New Mac(s)

Christmas came ... or might be coming.

We ran into some pretty serious problems with our two older G5 machines (we're having trouble getting clean-burning anthracite, for one) so there is the possibility that the company is going to let us pop for two new, tall, shiny Mac Pros.

I don't think they're going to let us go for 8 cores, so quad-core it is. 8GB memory and one if not two internal spinning hard drives -- like what we have now.

I'm worried about the OS. I'm not interested in Bleeding Edge. Edge with the blood carefully cleaned off is good. That and the interaction problems between OS and different Final Cut versions. I can explain a slightly late show, but I can't explain no show.

The GeForce GT120 isn't limited to 512MB on-board memory, is it?

Thoughts?

Koz

Hey Koz

Good to hear from you. You are stuck with Snow Leopard so no choice there unless you erase the HD and install Leopard. But SL is quite nice and bug free. As to stock graphics card its powerful enough unless you are using it for the big time animators at R&H. SL and Final Cut work nice with each other.

Michael Horton
-------------------

<<<unless you are using it for the big time animators at R&H.>>>

We are. It's not animators, tho.

If I tell you any more I'll have to kill you.

My personal opinion is anything that makes them happy is going to make me happy.

OK, less unhappy.

Koz

Then stuff it with a bunch more ram (32GB) and go out and get the baddest Graphics card you can afford

Michael Horton
-------------------

<<<a bunch more ram (32GB)>>>

I think that's covered. We're considering 8.

<<<go out and get the baddest Graphics card you can afford>>>

What about Final Cut and Snow Leopard support? I don't want to find out that one of the tools doesn't work right because the FrammisXXF Video Card driver doesn't support it.

Koz

There are issues but no deal breakers. Always issues. Nothing that cant be worked around. Your fine. 32GB won't do you proud with Final Cut, but will help with the other apps and of course all those goofy apps R&H use. Get BootCamp and a high end GPU and you can smoke all the WOW players in the cubicles down the hall.

Michael Horton
-------------------

<<<you can smoke all the WOW players in the cubicles down the hall.>>>

univac4tty35: Put down the stick. [enter]
univac4tty35: OK
univac4tty35: Pick up the bird. [enter]
univac4tty35: OK

Koz

>I don't think they're going to let us go for 8 cores, so quad-core it is

I remember someone mentioning that the 8 core mac pro of the previous gen is a better buy that the quad of the current generation- faster and cheaper.



www.strypesinpost.com

I think the quads are better myself. I have a 3.0 quad that kicks arsh. (8gigs ram). I am running SL and it is better than leopard. I got hangs in leopard.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

How are we dealing with Time Machine? My Macbook Pro has that and I dock once a week (or more) and let it share files with an external FireWire drive.

We have an SRW5800 that pretty much handles all of our deliverables that don't go out on a hard drive. We connect to the machine room with an AJA Kona2, again seriously dated, but seems to work just fine -- we did a dual link 4:4:4 transfer a while ago.

Did you know that the SRW will not accept 720 sync? 1080 only, even if the show is in 720. [Stunned Silence]
Right. That means the AJA takes different sync than the tape machine -- on the same show.

Koz

Koz-

Nice to see you're still cooking...eh, kicking. Sorry, food issues.

You want the 8-Core!! No two ways about it. Get the low end 2.26 8 core, it's a dream with Compressor, After Effects, Motion, and rendering anywhere. If anyone has school ties, get the academic discount.

RAM: this is a "triple-channel" machine. Yes, it has 8 slots, and you can do as Michael suggests, stuff it to the gills with 32GB of RAM- I was going to myself but researched it before buying memory.

Out of the box, the tower comes with 6GB, in slots 1,2,3, servicing the first CPU, 5,6 and 7 servicing the second. I didn't understand why all slots weren't populated until I learned this machine has a triple-channel memory interleave-- it's like RAIDING RAM chips for higher bandwidth. The minute you fill the 4th slot, you're telling the machine, forget the newfangled three-way interleave, and it'll slow down. It might be imperceptable, but you won't get that 1067 Mhz bus speed!

if you max this machine out, you lower your bus speed 10-15%, and if you need max speed in processing, especially with the lower end 8-core, consider upgrading RAM in three, not four slots.

I just upgraded from 6 to 12GB-- Other World Computer has a decent price, the upgrade was effortless and it's blazing along after first reboot.


- Loren

Today's FCP keytip:
Set a motion effect keyframe instantly with Control-K!

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

In Days Gone By, you couldn't capture uncompressed HiDef (for long) and so had to capture as Something Else and edit with that. This gave you the flurry of "real" versus "simulated" pixels and aspect ratios, etc, etc.

NTSC and its oddball pixels are dying out and machines improved, so how is it done now? Apple Lossless? Apple Intermediate? What's current, and cool?

Koz

in the apple world, the current and cool codec is Apple ProRes.

HD image size with SD file size.
(or SD frame size with close to DV file size.)

originally there were 2 flavours, Apple ProRes 422 and Apple ProRes 422 HQ.
Most people reported that there was no visible difference between the two.

with FCS3 & FCP7 there are some new flavours

ProRes LT. smaller than plain ProRes, "good enough for news & sport" is the selling point.

ProRes proxy. this is the real "offline" version.

what's great about these is that you can easily work at your finishing frame size,
so there are less issues with motion effects, graphics, etc when you come to up-res.

oh, and there's the big daddy:
ProRes 4444 which will carry an alpha channel



cheers,
nick

The new machines -- like the older ones -- will have two internal drives. A System Drive and a second internal. Traditionally, we ran everything on the System Drive and captured to the second. The machine I'm typing on right now has 150GB for the system and 250GB for the second.

You can't buy new, small drives any more, so the two new drives are likely to be upwards of 1TB each.

That can't be fast. We have one machine like that already in the building and it's a nightmare to service because everything takes two to four times longer than all the other machines.

I can't believe that doesn't bring a really fast machine to its knees just with platter management alone.

Koz

Everybody uses Time Machine, right?
Koz

No, i know a lot of people that don't use time machine but only know a few that do. I back up my media, xml, fcp project and other things dealing with a project to a separate drive and mirror that drive. that was suggested to me as a better means of backing up media.

haven't heard many complaints on Time Machine though other than its not the best thing for backing up major media.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Kozikowski Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Everybody uses Time Machine, right?
> Koz

Use it at the office and at home, no major complaints. At work I back up all my internal drives to an eSATA RAID via Time Machine, as well as a chunk of the files on my main RAID (graphics, Motion files, audio -- anything that's not captured media). At home I have a Time Capsule backing up a laptop and an iMac, everything humming along just fine. The only issue is getting a drive with enough space and the initial backup (which will take a while).

JK

_______________________________________
SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!

At home, I run time machine onto a firewire drive with 2 partitions (one for a bootable system clone, the second for time machine). On multiple machines, it would be interesting to time machine to a network drive. Currently, it seems like the only way to do it is with a hack (but I haven't tried this myself yet):

[www.somelifeblog.com]



www.strypesinpost.com

Quote

That can't be fast. We have one machine like that already in the building and it's a nightmare to service because everything takes two to four times longer than all the other machines.

I can't believe that doesn't bring a really fast machine to its knees just with platter management alone.

Actually most modern 1TB+ SATA and SAS HDDs are much faster and more reliable than those 250GB of yesteryear.

The only time things might take be slower is when backing up; if you fill them up say to 750GB and thus having 3x as much data to backup.

Otherwise there is very little to worry about when going to the new MacPros, they positively scream when given the chance.

However if you are going to be doing HD I would recommend getting RAID 5 arrays for each Mac if you aren't going to be getting a faster network media server.

Your main bottleneck is supplying the data-rate for the MacPros to chew on, you won't even come close with a single HDD or SSD. Lots of people ignore this and so completely stunt their performance. Don't.



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

We currently have two very nice ViewSonic VP2130P flat monitors on each G5 and I have several at home. They have terrific color and fidelity and at the time, they were the only monitor that would do this that didn't cost as much as a Buick. However, they wake up funny.

At home...

[www.kozco.com]

I have it wired DVI and I have a Wake Up Dance that I do after I put the Mini to sleep. If I wake them up in the wrong order or don't execute the dance correctly, the two will not connect to each other. That is, I press Enter to wake up the Mini at the exact instant that I press Power-On on the panel. Or I can Power the panel and within a quarter second, press Enter. Any other combination puts the panel into power save mode and you're dead. There is no recovery from that condition.


At work, all the panels are wired 15-pin VGA. We turn all the machines off every night and VGA wakes up every time, no exceptions. We struggled with Super High Quality DVI for two weeks and we never found the Wake Up Dance.

Is that a condition brought by this model number, or is there a dance I don't know about?

Koz

We have two RAID5 towers for each machine -- external. I think they're both connected Firewire 800.

I'm trying as much as possible to separate the fact that they have a ton of data on them from the ability to access that data at any given time. Yes, nobody is expecting a drive to dump tons of data in neck-snapping times. A ton of data is a ton of data, but capturing and playing back demand that room be found Right Now with no delays while the platter management thinks about it.

Koz

Interesting. I recall working on some monitors a while ago that didn't wake up from sleep. I don't usually put my computers to sleep while editing- only the monitors. Next time, I'll try that wake up dance!


Meanwhile a tuna was sold for a hefty sum:

[news.yahoo.com]



www.strypesinpost.com

<<<that didn't wake up from sleep.>>>

I want to be very clear that the panels do wake up (we also have panels that don't). The little front light turns green and the monitor gives every indication that it wants to return to service.

And then, after a couple of seconds it goes back to sleep again.

It's like there's a window of opportunity for the Mac and a separate window for the monitor Power Save and they're both really narrow and they are both required to be there at the same time.

Complicated, of course, by having two panels. You have to match up three acceptance windows.

Koz