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need a new computer for editing i had questions

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What are you planning on editing? My rig doesn't have as much processing power as that and can handle 4k decent enough. Even when it comes down to exporting to Dnxhd, which is pretty similar to your prores. My rig only hits snags when I have a lot of particles to generate in my 3d scenes with 3dsmax.
 
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I am planning on editing narrative work on premier and after effects.
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Yes, but what are you editing? Red 5k/6k footage, 1080p dslr footage from a canon, raw, Prores 444 or a whole range of footage in between. What bitrate of the footage? Each has its own requirements. Some are CPU bound, some offload to a consumer level video card while others currently require a rather specialized video card (or multiples) to decently perform.

After effects also depends on what you're doing. I'm not the person to ask about AFX requirements.

What Tony said is also true. Bang for buck, if you switch to PC, your dollars will get you way more than it will with Mac. I'm not sure what the multiplier is these days, but I'd say it's still safely 2:1.
 
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Tony Fiction said:
If price is an issue, don't get a mac. There is absolutely no reason to get a mac.


Sent from my iPhone.
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This made me lol pretty hard! Haha.

As everybody else said, it depends on what you're editing. If you're just editing regular DSLR footage at 1080p, it will be GLORIOUSLY fast and WAAAY more power than you need. But if you're going to work on 4K stuff, the entry-level Mac Pro might stutter a bit, depending on how much VFX you were doing. For general editing, however, it should be fine.

Although I'm a fellow Mac user and Apple "fan guy", I wholeheartedly agree that you can get way more bang for your buck if you build your own custom PC. The advantage of buying a Mac Pro is simply this - because Apple built it and not you, you're pretty much guaranteed to not have any bottlenecks, which if you built your own system you'd have a slight chance of doing, unless you really knew what you were doing!

And Final Cut Pro, of course, could be considered an advantage to some people. Other than that - PC all the way, if you're on a tight budget! Otherwise, if you can afford it, and it's what your PREFER, then the Mac Pro is perhaps the right move for you to make! :)
 
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Or you can have the best of both worlds.. Custom-built PC price point, and osx.. See: Tonymacx86

This also invalidates the "if price is a concern" argument, since OSX is now free.. windows, not so much.

I have a custom-built hackintosh with an overclocked i7 4770k processor, SSD system drive, and 8TB internal RAID0.. cost about $1800 out of pocket for everything.
 
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Will Vincent said:
Or you can have the best of both worlds.. Custom-built PC price point, and osx.. See: Tonymacx86

This also invalidates the "if price is a concern" argument, since OSX is now free.. windows, not so much.

I have a custom-built hackintosh with an overclocked i7 4770k processor, SSD system drive, and 8TB internal RAID0.. cost about $1800 out of pocket for everything.
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I have also done this. Head over to lifehacker, they have an "always up-to-date" hackintosh guide that can direct you to compatible hardware.
 
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Ahh, the old PC/Mac debate. I love it!

brandonf, the computer you're looking at is just fine, it will defiinitely handle your basic editing needs. Except for one thing -- you need more storage space. Think in terms of terrabites, plural.

If you're loyal to Mac, hey whatever, it's your money. But it'd be irresponsible of me to not make it abundantly clear to you that you can have a PC built that will exceed the specs of the computer you are considering, and you'll spend a great deal less.
 
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It's probably worth noting too that the new mac pro is really a better match for FCP X.. maybe the other way around, but FCPX was recently revamped to majorly take advantage of the new mac pro.. so if you're planning to use Premiere anyway, there's probably not a whole lot of reason to sink a bunch of extra dough into an apple product if you don't need to.

Much more info on that: http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/new...w-mac-pro-and-final-cut-pro-x-to-their-limits

tl;dr they recently did some torture tests to see just how far FCPx could be pushed on the new mac pro. In almost every instance the point where they stopped trying to push it more was due to boredom moreso than anything else. I also suspect much of the multi-track playback slowness they encountered was more due to bandwidth limitation on the drives than actual software slowdowns. Not enough to convince me to switch to FCPX, but interesting none the less.
 
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Oh my God... now I want the Mac Pro even more! Some of those tests are just silly!

See, and that's the benefit of going the Mac route... because they developed both FCP X and the Mac Pro for each other, it's a lovely marriage of video-edity goodness!

It's just too bad FCP X is still missing some things. :P
 
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I don't know that it is missing things.. but not everything is apparently until you really dig in and use it. There are a lot of features that are just kind of hidden, apparently.

It's also a totally different editing paradigm than previous incarnations of FCP.. so that's worth keeping in mind too as to whether or not things are "missing" or if they just never really belonged there in the first place. ;)
 
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Will Vincent said:
Or you can have the best of both worlds.. Custom-built PC price point, and osx.. See: Tonymacx86

This also invalidates the "if price is a concern" argument, since OSX is now free.. windows, not so much.

I have a custom-built hackintosh with an overclocked i7 4770k processor, SSD system drive, and 8TB internal RAID0.. cost about $1800 out of pocket for everything.
Click to expand...

How much would the apple price be for all of that?
 
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Baba said:
Will Vincent said:
Or you can have the best of both worlds.. Custom-built PC price point, and osx.. See: Tonymacx86

This also invalidates the "if price is a concern" argument, since OSX is now free.. windows, not so much.

I have a custom-built hackintosh with an overclocked i7 4770k processor, SSD system drive, and 8TB internal RAID0.. cost about $1800 out of pocket for everything.
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How much would the apple price be for all of that?
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I'd say at least another $850 - $1000 more, plus an extra $30 for the glossy/pretty factor...

Will Vincent said:
I don't know that it is missing things.. but not everything is apparently until you really dig in and use it. There are a lot of features that are just kind of hidden, apparently.

It's also a totally different editing paradigm than previous incarnations of FCP.. so that's worth keeping in mind too as to whether or not things are "missing" or if they just never really belonged there in the first place
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Yes, now that I've used the trial of FCP X everyday for about half a month, I can definitely say it's a pretty damn good NLE, and yes, several of the features are hidden, primarily audio editing and color correction - took me forever to find those things the first day when I tried it last year! :lol:

I can definitely see editing with it very comfortably. I'm actually really digging the magnetic timeline, once you learn how to use it it just makes everything so much easier. I just wish it had a normal "track" system like all other NLEs. :P
 
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Baba said:
How much would the apple price be for all of that?
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Well, you're not going to get 8TB interal RAID0 (spread across 4 drives) in the new mac pro, it's just not physically possible, so that would have to be external, and it would have to be thunderbolt, which since it's not widely in use (yet) means the enclosure would be significantly more expensive... so figure several hundred dollars more for that alone, and it's going to be another thing connected to your no longer sleek tiny machine.

Yodaman said:
I'd say at least another $850 - $1000 more, plus an extra $30 for the glossy/pretty factor...
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I'd like to say close but no cigar.. but unfortunately that's not even close. Not even half-way there..


Lets put it this way.. The base model quad core mac pro, with a slower (and not overclockable) processor, and about 1/3 the ram my machine has, without the 8TB raid is about $1100 more than my machine cost to build. Granted, it has dual video, but my GeForce card is at least as fast, if not faster than its dual AMD cards, vram the same, each of its cards has 2gb, my single card has 4gb. So we can call that a wash, and the two machines would be basically the same at that point, aside from ram and RAID.

Add another $500 to jump up to the 32GB ram I have in my machine. Yes, the mac pro can handle more, but most people aren't going to need more (not anytime soon anyway), and maxing it out at 64GB would add $1300 to the base price.

External 8TB thunderbolt raid from apple is going to run you another $799.95, or if you go with the 8TB thunderbolt 2 (higher bandwidth) another $1499.

So, using prices from Apple's site, you'd be looking at:

Code: 
Base macpro          $ 2999.00
Memory upgrade       $  500.00
8TB Thunderbolt RAID $  799.95
                     ---------------
                     $ 4298.95
(plus tax and/or shipping)

Note that does not include keyboard, mouse or monitor. But that's not included in my $1800 build either. I got a logitech mac mouse and solar keyboard for another ~$100 or so, and am currently using a 1920x1080 LCD monitor I already had lying around.

Anyway. there you go, by the numbers, the most comparable mac pro to what I built for $1800... almost $2500 more. For that I could build another one, and still have a decent chunk of money left for a nice high resolution monitor.

Take that how you will, but rushing out to buy a mac pro probably isn't a good idea.

Unless you have the money available, and since OSX is free, and runs flawlessly on standard PC components (so long as you plan your build carefully/follow a guide)... I dunno, personally I can't justify the extra expense because it 'looks cool' or whatever..
 
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To put it slightly more in perspective.. I built my own, and bought a $3000 black magic 4k camera for only about $500 more than that price before shipping and tax on a similarly spec'd mac pro. ;)
 
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Baba said:
How much would the apple price be for all of that?
Click to expand...

Will Vincent said:
Well, you're not going to get 8TB interal RAID0 (spread across 4 drives) in the new mac pro, it's just not physically possible, so that would have to be external, and it would have to be thunderbolt, which since it's not widely in use (yet) means the enclosure would be significantly more expensive... so figure several hundred dollars more for that alone, and it's going to be another thing connected to your no longer sleek tiny machine.


I'd like to say close but no cigar.. but unfortunately that's not even close. Not even half-way there..


Lets put it this way.. The base model quad core mac pro, with a slower (and not overclockable) processor, and about 1/3 the ram my machine has, without the 8TB raid is about $1100 more than my machine cost to build. Granted, it has dual video, but my GeForce card is at least as fast, if not faster than its dual AMD cards, vram the same, each of its cards has 2gb, my single card has 4gb. So we can call that a wash, and the two machines would be basically the same at that point, aside from ram and RAID.

Add another $500 to jump up to the 32GB ram I have in my machine. Yes, the mac pro can handle more, but most people aren't going to need more (not anytime soon anyway), and maxing it out at 64GB would add $1300 to the base price.

External 8TB thunderbolt raid from apple is going to run you another $799.95, or if you go with the 8TB thunderbolt 2 (higher bandwidth) another $1499.

So, using prices from Apple's site, you'd be looking at:

Code: 
Base macpro          $ 2999.00
Memory upgrade       $  500.00
8TB Thunderbolt RAID $  799.95
                     ---------------
                     $ 4298.95
(plus tax and/or shipping)

Note that does not include keyboard, mouse or monitor. But that's not included in my $1800 build either. I got a logitech mac mouse and solar keyboard for another ~$100 or so, and am currently using a 1920x1080 LCD monitor I already had lying around.

Anyway. there you go, by the numbers, the most comparable mac pro to what I built for $1800... almost $2500 more. For that I could build another one, and still have a decent chunk of money left for a nice high resolution monitor.

Take that how you will, but rushing out to buy a mac pro probably isn't a good idea.

Unless you have the money available, and since OSX is free, and runs flawlessly on standard PC components (so long as you plan your build carefully/follow a guide)... I dunno, personally I can't justify the extra expense because it 'looks cool' or whatever..
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Wow, that is quite a huge jump in money... kind of makes me sick, honestly!

Now I kind of wish I had just stuck with building a custom PC instead of buying an iMac for editing purposes. I love Mac OS X though, and my iMac is really decently powerful, but there's no way it can handle 4K very well (I tried some of Philip Bloom's clips from the 4K Production Camera... it was pretty sluggish!), so if I ever plan to do anything with 4K I'll need to upgrade* either to a custom built PC (something like Dave Dugdale built) or make myself a hackintosh! :lol:

*Note: I am not looking to upgrade anytime soon, I have more than enough power for my needs at the moment!
 
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Yodaman said:
so if I ever plan to do anything with 4K I'll need to upgrade either to a custom built PC (something like Dave Dugdale built) or make myself a hackintosh! :lol:
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You're already comfortable with OSX, and it's free now..So it would probably be pretty stupid for you to move to windows, that's just one more thing to pay for. And while there are some tools available for post production work on linux, there's just not quite enough for a full, comfortable, post production workflow there. Though lightworks certainly helps with that, and there is a good deal of 3D and compositing options. Gimp is still a far cry from photoshop, and while it'll work under wine, photoshop on linux is buggy -- at best.

Stick with what you're comfortable with, the hardware for a hackintosh build is every bit as affordable as a custom windows machine, and there's no need to feed the MS beast. ;)
 
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