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windows_sucks · Sep 22, 2006, 11:50 PM

allright...pardon me if i sound a little rude...but man i have had it with this windows piece of crap....all this is good for is watching porn

..this piece of sh*** has crashed more times than it has been up...so finally decided that I am gonna get me one of them Mac Pro's...I do a lot of video editing (post production) work...i have heard good things about Final Cut...i just need a recommendation on what kind of system (mac pro) would best suit the needs of a videographer.....this is a first time I'll be buying a mac, but i am pretty tech savvy so I don't mind dealing with a new OS and everything....

obviously the sn should give you an idea of my frustration with doors and windows...hahaha...funny thought....Apple has all its Operating Systems named after some sort of a big cat..hahaha...the way I see it..after Leopard..there'll be a LION...and then what..

cheeetah (not sure if this was ever a name..i think it was)
jaguar
panther
tiger
leopard (soon to come)
lion (hopefully will follow after leopard)
what next??...hahaha apple is gonna go back to stone age and call its OS "saber tooth"..hahaha just a joke

rozwado1 · Sep 23, 2006, 12:17 AM

Do you park your car in the blue-lined spots?

windows_sucks · Sep 23, 2006, 12:26 AM

Originally Posted by rozwado1

Do you park your car in the blue-lined spots?

dude why don't you answer the question instead of replying my question with an ignorant question...if you don't want to answer don't bother..it was just a little humor!..sorry if you can't take a joke.....

vinster · Sep 23, 2006, 12:34 AM

Welcome to the forums.

The best bet when buying Apple gear is to wait until after Macworld in January if you can as they're sure to announce improved models and/or lower pricing.

You should also consider buying online at the Apple store. I always go for the top-tier "Pro" model fo the computer-type of your choice (i.e. the fastest MacBook Pro available) and using the build-to-order option to upgrade options such as on-board VRAM, DVD-R choices, etc. This has always mitigated buyer's regret for me. I've chosen the mid-tier in the past and wished I'd gone with the extra options.

Other than that, after about a month of using a Mac you'll love it.

Good luck!

derekn · Sep 23, 2006, 12:46 AM

First off, Cheetah was used.

You can see all the cat names here:
Mac OS X - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There was an article on macrumors I think it was that had a note on Apple copyrighting several big cat names. Don't think Lion was one though. LOL

For your original question, I think the MacPro is the only real option if you're into video. You're going to need expansion (hard drives, RAM, optical drive/drives, PCI Express slots, even processor down the road) which only the MacPro can provide. You may want to go by an Apple Store or a 3rd party reseller where you can sit down and use a Mac, see how it performs and acts etc. You'll be able to get a good base reading from that.

One last bit of advice... don't install bootcamp. LOL

EDIT: Here we go: Apple Trademarks Lynx, Cougar, Leopard, Tiger and More... - Mac Forums

They've used Tiger and Leopard of those, so we have Lynx and Cougar to look forward to in the years to come.

windows_sucks · Sep 23, 2006, 12:52 AM

hahaha..thanks for all your replies...I really do appreciate them

vinster: I was looking into better solutions rather than a macbook pro..by the way any chances they will be coming out with a newer desktop workstations...

derekn:..thanks for your suggestiion....do you recommend a particular setup for optimal performance...of course 16gigs of ram and so forth would be ideal...but thats what I would "want"....thats not what i "need" =)...as far as bootcamp...i am going to make sure there are not traces of any windows dll's in the mac....windows is not worthy of that..as far as i know windows is out the door for me

once again thanks for your responses unlike that dumba$$ john stamos loving "rozwado1"..guess full house wasn't on when he responded to the post..haha =)

vinster · Sep 23, 2006, 01:14 AM

One thing about the MacNN fourms is that you just need to brush off the

- it can get pretty bad at times. Even with the

the forums are good reading with some excellent contributors.

I was just using the MacBook Pro as an example when buying. You'll get a bunch of options selecting a Mac Pro at the Apple store online, too. One thing, though, don't by RAM from Apple their prices are high.

Macworld 2007 could have revised Mac Pros, but you never know for sure. Apple's always been secretive about their new releases. Definitely no harm in getting a computer now, just be prepared to feel a bit outdated in January.

I agree with derekn that the Mac Pro's the comp to get for how you'll be using it. I've read about Apple's lack of a mini-tower offering, so you never know if that's something they will introduce in the future.

derekn · Sep 23, 2006, 02:33 AM

Originally Posted by windows_sucks

derekn:..thanks for your suggestiion....do you recommend a particular setup for optimal performance...of course 16gigs of ram and so forth would be ideal...but thats what I would "want"....thats not what i "need" =)...as far as bootcamp...i am going to make sure there are not traces of any windows dll's in the mac....windows is not worthy of that..as far as i know windows is out the door for me

Yeah 16 GB might be a "tad" too much.

Plus it's $5700 by itself. LOL I think right now, 4 GB should be okay, if you can afford more you can go for it. But the RAM prices will fluctuate, so they will most likely get cheaper as time goes on. It's easy to upgrade in the future, so keep that in mind.

The 2.66Ghz model should be fine. The 3Ghz model adds $800 (same price as upgrading to 4 GB of RAM BTW) but doesn't yield much of a performance gain as yet. It's one of those "if you can afford it, go for it" things, but realistically, at least right now, it's more of a "I must have Apples latest and greatest" thing. The MacPro is ahead of it's time right now and it's going to take time for Apple and the 3rd party software companies to fully optimize their software.

Hard drive wise... you can get four 750GB Seagates now and make a 3TB RAID.

Other World Computing reported that Seagate has a firmware update out that addresses the previous RAID issues on the MacPro with the 750GB drives. So if you're looking for bleeding edge storage, that's one route to go.

Video card wise... X1900 is probably best, it's a very high end card with great capabilities at a good price ($250 on a BTO system). The 4500 card is nice too, but adds on $1000 more.

Vinsters note about the a MacPro update at MWSF may be true or not. Intel is putting out it's quad core chips in November, but it's hard to say when Apple will introduce systems using it. If you're going to be doing a lot of work in HD, you may want to wait and see with that. Anandtechs experience of putting a Clovertown (the quad core Woodcrest) in a MacPro yielded some good performance with HD encoding. And as I said above, the MacPro is ahead of it's time, so more and more optimizations to software and video codecs are forthcoming.

Arju · Sep 23, 2006, 11:51 AM

Read this before you buy anything: Ten Rules for Buying Apple Products

If you need/want it now just buy it. I could've used my PC laptop for another 6 months and waited for a MacBook update or just bought the thing and enjoyed it. What do you think I did?

mduell · Sep 23, 2006, 02:16 PM

I'd start with the 2.66Ghz with 1GB RAM from Apple and the 160GB disk. Add 2x2GB third party RAM (I like Crucial), a 150G Raptor or two, and a large storage drive (400-750G) or two. You may be able to reuse a storage drive from your existing setup. If you're running a lot of apps at the same time, like the whole Final Cut Studio, or working with big HD files, adding another 2x2G may not be a bad idea.
The stock video card is fine for Final Cut/DVD Studio/Photoshop work, but if you're going to use Motion you should upgrade to the X1900.

windows_sucks · Sep 23, 2006, 03:33 PM

Dereken: You said to have 3 750Gb storage configured in RAID 0..I know mac's have the ability to do a software raid...any chances this will affect processor performance....also..i thought macs can support upto 2 TB ...having 3x750Gb hard drives exceeds this....will macs be able to support these drives for sure.

derekn · Sep 23, 2006, 03:42 PM

Four 750GB drives.

Apples official stance is that 2TB is the maxiumum size (since the biggest drive they sell is a 500GB drive), but 3 TB is now possible with good performance. Previously putting in 4 of those drives and making a RAID yielded very low transfer speeds, the new Seagate firmware update fixes that.

As for it affecting processor performance, it will help it rather than hinder it. You can see some tests here:
http://www.barefeats.com/quad07.html

Remember, the Seagate numbers in that test are with the old firmware, not the new. With the new, four 750GB drives in a RAID put in read/write speeds on par with the other setups.

mduell · Sep 23, 2006, 03:57 PM

Originally Posted by windows_sucks

Dereken: You said to have 3 750Gb storage configured in RAID 0..I know mac's have the ability to do a software raid...any chances this will affect processor performance....also..i thought macs can support upto 2 TB ...having 3x750Gb hard drives exceeds this....will macs be able to support these drives for sure.

As long as you're only doing RAID 0 or 1 in software and not RAID5, there's not much impact on processor performance. Keep in mind that with software RAID0, the loss of any disk or software corruption will render all of the data on all 3 disks useless. I'm not a fan of software RAID, espically with today's single disk performance.
The 2TB maximum is just when you purchase from Apple; for reasons unknown to me, they don't offer 750G drives, but plenty of people have added them successfuly.

windows_sucks · Sep 23, 2006, 09:17 PM

ok..so doing post production work...any of you think that configuring 2 hard drives in a raid 0 format would be beneficial in any way what so ever...when I was doing post production work on a windows I never had my hard drives in any raid configuration....sorry i am not to familiar with raids...i'd like to keep the hard drives the way they are right now...
but configuring 2 320GB hard drives in Raid 0 and keeping a 750GB for storage/backup purposes is what going to make my post production time less time consuming then I don't mind one bit doing that..

pixelbaker · Sep 24, 2006, 08:16 PM

Originally Posted by rozwado1

Do you park your car in the blue-lined spots?

ROFL. that was awful but I needed that after the shitty day I've had.

To the OP, I just ordered my Mac Pro and it should be here tomorrow. I'm excited. Have fun with whatever you end up choosing.

derekn · Sep 24, 2006, 09:14 PM

Originally Posted by windows_sucks

ok..so doing post production work...any of you think that configuring 2 hard drives in a raid 0 format would be beneficial in any way what so ever...when I was doing post production work on a windows I never had my hard drives in any raid configuration....sorry i am not to familiar with raids...i'd like to keep the hard drives the way they are right now...
but configuring 2 320GB hard drives in Raid 0 and keeping a 750GB for storage/backup purposes is what going to make my post production time less time consuming then I don't mind one bit doing that..

That configuration should be fine.

The RAID was only a suggestion if you wanted a lot of speed with a lot of storage. Running all the drives solo works just fine too, I have a 300GB, 400 GB and 500GB (non RAID) in my MacPro and they're just fine.

reader50 · Sep 24, 2006, 10:34 PM

Originally Posted by windows_sucks

...
once again thanks for your responses unlike that dumba$$ john stamos loving "rozwado1"..guess full house wasn't on when he responded to the post..haha =)

First, welcome to the forums, and to the Mac. I hope that you enjoy both for a long time to come.

Second, we do not allow abuse of other members on this board. Personal disagreements should be taken to PM, IM, or email. Don't post comments like that again.

UnixMac · Sep 25, 2006, 10:42 AM

Always great to see a Windows covert! go (no Run) out and get that Mac Pro now and get your new experience started! I got mine delivered last week, and my brother-in-law (a well off individual) liked it so much, that he ordered a maxed out system for his home studio to replace his PC... he must have dropped $18K on this system with 2x30" and 16GB of overpriced Apple RAM.

Get the best system you can afford, and make use of 3rd Party stores like OWC to get better deals on RAM, and added hard disks.

Once you go Mac, you never go back!

jamil5454 · Sep 25, 2006, 11:35 AM

RAID 0 works by connecting (in software) two or more drives together and splitting the access load among them. So two drives connected in RAID 0 will be significantly faster than each drive individually accessed, and, as an added bonus, the OS sees the two drives as one big drive so you can store large files on the volume without having to worry about balancing the space between two drives.

Now, RAID 1 simply mirrors two drives. All of the accessing done to one drive will be mirrored or copied to the other one (or multiple drives). This means that you always have a real-time backup available in case one of the drives/volumes fails.

If I were you, and if you make a living off your work, I'd get the four 750GB (if you can afford it) drives, chain two pairs together in a RAID 0 and then chain those two RAID 0s into a RAID 1 for backup purposes.

Or... if you're not too worried about backup of scratch video files, you can stick with the 160GB (or 250GB) Apple gives you and then just get three 750GB drives and put those in a RAID 0 for scratch use, and just worry about backing up the stock Apple drive with an external solution or sometihng.

TimmyDee51 · Sep 25, 2006, 06:56 PM

How reliable are software RAIDs?

mduell · Sep 25, 2006, 08:11 PM

Originally Posted by TimmyDee51

How reliable are software RAIDs?

Less reliable than hardware RAIDs or individual disks.

CatOne · Sep 25, 2006, 10:25 PM

Originally Posted by windows_sucks

ok..so doing post production work...any of you think that configuring 2 hard drives in a raid 0 format would be beneficial in any way what so ever...when I was doing post production work on a windows I never had my hard drives in any raid configuration....sorry i am not to familiar with raids...i'd like to keep the hard drives the way they are right now...
but configuring 2 320GB hard drives in Raid 0 and keeping a 750GB for storage/backup purposes is what going to make my post production time less time consuming then I don't mind one bit doing that..

Absolutely RAID 0 would be helpful for video production work. If you RAID 3 drives together you can *almost* get enough performance to do 10-bit uncompressed HD (reading). Certainly you want a couple drives worth of RAID 0 though if you want to be doing any uncompressed work... SD or HD (and HD practially is limited to HDV or DVCPRO-HD for multi-streams unless you use something like Xserve RAID).

TimmyDee51 · Sep 25, 2006, 10:44 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

Less reliable than hardware RAIDs or individual disks.

That's what I thought/was afraid of. Looks like plain old backups will have to do for me for now.

reader50 · Sep 25, 2006, 11:10 PM

Originally Posted by TimmyDee51

How reliable are software RAIDs?

The different RAID types have different answers to that question. mduell's answer presumably applied to RAID 0.

Compared to a single drive ...

RAID 0 - Less reliable. Reliability goes down as more drives are added.
RAID 1 - More reliable. Reliability goes up with more drives.
RAID 5 - More reliable. Reliability goes down with more drives.
RAID 10 - More reliable. Reliability scaling depends on which dimension the array is expanded in.

windows_sucks · Sep 26, 2006, 01:27 AM

Originally Posted by reader50

First, welcome to the forums, and to the Mac. I hope that you enjoy both for a long time to come.

Second, we do not allow abuse of other members on this board. Personal disagreements should be taken to PM, IM, or email. Don't post comments like that again.

Not trying to take this any further, but I suggest you read what I had to write initially and read the first response I got...I'd appreciate you if not jump to conclusions before reading the "everything".

windows_sucks · Sep 26, 2006, 01:33 AM

Originally Posted by UnixMac

Always great to see a Windows covert! go (no Run) out and get that Mac Pro now and get your new experience started! I got mine delivered last week, and my brother-in-law (a well off individual) liked it so much, that he ordered a maxed out system for his home studio to replace his PC... he must have dropped $18K on this system with 2x30" and 16GB of overpriced Apple RAM.

Get the best system you can afford, and make use of 3rd Party stores like OWC to get better deals on RAM, and added hard disks.

Once you go Mac, you never go back!

I got a chance to see your Mac Collection..."WOW" is definitely an understatement....you definitely seem to be well accustomed to your Macs...I know I am definitely getting one..just don't have the funds like you do...I just purchased a Viewsonice 22" widescreen from Costco ...its a new model.so I am One down..3 more to go (memory, hard drives, and of course THE MAC DADDY OF THE MACS).......I must say though that I am a bit disappointed with the monitor prices....i don't mind dishing out $2000 for some ram upgrades or processor upgrades....no doubt apple and dell are the only ones offering 30" monitors ..and i'd definitely buy the apple 30" over the dell hell 30" =)...

TimmyDee51 · Sep 26, 2006, 02:59 AM

Originally Posted by reader50

The different RAID types have different answers to that question. mduell's answer presumably applied to RAID 0.

Compared to a single drive ...

RAID 0 - Less reliable. Reliability goes down as more drives are added.
RAID 1 - More reliable. Reliability goes up with more drives.
RAID 5 - More reliable. Reliability goes down with more drives.
RAID 10 - More reliable. Reliability scaling depends on which dimension the array is expanded in.

Right. I'm familiar with hardware RAIDs, but I guess I'm wondering if a software RAID 1 is reliable.

Todd Madson · Sep 29, 2006, 04:50 PM

I thought it would have been interesting if Apple had created their OS X Server
product by branding it as "Serval".

Serval Cats

Anyway, yes, Mac Pro is what you want if you're doing the big video editing
thing.