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2013 Franken Mac Pro Tube – FCPX editor upgrades 2013 Mac Pro
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[Tom Sefton] “The cost of each raid is £5-£7k but you can get £100-£130 per day for hires. Nobody wants to hire a full machine for DIT, they want the raid only, in a flight case that can be shipped to set and then back to edit.”
I used to have a rackmount PC that was in a flight case. What if we eliminate the DIT and special situations and talk about an average editing suite?
[Tom Sefton] “Same goes for GPU – the red rocket x isn’t relevant anymore but a GPU inside an external enclosure with thunderbolt 2 or 3 is available from most hire companies for DIT and post work. It’s portable because it’s light and can go inside a rucksack.”
I agree the Red Rocket is obsolete. No one with a PC workstation would do that. A GTX 1080 will exceed the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 2. Why bother using an external GTX 1080 if you will not get the full benefits? Are Apple user not aware of the bottle neck of Thunderbolt 2?
[Tom Sefton] “What devices are capturing r3d? Either you use the usb3 or thunderbolt 3 device that red sells or you can put a single bay inside your gtech raid and capture to your storage that way.”
I had read about people capturing from a Red One, Blackmagic and AJA with certain external hard drive systems. There I can see the need because of the situations but we are not really talking about a NLE.
[Tom Sefton] “If there wasn’t a use for external 80TB raids nobody would be building and selling them. They are, they work great and they give great performance with replaceable drives and can be networked if required. I understand internal raids, but someone needs to build that for me or I buy it with a dell or HP machine and the cost goes up.”
I am not saying there isn’t a need. I am saying it is not the most cost effective. If you have an iMac or Mac Pro you obviously cannot have an internal RAID system. Also the external RAIDS are big and need an AC outlet just like a desktop PC. By the time you get the laptop and the external gear you might as well use a mATX computer. You will get better performance and more functionality.
[Tom Sefton] “How is the performance kick ass? Quantify it. Put some 8K or 6K raw footage on a timeline and play it back. What resolution are you playing back in premiere – 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 or do you get full?”
I can play 4K Pro Res files at 24 FPS at full resolution using a mediocre GTX 1060 and 3.4 GHZ Haswell CPU. Other people have played back 4K Red One R3D with a GTX 980 and 4.0 GHZ Skylake at full resolution. My system plays 4K Red One R3D at full resolution for about 20 seconds before the drop frame indicator goes off. Not bad. It will almost do it. I bet it would play at full resolution if I had a 4 GHZ i7 Skylake. Would a dual 8 core Xeon system with a Titan GPU play back 8K Red One R3D at full resolution? It might but I doubt it. 8K has a lot of pixels. AMD will have 16 core CPU very soon.
[Tom Sefton] “From 8K raw how long does it take to spit out a prores or dnxhd file of the same length – say one minute. How many nodes do you get in resolve for colour correction? I’ve written extensively about the performance with the new Mac Pro and 4K raw, and I’m finding That 6K is possible, but 8K sluggish on the new Mac Pro. Yes everyone will scream about proxIRS but I just want to benchmark from the highest resolution and quality.”
I do not have Resolve on my PC or an 8K file. I wish I did. I would test it out for you if I did.
[Tom Sefton] “I’m not PC bashing. I want to understand what performance you get with PC over the new Mac Pro.”
As I stated an internal RAID will be a lot cheaper. Eight 4TB drives would only cost about $650.00. Some of the $250.00 MOBOs have 12 SATA ports and a RAID controller. You will not get the full performance of a GTX 1080 using an external Thunderbolt 2 enclosure. The Pascal will probably even get bottle necked by Thunderbolt 3.
[Tom Sefton] “Yes the new Mac Pro is more expensive, but I get tech support with Apple care and immediate repairs or replacement.”
HP could offer extended services.
[Tom Sefton] “From what I’ve seen, a HP machine with top spec isn’t cheaper than a new Mac Pro but I don’t know how quick it is.”
You can get Dual 8, 10 and 12 Core Xeons. You will also get PCIE slots.
[Tom Sefton] “It all adds up to a new Mac Pro being very much wanted and needed – just perhaps with a few more connection ports and the ability to add a second ssd and upgradeable gpu…”
The PCIE slots and expansion bays cannot be overlooked.
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The benchmark for playback and editing with current camera files in raw 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8k footage is what I am interested in most, but I can’t ignore that someone is wiling to hire an external RAID from me, when a home built PC is worthless aside from the work I can do with it.
The Red One is now an obsolete camera. The new colour spaces with the Helium and Weapon cameras take up far more computing power than 4K red one footage. A 2013 mac pro system with maxed GPU and RAM can playback 8K raw and edit, but after a while performance gets sluggish. 6K is fine at 25p. Weigh up the cost of a system that can do this, with tech support and external thunderbolt 2/3 access against a mac system. Then it becomes clear just how much we need a new mac pro system, with thunderbolt 2, 3 PCIE, USB 3 and upgradeable GPUs.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
[Tom Sefton] “A 2013 mac pro system with maxed GPU and RAM can playback 8K raw and edit, but after a while performance gets sluggish”
Hi Tom,
I haven’t had any of the newest Red footage yet. Which system is this? 8K in FCP X? Better performance? I do know the file sizes remain the same yet the resolution keeps increasing, hence the need for more computing power I’m guessing.
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[Tom Sefton] “The benchmark for playback and editing with current camera files in raw 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8k footage is what I am interested in most,”
I can only let you know what my system can do with 4K Pro Res and 4K Native Red One R3D clips because I downloaded samples. I do not have any 8K video files.
[Tom Sefton] “I can’t ignore that someone is wiling to hire an external RAID from me, when a home built PC is worthless aside from the work I can do with it.”
It depends on what it is being used for. As I stated all new Apple computers must use external RAID systems. Or course you will get clients who need it.
[Tom Sefton] “The Red One is now an obsolete camera. The new colour spaces with the Helium and Weapon cameras take up far more computing power than 4K red one footage.”
I agree.
[Tom Sefton] “A 2013 mac pro system with maxed GPU and RAM can playback 8K raw and edit, but after a while performance gets sluggish. 6K is fine at 25p.”
A seven thousand dollar HP might get better performance but I don’t have a $7,000.00 HP to test.
[Tom Sefton] “Weigh up the cost of a system that can do this, with tech support and external thunderbolt 2/3 access against a mac system. Then it becomes clear just how much we need a new mac pro system, with thunderbolt 2, 3 PCIE, USB 3 and upgradeable GPUs.”
I agree the Mac Pro needs to have Thunderbolt 3. As far as up-gradable GPUS in the Mac Pro the easiest thing for Apple to do for their customers is offer a generic mATX system but they will not do it. If a generic mATX system was offered from Apple I bet it would out sell the current trash can Mac Pro by 10 to 1 if not 100 to 1. It may even tap into the iMac market. There is not a huge markup in generic ATX computers. Having said that you have to buy the trash Mac Pro be cause there are no other options.
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If you are willing to try, I’ll dropbox you some 8K r3d files for you to test performance with via an internal RAID and an ATX system.
I can see that an internal RAID is cheaper, I’m just not convinced that cheaper is always better when it comes to hardware, especially when you have a revenue stream available with the external peripherals that are now widely available.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
[Tom Sefton] “If you are willing to try, I’ll dropbox you some 8K r3d files for you to test performance with via an internal RAID and an ATX system.”
We can try it if you have real short 10-15 second long clips. I do not have super fast internet. The video below might help put things into perspective. I forgot about this clip.
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Yes I can upload some shorter clips for you.
I’ve done plenty of my own testing with Red One media – I’ve also noticed vast performance differences from CC to FCPX with raw media on more recent cameras from Red.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
Do you actually have an 8K monitor? Just curious. I can play 4K Pro Res at full resolution but it works the CPU and GPU kind of hard. I don’t have a 4K monitor so I just leave it at 1/2 resolution. That way I can apply cc and other effects. I myself just work with HD for clients creating web content.
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There aren’t any 8K monitors available for playback at present, just a couple of models announced. Much of our work goes to large projection screens for install in visitor centres/museums where high resolution displays are achieved via edge blended projection or video walls. We’ve got quite a few 4K displays for playback tests in our studio though. A recent project was filmed in 6K WS and delivered to a 4200 x 1200 (ish) resolution in a 3 blend projector theatre.
We’ve worked extensively in 4K and 6K where the CPU and GPU of the new Mac Pro is worked extremely hard, but performs incredibly well – offering realtime encoding from 4K Dragon to ProRes footage, and butter smooth playback. The new 8K Helium camera is stunning but obviously taxes your desktop machine even more for editing and post – hence my interest in what a PC can do with similar budget to a maxed out new Mac Pro with an external RAID.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
Hi Darren,
This is on new mac pro systems, either a 6 or 8 core, both maxed ram and GPU. Footage on a Gtech 48TB Studio XL at RAID5 over thunderbolt2. FCPX in better performance. It plays, but is sluggish with 8K. 6K is fine.
Happy to put some 8K footage from the new Helium sensor in a dropbox for anyone to do some benchmarks with – esp hackintosh or PC systems.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk
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