iMac Pro or next year’s Mac Pro?

[Shawn Miller]

[Tom Sefton] “I think a dog would have a better chance of building a PC that works than I would.”

You might be surprised, Tom. Building a PC can be easier than assembling a desk from Ikea. ☺

Shawn

[Michael Hadley]

FWIW, Apple said they would announce the new Mac Pro in 2018. My guess is that they will do so very late in the year and not actually deliver boxes until 2019–just like with the 2013 Mac Pro.

I’ll be interested to see what the specs are with the next version of FCPX does once they come out with the new iMac Pro, which will support eGPU on the AMD Vega cards (once High Sierra is updated) and if it makes sense at that point to get an eGPU with the new AMD Vega card and try to prolong the lifespan of my 2013 Mac Pro.

[Don Scioli]

Not with Closed Captions, I’ve tried this in FCPX and Compressor, unless you know of another way. (Avid does)

[Andrew Kimery]

[Jeremy Garchow] “How will your peripherals work on an old Mac? Your new Hackintosh will supposedly have everything inside of it.

You can tell me that internal peripherals are better, and I will tell you not necessarily. “

Thanks for the more detailed explanation, though I don’t think anyone was saying that internal peripherals are better in 100% of the situations (at least I certainly wasn’t).

With regards to how my peripherals would work, same way they do now, with adaptors. For example, I/O on my 2009 cMP tops out with USB 3.0, but my 2011 MBP doesn’t have USB 3.0. It does have ThB1 though so I use a USB to ThB adapter when I need to connect my RAID to my 2011 MBP. If I end up with a new Mac (or a new RAID) that only has ThB3 ports then I’ll have to invest in more adaptors.

The appeal of a Hack to me is customization, upgradeability, and price. The only reason my 2009 cMP is still viable today is because of its upgradability, and being able to upgrade the internal drive and RAM on my 2011 MBP certainly extended its useable lifespan as well (though it sees less uses these days since I have a 2015 MBP).

[Jeremy Garchow] ” Right now with our Macs I can swap the machine, and setup to all the same peripherals (including fiber storage) no matter if it’s a cylinder, laptop, iMac, the only thing that changes is performance.”

You can do that with a Hack too since Hacks can have all the same ports that Macs can.

I agree though that for large scale, multi-user environments Hacks will, generally speaking, have more IT overhead than going with off-the-shelf PCs or Macs.

[Michael Hadley] “I’ll be interested to see what the specs are with the next version of FCPX does once they come out with the new iMac Pro, which will support eGPU on the AMD Vega cards (once High Sierra is updated) and if it makes sense at that point to get an eGPU with the new AMD Vega card and try to prolong the lifespan of my 2013 Mac Pro.”

2013 MP only has ThB 2 so an eGPU is going to be constrained compared to ThB 3 or installing it internally.

[Andy Patterson]

[Michael Hadley] ”
I’ll be interested to see what the specs are with the next version of FCPX does once they come out with the new iMac Pro, which will support eGPU on the AMD Vega cards (once High Sierra is updated) and if it makes sense at that point to get an eGPU with the new AMD Vega card and try to prolong the lifespan of my 2013 Mac Pro.”

The Vega cards have not proven to be that great but they don’t suck either. Having said that Nvidia is supposed to release Volta in 2018 (rumors). Volta is supposed to kick some ass but who know for sure? AMD is supposed to have a new CPU in 2018 to replace the current Ryzen and Threadripper CPUs. 2017 was interesting but 2018 might be even better. I have a feeling in 2018 I am going to see Apple users getting external Volta GPUs if Apple does not offer them in their systems.

[Noah Kadner]

Unfortunately with the 50% slower Thunderbolt 2 ports on the 2013 MacPro vs the Thunderbolt 3 ports on new iMacs and MacBook Pros, you won’t get much net gain over the onboard GPUs with an eGPU.

Noah

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[Andy Patterson]

[Noah Kadner] “Unfortunately with the 50% slower Thunderbolt 2 ports on the 2013 MacPro vs the Thunderbolt 3 ports on new iMacs and MacBook Pros, you won’t get much net gain over the onboard GPUs with an eGPU.”

I think the GTX 1080 Ti hits a bottleneck with Thunderbolt 3. External GPUs are not the best option but for some that is the only option they have. There is rumor that Canon Lake or Ice Lake will support PCIE 4.0.

[Ricardo Marty]

This video claims that for less than 1k you get the same performance as 5k mac pro. This with only ryzen 1600, cant imagine a 32 core threadripper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAut2VGpDvo

Ricardo Marty

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[Ricardo Marty]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRW4c1FnRrE

Ricardo Marty

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[Bill Davis]

Oh gosh this thread is so painful to read.

Such a reminder of the years and years I spent calling Master Control’s and trying to interpret between the “deliverables spec sheets” that various Media Sales Teams delivered to me and what the ACTUAL people at the stations really needed in order to get my stuff on the air properly.

It schooled me to believe that the difference between what is ACTUALLY required – and what asked for – is so often VERY different, just because people find it so hard to evolve and change as technology changes.

I just delivered one of my 4 end-of-the-year pieces – yesterday at 4pm.

It’s due Saturday, but as usual, I’m done days early, thanks (in my opinion) to X.

It was behind a password on Frame.io for the approval loop. When the Agency head marked it as APPROVED I got emailed. I went on my phone and made one menu choice – and it was instantly mirrored From FiO to our Vimeo Pro Master File playout account – and within 30 seconds therefore available for pull distribution to any client stakeholder – at any resolution necessary – from SD to 2k – anywhere in the World.

“Delivery” for me now takes less than ONE second and requires ONE menu selection.
And via Roles and FCP X, that same trigger could have cued FCP X to generate 25 mix minus versions, various station tagged files or alt splits just as easily.

I understand that others work in environments where people are SUPER skittish about the new disruptive digital distribution platforms. And I can also see how large operations might worry about how they can maintain security and professionalism across a system where a guy like me in Arizona can feed Hi-Def content to the whole planet in a second.

But Thanksgiving was last week, but I’m still VERY thankful this stuff has changed so much for me.

Life was SO MUCH more needlessly complex in the days my deliverables we’re ruled by those aweful TV Station delivery standards sheets – (the ones that were usually out of date two weeks after they were typed up!)

FWIW.

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