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For those who are still Fishing…..
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[Bill Davis]What if the box no longer even matters. What if everything does eventually end up stored in the cloud?
Eventually, but not in the immediate future, not by a long shot. I shot a three-person interview on an HDSLR for a production company in LA and we tried to have the footage sent to them by way of FTP.
30GB of data was going to take 4 days to transfer.
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[Craig Seeman] “Keep in mind though ingesting to the cloud can be major time consuming given file size vs upload speed.
Once uploaded though, the ability to do long distance collaboration would be of value to some.”Can be? LOL, My partners and I FedEx bare hard drives back and forth between SF and LA on a regular basis to share the terabytes of footage. We both have the fastest upstream bandwidth possible in our areas and it would take weeks to ingest to the cloud. Add to that the fact that every major US ISP is capping data and this cloud scenario becomes a total pipe dream for any kind of serious work. Sorry, not gonna happen anytime soon.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
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[Gary Huff] “30GB of data was going to take 4 days to transfer.”
Yes, it depends on what your speed it. At my full bandwidth it would take about one hour and a half to download that and about 8 and a half hours to upload. That’s likely still slower than local ingest and use.
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The hardware argument seems to come up every few years. While it’s true that a comparable system can be self-built for much cheaper, the fact remains that a custom system rarely represents the same build-quality, performance, and engineering of a real workstation.
Build a real Xeon workstation with top-of-the-line motherboard and chasis, ECC RAM, etc, and you will start racking up $$ that is comparable to any ‘workstation’ class machine of multiple brands (apple included). I think the real point of saying “I built a system myself for cheaper” is the fact that Intel puts high margins on their Xeon processor line, and the same goes for ECC RAM vs non-ECC RAM. It’s not simply related to Apple or HP or any other company that builds workstations.
Want to compare to do a proper comparison? Try a real HP workstation against a mac pro. The Canadian HP store sells a 6-core 2.53ghz, 6GB RAM Z800 workstation for $3773. An 8-core 2.4ghz mac pro with 6GB RAM sells for $3599. If you look at further specs I’d say the raw hardware on the HP station is a little more bang for your buck due to the Quadro videocard, but the mac pro is easily a better engineered, quieter, and more stable machine.
Anyways — the point is not to start a price war on mac pro machines, just to generally point out that the mac pro hardware line isn’t all that overpriced for what you get.
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[Daniel Frome] “Build a real Xeon workstation with top-of-the-line motherboard and chasis, ECC RAM, etc, and you will start racking up $$ that is comparable to any ‘workstation’ class machine of multiple brands (apple included)”
I agree but there are people who insist they can build something similar for a lot less. That’s why I bring up downtime and maintenance. Those costs are there whether one is a facility or a sole proprietor. In fact, assuming you’re a professional making money from the computer, the cost of just a few days downtime over the life of a system can equal or even surpass the cost of the system itself.
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Maybe Apple will open up its own internet service then, at much cheaper prices. They have more cash than the US, thats not too far off with their all-in ecosystem.:)
Quobetah
New=Better -
[David Lawrence] “Add to that the fact that every major US ISP is capping data and this cloud scenario becomes a total pipe dream for any kind of serious work. Sorry, not gonna happen anytime soon.”
Add to that the major Net Neutrality war over “last-mile” that will dominate the next decade. It blows my mind the degree to which people are not aware of this issue, or think the “Net Neutrality” is a porn or free speech issue. The telcoms and the cable companies have done a really good job of confusing the issue, and the recent Supreme Court rulings against the FCC have pretty much guaranteed that no existing regulation can protect last mile rights. I think it inevitable that Apple, Netflix, Google, et. al, will be in a major legislative battle with the telcoms and the cable companies for much of the next decade.
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[Chris Harlan] “Add to that the major Net Neutrality war over “last-mile” that will dominate the next decade. “
Outstanding point, Chris. Net Neutrality is a huge issue that isn’t going away. Nor will the political influence of the telecom and cable industry. The US lags far behind other countries in bandwidth and isn’t even in the top ten for downstream speed, let alone upstream speed. The idea that the cloud will be viable asset storage for billable productions anytime soon is laughable.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
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facebook.com/dlawrence
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“I’d say the raw hardware on the HP station is a little more bang for your buck due to the Quadro videocard”
If your running PPro this is quite the understatement. The HP is an order of magnitude faster because of the Quadro. The 2 systems are not equivalent.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
[Daniel Frome][B]ut the mac pro is easily a better engineered, quieter, and more stable machine.
Purely in your own opinion.
But for $3500 I can purchase my own parts to get me a DUAL i7 Xeon (12 cores total) with 16GB of RAM, GTX 590 (arguably as good as the Quadro in Premiere) and a 256GB Samsung SSD (currently rated as one of the speediest). Can’t even get that combination with a current Mac Pro desktop. And that may never even be available in a Mac depending on what Apple ends up deciding to do about the line.
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