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2017
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[Shane Ross] “So now you are saying that that small car should be fine for me…it’ll just take a little longer? hmmmmmm….”
What I’m questioning is what’s commonly referred to as the “delta” between what’s achievable on one class machine compared to another.
For me, the delta of editing with X verses how I used to edit has been EXTREMELY large.
In fact the delta between my MacPro Cheesegrater and my current MacBook Pro is actually upside down. The laptop runs rings around my old desktop because – equipment advancements in virtually every area from GPUs to SSDs and beyond.
Now we’re in a realm of looking at whether the delta between a modern laptop and a modern desktop is wide or narrow.
No question it exists. But what’s the actual functional difference?
That full rez render or composite after all the editing is done? Is it 5 times as fast on a modern desktop rig compared to modern laptop? Twice as fast? Or just 10% faster?
Which of those deltas is in play tells you whether you NEED to remain in the desktop world or if the laptop (since it already at largely at parity via modern workflows on the pure editorial side) might be close enough on the grunt work to make It a reasonable choice to do everything for an editor.
For decades, ONLY a desktop rig handled the needs of working content creators. My question is “how true or false” is that today.
What’s the delta – basically.
Just an interesting question to contemplate.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “In fact the delta between my MacPro Cheesegrater and my current MacBook Pro is actually upside down. The laptop runs rings around my old desktop because – equipment advancements in virtually every area from GPUs to SSDs and beyond.”
A stock cheesegrater is pretty dated, but it is also upgradeable. Slap in a new GPU, SSD and USB 3.0 card in it and you’ve got a much improved machine for around $600-$700 (higher if you want a beefier GPU or a PCIe SSD of course).
[Bill Davis] “Just an interesting question to contemplate.”
It is, and I think to varying degrees editors have been contemplating it for the past twenty years or so. From NLEs vs linear suites to the DV/Desktop NLE Revolution to today where, given the right circumstances, one can shoot, edit and post one’s videos using just a smartphone or tablet.
For example, in Dec. of 2007 I flew to Vegas and spent a weekend cutting 3min-5min web videos non-stop in a hotel room at the Mandalay Bay. I used a then current MBP and FW drives (I also might have had a small HDV deck ’cause I don’t think the company was shooting on cards then). It all fit in a backpack and worked fine (worst part was the hotel’s insanely slow upload speeds). Would I have preferred a desktop (and a comfortable chair)? Of course, but flying out with a desktop was unrealistic, and renting from a local facility was out of the budget, so doing it with a laptop was the next best thing, and it was good enough to get that particular job done.
That brings up another point; the difference between ‘ideal’, ‘good enough’, and ‘I guess you could, but why would you voluntarily’. All three can get the job done, but the experience is certainly different depending on which route you choose take (or are forced to take because sometimes life throws curveballs).
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Andrew – exactly this.
What I’m constantly interested in is how much actual difference is innolay when you choose one editing setup over another. It’s been 5 years now since I started migrating away from desktop editing to laptop editing. If I’m ever going to invest in a new desktop system, I need to know how much more performance I can expect.
Primarily because owning and operating two systems that do the same things doubles the depreciation – and in an era of rapid technological change – that cost accelerates – I think it’s smart to understand how big the ACTUAL gap is between the work I can do on my laptop compared to a desktop rig.
IME, that gap has been closing fast tho, of course, it still exists.
I just want to know how big it truly is before I need to write the next big check.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
I still use my laptop to edit. And yes, I too travelled to somewhere to online a show (Dallas…JFK show). I know that the laptop is well and good for MANY MANY USES. I’m mainly referring to the lack of an update for the MacPro…and the sub-par machine known as the iMac. Yes, it’s fine for Premiere and Resolve and Avid…but it’s not as high end as PCs can get. And it wasn’t as high end, at one point, as the MacPro. The MacPro is there for the heavy lifting…Their top end machine. But apparently Apple doesn’t seem to want a HEAVY LIFTING machine. They’ll settle for a laptop that’s OK for offline and some online (HD, not 4K)…which is fine. But then the iMac is their best offering for high end? It’s mediocre…mid range.
THAT’S what I’m getting at. They seem to go “these computers are fine for OUR media software…and that’s all we really care about.”
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Shane Ross] “THAT’S what I’m getting at. They seem to go “these computers are fine for OUR media software…and that’s all we really care about.””
It’s a fair criticism, Shane.
The thing is, Tim Cook expressly said very recently that they still “Love” the Mac and that they have big plans for it. At this point, we’ll just have to have faith.
I get how people think they put too much emphasis on iDevices. But it’s simple reality that the income stream that has turned them into the largest company on the planet is built on stuff that EVERYBODY wants to use – not just stuff that one class of high end professionals use.
The hope is that they continue to find ways to leverage the expertise they have at both ends of the spectrum to make great products for all the constituencies. Basically, Retina screens that don’t jack the price of any of the laptops up needlessly, because that R&D is spread over the entire line.
That monster ACER Preditor is ALSO designed to target a constituency. Perhaps Gamers without budgets? So you get a head tracker before you get a trackpad under your home row thumbs where you don’t have to move your whole arm to actuate it? It’s always trade offs.
But sure, there won’t be a TOTAL focus on just what any of us would ideally like to have which is a single device capable of working at the highest end possible – but sill cheap enough so that unlike when I started out – ONLY those in a network level facility could afford to use the tool. (I’m looking at YOU 4 channel ADO in the 1980s!)
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “If I’m ever going to invest in a new desktop system, I need to know how much more performance I can expect.”
There’s certainly a point of diminishing returns though I think a related, and possibly more relevant question, is how much performance does one need in order to execute one’s own workflow in a satisfactory manner? For example, take the online/offline you use and compare it to Vashi Nedomansky’s workflow for the movie “6 Below” where he edited 6K R3D files natively. You use a MBP that’s a year or two old (IIRC) and Vash used a Dell with a 20-core CPU, 12gig GPU and 128gig of RAM.
Is his machine w-a-y faster than your MBP? Yes. Would using his machine (for the sake of argument assume it could run FCPX) speed up your workflow? Probably some, but mostly it would be expensive overkill (like buying a 50lb bag of sugar from Costco when all you need is cup). An editor friend of mine only uses Mac Minis in his home setup and hiss reasoning is since he’s only offline editing (or editing smaller projects) from home the extra power in a faster machine would just be wasted.
Being Mac-centric does skews things though because all of their computers (aside from the aging nMP) use laptop parts so the potential performance difference between a Mac laptop and a Mac desktop isn’t going to be as extreme as the potential difference between a PC laptop and a PC desktop.
[Bill Davis] “The thing is, Tim Cook expressly said very recently that they still “Love” the Mac and that they have big plans for it.”
Unfortunately he only name checked the iMac, but not the Mac Pro. Hopefully that was just an innocent omission and not a foreshadowing of things to come (or in this case, not come).
[Bill Davis] “So you get a head tracker before you get a trackpad under your home row thumbs where you don’t have to move your whole arm to actuate it? It’s always trade offs. “
Says the guy with big enough hands. ???? I certainly can’t accurately or comfortably reach the trackpad on my MBP while keeping my fingers on the home keys.
For a gaming setup though you are going to be using a mouse so the trackpad wouldn’t be a primary input device. The fact that trackpad can be flipped over (since it’s held in by magnets) to reveal a number pad on the other side is pretty cool, and the number pad is probably more useful on a such a machine.
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New Mac Pro
Built in batch syncing
Built in batch export
Built in clip exporting
Slate recognition software for marking on a clip.
To be able to drag a secondary storyline clip without the beachball (happens on multiple well-qualified machines)
Better media management for archiving. -
So the 10.3.2 update seems to fix the issue of dragging clips on the second storyline being so slow.
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