MP 1,1-5,1 MacPro 8 core 2008 vs editing video.

[Augustots]

Hi, as you know from my previous posts they gave me an 8 core mac pro from 2008, now I will install on a 256 gb SSD el capitan or sierra I will increase the RAM up to 32gb, and I will also install an MSI GTX 960 4gb, and also 3 1TB SSD as hd for video, music and document files.
My main purpose is to edit video with fcpx 10.3.4. which is the latest version of fcpx that works on el capitan, I have to do editing with files in ultraHD 4k that is h264 3840x2160 25p.
I'm not a video pro but a retired amateur, so I don't expect this macpro 3.1 to edit native 4k files like they do in the cinema, but I can convert them when importing on fcpx to pro-res 422HQ that way it will be more easy to work with.
Do you think I will be able to do what I have just described with this mac pro, or will there be problems?
thank you.

 

[Augustots]

Help my please

 

[AlexMaximus]

Help my please

Well, as a retired amateur you will be fine. For a free machine and some upgrades you can start truckin along just fine.
And don’t forget - you got lucky that you got the 3.2 cpus, that was the max model at that time. However, When it comes to 4K, you might experience some hiccups. 4k can be real tough on a MP5.1, so don’t expect too much. It’s a great collector Mac to have for sure. Speaking of upgrades, there might be some items left for you to speed up your video editing. If you are willing to monitor eBay for some time you might get lucky and score great pci cards for little money. See if you can find a newer version of cards like this below.

CDRLabs.com - Matrox CompressHD H.264 Encoding Accelerator Card - Reviews - all-pages

CDRLabs has put together a brief review of Matrox's CompressHD H.264 encoding accelerator card. This low profile, half-length PCI Express card supports Matrox MAX technology and features a dedicated hardware processor which allows it to encode H.264 video at resolutions ranging from iPod to HD...

www.cdrlabs.com

Matrox CompressHD Professional Accelerator Card with Matrox MAX, for Mac & Windows

If you're a professional content creator delivering H.264 files for Blu-ray, the web and mobile devices, you need a fast, flexible, high quality encoding workhorse. Matrox CompressHD is the first implementation of Matrox MAX technology in an amazingly affordable H.264 accelerator card. It lets yo...

www.amazon.com

Like mentioned above and in the article, this card only works till Yosemite and older, not with Newer OSX.
But it gives you an idea where to start. You would need a newer modern version like this, maybe an external matrox box will help With specific apps.
Things like that will help you to use your Mac to work with HD format, but not really with 4K. Your Mac is 13 years old...

 

[Augustots]

Thank you for your very useful advice, of course I don't expect miracles, but let's say that if the h264 3840x2160 25p files I convert them into pro ress 422 HQ files in the end it will be easier to edit them with fcpx, am I right?
Thanks again.

 

[nigelbb]

Even if you transcode the h.264 files to ProRes your 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 is really going to struggle with editing 4K. The answer is to use proxies where you work with lower resolution proxy files during the actual editing process then the actual 4K files are only used at the final stage to output the final cut (no pun intended?). Here is a discussion on using proxies in FCP https://blog.frame.io/2017/05/11/ultimate-guide-to-fcp-x-proxies/

 

[Augustots]

Thank you for your very useful advice.

 

[AlexMaximus]

I don’t know your exact user case, however this might prove useful.

 

[Augustots]

Thank you