Egpu for a 2018 MacBook Pro?

[Eric Santiago]

What 4K flavor?

A lot of preplanning you don’t need a GPU.

Not sure if you are just editing or dealing with finishing too.

[Ernie Munick]

Thanks for the reply, Eric.

Usually 4K in MOV format, 150Mbps or 400Mbps 10 bit, mixed with 4K 60p in 8 bit…

I suppose I should be using proxies—that would be faster and easier than an egpu.

But..I AM curious.

[Eric Santiago]

You might have read this already:

https://creativecow.net/forums/thread/cause-every-now-then-someone-has-to-do-fcp-vs-ppro-speed-tests/

I found searching for the holy grail on the mac side of things to be a waste of time.

I have so many different hardware sets for DIT and office.

I lived on a 2008 Uni MBP for 5 years hooked up to a RED card on set.

Replaced that MBP with a 2015 but barely work on set now (mostly post).

The best tool I think was the Sonnet Tempo PCI SSD card and enclosure.

That baby worked wonders using Sony/Canon/ARRI and RED RAW.

At the time I only 2TB (2x1TB) to deal with but it did wonders for playback.

Look into a faster IO setup before eGPU.

Its changed a lot of late due to the new Apple M1 chip.

Cause every now & then someone has to do FCP vs PPro speed tests.

[Eric Santiago]

Another tip is to always convert your original files to PRORES before editing.

[Ernie Munick]

Faster io? Input/output for …audio?

[Eric Santiago]

Sorry I was referring to external drives.

I’ve had great success with 4K MOV and 8K RED RAW on Thunderbolt 2.

So I can imagine Thunderbolt 3 and up will suffice.

I would keep all files ProRes if you don’t have the option to move up with drive speed.