4K Editing?

[John Rofrano]

You’re welcome Ray.

I was one of the early adopters of HD with the Sony Z1U when everyone else was shooting DV and I have no plans of ever going through the pain of letting my camera technology get ahead of my computer technology again. I wouldn’t even consider a 4K camera until I can afford new Mac Pro. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ray Sherman]

Makes sense to me as well. For know, I believe I’ll stick with what I have which is a Canon EOS 7D. This camera is a handful in itself between use and workflow. Thanks again for all your input. Ray

[Ray Sherman]

Well it’s been 9 months since I posted this thread…. I just purchased the 4K ready Sony PXW-X70 which currently shoots XAVC L (long)and AVCHD. I still need to either build a new workstation or have one made to replace my current one. I’m open to either a PC or Mac that will give me great 4K video real tiime editing/rendering without struggling. I definately agree with John that 12 physical cores and 24GB of memory would be something I would need. I’m using this mainly for personal use, but I have been known to do a job every now and then. I’d like to add that I only need it for “offline editing.” Also, I believe it’s smart to have a three hard drives. One for software/hardware C/drive, with the other two configured RAID 0 for editing, final rendering output. My final output will be DVD and Blu-ray. With that being said, If anyone has anything they would like to suggest/comment on, please do so? As always, your help is sincerely appreciated. Ray

[John Rofrano]

[Ray Sherman] “I’m open to either a PC or Mac that will give me great 4K video real tiime editing/rendering without struggling. …If anyone has anything they would like to suggest/comment on, please do so?”

I just bought a 2010 Mac Pro 2.93Ghz 12-Core, 24 GB Memory, AMD Radeon HD 5870, 1TB Boot drive, Apple RAID Card w/ 6TB RAID 5 (3x 2TB WD Black), on eBay for $2275 USD.

I swapped out the 1TB boot drive for a 2TB drive and created an 8TB RAID 5 with 4 drives. Then I added a 480 GB PCI Express SSD OWC Mercury Accelsior_E2 as the boot drive and Pioneer Blu-ray BD-RW BDR-2209 burner. I added a Windows 7 Pro Bootcamp partition for running Vegas Pro natively. I also use Final Cut Pro X on OS X.

I assume this would be adequate for 4K but I don’t have a 4K camera to test it. The idea is that 12-Core 2010 Mac Pro’s can be had for $2200 – $2400 on eBay so it might make more sense to buy an old Mac Pro rather than a new one (unless you have $6000 burning a hole in your pocket) Of course you could also buy a PC but then you’re stuck with only using Windows tools.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ray Sherman]

Thanks for the reply John….. Sounds like your workstation will do the job. That’s great alternatives in which I will definately search out. When comparing Mac’s with PC’s there’s always a price to pay, but I feel the way you do when it comes down to either one. As always, your thoughts and help is very much appreciated. Thanks, Ray

[John Rofrano]

[Ray Sherman] “When comparing Mac’s with PC’s there’s always a price to pay, but I feel the way you do when it comes down to either one.”

What price is that?

The high end Mac’s are cheaper than high-end PC’s. In this Extreme Tech article you can read about how the new Mac Pro is $2000 cheaper than a comparable PC.

Apple’s new ‘overpriced’ $10,000 Mac Pro is $2,000 cheaper than the equivalent Windows PC

Don’t forget the new Mac Pro comes with dual workstation class GPU’s which are extremely expensive if you were to buy the equivalent card for your PC.

If you look at the new iMac Retina 5K the entire computer cost about the same as you would pay for a 4K monitor alone without a PC. Mac’s are extremely competitively priced these days. I had the opportunity to play with the new 5K iMac at the local Apple Store and the display is incredible. They had 4K video on an Final Cut Pro X timeline and I was skimming it smooth as butter. Very impressive and beautiful. If I were working in 4K I would buy the iMac Retina 5K in a heartbeat. No doubt about it.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ray Sherman]

I must say, after reading some about the following iMac, it is impressive. Hands down when comparing to a PC. My biggest concern would be the 4 core processor. If it’s not a concern, please explain? The only other hardware that I would need is a couple blu-Ray read/write burners. Any thoughts?

Configuration (includes everything below): $5,566.99

iMac with Retina 5K display
https://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac-retina

Hardware:
4.0GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 4x8GB
1TB Fusion Drive
AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB GDDR5
Apple Magic Mouse
Apple Wireless Keyboard (English) & User’s Guide

Storage:
PROMISE Pegasus2 R4 8TB (4 by 2TB) Thunderbolt 2 RAID System
https://store.apple.com/us/product/HE151VC/A/promise-pegasus2-r4-8tb-4-by-2tb-thunderbolt-2-raid-system

Software:
Final Cut Pro X
Pages, Numbers, Keynote
iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand
OS X

[John Rofrano]

[Ray Sherman] “I must say, after reading some about the following iMac, it is impressive.”

You have no idea until you see it. If you have an Apple Store nearby, you should go in and actually work with it. But leave your credit card home because you’re going to want to buy it on the spot. lol

[Ray Sherman] “My biggest concern would be the 4 core processor. If it’s not a concern, please explain?”

What you want for editing is fast cores. What you want for render is lots of cores. So this Mac will give you a better editing experience than one with more cores that are not as fast. For example, this 4-Core is 4.0Ghz while the Mac Pro 8-Core is 3.0 Ghz. So you are optimizing your editing experience at the cost of rendering. I think this is what most people would prefer. I spent some time with it at the Apple Store with 4K video and the editing experience was very smooth and the display was unbelievable. The preview window wasn’t a preview at all… it was full 4K preview with enough pixels left over for the FCP X interface to still be very usable. The 5K monitor is just unbelievable.

[Ray Sherman] “The only other hardware that I would need is a couple blu-Ray read/write burners.”

Those are easy to find because the Mac Pro has all of it’s peripherals external as well so lots of manufacturers and making these.

[Ray Sherman] “Software: Final Cut Pro X”

I would also get Apple Motion 5 ($49) and Apple Compressor 4 ($49). FCP X has tight integration with Motion. You can actually make your own FX, generated media, titles, etc. in Motion and save them as templates that you can use in FCP X. Motion is like After Effects so imagine getting AE for $49! Compressor allows you to create new render templates for FCP X and also performs batch rendering.

If you want to see how FCP X and Motion work together, watch my Boris TV Episode 229: Custom Presets in FCP X Using Motion 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuJXa8AGWaU
I’ve had people tell me that BCC has too many parameters and they get lost; using the approach Apple does with Motion and FCP X allows you to limit the interface to just the parameters that you need for a particular effect.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

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[Ray Sherman]

Thanks John…… Great video! Motion 5 surely looks like a great tool for effects. Coming from a PC using Vegas Pro, Apple would definitely be somewhat of a learning curve. With that being said, this is part of what I enjoy about video editing. Please correct me if I’m wrong; In regards to the configured iMac, you feel that actual 4K real time editing with effects, transitions, titles and music would run smoothly on the timeline without pre-rendering? At times, I’ll make events/movies anywhere from 20 to 55 minutes long. In Vegas, I have to loop/render out small parts of an event (build dynamic RAM preview) in order to see less than a minute of my edited event. On top of that, the preview isn’t that great. Actual rendering time for output to DVD is not a concern for me, I could actually render overnight. I just want to be able to do all my editing and previewing on the timeline without any lagging and/or hiccups. This is more than half of my battle……. A smooth editing workflow would be like a breath of fresh air and then some. I’ve listed a few things below that may be some concerns of the iMac for 4K editing. Other than that, this workstation seems to be awesome!! Thanks again for your help! I can’t tell you enough how much I appreciate it. As for my credit card….. My wife is hiding it now 🙂 Ray
Concerns;
1) Cooling – Due to 4K editing for several hours at a time. Several reviews are stating 100 to 105 degree gpu readings.
2) All-in-One – Not sure of the life expectancy of the components. For example; Wouldn’t want a great running workstation with a dead monitor.

[John Rofrano]

[Ray Sherman] “you feel that actual 4K real time editing with effects, transitions, titles and music would run smoothly on the timeline without pre-rendering?”

Are we talking about Vegas Pro or Final Cut Pro X? This is where FCP X shines. It dynamically pre-renders in the background without you having to do anything. So you can make a transition, and with 5 seconds it will start pre rendering that in the background so that when you play it, it will be a smooth playback. Same for applying effects or compositing. You know how if you loop something in Vegas Pro it gets faster and faster because it renders to memory but then when you move out of the loop and go back it’s slow again? Well, FCP X never forgets that rendered section so it never gets slow again and it always stays that fast until you change it (but then it pre-renders again after the change). It’s a really smooth editing experience. It’s too bad Vegas Pro doesn’t do this. Their pre-rendering is manual and it breaks as soon as you move anything.

[Ray Sherman] “In Vegas, I have to loop/render out small parts of an event (build dynamic RAM preview) in order to see less than a minute of my edited event.”

You won’t gave to do this anymore with FCP X. It will dynamically pre-render in the background. If you plan to use Vegas Pro then you will still have the same problems. Vegas Pro does not make use of lots of cores when previewing the timeline so like I said, you are better off with a 4.0Ghz 4-Core for editing than a 3.0Ghz 8-Core. The AMD Radeon R9 M295x GPU should work great with Vegas Pro as well. I’m only guessing (because I don’t own one).

Note: I believe I read that running Windows on an iMac 5K via Bootcamp will only give you a 4K display! I would double check with Apple on this but I think you only get 5K on OS X and Windows is only 4K resolution.

[Ray Sherman] “1) Cooling – Due to 4K editing for several hours at a time. Several reviews are stating 100 to 105 degree gpu readings.”

I did a little reading since you brought this up and it looks like people are concerned about the GPU temps being high but no one is complaining of failure. Apple didn’t give the iMac a 5K display on a whim. This is their entry into the 4K editing market. As long as the computer doesn’t shutdown from failure I’d say it’s working OK.

[Ray Sherman] “2) All-in-One – Not sure of the life expectancy of the components. For example; Wouldn’t want a great running workstation with a dead monitor.”

It’s no different than a laptop. Buy Apple Care and they will fix it for free. I had a display go bad on my MacBook Pro and it was under Apple Care so I walked into an Apple Store and they fixed it while I waited; no cost to me. (try that with a PC!) lol

If you don’t like All-In-One’s that’s a separate matter but like I said, it’s no different than a laptop. The 2010 Mac Pro’s might be a better choice if you want components instead.

You’re asking the right questions though. I bought a 2010 Mac Pro instead of the iMac Retina 5K because I’m not working in 4K nor do I plan to in the near future. When I finally saw and touched the iMac 5K at the Apple Store, I almost regretted my purchase because it was such a great experience. But I can’t say what it would be like after hours of editing.

This is a hot topic. You’ll find lots of forum posts about Mac Pro vs iMac 5K. There is a rather long one right her on the COW: FCPX on 5K iMac

Here is a comparison that was referenced in that long thread were the iMac 5K beats out the 4-Core Mac Pro bit not the 6-Core or 8-Core Mac Pro in real world tests.

https://barefeats.com/imac5k4.html

But I don’t think you are even entertaining a new Mac Pro. If you were, I’d say the new Mac Pro is better for 4K editing because it gas dual AMD FirePro GPU’s. But if you’re comparing the 2010 Mac Pro that’s a different story.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com