We're a PC faciilty, but I'm thinking about adding a few Macs to give editors a choice. Can someone recommend how much RAM, what kind of video card, and processing power I'll need. I would like something that can handle the heavy lifting of editing 4K
Hi Wes, I use a mac pro 3.4 dual d700 video cards with 64 gig ram and a ssd with stand alone 16 tb raid it cuts 4k with out an issue at all
Tom Pearson
Director/Writer Big Picture Films
Sound Designer/Sound Editor Hollywood Sounds
WWLD
Moving this to MC|Full Mac version.
We use 3.5 Ghz 6 core Mac Pros for our offlines working with DNxHR LB. At Online working with full DNxHR HQ we have 2.7 GHz 12 core Mac Pros. We have to provide Resolve as well as Symphony in our Online suites and went for the D500 cards because there were reports of Resolve overheating with D700 cards at the time.
I don't know if that's still an issue.
Be mindful of the small differences between Media Composer on Mac and PC.One of the main issues is not having consistent and fault-free titling between the two. Usually because of the different way the two platforms handle fonts. This one is a headache for us, where we do titling on all edit stations and share Projects across the two platforms.
Neil.
Thanks for the feedback, this is very helpful. Have any of you used both Mac & PCs? Which do you prefer and why?
Wes Torain:Thanks for the feedback, this is very helpful. Have any of you used both Mac & PCs? Which do you prefer and why?
We service many clients. Some are single platform oriented, some are both.
In general, my advice to you would be to stick with what you know well. By "you" I mean the technical team that will support the environment and the editors and AEs that will interface with the OS on a daily basis.
Also, it depends on what other software and hardware assets you already have. This can significantly affect your time and cost if you decide to migrate.
DQS
www.mpenyc.com
N Ryan: Be mindful of the small differences between Media Composer on Mac and PC.One of the main issues is not having consistent and fault-free titling between the two. Usually because of the different way the two platforms handle fonts. This one is a headache for us, where we do titling on all edit stations and share Projects across the two platforms.
That's really interesting - I've been thinking of getting 2 PCs alongside our 40 mac clients to do ingest/transcode/conform/grades, and hadn't thought about fonts.
Are there any other issues [apart from no ProRes on PC] to bear in mind?
Nigel
Apple is supposed to release new Mac Pro systems this year. The previous systems are really long in the tooth right now. There may be a reveal in June. I'd wait until they let us know what is going to be released.
I built a PC just to do the ingest/transcodes and it was totally worth the effort though I would probably let someone else build the next one.
One of the issues that we had is we had to put in a 10 Gig network card to keep the system fed as it would saturate a 1 Gig pipe when transcoding.
We are able to transcode C300 MII 4k footage about 2.5 times faster than realtime. Our next fastest Mac is the latest iMac with the top processor from Apple which starts at almost realtime until it starts to thermal throttle at which point it slows down.
I'd agree wait for the next Apple offering. Anything else is just aginmg tech currently or sufferes thermal issues.
I'd also agree that mixing platforms isn't ideal just to give choice. Having all Mac and the odd PC for certain tasks or all PC with the odd Mac is fine but mixing both in the edit environment is just going to cause issues and twice the IT support.
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