So i find myself increasingly having chunks of video to offload, trim and the burn to DVD's.

Video is recorded using a consumer level HDD camera, which connects to PC using Firewire.

Work gear is windows-based and a tad temperamental with the camera and/or the dvds - it's a bit long in the tooth too (p4 3.0ghz, 2gig, crammed in a shuttle xpc, pinnacle studio software)

So I've been using my personal Macbook Pro, which i get on with, aside from the time it takes to convert the video and then encode it to dvd format.

I've found myself eyeing up a Mac Pro tower (expensive, but possibly justifiable..)......but anyone got any experience of them in terms of using them for video work?

Or even an easy-to-use, cheaper pc-based solution?

Yes we used a Mac Pro Tower for video work and even that struggles if you're trying to do real time high res.

What resolution/frame rate are you looking at for the incoming video?

What software are you wanting to use?

As for the MacBook, I have to say IMHO not suited for the heavy processing of video encoding.

Not sure....

Camera is a JVC GZ-330, which apparently has recording settings of "Fine" at 4.2Mbps and "Ultra Fine" at 8.4Mbps - those are the two I usually run with anyway. It's standard def, not HD.

In terms of software, given the time i've spent using my MBP, i'd like to stick with iMovie etc, though I'm not averse to moving to another product if it will do the job - looking at reviews of final cut express......but again it's Mac-focused.

Really, I just want to get away from using my own laptop...

Standard Def, then something is wrong if you can't encode in real time.

What format is the camera putting out?

At those data rates I very much doubt it's going to be RAW, so you might find the issue is decoding, editing and then recoding in a single go.

Also your firewire will place a load on the PC, have you tried pulling it to the local hard disc before doing the edit/transcode?

I was using Final Cut Pro and that is excellent. If you don't need all the features of Pro I'd say a Mac Pro with Final Cut express and two or more hard discs could be a good option assuming work are paying.

Expensive, but it will do the job.

transfer/import video into iMovie via Firewire.

trim/edit, that's fine

The export to Quicktime..........cue the first long haul.

Then import into iDVD, which the re-encodes the video......the second long haul...

So it does appear to be the decoding/editing/recoding is the bottleneck.

While expensive, would jumping to the Nehalem Quad core Mac Pro be a vast improvement over the C2D in the MBP?

transfer/import video into iMovie via Firewire.

trim/edit, that's fine

The export to Quicktime..........cue the first long haul.

Then import into iDVD, which the re-encodes the video......the second long haul...

So it does appear to be the decoding/editing/recoding is the bottleneck.

While expensive, would jumping to the Nehalem Quad core Mac Pro be a vast improvement over the C2D in the MBP?

Well we used both for some HD video work and the 8 Core 6 GB 2 * HDD version of the Mac Pro ate the MacBook Pro for breakfast. Again that was using FCP though.

Why are you going quicktime to DVD and not direct to MPEG2/DVD? I can only assume that iDVD requires a quicktime in or you have some other reason for it?

Are you reading and writing from the same disk as this would cause slowdown as well. Last week I was encoding RED footage at full 4k res on a eight core mac tower, the advantage is you can have multiple transcodes assigning one to each core of the processor. Normally though I work with SD video exporting QT refs from my Avid suite and use Canopus Procoder 2.0 on a dual xeon workstation - even on this though which is just about as good as it gets, real time encoding is not really possible!

Out of interest how much RAM you utilising? If you are constantly encoding I know some people set up 'render farms' and just queue stuff to transcode although I dont have much experience with this setup it can really help as it will free up your main workstation to continue working on other stuff, FCP / Avid / After Effects or Adobe apps?

John

A render farm and large SAN is a good option, however I was assuming there was a small budget of £4-5k rather than a huge budget for a full encode system.

oh lordy.....a budget of £4-5K would be lovely.....think more like £2K. Which is why the Mac Pro seemed attractive, given it's an environment I'm happiest with.

In terms of my choice of encoding/recoding.....

iMovie has to throw the video out in some format, doesn't it? I didn't realise I could just go from step A straight to step B, without fiddling about with the middle ground export/recoding.

Still takes a while though.

Cheezemonkhai - I'd love the eight core version, but it's overkill on budget, even with my not-insignificant discount.

Render farms etc - well, I've got a dedicated encodng station sat on my desk, but it's proprietary software and designed to shunt video straight to a streaming server off-site once it's encoded. Not exactly fast either......it's been digesting 1.45GB of AVI files from a DVD since 9am this morning, barely half way through (that's the P4 system)

So...are we saying the entry level Mac Pro will be a vast improvement, if equipped with some more RAM and a second drive for the media/work?

Bung in a second drive and a lot of RAM and soften your boss up for the future option of a second processor and I think it would be a good starting point.

I'd see if you can get Final Cut Pro too as it's cheap enough and includes compressor which can do direct to MPEG2

Another thing you'll want to consider is just try getting work to buy an MPEG2 licence for quicktime then you should be able to use iMovie to go straight to MPEG2. At that point making the DVD is easy as the encode is already done.

Another option might be to see if FFMPEG can do what you want on windows and if it can throw a grunty PC at it.

Excuse my ignorance Gwilo, but if it's a HDD based camcorder, can you not grab the files off the hard drive via USB interface instead of streaming it over the firewire port?

If you can grab the files and the camcorder is not HD, chances are the file is already in MPEG2 format so you wouldn't need a beasty machine to transcode it.

I haven't looked hard, but can't seem to find the manual so can't check specs myself

edit: found this on pixmania: http://www.pixmania.com/si/uk/755502/art/jvc/gz-mg330-camcorder-silver.html

Says it's MPEG2-PS so already the right format But then again, it says no firewire interface, but as you've said you've been using it, maybe the specs are completely wrong?

My mistake Xav....It's a GZ-135.

No idea if that makes any difference, haven't tried connecting via USB, only tried the FW. I assumed the USB would only be for still images.....I'll give it a go, see what happens.

Certainly would take a chunk out of time if so - once imported it shows it as DV format.....

Might need to do more fiddling.

Budget has just been pulled too........

So this whole thing now becomes a case of:

Can I justify spending £2K of my own hard earned on it? Apart from the video work I do here and personally (which is just your home user sort of fiddling about) wouldn't get much more exercise....unless bootcamp it into windows for a spot of gaming.....that could be fun.....

Thoughts?

sorry to bump this again....

But any thoughts about using a Core i7 rather than a Xeon-based system? Windoze would be cheaper to build myself...

something like the Vista 64 workstation option spec here

I'd say spend your money on getting final cut pro (£500 ish out of the studio pack) and don't even think about using windows to do it if it's for anything important or real world.

No point spending your own money on work jobs.

No point spending your own money on work jobs.

Absolutely.

The management are going to get a shock - half the capability in this office disappeared last week - we just lost a technician and didn't realise how much of his own gear he was using. My kit is heading back home to be put in storage too.

Crappy DVD-cam footage and windows video files it is then....