MacPro Purchase for FCP Editing

Am looking at purchasing a new MacPro for using with FCP and am trying to decide how to configure it.
I'm considering two 1TB HDs, plus a 300GB SAS 15,000RPM drive to use as my scratch disk for FCP. Do I need the RAID card for just 1 SAS HD?
Would there be any benefit to the SAS drive for editing in FCP vs. using one of the 1TB drives?
Also, I'm considering of 8GB of RAM. Sufficient for FCP or over-kill?
My projects are not large (15-20 minutes or so) and are mostly for QuickTime playback on computers or sent to a DVD. They are mostly training videos for my office, plus personal family stuff.
Also, considering the Quadro FX 5600 graphics card.

Any suggestions before I plunk down around $10K (or more) would be appreciated.

Regards, Cyrus
iMac 27" Intel i7 Quad-Core; 16GB RAM; 2TB HD
Final Cut Studio, FCP X, Photoshop CS5, After Effects, etc.

Try it with the 8800 rather than the Quadro (see how it feels then maybe upgrade if you really need it). Use the money you save to get a decent 30" monitor (or 2) as working on a 23" or 24" doesn't cut it no matter what anyone else says. Get that full 2560x1600 res!

Don't bother with a 10,000RPM Drive just get 3x 1TB Hitachi (or Segate 1.5TB if you want to risk it considering their recent record) in a RAID.

Better still get a Hardware RAID card like Caldigits and have a Hardware RAID 5 on 3 Disks which will give you a good performance and a bit of redundancy.

Have a 1TB for your system - I'm using the 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F1 which is a bit quieter than the Hitachis and so far so good a year on.

A lot of people might tell you (including other mods here ) that a large system disk can be problematic - not so in my experience and after you have installed all the software you need, you'll probably end up with about 400GB left for overheads.



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Overhead on the system disk is wasted space; nothing should go on your system disk but your system software and your applications.

You can get a big drive if you want, but our edit systems have 500 GB system drives partitioned in two, one partition for the current system configuration and one for the before-the-most-recent-upgrade configuration.

We also only get the Radeon 2600 graphics board.

Having an external RAID for your framestore isn't technically essential; I ran a system for nearly a year on two striped internal 750 GB drives. But having to separate my important files (project files, graphics, audio files and such) from my footage was kind of a pain. So now we've standardized on RAIDs, either from G-tech or Caldigit.

If all you're doing is Final Cut, 8 GB is the right number. If you're doing After Effects, you'll want 16 at an absolute minimum. And if you're doing 32-bit compositing in After Effects, get 24 or 32, because you will run out with just 16. Trust me. I know.

Sorry Cyrus I did forget to mention INTERNAL not an external RAID setup with 1 system HDD and 3 internal on a RAID 5 with Caldigit card.

Jeff is like my mother, thanks to him I tied my shoes for the first time the day before my 33rd birthday...

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We also only get the Radeon 2600 graphics board.

Its rubbish - especially for CoD or WoW

If you want speed on AE or Adobe schuffs get the Nvidia 8800

If you want Apples Pro App speed then the ATi 3850

If you want both THEN get the Quadro

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Having an external RAID for your framestore isn't technically essential;

Hes right but it might be an option if you wanted a REALLY big storage.

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If you're doing After Effects, you'll want 16 at an absolute minimum

When rendering with Multiple Processors AE loves to have LOADs of separate Memory for each. Plus it will really fly!



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

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They are mostly training videos for my office, plus personal family stuff.

in this case, it doesnt sound like youre dealing with huge deadlines and mission critical content.

i say simplify things. get the second from the fastest mac pro (the fastest is generally like only 200mhz faster or so and you wont see enough performance gain justify the price - you could spend the money better on more ram or external storage card) load it up with 16 gigs from an external vendor. up the video card a notch or two. put a second 500 gig internal drive (something to keep your email, music, ect or as jeff says to back up the last working state of the boot drive) and work off external firewire800 or esata drives.

from what youre telling us, that will be more than sufficient.

I'm with Wayne on this... Do you need all that horsepower? Are you working with graphic intensive applications or Color?

How about monitoring gear?


>>plus personal family stuff.

>in this case, it doesnt sound like youre dealing with huge deadlines and mission critical content.

He could have an extremely demanding wife...



www.strypesinpost.com

Sorry, no extremely demanding wife.... but do have something worse:
A bunch of demanding city attorneys... ;-)

I'm overwhelmed at the rapid response from all of you. I thank you much.

I'll review all your recommendations and re-think my configuration.

And, you are correct that my projects are not mission critical nor are they "commercial" level products, although I do want to produce the best professional results I can, be it QuickTime for playback on computers or burned to DVD for distribution.

Maybe what I should be asking is can anyone recommend a knowledgeable store/retailer where I could go in and talk with them to get a system configured for my needs, rather than trying to blindly order everything from Apple on-line? The Final Cut Store? I'd like some place where they have put video editing systems together before. Some of the "computer" stores I've been to are "just" selling stuff and don't seem to be very knowledgeable about configuring for video editing.

The $$ amount isn't all that critical as I have about $15K to max out a system with. This will be my own personal system that I will take with me when I retire (possibly end of this year). Yup, I iz an oldie... ;-) Thanks, again, to everyone.

Regards, Cyrus
iMac 27" Intel i7 Quad-Core; 16GB RAM; 2TB HD
Final Cut Studio, FCP X, Photoshop CS5, After Effects, etc.

We do a lot of color correcting using ProRess 1920x1080. I use the Radeon 3870, this card is great for Motion, AE and Color. I can't say I noticed much of a difference for FCP.

I also only have 5GB of RAM. Sometimes if I'm working on large complicated 10 bit float projects in AE it will start swapping and really slow down. If this happens I do a little house cleaning and pre-comp what I can and everything gets right with the World.

Anyway, if you need more than 8GB's of RAM your compensating for something....

Not sure where your located but if its in the Los Angeles area you can call Mac Hollywood.

I am in Los Angeles. Thanks. I'll give them a call.

PS: All you folks are terrific! My stuff isn't all the important in this world, but the support from this group really helps not feeling lonely and helpless out here on my own. It is amazing the things I learn from reading the posts on a regular basis. Big Thanks to all.

Regards, Cyrus
iMac 27" Intel i7 Quad-Core; 16GB RAM; 2TB HD
Final Cut Studio, FCP X, Photoshop CS5, After Effects, etc.

Better yet. MeleroseMac on Melrose. They are the big sponsors of lafcpug so I like to direct folks to there as much as I can. They support us big time.

Michael Horton
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I like that concept, too. Thanks

Regards, Cyrus
iMac 27" Intel i7 Quad-Core; 16GB RAM; 2TB HD
Final Cut Studio, FCP X, Photoshop CS5, After Effects, etc.

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Anyway, if you need more than 8GB's of RAM your compensating for something....

I know this isn't topical here, but this piece of misinformation demands correcting.

After Effects, like many applications, starts up one process per processor in the system, to the extent that enough RAM is available. Each process allocates two gigabytes of RAM. So an eight-processor After Effects system needs a minimum of 16 GB of RAM.

Now, After Effects won't necessarily require two gigabytes of RAM per processor. If you're doing simple work ? like low resolution compositing, or 16-bit integer compositing only, or small motion-blur sampling values, or trivially small numbers of layers ? After Effects may not actually require all of the memory it allocates. But if you're doing real work ? 32-bit float compositing at HD resolution or better ? then you need an absolute minimum of 16 GB of RAM. Unless you enjoy waiting.

Final Cut is a different beast. It handles multiprocessing and memory entirely differently. For Final Cut, 8 GB of RAM is sufficient. I wouldn't even consider going under that on an eight-processor system, though.

Jeff Harrell Wrote:
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> Anyway, if you need more than 8GB's of RAM your
> compensating for something....
>
Jeff: At my age, there ain't much left to "compensate for"!! Draft! .... ;-)

And, I haven't take the leap to AfterEffects. I pretty much do everything I need in FCP with Motion and using Compressor, etc. Not up to "studio quality" productions.... yet!! Using Color and SoundTrack Pro are still in learning stages. My "editing" skills are a real "work in progress" (or, more accurately, "burn and learn"... lots of trial and error!

I'm going to wander over to MelroseMac this weekend and have a talk with them.

Regards, Cyrus
iMac 27" Intel i7 Quad-Core; 16GB RAM; 2TB HD
Final Cut Studio, FCP X, Photoshop CS5, After Effects, etc.

FCP wont utilize more than 4GBs of Ram. Actually I think its like 1.5GBs or something. Motion and compressor will. 8 is plenty for the video editor. so is 4 for that matter. Just don't have a bunch of apps open at same time. Hard as that is.

Michael Horton
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[support.apple.com]

Yup. And it will only address 2.5 gigs of those.



www.strypesinpost.com

Yes, but that limit applies to all 32-bit applications. That's two-ish gigs for Final Cut, two-ish gigs for Soundtrack, two-ish gigs for Color and two-ish gigs for every Compressor rendering process. Not to mention two-ish gigs for the Finder and two-ish gigs for the kernel itself.

If you've got fewer than eight gigs in your system, and you're even making a passing attempt to take advantage of all eight processors, you're going to run out of RAM frequently.

Hells, people, 16 GB of Mac Pro RAM has a street price of under $400 today, I-need-it-this-afternoon shipping included. There are better places to cut costs than RAM.

Jeff Harrell Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Hells, people, 16 GB of Mac Pro RAM has a street
> price of under $400 today,
> I-need-it-this-afternoon shipping included. There
> are better places to cut costs than RAM.


Really? On the Apple site, they want $3,500 to $4,300 for 16GB RAM.....??!!!
Beginning to suspect ordering on-line is not the best way to go $$-wise...!!
I think MelroseMac & I need to talk!!!

Regards, Cyrus
iMac 27" Intel i7 Quad-Core; 16GB RAM; 2TB HD
Final Cut Studio, FCP X, Photoshop CS5, After Effects, etc.

> Really? On the Apple site, they want $3,500 to $4,300 for 16GB RAM.....??!!!
> Beginning to suspect ordering on-line is not the best way to go $$-wise...!!
> I think MelroseMac & I need to talk!!!

Yeah, for a lot of hardware peripherals Apple's prices are not good at all.


www.derekmok.com

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Really? On the Apple site, they want $3,500 to $4,300 for 16GB RAM.....??!!!
Beginning to suspect ordering on-line is not the best way to go $$-wise...!!

NOBODY buys their RAM from Apple - crazy pricing. I get mine here:

[www.a1acomputing.com]

$509.89 for a 16 GB kit

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Ordering online is, in fact, the best way to go price-wise, in no small part because most online orders do not include sales tax. On a multi-thousand-dollar purchase, the tax really adds up.

Remember also that RAM comes in different capacities. You can get to 16 GB either by using eight 2 GB modules or four 4 GB modules. The difference is that once you've put eight 2 GB modules in your Mac, you can't add any more RAM without first taking out and discarding at least some of the RAM you already bought. Buying 4 GB modules means you're leaving half your available RAM sockets empty for possible future use.

(Joe, you're getting overcharged. OWC has 8x2GB for $374.99.)

RAM is coming down everywhere. Where's the link, Jeff?

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

It's macsales.com, I think. I can never remember that, so I just google "OWC."

I'm not trying to make an official endorsement or anything here, but OWC has been my single-source provider of RAM and hard drives for years and years. I've probably spent tens of thousands of dollars of my own and (mostly) company money with them, and I've never had a single bad experience. To the contrary; when I bought two gigs of then-pretty-pricey RAM for a G4, one stick turned out to be bad. OWC replaced the whole set for me, cross-shipping me a more expensive variant that they promised would be completely reliable without charging me for the difference.

Lazy

[eshop.macsales.com]

I would probably go with this...4 x 4 GB for $599.97 = GREAT PRICE. Leaves room for 4 more chips in case you want to go to 32 GB total.

Good tip, Jeff...looks like I have a new vendor

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

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OWC has been my single-source provider of RAM and hard drives for years and years.

me too. wouldnt go anywhere else.

Thanks everyone for your responses, but....

..doesn't it just figure.... in the interim I decided to buy the "new" iMac with 4GB ram and 500GB system disk. I am waiting a bit to still get the MacPro (lucky me, maybe)....

No sooner do I get the "new" iMac all set up and running that I come across yak on the web that Apple may(?) be releasing "new" models of the Mac mini, the iMac and the MacPro......!! What? Again?? Some new type of processor and(?) video card!!

Really odd how when I buy any "new" Mac, it seems to trigger Apple's release of an upgraded model. I no sooner drive the "new "BelchFire 8" off the showroom floor, than I see an ad going up for the "new, improved BelchFire 9 - In showrooms next week!!!"

Maybe I'll just go back to what I did when I was a young kid: Cave paintings...

It was dark and lonely, but you only had "upgrades" every 1,000 years or so.....

Cyrus