G5 and Video Editing

[ewoh24]

Can somebody tell me how important the system bus speed is when compressing and working with video? I am looking to get a G5 soon, but am not quite convinced about getting it until Apple and third party vendors begin to release true 64 bit applications. If my logic is correct (and it probably isn't), the things I see being advantageous in a G5 at the moment is the high system bus and higher MHz (which is very impressive, don't get me wrong, but how much of a difference will that make from a G4 system when running 32 bit code?). And I certainly don't have an extra $4950.00 to max out the RAM at the moment either!
Or maybe somebody who owns a G5 (lucky...) can give some real world time stats when compressing from iMovie or Final Cut Express to QuickTime? Any stats will do.

Thanks!

[MacAztec]

If you dont really NEED the G5 at the moment, I wouldn't get one. To me, they aren't quite worth the cash yet. And, not everything is optimized for it.

I would wait for revision number 2 (which might take place in January?) because the machine will be worth it then, and more things will be optimized for the G5.

[actionslacks]

I am currently using FCP 4.1 with an AJA Kona 10bit uncompressed card on a Dual 1.25 G4 and I can do a 30 minute edit to tape to a digibeta deck without dropping frames. (That is Broadcast quality, if you don't know)

Judging by the tone of your question, I doubt you would need a G5.

Are you going to be editing Hi Def at Online resolution? You can do that on a g4 also, although it gets a little sluggish without the right hardware. But anything standard def works great. Get the G5 if you are going to be editing a lot of Hi Def material or doing a lot of heavy compositing where you will need faster render times.

EDIT: I just reread your post. I don't have any stats. There are NO 64 bit editing applications available. There is not any reason for them yet. However, FCP 5 may become a 64 bit app.

Anyway, 64-bitness should have nothing to do with your decision if you need an editing machine. Currently, it doesn't apply.

[ewoh24]

Thats what I thought. All the G5 offers AT THE MOMENT is more MHz. So that will drop a few minutes off of rendering and compressing.
BUT, when apps are 64 bit optimized, we should see this machine seriously knock times out of the park, right?

[Mr. Anderson]

Not only will Rev. B of the G5s kick ass for video, but they'll almost definitely come with Panther. Have you looked at what's in store for Quicktime in Panther? That's going to make a huge difference and I'm sure there will be an updated to FCP for this.

Just one of many good reasons I'm waiting.

D

[stoid]

I did a large FCP3 project on an original 400Mhz TiBook, and it worked just fine. Unless you need UBER-fast render speeds, get an older G4.

[actionslacks]

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
Not only will Rev. B of the G5s kick ass for video, but they'll almost definitely come with Panther. Have you looked at what's in store for Quicktime in Panther? That's going to make a huge difference and I'm sure there will be an updated to FCP for this.

Just one of many good reasons I'm waiting.

D

1. What's in store for quicktime?
2. I am sure FCP will be updated again soon, but do you think it will go 64bit? I am worried that this would put those of us running FCP on G4s stuck without future versions.

[LethalWolfe]

It all depends on your editing needs. Where I'm working we do a lot of spots for music related events (albums, concerts/tours etc.,) so everything is usually hi-energy. So lots of cuts and lots of layers and FX which means an @ss load of rendering. So anything to speed up the render time is desired. And, IIRC, some of the unoffical benchmarks had the 1.6ghz G5 holding it's own against the dual 1.42ghz G4. So, assuming performance scales well you can imagine what a dual 2ghz G5 would be like. And if you are using FCP 4 you get even more of a power push from the G5 'cause FCP 4 is designed to use the entire system to help increase RT instead of just relying on the proc (which is how RT ability was "measured" on FCP 3).

But, like anyting else, the longer you can hold out the faster, cheaper, and better the tech will get.


Lethal

[Waluigi]

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
Not only will Rev. B of the G5s kick ass for video, but they'll almost definitely come with Panther. Have you looked at what's in store for Quicktime in Panther? That's going to make a huge difference and I'm sure there will be an updated to FCP for this.

Just one of many good reasons I'm waiting.

D

Mr. Anderson, I'm not sure why it is so important for panther to be installed when it comes to your door. Does it make a difference if you install it over 10.2.7 compared to panther coming preinstalled on your machine?

--Waluigi

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by Waluigi
Mr. Anderson, I'm not sure why it is so important for panther to be installed when it comes to your door. Does it make a difference if you install it over 10.2.7 compared to panther coming preinstalled on your machine?

--Waluigi

I think he meant if you waited until Panther came shipped you wouldn't have to $$$ to upgrade from to it from Jag.


Lethal

[Waluigi]

Originally posted by LethalWolfe
I think he meant if you waited until Panther came shipped you wouldn't have to $$$ to upgrade from to it from Jag.


Lethal

Good call Lethal. I guess I never thought of the obvious answer!

--Waluigi

[HasanDaddy]

I ordered a Dual 2 gig G5 ONLY for film rendering

you guys are gonna tell me that a 1 ghz BUS doesn't make much of a difference???

[actionslacks]

Originally posted by HasanDaddy
I ordered a Dual 2 gig G5 ONLY for film rendering

you guys are gonna tell me that a 1 ghz BUS doesn't make much of a difference???

"film rendering" ? Do you mean rendering video effects for film output? Cineon files?

Nobody on this thread has said anything about a 1 ghz bus not making a difference. Anybody here would recommend buying the fastest Mac you can (Dual G5) if you have the money, but the point of this thread is to discuss when and why to buy.

If you can make a smarter purchase (i.e. dual 1.25 G4), it might make more sense for what you want to accomplish.

If you are looking for the best rendering machine, then I would hope you have done your homework and are comparing benchmarks on many machines/platforms for the specific app that you use. The Bus speed of a computer is only one of the many factors you should be considering.

[MacBandit]

From the real world tests I have seen my machine a Dual/1GHz/DDR PowerMac is actually faster then a G5 1.6 and about the same speed as a G5 1.8 with programs that are dual processor aware. The photoshop tests I have seen have definitely shown this. Though I expect the advantage to go away a little if and when Photoshop is ever rewritten specifically for the G5s.

Personally for a desktop machine I don't think I will ever be able to go back to a single processor machine. To truly multitask you need more then one processor. You can two heavy hitting programs at once and fully utilize both cpus almost as if you had a machine that was twice as fast.

[legion]

Originally posted by actionslacks
"film rendering" ? Do you mean rendering video effects for film output? Cineon files?

Nobody on this thread has said anything about a 1 ghz bus not making a difference. Anybody here would recommend buying the fastest Mac you can (Dual G5) if you have the money, but the point of this thread is to discuss when and why to buy.

If you can make a smarter purchase (i.e. dual 1.25 G4), it might make more sense for what you want to accomplish.

If you are looking for the best rendering machine, then I would hope you have done your homework and are comparing benchmarks on many machines/platforms for the specific app that you use. The Bus speed of a computer is only one of the many factors you should be considering.

I agree that performance is very program specific. I've found that encoding (format conversions) is much much faster with any Intel chip (using both Canopus ProCoder and Discreet cleaner XL/6.) For rendering effects with programs like Adobe After Effects, I've found a DP G4 faster for many of the effects (but not all.) Finally, with Discreet Combustion and Avid Xpress DV, dual processor Intel boxes are incredibly fast for NLE (especially for Xpress that is very dual processor aware and can schedule tasks dynamically.) Sorry, I don't use FCP, so can't comment. The other thing is that all of the programs I use are cross-platform and I've tested them on both my Intel and Mac platforms. The biggest hit the Mac takes is with the encoding part. It is very optimized for Intel chips (so much so that I'd recommend getting just a small Intel box to handle that part if you value your time.) I've watched encoding that took over 10 minutes on my DP G4 take under 3 minutes on a single Intel Pentium 1.4Ghz (no HT.) Luckily, you can almost always off load this from a Mac using QT reference files and then push it to an Intel box to do the actual encoding, making it more or less an encoding subsystem.

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by actionslacks
1. What's in store for quicktime?

High-end Video Codec

Pixlet is the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers. Pixlet provides 20-25:1 compression, allowing a 75MB/sec series of frames to be delivered in a 3MB/sec movie, similar to DV data rates. Or a series of frames that are over 6GB in size can be contained within a 250MB movie. Pixlet lets high-end digital film frames play in real time with any Panther Mac, without investing in costly, proprietary playback hardware.

Now I'm not sure on the specifics, but if this is available with the upgrade to FCP it would be quite sweet...

D

[actionslacks]

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
High-end Video Codec

Pixlet is the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers. Pixlet provides 20-25:1 compression, allowing a 75MB/sec series of frames to be delivered in a 3MB/sec movie, similar to DV data rates. Or a series of frames that are over 6GB in size can be contained within a 250MB movie. Pixlet lets high-end digital film frames play in real time with any Panther Mac, without investing in costly, proprietary playback hardware.

Now I'm not sure on the specifics, but if this is available with the upgrade to FCP it would be quite sweet...

D

yeah, I remember that demo. As great as that will be, it seems like more of a pre-view codec than one for final output. You are still going to have long render times for uncopmressed film output. But most people will be doing their final rendering on pc's anyway unless apple can get the G5s in some xserve type of enclosure for render farms.

[iLife]

Originally posted by actionslacks
...2. I am sure FCP will be updated again soon, but do you think it will go 64bit? I am worried that this would put those of us running FCP on G4s stuck without future versions.

even if it didn't go 64 bit they most likely will allow a patch/plugin that will allow it to run extended tables much the way photoshop does and pro tools.

maybe its worth maybe its not, time will tell...

[patrick0brien]

-ewoh24

Gary Adcock the current president of Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group had the opportunity to use FCP4 on a Dual2 G5.

He had heart palpatations.

Knowing the hard-to-impress Gary, that's telling.

[jelloshotsrule]

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
High-end Video Codec

Pixlet is the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers. Pixlet provides 20-25:1 compression, allowing a 75MB/sec series of frames to be delivered in a 3MB/sec movie, similar to DV data rates. Or a series of frames that are over 6GB in size can be contained within a 250MB movie. Pixlet lets high-end digital film frames play in real time with any Panther Mac, without investing in costly, proprietary playback hardware.

Now I'm not sure on the specifics, but if this is available with the upgrade to FCP it would be quite sweet...

2 things.

1. to really have a point to use pixlet, you'd need to be starting with very high quality (uncompressed, hd, etc)... which relatively few people are. though pros in the industry, studios obviously do.

2. me and robbied asked the guy at pixar at siggraph about pixlet... he essentially called it vaporware


not sure why exactly. but just a heads up