Rob,

No problem. I can see your viewpoint. Here's the updated list of those planning to use the HVX/Mac combo:

Kaku Ito
Derek West
Edwin Hernandez
John Benton
Barry Green
Bill Sepaniak
Lou Squitieri
Jeff Kilgroe
Paul Lohbauer
Rob Katz
Robert Lane
Marty Hudzik
Lee Faulkner
Nathan Brendan Masters
Bill Southworth
Jarred Land
Steev Dinkins

FYI, Jarred Land has also switched to the Mac specifically to use FCP with the HVX, so that's another one for the list...

barry get to work
 

barry-

i don't want to see these late nite posts (1:07am indeed!)

at that hour, i'm hoping/wishing that u were putting your efforts to the upcoming (say its so) hvx200 users book!

i've said it previously...

and it is worth repeating...

your dvx100 book was THE best guide for me to get the most out of my camera.

now don't take this flattery to heart.

no more late nite trolling on the user sites.

back to your hvx200 draft!

be well

(and i hope u are smiling)

rob katz
harvest films

That's amazing.

Which Mac did he buy?

I'm not sure what propagand you're reading, but there are several BluRay announcements that claim players in the $500 and under range. The PS3 is expected to be $499 and will be a full featured BluRay player, not to mention a rather powerful game console. I've seen all sorts of wild numbers in the $1000 to $3000 range being claimed for BluRay players and none of them are substantial, most are marketing fud being spread by the HD-DVD crowd. Sony has already stated that BluRay players will be available at a variety of price points with different feature sets and will compete directly with HD-DVD products. In the end, this format war will be won by the disc type that offers more to the consumer.

I thought FCP was now fully optimized for 64bit OSX and the G5??? If this is the case, then I see no reason why it would be limited to 2GB. Within a 32bit construct on the G4/G5, individual processes were limited to a maximum of 2GB process space, within the total address space of 4GB. This also applies to 32bit applications on the x86 architecture in Windows and Linux. Anyway, I guess this is just one more thing to check out before taking the Mac plunge -- if that ends up being my most sensible choice.

...Actually, I'm still on the fence. I should have it all figured out by the time my HVX200 ships.

Jeff - re fcp and ram -

I can't remember exactly when the update was or if it was an OS update - it was some time ago, months if not a year (maybe it was addressed with fcp 5 release). It removed the 2 gig limit to allow it to address 4 gig.

Motion tho' - whole other beast - as much as you can afford .....

I am! I am! It's over 107 pages already, and I was only waiting on getting my hands on the production model before being able to finish the second half. It's here now, so... back to work... :)

To Jim and Derek,

Sorry it's taken so long to answer you guys.

I specifically chose the Quad G5, the amount of RAM etc so that I could have the best operating environment possible for the DVCPRO HD format and take advantage of all the processing power the Quad offers.

With regard to the drive assignments the choices came from two sources. One was that I've always known that splitting up work between multiple drives or a VLRA (very large RAID array) would speed up any application. However, there were many tweaks specific to FCP that came from the book, "Optimizing your Final Cut Pro System" from the Apple Pro Training Series.

Based on my own testing with the Quad G5, after I made the new drive assignments I noticed a significant performance boost, which will most likely get better as soon as a dedicated PCI-e Firewire 800 card becomes available.

I'd highly recommend the book to anyone using FCP who wants to maximize their system's potential.

One quick correction to the post by Walter:

The amount of RAM FCP can use is limited by two things: the motherboard verion it is using - G4/G5 and which firmware it's using - and whether or not you're on 10.4.

On my system, (Quad G5 w/8GB RAM) I can address 2.5GB of RAM just for the application, and another 2.4GB of RAM for still cache, not including the amount of RAM that can be manually allocated for Thumbnail cache. So in total FCP can use well over 6GB of RAM - if you have it available.

Yes Robert - sorry, should have qualified what I posted above. My old g4 tower can only support 1.5 gig max.

No problem, Rob. Learning from each other is what I enjoy most about this forum! And believe me, at this point in my limited production knowledge I'm learning more than I'm teaching/sharing !! (laughs)

heh - getiing around the traps (discussion boards) is one of the err, most productive things I like to do.

Technology is being dished up at an alarming rate - bright shiny products everywhere. Only so much money in the budget.

I reckon I've saved ohhh, around $30 k by not buying a thing in the last month - at this rate I'm going to be a millionaire ... by not doing anything - lol

hehehe...
....Just Wait till Macworld SF announcements tomorrow....

dude !
You're right - ka ching .... there's always something that gets me in the end.

Steve knows this.