Mac Pro specification help requested

[hedleyw]

Works just fine here as well

[STORMDAVE]

8800GT works fine with EDIUS in my configuration...it's the 512MB version, not sure if that makes a difference.

[majormauser]

I doubt Apple will release a new Mac Pro anytime soon. There was already an upgrade very recently to the Penryn architecture.

You will be fine with 2.8Ghz. I have the 3.2Ghz (check my specs) and it's nice. You will be fine editing m2t file with the 2.8. Save some money and get the 2.8 and upgrade your RAM to at least 4GB. Don't get hard drives from Apple, but rather buy your own (Maybe 2 x 1TB drives) and stick them in the Mac Pro and make a RAID under Windows.

Get the 8800GT instead of the ATI. Dont get the RAM from Apple either, get 2GB stock and get 4GB from otherworldcomputing.com

Also check these threads regarding the Mac Pro:

(This thread is about the last gen Mac Pro, but I have the new one)

StormDave,

Has there been any more support for the 8800GT in Edius? I replaced my 8800GT with the ATI 2600 because the 8800 was so terrible.

[hedleyw]

Perhaps you will read my other post, but Edius NX is now working on my Mac!!!! It was an EX card problem.

Good luck with your system, it will fly!

Geoff

Well, (touches wood) it appears to be up and running, and yes - it FLIES :). What a wonderful experience customising a Mac Pro - the build quality and ease of hardware addition is astounding. Quality oozes everywhere, even down to the spring loaded captive screws holding the cards.

The only downside is that I now know that Windows RAID drives are not accessible by MacOSX - a bit of shuffling via the windows partition will be required now and again.

I am, as ever, indebted for the help of others on this forum for taking their time to assist me - thank you again.

[Geoff]

Perhaps you will read my other post, but Edius NX is now working on my Mac!!!! It was an EX card problem.

Good luck with your system, it will fly!

Geoff

[hedleyw]

Nowhere :)
Mac Pro doesn't have any molex adapters onboard except with the 2 super drive slots (They use IDE). You don't need the power. That molex is only for supplying power to the 6pin component boards firewire connection. If you need power for a firewire device (Not many nowadays), use the Mac Pro firewire ports.

For audio, skip the included aux cable that's included and buy a short 3.5mm male to male cable and route the LINE OUT from the NX to the LINE IN on the Mac Pro. Then enable Line In from the audio menu in Windows.

Whoah that was quick! Thanks very much :). Just installing the 4.61 update then it's off for some shut-eye.

[STORMDAVE]

Nowhere :)
Mac Pro doesn't have any molex adapters onboard except with the 2 super drive slots (They use IDE). You don't need the power. That molex is only for supplying power to the 6pin component boards firewire connection. If you need power for a firewire device (Not many nowadays), use the Mac Pro firewire ports.

For audio, skip the included aux cable that's included and buy a short 3.5mm male to male cable and route the LINE OUT from the NX to the LINE IN on the Mac Pro. Then enable Line In from the audio menu in Windows.

[hedleyw]

A very basic question - where do I route the power from for the component out board? fx: blush

[STORMDAVE]

Yeah it does get a bit complex. For me I do all my motion graphics work under OSX but editing jobs are done under Windows. You can put in 2x1TB drives in the Mac Pro and RAID0 them as I explained previously in this thread. Cheap way to go, but unsafe. Make sure to keep backups of your projects on external USB drives in case of drive failures.

If you need to do DVD authoring etc under OSX, just get the Paragon NTFS for Mac software, it will work fine for that kind of stuff.

[hedleyw]

Yeah you're better off using the Paragon software to read from NTFS drives, however as KH stated performance is not guaranteed. I have the software but I haven't installed it on my newer Mac Pro. I used an older copy of MacDrive under XP and loaded clips into EDIUS from an HFS+ partition. It worked ok but I didn't do any extra testing. Besides there was one instant problem that I found with that solution, if you wanted to go into the properties of the clip from EDIUS, it would give an error and not open the properties. So that made it pretty much unusable for me, I always use the properties.

Your other option would be to setup a Windows machine with a gigabit connection and share your NTFS windows drives with the Mac. Since SMB networking does not see any drive formats and doesn't care for it, you can use it as you would any other drive just that you will have access to it from Windows and OSX without problems. Under Windows you can mount the drives with drive letters, under OSX you can mount the Windows share on your desktop and have fast access to it. However, gigabit maxes out to about 80MB/sec, so if that is enough for you, I would think that is a better route. You can probably build a nice RAID 5 windows box for about $1,000 and put it in another room so you won't hear the fan noise (maybe 5x500GB seagates or 5x1TB)...I was thinking of doing that instead of going the eSATA route as I have to pick a drive format for that. Right now I am using single drives, which are enough for DV/DVCPRO50/DVCPROHD and some other formats. I also have an internal 400GB drive in my Mac Pro for After Effects work (I work at 8bit uncompressed) under OSX.

Getting a bit complex now - I think I have to decide where my priorities lie - at the moment that is with Edius, Mac editing will be secondary on this machine. So format the raid 0 drives as NTFS from windows and move anything across to the system drive that I want to work on under Leopard. Hope that makes sense!

[STORMDAVE]

Yeah you're better off using the Paragon software to read from NTFS drives, however as KH stated performance is not guaranteed. I have the software but I haven't installed it on my newer Mac Pro. I used an older copy of MacDrive under XP and loaded clips into EDIUS from an HFS+ partition. It worked ok but I didn't do any extra testing. Besides there was one instant problem that I found with that solution, if you wanted to go into the properties of the clip from EDIUS, it would give an error and not open the properties. So that made it pretty much unusable for me, I always use the properties.

Your other option would be to setup a Windows machine with a gigabit connection and share your NTFS windows drives with the Mac. Since SMB networking does not see any drive formats and doesn't care for it, you can use it as you would any other drive just that you will have access to it from Windows and OSX without problems. Under Windows you can mount the drives with drive letters, under OSX you can mount the Windows share on your desktop and have fast access to it. However, gigabit maxes out to about 80MB/sec, so if that is enough for you, I would think that is a better route. You can probably build a nice RAID 5 windows box for about $1,000 and put it in another room so you won't hear the fan noise (maybe 5x500GB seagates or 5x1TB)...I was thinking of doing that instead of going the eSATA route as I have to pick a drive format for that. Right now I am using single drives, which are enough for DV/DVCPRO50/DVCPROHD and some other formats. I also have an internal 400GB drive in my Mac Pro for After Effects work (I work at 8bit uncompressed) under OSX.

[hedleyw]

HFS+ for sure - Mac OS support for NTFS is read-only, unless you buy a third-party app from Paragon (the counter to MacDrive). Mileage may vary on performance.

(certainly, it would be better than the free MacFUSE+3G-NTFS package - it's slower than a wet week)

Thanks again - appreciated :)

[GrassValley_KH]

HFS+ for sure - Mac OS support for NTFS is read-only, unless you buy a third-party app from Paragon (the counter to MacDrive). Mileage may vary on performance.

(certainly, it would be better than the free MacFUSE+3G-NTFS package - it's slower than a wet week)

[hedleyw]

If you've purchased and run MacDrive, sure. If not, Windows cannot access HFS/HFS+ partitions.

Also note: MacDrive is incompatible with x64 XP/Vista. I found out that out the hard way recently..

Thanks KH - verging on support for Mac OSX ;)

But each answer raises another question - when I add the two extra drives if I am using MacDrive are they best formatted for windoze or Mac? I plan to use the Mac side for some editing and DVD creation as well.

[pjsssss]

Also note: MacDrive is incompatible with x64 XP/Vista. I found out that out the hard way recently..

Ohhhh. I did not know this. Thanks for keeping me from making the same mistake