FCP.co long term testing of FCP X and the new MacPro and my thoughts.

FCP.Co has an extensive article on long term testing of the new Mac Pro with Final Cut Pro X.

And the results do sound pretty impressive, even if there are some problems with expansion. Seems like you need to use Thunderbolt, as a NAS over GigE is just too slow, and you will quickly use up your thunderbolt ports and be daisy chaining, especially as new devices come out.

And this lack of expansion is what worries me. Do I stay with Mac which I love, or go with a huge expandable PC that can have all the internal storage and external expansion I could ever want? Not that Windows 8.1 is all that great. I have had my Bootcamp install go down multiple times in a short period, for no reason.

Got Windows up last night then ran Advanced System Optimizer and it tanked my system

In fact it was the same problem as before, so it seems that it was the Registration Optimizer that killed my BootCamp install to begin with, or at least once I managed to get it to reboot one time. It seems the Registry repair just doesn’t work!

I just tried a system Refresh, and the computer came back up, and ran the Bootcamp installer, and on it’s restart it went back into the system repair loop failure. So I am trying a Refresh again, and hope the computer makes it. I could do a full install again, but I want my documents, only because all of the downloads are already there, so I can quickly re-install them.
Now I have been considering moving to Windows because of the lack of expansion in the new MacPro, but honestly if Windows is this picky, I might not. 
I was going to make a Recovery DVD when I got my system back up, but it was a 55 Gig backup, and that is a shitload of DVD’s. I need to do this, but I need to use a hard drive to make the backup, so when I screw the system up, I can recover back to exactly my system, and not go through all this crap again!

Never got Windows to boot again, just had to wipe and re-install

So I was never able to get my Bootcamp Windows 8.1 install to boot again or get it to repair, so i finally just used. Bootcamp Assistant to wipe the partition, and re-partition.

Now I ended up having to do this 7 times, as 6 times windows on it’s first restart it came to an error message loop saying “The Computer Restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. To install Windows click OK to restart the computer, and reinstall Windows.” I finally found a fix for this ( https://avatargamingpc.com/support/951869-The-Computer-Restarted-unexpectedly-or-encountered-an-unexpected-error-during-installation-of-Windows ) but the Windows install had totally tanked by that time, and on the next re-partition and re-install, the install actually worked.

Have spent the day upgrading, and am now installing 8.1. Then time to re-install everything, and make a backup disc!

What a pain in the ass!

After one good restart Bootcamp Partition is toast

So after coming up yesterday and me running utilities, Windows needed to restart to fix Registry issues, and I never got it back up. It would not let me re-install over the old partition, and it would not let me do anything that would fix it, and the problems seemed to get worse until it is totally tanked, I am going to have to re-install. Activation will require a call to microsoft, but hopefully it will work, and they will let me re-install. Might be a problem because it is an OEM version, but those have to be re-installed.

What a total pain in my ass! I am mean seriously, I can’t believe how they make it to repair windows if there is a problem! The tied down OS is really such a pain. With Mac I can easily use another hard drive with another system install on it and run repairs at least.

After restart Windows was caught in a loop again

So after I ran the utilities Smart PC Care on Windows it needed to restart to finish fixing the registeries, and the computer got caught in a restart loop to Windows install dvd. I zapped the PRAM a couple of times to try and reset the startup disc, but that didn’t work, so i also reset the SMC, buy that didn’t work so I had to open the computer to eject the dvd from the tray and then the computer wouldn’t start at all.


Eventually i reseated all the hard drives and swapped out my PC GTX 670 for my GTX 270 and that managed to boot into OSX, and I set it as the startup disc. 

Windows is going in Automatic Repair again, and will likely fail, wonder if the MBR thing will work?

Having usb issues with my MacPro 4,1 2×2.26 Ghz Quad-Core

In the last few days I have been having USB freezes on my Mac, where all my USB ports seem to die, and only a restart can fix the issue. I had thought it was my beloved Microsoft Trackball Explorer that was causing the issue (as it has been known to cut in and out), and so I detached it and switched to my Kensington Trackball explorer that I bring to work, and it seemed OK today. Sure last night I had to use TechTool and restart into my emergency drive, and run diskwarrior, but I figure that is par for the course after a few hard resets. Anyway, the problem happened again today, and I decided to try something different, since I have a CalDigit USB 3 and SATA card, I tired plugging my Kengsington and Keyboard into that, and low and behold those ports still worked. Now I was in the process of rebuilding my iPhoto library, so I didn’t restart, though I should have as the computer totally hung up shortly thereafter, but I did have time to look at a System Report.

The system report was telling, as it showed all of my USB devices, but still showed my trackball and Microsoft Keyboard connected to the USB 2 port as well as the USB 3 port. Hoping it is not a hardware issue, I decided to reset the SMC, by disconnecting power for a minute, and then reset the PRAM 3 times as I restarted. So far so good, but it usually is after a restart.

Hopefully it is OK now, but we shall see.

Black Magic DaVinci 10 will support the MacPro and it’s Dual GPU’s, and likely so will Adobe Premiere Pro Creative Cloud

Nonlinear has a post on a post from Grant Petty the CEO of BlackMagic saying that the full version of DaVinci 10 will support the Dual AMD GPU’s of the new MacPros. And Premiere Pro already supports AMD Firepros, and hopefully will soon support the duals of the new MacPro.

I will still rather see Dual NVIDIA GPU support, as CUDA would likely be faster, but this could make the MacPro a viable alternative to the current MacPro without the expansion. Still want to see some speed tests though as I would like to see Premiere Pro rocking Dual Titans!

Phil Hodgetts on Final Cut Pro 10.1 on new Mac Pro and my thoughts.

Phil Hodgetts has an article on running Final Cut Pro 10.1 on the new Mac Pro and what he was able to play back, 5 Red R2D 4K streams at different scales positions and rotations without rendering.

Pretty amazing, though now I want to see what happens when Adobe re-writes premiere for Dual Graphics Card support and what it can do, and even better if they carry that over to PC, so we can see this on dual NVIDIA CUDA cards. I would love to see what Premiere Pro could do using 2 GTX TITANS instead of AMD FirePro cards which are slower than gaming cards (much like NVIDIAs QUADRO line). The nice thing about the MacPro is it seems Apple is charging the gaming price for it’s FirePro cards, so you are paying for the Radeon editions and getting the FirePro.

I know that Final Cut pro X has gotten much better, but I am still not sold on it. I gave my 2 weeks at the beginning and the mess that it made of the timeline really makes it seem not viable for commercial or direct response, nor for anything that needs an audio mixer, as it will take so much longer to mix something that isn’t set specifically for an audio mixer.

Maybe I am biased by Final Cut Pro X 10.1, but all the improvements have not changed the timeline.

MacRumors on new Mac Pro

Mac Rumors has a roundup of reviews on the new MacPro.

Overall it sounds like people’s complaints were right. The ports on the back are a pain. And the Dual GPU is only good if a program is written for it, and the only one for that now is Final Cut Pro X. It seems currently Premiere Pro uses mostly the CPU, so it is pretty slow as compared to say with CUDA and a GTX 680 or my GTX 670. Be interesting to see what will happen when Adobe makes it compatible with the dual graphics cards though.

Still on the fence. Really want a GTX Titan, which would mean a Windows Machine for my next computer, but there is much software that would not move over and that would not be good. And even with it’s improvements I don’t see myself moving over to FCP X anytime soon.