz Windows 10 PC I tested. In my back-to-back performance testing on a top-spec 2015 iMac 27, Premiere does not deliver responsive timeline performance on H264 4K material, whereas FCPX does. When fast forwarding through the timeline I would estimate the viewer update rate of FCPX is about 20x faster than Premiere, likewise lag on JKL input is much less.
If you transcode H264 4K to ProRes (about 8x the size), then Premiere is fast. That means manual transcoding using external utilities. An approx 1 hr two-camera 4K shoot using 100 megabit H264 is roughly 80GB; transcoded to ProRes that's about 640GB. The latest version of FCPX does not require this for adequate performance, but if desired it has built-in transcoding and proxy features so you never worry about moving files or getting them out of sync.
This is all relevant since it affects hardware choices, which is this thread's topic. If Parsuto will only be editing H264 1080P on Premiere CC then almost anything will work -- iMac, Mac Pro, Windows machine, etc. If he will be editing H264 4K, that is a lot harder for Premiere and he may need to transcode to ProRes (which means a lot more disk space) or get a really powerful machine.
If he wants to consider FCPX that is OK but generally I do not recommend changing editing programs you are familiar with. Despite these issues Premiere is a good product and the suite (Prelude, Audition, After Effects, AME, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc) is very rich and diverse.
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Good stuff, thanks. I still haven't had to deal much with h264 as anything but a delivery codec so I have little first-hand experience with actual performance comparisons.
That's pretty much what I recently did. My new PC is up and running, but I'll do the full migration over the holidays. I do prefer OS X, but Win 10 isn't that bad. Oddly enough, I now think Win 10 may be about equal to OS X as a laptop OS, but I much prefer OS X in a desktop. Still, I think with some playing over the holiday downtime, Win 10 will be fine.
And do check out the various outlet stores. I wound up getting a big goofy gaining box, though I'm not much of a gamer. Still, it was a ~$4,000 system that I got for ~$2,100 (5930k 6-core CPU, 2x GTX 980 GPUs in SLI, 32GB DDR4, liquid cooled, 1,500w PSU, etc.). Keep an eye out for coupons. In my case, it was the Dell Outlet. They're already discounted heavily over the base systems, and the 33% or 40% off coupons certainly sweeten the deal. You can find Precision workstations, Alienware game systems, etc. on there.
On the plus side, it's pretty nice to slap in all the components you need. I immediately dropped in a NVMe SSD and two SATA SSDs, in RAID 0. On the negative side, I miss OSX> But again, Windows isn't bad.
And do check out the various outlet stores. I wound up getting a big goofy gaining box, though I'm not much of a gamer. Still, it was a ~$4,000 system that I got for ~$2,100 (5930k 6-core CPU, 2x GTX 980 GPUs in SLI, 32GB DDR4, liquid cooled, 1,500w PSU, etc.). Keep an eye out for coupons. In my case, it was the Dell Outlet. They're already discounted heavily over the base systems, and the 33% or 40% off coupons certainly sweeten the deal. You can find Precision workstations, Alienware game systems, etc. on there.
On the plus side, it's pretty nice to slap in all the components you need. I immediately dropped in a NVMe SSD and two SATA SSDs, in RAID 0. On the negative side, I miss OSX> But again, Windows isn't bad.
Yeah, I've become OS agnostic over the past few years. All things being equal, I'd go with OSX, but that's still probably only because I had used them exclusively at home and work for a decade or so and is what I remain more comfortable with. But for the past three years I've had to work on several different HP and Boxx workstations, which got me back into the Windows environment. I also picked up a Surface Pro 3 last year. Honestly, the OS mostly remains in the background whenever I'm doing serious work. The only piece of Apple software that I'd like to be able to use is FCPX, but that alone isn't a reason to keep me on OSX. Besides, I quite like Windows 10.
Yeah, I think it's a mixed-bag. For personal stuff, I really like OSX and its ecosystem. iLife and device integration are wonderful. For work stuff, at least for what I do, I continue to bump into some situations where Windows is a bit better.
So the trick will be to setup all my old Apple ecosystem stuff to work on my PC.
So the trick will be to setup all my old Apple ecosystem stuff to work on my PC.