Early tester James Tonkin on the new MacPro in actual use.

[Andrew Kimery]

https://xkcd.com/927/

[Rich Rubasch]

I always heard NTSC meant Never Twice the Same Color with the “twice” being the key.

I do normally trust all my portable Apple devices and even my MacbookPro, but the iMac Pro monitor was very problematic with saturation and there is no setting in calibration to bring it down. Sure wish there was!

So I’m curious if the engine is the same in the new Apple Display.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com

[Bill Davis]

I doubt it will be the same as the IMac Pro monitors. From everything I’ve read, Apple pretty much re-imagined the Pro Display XDR from the light emitters out.

The only thing I’m sure of is that I spent 30 years pretty much as a slave to Vectorscopes and Waveform monitors. But over the past 5 years of so I ONLY seem to use them if third party content comes in looking wrong.

Once signals hit my screen and are scoped as OK, the rest of the pathway to distribution seeks to be ROCK SOLID – and when I see the work later via broadcast, on the web – or on a personal digital device – the experience is pretty universally reliable.

Pretty sure that’s because Apple built their “managed color” pipeline to enable that.

But I hardly think about color anomalies in my post pipeline much any more.

Huge difference from the early days.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Oliver Peters]

[Bill Davis] “I doubt it will be the same as the IMac Pro monitors. From everything I’ve read, Apple pretty much re-imagined the Pro Display XDR from the light emitters out. “

But the software color management will be the same. Remember that this is not an actual HDR display. It’s a P3 display with extended brightness range. So images will likely look right in FCPX, but probably not in other video apps. Probably even including QT Player. Not bad, just not accurate.

There may also be a difference if you are judging the image inside a viewer pane within the software or if it’s an extended desktop display getting the fullscreen a/v output signal. That’s for those rich enough to buy at least two of these on a system 🙂

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Rich Rubasch]

What Oliver said…What was nice in the old days of AVID is you had a reliable video output usually to a calibrated and expensive broadcast monitor. Naturally we don’t watch on CRT tubes via TV broadcast anymore, but panels are so different. Compare the same clip on an iPhone, Samsung, iPad, google phone etc and I dare you to say they are all the same.

I’m still not sure making final color decisions on an Apple display is a good workflow. I’d much rather have an AJA card feeding a Flanders Scientific via SDI and use that for color.

We are all gaga about the new monitor, but for me it still is just a place to hold my software interface panels, Pages docs, email and internet surfing….not critical color.

I am also curious about angle of view…nothing beats my old plasma panels throughout my house and office for angle of view and reliable color.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com

[Ronny Courtens]

In the setup at Hangman Studios, the colours seem very accurate across the pipeline. I could see no difference between the viewers in FCP X or Resolve on one Pro Display, and the program out on another Pro Display connected directly via Thunderbolt to the Mac Pro. It was even very hard to see any difference between the images on the Pro Displays and the 77″ OLED monitor connected via HDMi and a Blackmagic card. The difference between the Pro Displays and the LG OLED tv only becomes apparent when you start running HDR footage.

This is a quote from James Tonkin that I left out of the article:

I have a 77″ OLED LG screen in the grading suite, which is a jaw-dropping display. Everyone who comes in here always gets drawn to that screen. But that tv only has 500 Nits of peak brightness. Last week I was doing some HDR tests and I was totally baffled by how far I could push the Pro Displays. You don’t realise how amazing that extremity of HDR luminance looks until you sit in front of a real HDR display and start pushing things around. These Pro Displays are extremely accurate and will last a very long time.

– Ronny

[Oliver Peters]

Ronny,

What’s not totally clear from the article is how the two XDR displays are connected. Tonkin talks about one for UI and the other for video output. Is he doing that direct via TB3 out of the Mac Pro? The photos show Resolve, which can’t do that like FCPX can. So is the XDR for video being driven by the BMD hardware? Or both?

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Eric Santiago]

I asked this on a diff post in regards to the W5700X 16GB option.
I am ready to press buy (base 8GB) but wondering about the 16GB.
I understand that more is better but is there anything else I should know e.g. taking up slots etc…

[Jeremy Garchow]

Vincent Laforet is recommending some prelim MacPro Configs:

https://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2019/12/12/mac-pro-configuration-recommendations/

He jumps straight to the one 32GB card.

[Eric Santiago]

Uggh that’s out of my budget range.
I talked to the local Apple rep here and he thinks the W5700X will clock in closer to 1500 USD.
That too is out of my range.
My day job is mostly Adobe After Effects and the D700 is cutting it.
I have an HP Z240 for Maya which is fine for now.
Are these video cards upgradeable?
I know stupid question but I’ve been out of the loop and haven’t been reading any specs or forums.
I just focus on this site mostly.