I might be looking into getting a computer for the art kids to use on the Formula team for making movies. Currently it takes a long time to render and what not.
What should I look for/stay away from? A Mac thing? buy a good graphics card for one of our current work stations?
We’ll probably end up going used if a separate computer will be purchased. I’m not about to spend a lot on a computer to make 3-4 videos a year.
thanks.
What do you use to make the movies? If you are using a Windows program, a new Mac will be expensive and also require you to learn a new program if it is unavailable. If you are just doing editing and 3-4 videos a year, I would look at a PC with a solid state hard drive for a lot of your cache writing, at least 4 cores for a CPU and 8GB+ of RAM. A single decent video card would be ok too. No need to invest in a dual card setup
+1, Video editing relies more so on the processor than the video card.
Ok, good to know. I’m not sure what program the one kid uses, we certainly won’t be buying a new mac either way. Might be able to swing some new bits for a workstation though. I’d think being an art major he knows how to use the mac programs, I just want to have some knowledge before he starts saying he ‘needs’ this or that.
If he is used to the Mac programs, then have him stay on that platform. You can look for a used Mac Pro and get him going. Tell him his work will dictate a beefier setup. =)
Also for Windows (or Mac) you could get the Creative cloud and ultimately get Premier Pro/Soundbooth if you need. You can pay by month so you’d only need to pay for it for the months you are using it.
RAM is typically inexpensive enough to just shovel in the max the computer can handle. 16GB is roughly a minimum, since its $60 or less. You need modern hardware for it to support that, however. The Mac Pro is really outdated right now, and takes FB ECC RAM, which costs quite a bit more. If the machine has 4 slots and the chipset can handle it, I would run 32GB. An SSD will typically not do a thing for your render performance on an average machine, but it will absolutely make the machine massively more responsive and pleasant to use.
A good way to determine what a new machine can do in terms of CPU performance is not by comparing clock speeds, cache, RAM, or even cores. Run Cinebench R11.5 in multi-core CPU mode. It gives you a simple number thats going to represent your machines ability to render video fairly accurately. You can typically find this benchmark on all sorts of Apple hardware, so you can compare your current machine to a new machine, and make a relative determination of how much faster it is. Clock speeds are extremely misleading.
Just for comparison, the current gen 27" iMac with the optional i7 processor is roughly the same render performance as the most recent 8 core Mac Pro. It has half the cores and one less processor. Clock speeds are not that far off. But yeah, the really ‘new’ 12 core Mac Pro’s are still fast even with the old hardware. If you can find one cheap enough to justify it.
If they don’t need to make anything fancy: iMac + iMovie
If they need to make something fancy: iMac + Final Cut Studio + Adobe Creative Suite
Stack the iMac with Memory and maybe buy a large external drive. Video takes up lots of space.
The current Mac Pro is expandable. The new one will require external storage.
The sky is the limit with video production setups. It seems like it never renders fast enough no matter what setup you have. Pick your budget and needs and go from there.
If they want stock stick with Windows then I donno. Is Premiere still around?
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud.html
Yes in the Adobe Creative Cloud.
So I talked to the other decision makers and we’ve decided just to spend a few hundred and upgrade one of the computers we already have. Here are it’s specs:
HP Z400 Workstation
Intel xeon W3505 processor @ 2.53 GHz
14.0 GB ram
windows 7 64 bit
230gb HDD
Nvidia Quadro 2000 , 4095 MB
We also have Lightroom 4.4, it seems as if we have most/all of the cs6 suite.
As of right now the only thing I’ve heard is that it takes forever to render, but there may be other areas of improvement.
Edit:
I ran the cinebench program and got 45.31 fps on the OpenGL and a 1.68 on the CPU. So it looks like we need to upgrade the processor? I’m not sure how common/useful that is without getting a new motherboard. Then power supply, etc etc.
recommendations? trying to stay <$300 but can probably push $500 if really necessary
Yea, it takes forever because that processor is only a 2 core at 2.5GHz without multi-threading; there’s your Bottleneck there.
There is a reason people do video work on macs lol
I use that as my main computer at work. only 8GB of RAM though.
My year or two old Apple notebook gets in the low 5’s on the CPU benchmark.
The new 11 and 13" MacBook Air gets mid 2’s…
Realistically, you’d be better off tossing the machine into a dumpster and getting a new $400 rig from Dell or something.
Or drop $2k on a 27" iMac.
lol yea? $400 on a new dell or $2k on a mac?
I figure it was better to upgrade a few components than spend money on a new case and what not.
Show me were you can get 16gb of memory for $60 or less… 32gb is about $250+…
For reference
My $400 HP envy desktop just did 4.31/35
My Macbook Pro does 6.5/37.58