Which Mac is the best for editing raw DSLR footage without any problems?

[anthroposii]

Originally Posted by simsaladimbamba

Did you consider using an editing codec? Apple Intermediate Codec is included with every Mac, CineForm can be had for free and works with Premiere Pro.

Video Compression
Why It Matters & How To Make The Most Of It

which includes the following sections:

• GOPs, Macroblocks & Wavelets
• Acquisition Formats
• Editing & Post Formats
• Final Cut Pro
• Avid Media Composer
• Adobe Premiere Pro
• Which Codec Should I Edit With?
• Conclusion
• Camera Codec Summary
• Apple ProRes Variations
• Avid DNxHD Codecs

I just ask, as I already mentioned, H.264 is NOT an editing codec and if you want to do all the things you mentioned, an editing codec would be much, much better. Then the iMac would be very good for that.
Have you considered refurbs in the Refurbished Mac section in the Apple Online Store?

Well, thanks for your help in my other post, got my Mac Pro working again and installed Snow Leopard. BTW I opened Adobe and tried to play raw uncompressed DSLR footage on the mercury engine and it still gives the same stuttering delayed playback I had on my macbook pro, i thought Mac Pro would solve this,

do I really have go with the prores thing to be able to play the footage smoothly on mercury engine? I tried lowering the resolution still the same thing.

Can u give me links to prores or free apple codecs that I can install and how they work.

Thanks.

[simsaladimbamba]

Originally Posted by anthroposii

Well, thanks for your help in my other post, got my Mac Pro working again and installed Snow Leopard. BTW I opened Adobe and tried to play raw uncompressed DSLR footage on the mercury engine and it still gives the same stuttering delayed playback I had on my macbook pro, i thought Mac Pro would solve this,

do I really have go with the prores thing to be able to play the footage smoothly on mercury engine? I tried lowering the resolution still the same thing.

Can u give me links to prores or free apple codecs that I can install and how they work.

Thanks.

Do you use an Nvidia GPU?
Mercury Playback Engine (MPE)

Anyway, you can use the Cineform codec with Premiere Pro.

[wonderspark]

Originally Posted by anthroposii

Well, thanks for your help in my other post, got my Mac Pro working again and installed Snow Leopard. BTW I opened Adobe and tried to play raw uncompressed DSLR footage on the mercury engine and it still gives the same stuttering delayed playback I had on my macbook pro, i thought Mac Pro would solve this,

do I really have go with the prores thing to be able to play the footage smoothly on mercury engine? I tried lowering the resolution still the same thing.

Can u give me links to prores or free apple codecs that I can install and how they work.

Thanks.

For what it's worth, my system plays/edits native DSLR footage in full 1080p resolution perfectly smooth in Premiere CS5. 5DMkII, 7D, D7000 or whatever... all H.264 straight from camera. It didn't play smooth until I added an 8-disk RAID6 via mini-SAS, but most people just use ProRes anyway. I have the ATI 5870 GPU, which seems to work better than my GTX285. You'd think the CUDA card would be better in Premiere, but it was no different than the 5870 for me, and the ATI card is better in After Effects in my experience. This is using only two monitors - a Dell and a 30" ACD.

[CaptainChunk]

Originally Posted by wonderspark

You'd think the CUDA card would be better in Premiere, but it was no different than the 5870 for me, and the ATI card is better in After Effects in my experience. This is using only two monitors - a Dell and a 30" ACD.

That makes sense, considering that on-the-fly transcoding of H.264 sources isn't handled by MPE/CUDA in Premiere at all. It will make rendering real-time effects faster, but not much else. In terms of raw power (disregarding CUDA), the 5870 is simply a more powerful card than the GTX 285, at least in situations where that matters.

After Effects uses OpenGL for GPU acceleration, but I've found that CPU and memory matter a whole lot more in AE than the GPU ever does. I've observed very little performance difference in AE between my own machine (which still has an 8800 GT) and my friend's similar 2008 MP with a 5770 (a significantly faster card) fitted.

[anthroposii]

so I went with the Mac Pro and i'm not sure if the decision was good. Need you guys help.

I'd bought a refurbished late 2010 2.8 ghz intel Xeon quad core Mac Pro with ati radeon hd 5770 graphics card, months ago. Initially it came with only 3gb worth of ram. It was fine for a while as I wasn't doing any heavy effects editing and I bought it with the intention of having it as my editing machine for years to come thanks to its expandability. It was speedy enough to get majority of my editing work done, namely short films. Now I've ordered 16gb worth of memory from OWC to replace my old ones to be able to do some heavy editing expecting a significantly faster performance.

But that didn't happen as once I did some effects heavy editing in either adobe premiere or after effects the hard drive started making a lot of noise started eating up a lot of space and even got slower. The rainbow ring showed far too often for far too long and the machine got slower or laggy.

Now I'm not a computer expert but I was under the impression that Mac Pro can take any kind of beating and shoulda been real fast especially with 16gb ram. Sadly it only runs slight faster than my 2010 MacBook Pro.

What am I not getting here or doing it right. Should I replace the hard drive for ssd would that make things faster? Cuz I'm assuming its a hard drive issue that's making it all very slow.

Basically I want a machine that can do mercury playback on premiere flawlessly and can play the dynamic link without any stuttering in premiere pro. Now even when simultaneously rendering playback on After effects it lags and stutters when before I added the ram memory or even on my old MacBook Pro, the playback was smoothly.

Should I replace the Ram memory, buy an SSD or a better Hard Drive, or switch to another editing software?

Need help in resolving this issue. I feel like I've wasted money on such an expensive money only to have it perform so disappointingly.

Thx.

[LethalWolfe]

First off you need to swap out the GFX card for one that Adobe recommends (link). Second, if the HDD is making noise then it could be damaged/failing and you should replace it. Third, you should keep your programs on one HDD, your footage on another and point your renders/exports to yet another. With a MacPro it's easy enough to add drives internally but if you are working many streams of a large video codec then you might have to build a RAID to get more speed.

[anthroposii]

Originally Posted by LethalWolfe

First off you need to swap out the GFX card for one that Adobe recommends (link). Second, if the HDD is making noise then it could be damaged/failing and you should replace it. Third, you should keep your programs on one HDD, your footage on another and point your renders/exports to yet another. With a MacPro it's easy enough to add drives internally but if you are working many streams of a large video codec then you might have to build a RAID to get more speed.

Wow, that means i have to spend a extra bucks to get it to its full potential. that's gonna cost a lot.

thx for reply tho

[reachingforsky]

I have a 2009 Mac Pro at work. Eight-core. 8GB RAM.

I have a 2011 27" i7 iMac at home. Quad-core. 16GB RAM. SSD.

The iMac blows the Mac Pro out of the water. Seriously. I just edited a 7-camera multicam shoot in FCPX. This was all native DSLR footage from a Canon 60D. I tried editing some at work, but the Mac Pro couldn't handle it. The iMac, while not flawless, was decoding all 7 camera angles on the fly.

The new iMac > Mac Pro. My two cents.