2012 Mac Pro and Final Cut Pro X

So where is it? I refuse to believe its dead - because the current line up doesn't seem powerful enough to run FCP X to its fullest potential. Do all us editors really want to be buying an iMac every time we update our system?

I have been using FCP X professionally since the second update. I use it at home on a top of the line 2011 Macbook Pro and at work on a 2007 Macpro. Its a great piece of software but I am really beginning to hit bottlenecks.

I can't see that this software is designed primarily with mobiles in mind. If you are beginning to push multiple effects in a compound clip - things slow down fast (maybe more so on the laptop than the Mac Pro) - and quickly. It won't take much to see that little spinning circle - which begs the question where is the power machine to really show this software off.

Um, where did anyone say it was designed "primarily" for laptops?

Apple even recommends using proxy media with laptops and lower powered computers. Brand new iMacs and MacBook Pros with a Thunderbold RAID and maxed out on RAM should perform just fine.

You can work with FW800 drives just fine also, which may require proxy media due to the limited bandwidth of FW800.

Don't put your Events and Projects on your OS drive.

Proper system maintenance.
www.fcproxuniversity.com/documents/FCSystemMaintenance0811.pdf

It's GPU intensive, and any machine that has a fixed GPU, well, that's that.

First, set for "Better Performance" in the preferences. Use either Optimized or Proxy media for editing. Turn off rendering.

For ANY software "minimum specs" have always meant "minimum performance". But any new MBP or iMac should be fine. I have no idea from your post what your having trouble with.

Do you have a specific question in mind? What specific bottlenecks are you running in to?

So far Apple has by not releasing a real workstation I mean Mac Pro. :woohoo:

thanks for the advise I'll put that into practice on my macbook pro.

there seems to be a general consensus that apple is focused on consumer macs and that FCPx was designed to run with them in mind. Can't quite understand why there is no thunderbolt MacPro when this is arguably the device (and consumer group) that stands the most to gain from this super fast technology.

my point was however that (based on my i7 17 inch macbook pro with maxed out ram - running from a firewire 800 external drive) there was still a lot of room for performance improvement. It doesn't take much to make the wheel spin or cause a temporary lock up whilst FCP X gets it sh*t together. I have an aversion to lag or performance freezes and I have seen a lot of it in FCPX. I am not running an SSD so maybe that has an impact.

I am ready to buy a new Mac Pro that really shows off what this software is capable of - but I don't think the 2010 represents very good value for money - even if its the last Mac Pro apple ever make.

I can't see that though. How hard can it be for Apple to basically make a slightly customised PC that is based on off the shelf components in a fancy case?

Oh its not and I still think the Mac Pro is overpriced for what you get.
My hopes is still up that a Kick A$$ Mac Pro is coming so we don't have to rely on iMacs with the slower Thunderbolt! :silly:

Like I said, what specifically is your question?

And you do get much more power with a Mac Pro than with anything else.

my specific question is where the f^&k is the thunderbolt Mac Pro and why isn't there more interest in one?

the intel chips everyone has been waiting for are updated at the beginning of March and there hasn't been a sniff of a new Mac Pro, or component leak etc et - anywhere.

I am in the market for one but am not about to buy a 2010 machine.

Another suggestion: try closing open projects that you aren't using. That has created a bottleneck for me in the past.

Just wanted to clarify - when you say you've maxed out the RAM, do you mean you've installed 16GB of RAM?

It is publicly known that there is a debate inside of Apple about doing a new Mac Pro, or just dropping it. At this time, it is by far the least purchased model in the Mac line. They dropped the XServe for the same reason, not enough people were buying them to justify the cost and resources needed to manufacture them. But I have a feeling we will see a new Mac Pro with T'bolt this summer. That's just my educated guess, though.

I edited for two weeks on a brand new 17" MBP and LaCie 2TB T'bolt drive. It outperformed my 2008 Mac Pro by leaps and bounds. I may dump both my Mac Pro and current MBP for a single new MBP this summer, and a T'bolt RAID. It's plenty fast and powerful enough for editing on.

Didn't Apple hint that they are still waiting for Intel?
The fact that the Mac Pro is the least purchased Apple product is that hasn't been a update for awhile. Don't need to be rocket scientist to know that.
The reason for the Xserve that was given is BS!
Here are the real evidence Linux free or cheaper, no Final Cut Server, no WebObjects... No need to get in detail and of topic.
Don't forget Mac Pro are not mainly bought for Apple software like Logic and Final Cut Pro, there is still a lot of big boys out there. Adobe, Avid, Autodesk Smoke - Maya and so on...
If Apple takes the Mac Pro offline then that's the first sign they are stepping away from the desktop/workstation and Windows will dominate the Highend world.
Which I don't believe or hope unless they have monkeys deciding for them. :silly:

Crossing my fingers for a new Mac Pro! Next love cycle I could see 200 being bought!

Ben you are wanting to dump your Mac Pro for..

BenB wrote:
And you do get much more power with a Mac Pro than with anything else.

? :ohmy:

Our Mac Pro 3.1 out perform the latest MacBook Pro in Final Cut Pro X and Cinema 4D.
They just don't have enough RAM and Cores.

Oh, only have 8gb as I thought that was maximum.

on further reading it seems that all the thunderbolt macbook pro's can take unto 16gb.

is that right? if so that's great.

Pie in the Sky stuff here but I'd love them to do a modular system. So something about the size of a Mac Mini with processors logic board and Ram. Use Thunderbolt to add more modules, storage and graphic card arrays. Build it as big and powerful as you like, swap out graphic cards or processor units as they become obsolete.

How cool would that be? Put some use to Grand Central Dispatch.

I mentioned that the screen is set up for laptops, which makes sense for Apple as 75% of all Macs are MBA/Ps.

I run FCP X on a 2010 MBP with 8GB RAM. I rarely have any hiccups ("native" HDV and MXF converted with Pika's plugin ). Sure, the beachball shows up now and then, but that's nothing that really'd slow me down. OTOH, FCP X is that much faster than FCS that it doesn't bother me.

What I have found out - weirdly as it sounds - I have less problems with the integrated Intel GPU than with the discrete nVidia. GFXcardstatus lets me switch.

MacPro? The village myth says Apple is waiting for Intel. Isn't it their tradition to only renew the Pro when Intel has a new CPU for them?
HP and Boxx are also waiting...

I wanted to add that I only have Events and Projects on the working drive that I'm actually working on - normally just two or three. The other ones are archived on a drive that I only mount when I need it.
The less Events and Projects FCP has to load, the faster it is.

Haven't updated to 0.3. yet though and am still on SL.

Can't add CPU's vie T'bolt, not nearly fast enough. Same for RAM.

Maybe but it would be fast enough for adding CPUs for rendering just as Compressor uses networked clusters now.

Ram would definitely need to be housed locally. But imagine a little box that had an 12 Core Processor and 16GB of Ram in it attached to an external chassis with say 4 high end graphics cards in it and two more Mac Minis to utilise their processors for big renders. You could have up to 36 Cores and 8 GB of Graphics Memory available. No?

A CPU by itself is useless, you'd need to have a CPU with it's own RAM, disk access, other necessary chips for operation, basically a mini-computer. Simply not something you can do via a PCI slot, which is all T'bolt is, an external PCIe slot. What you're describing really are full computers.

If that could be done via PCIe cards, we'd have had them already. But the idea is nice.

There are external PCIe boxes coming out soon that will hold extra graphics cards, so you can add a high end card to a laptop. There is some issue with T'bolt not supporting all the data lanes of PCIe, I've not paid attention to the technical details, but adding GPU's like that is the same thing as what you're proposing. It simply can't be done with CPUs.