MacPro Question
 

Hi All
Im currently running FCS 2 on a Macbook pro 2.5 Ghz Core duo with 4mb of Ram , with a g-raid on a firewire , usually used to Edit DV finished on DVD and some conversion to Flash files
A HDV 2 hour TC window burn through compressor is taking over 12 hours and Ive had a lot of freeze ups lately (although i suspect a lot of thats caused by another drive on e sata which I dont fully trust)

A new MacPro with 2 x 2.66 chips and 8mb Ram would be a very hefty investment

What sort of speed increases in Compressor and Rendering would I see for my money and is it worth it

(not looking for exact science just a general indication)

Many Thanks in advance

If you get an 8-core it will increase your Compressor DVD rendering power by a lot especially if you engage QMaster to use all 8 cores. Also with a few codecs that have been optimized for QMaster. Regular FCP rendering within the timeline only use 4-cores at this point in time. A quad core MacPro will be better then what you have now but the 27in iMac has about the same power for quite a bit less. Unless you have an immediate need, wait a few months as it seems that 6-core and 12-core MacPros are on the horizon.

Also try rendering the HDV to DV before applying the timecode. Might be quicker.

John,

Right now isn't the time to rush into purchasing any Apple-branded hardware; according to reports from the town-hall meeting Jobs hosted immediately following the iPad release they are about to launch major updates to their hardware lineup. Of course there are no exact details about when or what but it's a safe bet that if you purchased something *right now* that in just a month or two it will be replaced by it's newer successor. Hold off - if you can.

Instead consider investing in a different HDD interface and better encoding engines that are much faster than Compressor.

I'm assuming your MBP is the pre-unibody version so you have the ExpressCard slot; get the Sonnet Pro eSATA card which will allow you to use up to an 8-bay eSATA array and get much faster connect speeds than FW will allow (Firewire has a max data rate of approximately 80-90Mb/s which is about the average single-drive speed, so there's no benefit it using a FW-based array for speed purposes).

Next, look into getting either the newly released Sorenson Squeeze 6 or Episode Desktop Pro encoder software. I'm about to post a comparison between those 2 and Compressor but here's a spoiler: for MPEG2 encoding at the same quality/bitrate settings Squeeze and Episode are both up to 2x times faster than Compressor even if C3 is using virtual clusters.

Look into those options before coughing up major cash for a tower.

For what it's worth: My main testing system is exactly what you have: a 2.5Ghz MBP pre-unibody and I've got the setup recommended above. It's quite the powerhouse when you use the ExpressCard slot for HDD access.

That spoiler is more of a tease! When do you think the final review will be posted? I'm interested if the speed boost is worth the $500 or $800 extra.

"Soon" is all I can say. There are some technical niggles that need to be sussed out and I'm working with feedback from the publisher before continuing the review so I have a full understanding of performance expectations.

I love how we hijacked this thread but:

I've been using squeeze for years (version 5 now) yet hate the interface... I also think Episode is a joke (use WireDrive and am hugely happy). On the flip side, Compressor pales in comparison to the raw encoding power Squeeze has... so it wouldn't surprise me that it beats out Apple... And FLV/SWF in Compressor... yeah right.

But do you really want to export a reference file every time to gain in MPEG2 encoding speed? It's a chore. Where is our send to> command?

-C

Just to be sure we're on the same page here: Wiredrive? That's a content hosting/push service, not a desktop encoding engine. So when you say, "...Episode is a joke..." are you referring to another service offering from a different company? (Episode = Telestream, same people who make Flip 4 Mac plug in). Telestream doesn't offer content hosting.

I'd love to get more flexibility than Compressor currently offers. But I don't do encoding anywhere near enough to justify the cost of Telestream Episode Pro. Its a shame because I'd like to be able to take care of all my encoding in one place. The Telestream WMV Pro plugin doesn't play too nicely with Compressor (crashes Qmaster if you try to use multiple cores). And I don't get as efficient compression using On2 Flix Pro as I would do using Compressor.

Are there any good alternatives to Compressor out there that don't cost the earth?

Rather than continue this thread in "hijack mode" I'll answer this and other questions this weekend after posting the encoder review on the site and starting a QA thread here on the forum.

You're not hijacking, the entire conversation is fascinating and very educational for me anyway
Thanks for the advice on waiting to buy, (according to a sit called macrumours) new one due, 6core and 12 core, in March
Finding out that not everything actually uses all 8 cores (yet) was very interesting (Thanks)

Following the advice I Looked at buying an older Xeon model, some great value to be had except as the proud owner of a 24 Cinema Display Id have the DVI to Apples unique video connection (con job) to deal with
Not sure Im up to an 8 bay array Robert but will look , have you any manufacturers preferences as Im currently running a 1 TB La Cie on e-sata with a Sonnet Pro card and it gives me nothing but grief or freezes (and i was never sure whether it was the drive r the card) my Gtech is solid as a rock
Finally I have Sorenson 5 and like another poster Dont like the interface and use it mainly for FLV outputs, never even occured to me to use it for Mpeg 2 burns as well (D'oh)

Probably wait and see what price the new 6 cores are but many many thanks to all for taking the time to reply

I meant to say their "360" product. Doh! Dunno why I thought it was called Episode...
-C

John,

I never use pre-made arrays by any manufacturer and instead get bare enclosures and put in my own drives. That way I'm not paying a premium on their cost to purchase, test and install the drives and as drive tech improves I can simply swap out drives and keep the same enclosure/interface.

OWC has the widest selection of bare enclosures that I've seen; they key with eSATA is to stay away from port-mulitplier and stick with either JBOD or mini-SAS (infini-band) connectors. (despite claims for various manufacturers, port-multiplier is nothing more than multiple drives sharing the same single-lane I/O to the host, so no matter how many drives you have in the array you never get better than single-drive I/O speeds, just like Firewire)

LaCie has always been buggy with it's controller chipset choices and chances are the backplane controller in the LaCie chassis is causing data collisions with the Sonnet card. I've seen that play out too many times. The Sonnet card is rock-solid on it's own; make sure you have the latest drivers too.

With all the problems the Nehalem chipsets have been having in 09 towers (mac only) I'd either buy an older 08 Quad-core or wait and see if the newer releases solve the many issues the newer ones are suffering from. (see the thousands of complaints on various sites about MP3 and other audio-related files causing fan spin-ups and heatsink overheats)

I have a 09 MacPro and have never experienced the fan spin-ups with mp3 files or overheating caused by audio files. Some of the complaints seem to be focused around USB or FireWire audio interfaces which I don't use. It remains to be seen if this is an across the board problem or isolated to a specific run of computers. Once a serial number set has been isolated (or hasn't) we'll know better. Unlike the problems with some 27" iMacs, Apple has yet to acknowledge any problems with the 2009 MacPros so we'll see where that goes. Quite frankly with video files the 2009 MacPros are a little bit more robust than the 2008 models even though the processor speeds are around the same. Regardless, it's best to wait if you are considering a tower.

I've got a Quad 2.66 Nehalam (the model which is supposedly affected by this whole
MP3 thing) and have NEVER once noticed any problems when playing audio. The
thing is a rock solid FCP workstation in my experience.....even if you have music playing
in the background. Of course, I don't know that I've ever heard any fan spin ups on
it, so maybe they are just really quiet. And of course I wouldn't necessarily know
if there was a heating issue, but it hasn't affected the computers performance.....it's
a nice, fast machine.

Ditto with my 2.66GHz 8 Core 2009 Mac Pro. No problems for me at all. Wonderful machine :-)

I have an early 2008 MacPro 2.8gHz 8 core and I will echo Andy's comments. NEVER had a problem with it. And it is quiet as a mouse to boot. No regrets.

I don't know that this is a kosher suggestion, but if you check out lifehacker.com they have a how to on building a mac(hackintosh). It is pretty cheap and the results (in my experience) are on par with some of the more expensive used mac pro's out there.

Of course if you can afford it the apple branded hardware is awesome. But if you're holding out for a new one this isn't a bad stop gap.

Sort of kosher but since a rabbi hasn't certified it, not completely kosher. My consulting work once brought me into contact with a quad-core "hackintosh" tower and here's my observations.

1) Fast and responsive 3.5 quad-core. There isn't a comparable MacPro since Apple has never released a 3.5 quad-core for some reason although they now have a 3.3 quad. Every standard Mac program seemed to run properly. Took a bit longer to boot than any Intel Mac I've worked with.

2) The quality of the hardware on this particular machine is lower than a MacPro. USB data transfers can actually be heard in the headphones. The FireWire 800 port failed at some point which required a new card in a PCI different slot. There is some issue between the OS and the hardware making a second monitor unwise to activate even though the video card is supported by 10.5.

3) System updates are a problem. It can choke up on re-booting which requires a full power down including unplugging the tower for a moment. Also it won't take 10.6 at all.

4) Adding internal drives turned out to be a problem as well. They had to be initialized in Windows first and then reinitialized in Mac although I don't know if it ever really worked. I decided to not recommend any course of action with the machine.

5) The box is rather ugly and stealing technology is ugly as well.

The person who owned it eventually decided that an 8-core MacPro was the way to go for robust video editing and they re-purposed the hackintosh to a Windows/Linux audio station. The solid behavior of an Apple built computer made the person much happier although it cost more than twice as much.

My brief tests with FCP showed that the 4-core hackintosh was definitely faster rendering standard FCP filters than any 2-core iMac or Mac notebook out last year although the new 27" 4-core iMac probably gives it a good run, possibly beating it. I have never come into contact with a quad-core MacPro outside of an Apple store. The only other new Mac I have been able to compare it to is my own 2009 8-core 2.26 which is quite frankly faster even with processes that only utilize 4 cores. Whether that's due to Apple's "Turbo-Boost technology", the high quality of the components or something else I am unable to say.

Hackintosh at your own risk, legal and otherwise.

Both my wife & I have the same model as you an early 2008 MacPro 2.8gHz 8 core but I would never describe them as 'quiet as a mouse'. I have even removed the fans & fitted large passive heat sinks to the dual graphics cards in my wife's system but the there is still a fair bit of noise from the system fans. I have always attributed this to having an Apple RAID card which prevents the system going into sleep mod when idle.

However our older systems are not the current Nehalam-based systems that are being discussed with regard to alleged noise or overheating problems.

Just to clarify my 2.66Ghz 8 core 12GB RAM Nehalem Mac Pro 4TB is very very quiet even under pretty heavy load in rendering where the most I'll hear is "a very low level background purr". However, I opted to stay on 10.5.8 and FCS2 (I'm waiting for a "real" FCS software upgrade before Apple get any more of my money - i.e. one that can actually use some or all those cores in applications other than just Compressor). I'm not sure if being conservative has enabled me to avoid the fan/noise/overheating problems or not that others seem to wine about on geek Apple forums!

Regarding the original posters question, well yes expensive though it is, MY experience is that you get what you pay for and with a Mac Pro I got a stable, fast editing workstation which is faster than the 2.5Ghz 4GB RAM mid 2008 MBP and FW800 connected 2TB G-RAID3 system I also use for editing. Obviously, in video rendering the Mac Pro leaves the other system well behind but I've done some pretty big commercial jobs (well big for me!) on the MBP system, all with XDCAM EX3 1080p and it's more than paid for it's keep too, it's just that I'd plan my work to let it render overnight.

I think (and I'm no Apple expert) that the best "value for money versus performance Mac Pros" were the 2008 2.8Ghz 8 core's (us early adopters of Nehalem got stung big time, especially in the UK with currency devaluation) so if you can get a second hand one that would be a good route to consider. If Apple can get the the new iMacs glitches sorted soon, they also look a good choice (just look the Barefeats performance benchmark articles), as long as you're happy that you don't need the excellent flexibility for expansion that the Mac Pros offer.

Worth the extra money will come down to your individual workflow and how often you have to encode MPEG, Flash or H.264 finals for output. However, there's no debate as to the actual speed benefit - it's huge. The encoder shootout will be live on the review site by the time you see this; look for the link on the homepage.

Very interesting review. I would be interested in the outcome on an 8-core. Did you use the trial versions of Episode and Squeeze? If so, I'll try it on my set-up this week.

By the way I made the theatrical trailer for the re-release of the original Godzilla a few years ago.

Was it back in 2004 and there a fat guy wearing a dark-green shirt holding a model-plane that looked exactly like Godzilla minus the spine spikes walking around the studio? Gee, I don't remember seeing you there...(laughs) One of these days I'll get around to posting the clip that made Chris Hurd assign me the "Godzilla" moniker. Geez, how quickly you put on the pounds when you're stressed out...

I actually have full versions of both. I've no doubt I'll be working with Sorenson soon to try and suss out it's instabilities. I'd wait to try Squeeze until *after* we figure out why it's hiccuping with H.264 encodes. Right now it's too unstable to even finish the full review on it.

And post that trailer somewhere - we ALL want to see!

I completely agree with you, the boot up time on my hackintosh, is extremely slow, up to a minute at times, I suppose technically it's booting additional processes so maybe that's it but yeah not great boot times. I'm currently running a 4.0 quad core which I like because it's been overclocked from a 3.0ghz, which unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) is something you can't do with a Stock MacPro.

Again I agree, I think that on most hackintoshes the hardware will not be up to the same quality as on a MacPro mostly because if you were to try and build a mac pro the cost of the hardware would be even more then buying it from apple. That being said, I personally have had no issues with firewire ports, or hearing the data transfer in the headphones.

I have heard of system updates problem, however on the lifehacker build that has not been an issue, in fact I'm running the most recent build 10.6.2, but again that may change with 10.6.3 it's really up to apple. I personally have had my apple branded computers die on me after a system update more times then the hackintosh (which isn't a very fair comparison since i"ve been using apple hardware for 10 years and the hackintosh for 3 months, but still no system update failures on the hack)

Again this may have just been the system you were on, I have installed numerous drives now and the only issue I had was 1) I ahd a seagate die on me, which was a real bummer, but I think that would have happened with mac/pc/or hackintosh. And I did have to use a Mac to create my operating system drive.

I agree that most boxes are ugly, and I bit the bullet and bought a thermaltake level 10 case, which I believe to be at least as pretty as a mac pro case and perhaps even cooler looking. As for stealing technology, I purchased all of my software and hardware so I don't feel like I've stolen anything, but I think it's ok to "hack" around with things and make them work to do what I need them to do, especially if I've purchased the items.

I have a couple of friends who have sold their old mac pro's to build cheaper faster hackintosh's however they don't make their living on those computers, neither do I. I think if it's a mission critical type of deal you probably do want an apple product, not that that means it won't fail but it does mean if a producer comes to you and says "why did this computer fail, why are we behind schedule and over budget?" You can say "because the computer I bought from apple failed" not "because the computer I built from this website that said build at your own risk failed"

I agree that is definitely up to the user's comfort level, but I will say that a lot of the issues that William faced I believe have been solved as the osx86 community grows more robust. Again I't probably not even fair to compare a 1000 computer to a mac pro, but I have been very happy with mine for what it's worth.

[QUOTE=Robert Lane;1481319]John,

Right now isn't the time to rush into purchasing any Apple-branded hardware; according to reports from the town-hall meeting Jobs hosted immediately following the iPad release they are about to launch major updates to their hardware lineup. Of course there are no exact details about when or what but it's a safe bet that if you purchased something *right now* that in just a month or two it will be replaced by it's newer successor. Hold off - if you can.

Understood there's no definite release date for the new Mac Pro. My question is what's the history of when the current models will go on sale in anticipation of the new ones. Does that happen when they're are announced or before it? And what's the typical saving?

Jase,

Indications (from past history) of stuff like that is easily found on the buyers guide page of the very well known mac rumors site. Google will easily find the URL.

Just remember, it's a rumour site so make any of your buying choices with that in mind!

:: Godzilla ::

A couple of notes about it. Toho (the owner of Godzilla) wouldn't let us use any footage from the film without paying an exorbitant footage fee even though it was an official release! We came up with a trailer that used music, sfx and titles cards. Mostly made in After Effects and FCP on a 12" Powerbook! The result works very well I think and so did Entertainment Weekly in their trailer review section. It got an "A-" if I remember correctly. Toho was quite irritated that it worked that well but not irritated enough that they didn't copy it nearly frame by frame for a teaser for the last new Godzilla film a few years ago.

The problem is quite real and Apple has finally and publicly acknowledged the issue:

Apple acknowledging, investigating Mac Pro problems? | MacNN

I think you quoted the wrong post there :)