Transferring DP projects from Mac Pro to Windows PC

[phaser74]

Hello Everyone,

I’ve been using DP 7.21 on a mac pro 1,1 with a MOTU 828mk3 FireWire for many years now. I would like to start getting into video editing as well — but unfortunately the OS can’t be upgraded beyond 10.7 and the graphics card would certainly not even come close to meeting minimum GPU requirements for today’s video editing software.

That said, I’m thinking of purchasing a Windows PC (perhaps a late-model HP Z Workstation or a newer Dell XPS) with a high-end graphics card. I would also upgrade to DP 9 for the PC. So basically, I have some questions about how to make the PC my new audio/video workstation:

1) From my research, I could only use my MOTU 828mk3 FireWire with a PC that has a FireWire card or built-in FireWire port. Has anybody dealt with this scenario and/or able to verify my research?

2) My second question has to do with migrating my DP 7.21 projects from my mac pro to the PC. From my research, it seems the best route to do this would be to save all my DP projects onto a FAT32‑formatted drive (which I have) and then transfer them to my PC. Will my DP 7.21 projects (that were all created on the mac pro) open up properly on the new PC with DP 9?

Thank you,
David

[mikehalloran]

Zip your projects before moving. There can be permission and privilege issues if you don’t. Expanding on the new machine is your best way to minimize these.

If you used any 3rd party plugins, count on them not working DP 7 supports MAS and AU, not VST. Expect to be replacing those plugs as you open your projects up in 9. DP’s plugins may have changed—many functions that used to have their own plug are now part of the Trim plugin.

[HCMarkus]

Although I haven't used a MOTU interface with a PC, I recall MOTU recommending Firewire cards with a Texas Instruments chip. I used such a card in my Mac Pro for a number of years with my MOTU 828mkII and it worked flawlessly.

May the Force be with you making the move to PC!

Let me take the opportunity to mention that 4,1 and 5,1 Mac Pros are very inexpensive now (and they'll get cheaper still once Apple introduces the 7,1 in 2019) but still work very well for audio. With a good GPU, they are not bad for video either, although a good current PC will smoke it on some tasks. If you find migrating to a PC too daunting, look into a 5,1 Octo, then upgrade to 12 CPU core and add a Mojave-compatible GPU (after first doing the required preliminary step of migrating to High Sierra so the Firmware Flash is applied...use the stock GPU for that).

[toddbooster]

Welcome to the other side!

Firewire ports were never common on PCs, even in their heyday. Good news is that add on cards are still easy to find and simple to install. In fact, this might be your best option considering the interface you have, as I don't think Macs have firewire ports anymore.

Anyway, beyond that, I have the sneaking suspicion that projects you transfer won't be able to automatically find the VST plugin equivalents of any AU ones you've used, so you may have a bunch of work trying to re-add them and match the settings. You may also be missing some functionality from the AU versions as DP on Windows currently only supports VST 2, so some things like sidechaining to Waves plugins doesn't work.There is also no Eucon support on Windows, if that matters to you.

Aside from those little niggles, DP on Windows seems to run quite well. I've been happy with it this past year, although I have such high hopes for what they'll add and fix in DP 10.

[toddbooster]

Just wanted to add considering the reply from Mike above, if you're going to buy DP 9 anyway, you may as well install it on the Mac (your new license will work for both Mac and Windows), open copies of your projects there and straighten them out before saving them in DP 9 and then transferring them over. It'll probably make less work on the Windows side.

[phaser74]

Thank you everybody for your input.

Concerning HC Marcus’ suggestion about getting a cMP 5,1… I’d been considering this actually but was hesitant about investing money in an older machine. After researching more into the matter, I’m reconsidering purchasing a cMP 5,1. You can use newer NVIDIA graphics cards (e.g., GTX 9xx series) with High Sierra, which is good news.

Also, the new mac mini with an eGPU via Thunderbolt 3 looks pretty nice for video editing and music production. I did some research concerning the 828mk3 and apparently people have had good luck using their FireWire audio interfaces to Thunderbolt 3 using simple adapters...

Question: "How can I connect FireWire Interfaces to the new Thunderbolt 3/USB 3 ports? It seems the only way is by using 2 adapters: Thunderbolt 3 -> Thunderbolt 2 -> Firewire. Besides the cable mess, is it reliable? Does it work? Has anyone yet tried that in a live-situation"

Response #1: "I have succesfully used this setup with MOTU firewire interfaces (but have not tried RME yet). Waking up the computer after sleeping has sometimes created problems for me though."

Response #2: "Hi, I tried that messy cable chain T3->T2->Fw with different Audio interfaces in concerts and recording sessions: Motu 896, Apogee Rosetta, Edirol fa101, Rme ff400 (also several students of my courses used it). It works well, I had once in a concert some digital clicks with MOTU 896 but maybe was a software problem (I didn't investigate). Just pay attention to the insertion of the adapters, specially the first T3>T2 that tends to detach itself if moved."

Additionally, there is this device to consider for FireWire to Thunderbolt 3: https://www.startech.com/Cables/firewir ... NDTB1394B3. But that seems expensive.

Anyhow, I do have one more question…
Regarding my cMP 1,1… I have two 500 GB HDD’s installed (I think they’re both 7200 RPM models). One drive has the OS & DP 7 app, and the other one has all my DP projects. If I were to get a cMP 5,1, could I simply swap the HDD’s out of the cMP 1,1 and put them into the drive bays on the cMP 5,1? If so, this seems by far the best and easiest way to migrate my DP projects to the newer machine.

-David.

[HCMarkus]

10.6.8 Snow Leopard supports any 4,1/5,1 Mac Pro, so the drive swap should work!

Although my research suggests the Nvidia cards are better for video editing (with most software), there are no drivers as yet for Mojave and no certainty that they will ever be released. If you run Final Cut Pro X, the AMD cards reportedly work very well, and many are supported in Mojave, which will probably be the last OS that will work in a cheesegrater.