Help with new Macintosh specs

I'm shopping for a new Mac for my video editing machine and i'm looking for advice from those who have Mac video editing experience. I've used a standard def sony in the past but am planning to step up to HD very soon. Everything I shoot is for personal use or shared with dive classes and clinics. It's not production quality but I do spend a great deal of time editing it to look nice. I'm assuming I'll need a Mac Pro but I'm looking for advice on how to have it configured (processor, RAM, hard drive space, video card, etc). Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Regards!

I'm shopping for a new Mac for my video editing machine and i'm looking for advice from those who have Mac video editing experience. I've used a standard def sony in the past but am planning to step up to HD very soon. Everything I shoot is for personal use or shared with dive classes and clinics. It's not production quality but I do spend a great deal of time editing it to look nice. I'm assuming I'll need a Mac Pro but I'm looking for advice on how to have it configured (processor, RAM, hard drive space, video card, etc). Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Regards!

Well like anything, the faster and more power the better

With the Mac Tower:

1.) Get the base RAM when you order and install as much RAM as you can afford afterwards. macsales.com, crucial andd others are good after market RAM sources and alot less expensive.

2.) Same comment regarding internal drives, OEM is alot less expesnive and the Mac towers are real easy to put them in and out. 7200 RPM for speed is the best (I loaded my new Tower with 4 1 Terrabyte drives).

3.) Depending on your work load, the difference is processor speed may not be worth the bang for the buck. The base processor speed in all likelihood will be fine. If there is a choice between a better graphics card, faster processor or more RAM based on your budget, go with the RAM.

4.) Video card will help with some things, such as Motion and Aperture and perhaps other apps where Apple unloads more to the GPU down the road. That being said the 8800 is a nice card but right now the Mac does not fully take advantage of it. There should be driver updates/OS updates (hopefully) that address the issue and there are other cards coming down the road. I have the 8800 and so far so good.

5.) Not sure what you are going for in terms of editing the next round, but it sounds like you will not be doing full uncomressed HD as start. For HDV you can even get by with FW800 external drives. I like using some hardware RAID such as the RTX by wiebetech and use a eSATA card to attach them, though the RTX also has FW800 and USB 2 ports (stick with the FW800 as oppossed to USB) You can do fine with this. (Do a search for RAID in the forums, there have been some discussions about different setups and recommendations) I have an old 1 Ghz G4 laptop that I was able to do HDV on. My Mac Book Pro, with Express Cards for eSATA and another for extra FW800 ports, is also more than adequate for things (faster than my DP G5 2.0 Ghz Machine) so any of the new Towers will be more than enough. The only issue is Leopard and some Compressor issues, more so if you are on a real tight timeline. I am not a big fan of Leopard quite yet when using the FInall Cut Studio, though it is not horrible.

6.) Internal RAID Card. A pricey upgrade and could be worth it. I have it and set it up for RAID 5 on some disks for a bit of data protection, but it is not to replace a proper back up scheme. Not sure if I would say go for this option. I did, welll just because

can someone explain eSATA drives to me?

ever the idiot,

-A

Thanks for the speedy and thorough reply, TheRealDrew!

I'll probably be shooting with a Sony HDV camcorder so I don't know if that's considered full uncompressed HD or not.

I assumed loading up on the RAM would be important and aftermarket is probably the better bet. How much RAM would you recommend to run things effectively. The basic Mac Tower comes with 2GB.

I'm not really familiar with the file sizes for HDV either. Do you really need 4 terrabytes or are you storing large amounts of video and data. I generally will shoot/capture 4 to 6 hours of video from a set of dives and edit it into one video around an hour long or so.

I'm a little confused on the RAID card though. Is that to support external drives only? Will I need more external drive space or will mulitple internal drives suffice? I guess I'm wondering how much harddrive space I will need for everything and then choosing if they should be internal or external.

The 8800 video card is a $150 option with the base tower package. Seems like a cheap enough upgrade for video.

Thanks for the speedy and thorough reply, TheRealDrew!

No problem

I'll probably be shooting with a Sony HDV camcorder so I don't know if that's considered full uncompressed HD or not.

HDV is not full unccompressed HD, I even edited in on the old Powerbook so you should be fine. Converting to some other formats will take up more room, but are easier to work with (AIC and ProRez). HDV itself will take up about 13 Gigs per hour.

I assumed loading up on the RAM would be important and aftermarket is probably the better bet. How much RAM would you recommend to run things effectively. The basic Mac Tower comes with 2GB.

Again the more the merrier, though applications do not necessarily use all of it (though hopefully future versions may.) I think Final Cut maxes out at 4 Gigs and Photoshop has some limits. I threw an extra 8 in for a total of 10. Will help if you have more than one application running. The 4 Gig chips are still kind of pricey, the 2 gig chips seemed to give the most bang for the buck.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory

I'm not really familiar with the file sizes for HDV either. Do you really need 4 terrabytes or are you storing large amounts of video and data. I generally will shoot/capture 4 to 6 hours of video from a set of dives and edit it into one video around an hour long or so.

I just got a ton of files 13 Gigs an hour for HDV. With drives so inexpensive even if you use AIC or ProRes you can still get enough space for a relative song. Remeber though the best move is not to have your scratch disk or media on the same drive as the OS and Application. Real easy though to do either internally or externally.

I'm a little confused on the RAID card though. Is that to support external drives only? Will I need more external drive space or will mulitple internal drives suffice? I guess I'm wondering how much harddrive space I will need for everything and then choosing if they should be internal or external.

THe RAID card Apple offers is for the internal drives. There are other cards for external drives and/or external hardware RAIDs that are also fine. I order the internal one just because and I am not sure I would tell someone to get it. I just wanted some felxibilty on a hardware side of things internally, but really not needed I guess. It was just easier for me to order at the time and Apple to install so I did not have to think about it. With 4 internal bays and 750 Gig drives so inexpensive you could start with that. Have one of the drives as the media holder, the second that you back up the media to and the 3rd as the scratch/render and for what you are looking at doing you will be golden. The 750 Gig will hold 50+ hours of HDV.

The 8800 video card is a $150 option with the base tower package. Seems like a cheap enough upgrade for video.

That was my thinking though the card is not fully (yet) what it is cracked up to be. Tests well on gaming, but not as well as it otherwise should for what it is being mentioned for. On the other hand hopefully things will catch up. Everything seems to indicate it is a driver issue, but I am not sure.

http://www.barefeats.com/york2.html there was also another less flattering benchmark on the site but could not put my hands on it right now.

Personaly I would still get the card, but may have passed on the RAID card since I have alot of external items also. Me just being lazy and having some (a bit false) sense of security under RAID 5. For the most part my main footage is off the Tower and on externals, I use the internals for other things, some renders and so forth.

can someone explain eSATA drives to me?

 

ever the idiot,

 

-A

The eSATA connection allows for faster speeds

eSATA drives depending on type is 150/300 MB/sec while FW800 is 100 MB/sec. I used FW800 for HDV no problem, but for other more data intensive Codecs more speed is better. There was a discussion or two around here about the speed and how to get it to work the best (RAID 0 with more drives for the uncompressed Codecs.)

Nowadays the enclosures are geared more to eSATA drives that the old IDE ones and the hard drives themselves are cheaper and getting larger quicker it seems. The other formats are falling off. And we will be saying the same thing at some point when the SSDs start droppoing in price

eSATA = external Serial ATA

basically, the cable connectors are beefed up for secure external connection when compared to the internal connectors.

wikipedia link to SATA

There are some nice eSATA RAID boxes out there for relatively little money. But, you also need an eSATA RAID PCI card to run them. (I saw one at the SF Macworld show in January for $695, 4 hot swappable bays and the RAID card, I think it was 2 terabytes, 4 500GB drives.)

The old ATA is a parallel and its xfer speed is limited because it's hard to keep the parallel data lines in sync with each other.

Take Care,

ChrisS

can someone explain eSATA drives to me?

eSATA = external Serial ATA

basically, the cable connectors are beefed up for secure external connection when compared to the internal connectors.

 

wikipedia link to SATA

 

There are some nice eSATA RAID boxes out there for relatively little money. But, you also need an eSATA RAID PCI card to run them. (I saw one at the SF Macworld show in January for $695, 4 hot swappable bays and the RAID card, I think it was 2 terabytes, 4 500GB drives.)

 

The old ATA is a parallel and its xfer speed is limited because it's hard to keep the parallel data lines in sync with each other.

 

Take Care,

ChrisS

for the EX1, eSATA necessary? Can I run a new MacBook Pro and some FW800 externals?

Assuming you mean the Sony PMW-EX1, I don't know. It depends on the data rate of the video you're going to record _and_ what you expect the machine to do while you're editing. (if you're just logging your footage and saving it to an external hard drive, firewire 800 should work fine.)

You might be more bound by the number of processor cores (2), the slower front side bus (800MHz), and RAM (4GB max) when compared to a MacPro 2.8GHz: 8 cores, 1.6GHz frontside bus, 8/16/32GB depending on how much $$$ you want to spend. There are always tradeoffs when using a portable.

Take Care,

ChrisS

for the EX1, eSATA necessary? Can I run a new MacBook Pro and some FW800 externals?

There are always tradeoffs when using a portable.

 

Take Care,

ChrisS

Well put, Chris.

What's I'm trying to accomplish is, for the least amount of investment (right now), be able to log and capture in the field and maybe make some very basic storyboard edits while I'm on location. I've seen some impressive stuff in that respect being done from a newer MacBook Pro, which is why I asked. Keeping on top of my footage while I'm in country is key for what I have coming up this year.

One thing to consider, too -- the Mac Pro has 2 extra SATA ports inside on the motherboard. You can wire them to a spare slot on the outside and have eSata connectors there.

Instead of doing that, I put 2 more drives in the 2nd 5.25" drive bay (where the 2nd optical drive would go). Info here:

http://echeng.com/journal/2007/08/30/6-ter...s-in-a-mac-pro/

(this was on Wetpixel earlier, but is still relevant )

I did, however, buy a Wiebetech eSATA card to use port-multiplied eSATA for backup purposes. So now I have 6 internal SATA drives and 2 external eSata ports.

Thank you all very much for the informative replies. It's nice to get suggestions from people actually using the hardware for video editing. Llet me see if I can summarize what I think I've read. Tell me if I've missed something.

Below is the standard Mac Pro tower specs.

Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown†processors

2GB memory (800MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)

ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics with 256MB memory

320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive1

16x double-layer SuperDrive

$2799

My plan would be too buy this model as is and add the following pieces aftermarket.

Four additional 2-GB RAM chips for a total of 10GB

Two additioal 750-GB Internal Harddrives (three internals if they budget will allow it)

Upgrade to the 8800 Video card

One additional Superdrive

Is there anything else i've missed? Would this be a powerful, speedy configuration for capturing up to 10 hours of HDV and loads of still pics for creating home/shop videos? I generally will capture about that much video and photo, edit a video, burn it to disc and then clean all the video off the drives. I don't generally leave the video on harddrive after creating the final cut of the video.

Sounds like you've got a good plan. Do you need a 2nd superdrive though? As far as I know if you want to burn 2 disks at the same time you have to run 2 separate programs at once. Personally I don't use drives bigger than 500GB because I don't trust them. If one crashes that's potentially a very large loss of data. With that in mind redundancy with backups is a big deal. I also don't fill them more than half full because there is a theory that they start to slow down after reaching 50% capacity.

Billy

Sounds like you've got a good plan. Do you need a 2nd superdrive though? As far as I know if you want to burn 2 disks at the same time you have to run 2 separate programs at once. Personally I don't use drives bigger than 500GB because I don't trust them. If one crashes that's potentially a very large loss of data. With that in mind redundancy with backups is a big deal. I also don't fill them more than half full because there is a theory that they start to slow down after reaching 50% capacity.

 

Billy

That's a good point regarding the hard drive size. Regarding the superdrives, my thought was having two drives would allow me to copy discs quicker and easier. Is that not the case?

That's a good point regarding the hard drive size. Regarding the superdrives, my thought was having two drives would allow me to copy discs quicker and easier. Is that not the case?

I use a program called toast for burning multiple disks. In order to run multiple burners at once I need to have different versions of the program opened, one for each burning process. I think it's somewhat of a pain. Now I stick to one burning process at a time, it's really not that big of a deal. Most of the work I do is distributed digitally anyway so I've really cut down on burning disks.

The way that the MacPro is setup allows for a lot of flexibility with drives. I have each drive set as an individual.

Bay 1 - Applications and OS No file storage at all. This way if my OS becomes corrupt or a new version comes out and I want to format and install it's super easy.

Bay 2 - Avid drive and a different OS

Bay 3 - FCP Capture Scratch

Bay 4 - File Storage

Of course there's the usual multitude of eternal drives. That's just what I do, but I'm really anal when it comes to being organized.

Hope this helps!

Billy

Does it make sense to upgrade to the 8800 graphics card after market? I thought it was cheaper to order it from Apple with the system. Though maybe if you replace the old one you can sell it and come out ahead.

Does it make sense to upgrade to the 8800 graphics card after market? I thought it was cheaper to order it from Apple with the system. Though maybe if you replace the old one you can sell it and come out ahead.

I doubt it. It would probably be more hassle than it's worth.

Billy

One issue to remember with aftermarket is warranty. I have 3 year Applecare protection, and recently when my ATI 1900 card was having problems, it was replaced no questions asked under my AppleCare more than one year out, which would not have happened with a 1yr aftermarket warranty.

I doubt it. It would probably be more hassle than it's worth.

 

Billy

Agreed. On some things (meaning things other than RAM or Hard Drives) I usually let Apple do the work, it is worth not dealing with it (at least with respect to options I can get when I order a computer.) The video card falls into probably more hassle than it is worth catagory...

One thing to consider, too -- the Mac Pro has 2 extra SATA ports inside on the motherboard. You can wire them to a spare slot on the outside and have eSata connectors there.

 

Instead of doing that, I put 2 more drives in the 2nd 5.25" drive bay (where the 2nd optical drive would go).

 

...

 

I did, however, buy a Wiebetech eSATA card to use port-multiplied eSATA for backup purposes. So now I have 6 internal SATA drives and 2 external eSata ports.

I have done the same as Eric, two extra internal drives in the second 5.25" bay and an eSATA 4-port card, but I've tried two different eSATA cards and neither supports booting from the attached drives. I suppose that shouldn't come as a surprise but, because of that, my original plan to used a port-multiplied software RAID 0 backup array wasn't possible since I couldn't boot from it. I now split my backup onto a single bootable drive and a non-bootable software RAID 0 for my data. I also use a 5x1TB hardware RAID 0 box as a Time Machine drive and it works fine though it's a bit noisy. I use the WD green drives there because they generate less heat. So far so good.