Under $1000 for a way to monitor 1080p with worldwide frame rates using thunderbolt

Allan Tépper at the Pro Video Coalition has a great solution for monitoring video using thunderbolt and a Sony KDL-40BX420E, which will work with US power and supports, both PAL and NTSC frame rates as well as 23.976 and 24 FPS. Very very cool. The monitor is grey market in the US, so he also recommends a third party warranty. This is a inexpensive and great solution for monitoring.

2012 iMac faster than Mac Pro with Radeon HD 5870 in DaVinci Resolve and Premiere Pro CS6

Bare Feats has run the tests, and the 2012 iMac 27″ 3.4GHz Core iMac with 32GB of RAM and the GeForce GTX 680MX GPU actually does beat the MacPro in Resolve and Premiere Pro, but that is a MacPro with the Radeon HD 5870 GPU. Not really a fair test unless you have an NVIDIA CUDA card in the MacPro. As the MacPro still beats the iMac in 2 out of 3 CPU tests.

I have a feeling my non Mobile NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 4096 MB would slaughter the iMac in anything CUDA aware, which would be Premiere Pro, After Effects or DaVinci Resolve.

FX Factory Updated to 4.0 now with Premiere CS6 Support

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Noise Industries has upgraded the FxFactory to 4.0 and added Premiere Pro CS 6 Support. I have a ton of their compatible and free plug ins, but don’t actually own this suite (always thought it was a tad expensive), but this gives me one more reason, as I have moved from any version of Final Cut and now prefer Premiere Pro (though I of course still have Media Composer which works with very few plug ins).

The new iMac

Apple has updated it’s iMac and it is thinner and more powerful, and now sans a CD rom drive.

Most impressive for editing are NVIDIA Mobile processors across the line, so they should all be great for CUDA in Premiere Pro. The low end has a GT 640M with 512MB of RAM, the second has a GT 650M with 512MB, the 3rd has a GTX 660m with 512MB and the high end has a GTX 675 with 1GB of RAM (best for editing right there). Even better the high end is configurable to a Geforce GTX 680MX with 2GB of RAM!

Too bad ll the stock models have i5 processors, but you can upgrade to an i7 that is 3.4Ghz. The high end also has user addable RAM, though the smaller model is soldered, but comes with 8GB to start.

Another exciting upgrade is the Fusion Drive you can get in BTO. It has 128GB of Flash Ram tied to 1 or 3 TB of regular hard drive, so your system can be on the fast Fusion, but you seamlessly get FLASH speeds for your system.

Starting at $1299-$1999 and available in November to December.

You have to configure it, but it really could be a great editing machine, especially with Thunderbolt, though I would prefer a non-mobile video card personally.

FCP.Co on installing a PC GTX570 in a MacPro

FCP.Co has an article on installing a PC GTX570 in a MacPro to get better OpenCL performance in FCP X, but it will also increase your CUDA power for Premiere Pro and After Effects CS6.

Still you can score over 1000 on Luxmark if you go for a GTX670 instead (which has a huge amount more of CUDA cores, and can still draw it’s power from the internal power supply instead of say a 680, which would require an external power source to run), but they are not as well supported on the Mac. Either way you will need to go to Netkas to get some instruction and some help (though some of the help can be rather surly, but it is worth it if can really beef up using your MacPro). Someone at Netkas has also figure out how to Firmware update recent MacPro’s to the latest firmware for the newest itineration, allowing beefier XEON’s into your old MacPro.

The instructions are pretty easy, but I have found that they don’t always work, so think about re-installing your NVIDIA drivers once you are done, as that did it for me.

You will also need to do some hacking to Premiere Pro and After Effects to get them working with the CUDA cores on a new video card.

StudioDaily on using Premiere Pro CS6 on SNL

StudioDaily has an awesome article on how they are using Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 on SNL. They were in Final Cut Pro and decided to move to Premiere Pro, especially because of the workflow with After Effects.

Still I am surprised it is all Mac, but they obviously had Macs for Final Cut. So far I am impressed with CS6, but there have been some stability issues for me, especially with CUDA, though hopefully that last NVIDIA update fixed that. I would think PC’s would be faster and more stable, though I do still love my Mac. They had just better make a really kick ass MacPro really damn soon!