Mac Pro 2016 For Video Editing

The best video-editing Mac for raw speed is the iMac Pro. Apple's high-class apology to its long-neglected pro customers comes with 8 cores as standard and can be specced up to a maximum of 18 if. The Five Best Video Editing Programs (Windows and Mac). With the rise of video over the past decade, accelerated by growing capabilities of Similar to Sony Vegas Pro and Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro is an industry-standard for video editing and designed for experienced video editing.

TIME FOR A CHANGE Written by Mike Pecci Filmmakers. I’d like to tell you about a recent choice I made that would effect how I do my projects as an artist and as a filmmaker. I have been long frustrated by constant upgrades slowing down my edit suites and dealing with Apple’s constant push for creative professionals to buy over-priced Mac Pro systems. I was on a mission to find something new, faster and less expensive. Join me as I tell the story of how I broke away from Apple’s marketing and built our new PC based 4k video editing system.

For the past 16 years now I’ve been producing and directing visual content (music videos, commercials, photography and films). Together with my business partner Ian McFarland, we run a small post-production facility at McFarland & Pecci. Our company prides itself on developing cutting-edge work, while constantly pushing the limits of modern technology. Our edit house needs to stay on top of the latest techniques and equipment while creating edits for broadcast, web, and theatrical distribution. However, I strongly believe that cameras, laptops, lights, and edit systems are just tools. Tools can help us create something beautiful, but they should never dictate how it should be done. Like the majority of post facilities in the film business, we’ve been primarily running Apple systems.

Mac Pro’s have long been the standard computer for all of the film, photography and television industries. The people I respect use them. The people who create my favorite content, use them. The people who make money, use them.

The general consensus in the creative world is that you aren’t a professional if you don’t use Apple products. It suggests that you aren’t a real filmmaker unless you are using a Mac Pro. This sentiment has become damaging, forcing artists to comply and shell out fistfuls of cash for the privilege to use Mac-based software in an effort to not just stay up-to-date with technology, but to fit in with the other artists. Apple ships out their glossy products with a promise to support the creative professional with reliable systems that never crash and structure for a simple workflow that always works.

For the most part they do. They make very well put together products. They better be for the price.

For those who watch the occasional Brood War pro game out of South Korea, Remastered will be a real boon. I'm hoping this might generate some new interest in Starcraft 2.

At McFarland & Pecci, we had multiple Mac Pro towers running Final Cut Pro in our main edit suites. They made the clients happy and they made us happy. Then came new of the release of Final Cut X and how Apple was now determined to change things. With the tablet style interface, the loss of professional tool and most importantly the inability to open our old FCP7 project files -- this change had me worried. Apple announced it during one of the company’s giant keynote addresses and the rabid consumers scrambled to be the first to own it. I typically like to wait it out for a few versions to see how it actually works because I can’t afford any bugs messing up our current projects. The Internet started buzzing with the problems caused by FCPX.

It didn’t seem to integrate into a professional post workflow. It was frustrating to use, and most importantly, I wouldn’t open out FCP& project files. We had years of work saved in those project files. Why wouldn’t they make the new version compatible?

This seemed like way too much trouble for me, so I decided to not upgrade and keep editing with FCP7. Then new cameras started introducing new formats. All the clients were shooting with DSLR’s and recorded using the H264 codec. That codec runs terrible in Final Cut 7. More and more clients were shooting with Red cameras, and Red’s still have their own codec (R3d). Those files couldn’t be imported natively into our editing project.

To work with that footage it required a long convoluted workflow using proxies, off-line editing, followed by online editing. Bottom line is that with all these different formats, most of our time was spent transcoding. Converting footage to an older codec before we could even start cutting. This caused a stir with clients. They didn’t want to pay for that prep time.