??What to do What to do What to do?? (opinions please!)

I'm working on a 2008 Mac Pro here, with a 5870 (which I don't think makes much difference over the 5770 you have, to be honest). My drives are slow (no RAID, let alone SSD), though I do have 18Gb RAM.

I happily edit AVCHD and similar-bitrate H.264. Now, I'm working at 24p rather than 30p, so I'm throwing around fewer frames, but still. I work mostly with original media, rendering only when needed (which is usually when I have several layers of effects on). I have playback set to 'Best Performance', which is a trade-off but acceptable for me.

I don't find playback or export slow. However - I export to ProRes, and handle compression externally to Final Cut, usually in Telestream Episode (which I bought many years ago, and have come to rely on). That's the only difference I can spot in our workflows.

Can I suggest that you run Alex's BruceX benchmark and see how your system performs? You should see something around 120 seconds or so. A dramatically poorer performance would suggest there's something amiss with your install which warrants further troubleshooting. Otherwise, at least we'd know if you're hitting the limit of what your system can be expected to handle in real time.

Another option - top end iMac. It won't be as fast as the new MacPro, but mine (two weeks old) renders twice as fast as my 2008 MacPro. But, I never found the ProRes transcoding to be that slow on it anyway. Even more than the rendering I appreciate the response of the interface. It sounds minor, but I got tired of waiting 3-5 seconds for the Inspector to update when I clicked a new clip, changed tools, etc.

The iMac is a joy to use every second, and for hundreds of dollars less than the MacPro I got a huge speed increase plus the added bonus of this gorgeous 27" display. Now when I click on a clip the Inspector is updated before I can get my mouse over there

Edit: On an iMac get the 4GB video card if you can - I only got the 2GB, but the 4GB will help a bit on rendering speed.

Thanks for the tip. The 27" iMac was the other direction I was considering. On another note... I tried transcoding the event and then rendering.. it made a HUGE difference.. I think that was the big key that I was missing to have my current system be more useable. Having only ever really used iMovie in the past, I always wondered why the events were so large.. now I know. It automatically created "optimized" video.

The size difference is pretty dramatic. 7 GB turned into 60GB once transcoded. Fortunately you don't have to archive the high quality media when you shelf a completed project.

Anyway. I really thank you all for your help. It's really set my mind at ease as to how to move forward.

Cheers
Rick Eutsler, Jr.
www.airgunweb.com
www.youtube.com/airgunweb

Wow all of this information is awesome, I am using a Cannon Vixia HF G20, so that explains some of it as well. So new question though. Instead of a laptop, is there an iMac that is suitable for $1500?

Follow up...

Hey there ya'll I wanted to give you a follow up and also again say "thank you" for all the help. I worked on another project for a client late last week. I shot all my footage using my Vixia hf g10 and my vixia hf21.

After I imported all the relevant footage I created optimized media for all the event footage. Some time later, not sure how long it took but it was a while, I sat down and started editing. A couple of hours later I had this video:

I "shared" a master file from FCX which did not take nearly as long as it used to take. With the master file done, I setup my renders in compressor and called it a day. Again, not sure how long it took, but it worked and worked really well.

The key to streamlining the process was most certainly to create optimized media right from the rip. Once the client is happy with the work product, I'll delete the optimized media, create a sparse disk image and use FCX to archive the project and relevant clips for safe keeping. Super easy and a good bit faster.

Thanks again for everything. I'll certainly be back to this forum in the future.

Cheers

Rick Eutsler, Jr.
Dog River Design, LLC.