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iMacs and Fusion Drives
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What is the recommended headroom for an iMac system drive?
What type of applications do you have on your system drive?
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Hi Erik,
I will be editing a web series which will be shot partially on green screen. Segments will range from 3-7 minutes, some may run longer 10-15 minutes. I will also be editing some docs and short films.
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Hi Mark,
Thanks for responding to my post.
How much RAM does your iMac have?
What kind of projects do you edit?
Are you using a G-Tech RAID or single hard drive for your media / scratch?
What kind of plug-ins do you use?
Are the plug-ins kept on the fusion drive or your external drive?
Do you plug-ins all run at the same time?
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[Erik Lindahl] “HDD vs SSD depends on what you’re doing also. Random r/w will be vastly supperior on SSD”
Sure, but in that testing when using 8 bays over Thunderbolt SSDs don’t have any advantages over HDDs, did you see it? It’s a waste of money.
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[Howie Young] ” Would you advise against getting the SSD as the system drive in an iMac and opt for a fusion drive?”
No, I would use the SSD as a boot, where you’d load the OS, apps and plugins and the HDD for Projects, Events and general media. I haven’t done this, but I know it is possible to detach the fusion drive so they’ll work as independent drives. Additionally, you have to have a RAID of some sort to house your video files (Thunderbolt being your best choice) and at least another big cheap USB one for Time Machine back ups. But if you can manage to fit the entirety of your video files into the HDD project drive, it’s OK as long as you decouple the Fusion Drive as previously recommended. Remember that HDDs perform noticeably bad when they are more than 80% full.
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[Howie Young] “How much RAM does your iMac have? What kind of projects do you edit? Are you using a G-Tech RAID or single hard drive for your media / scratch? What kind of plug-ins do you use? Are the plug-ins kept on the fusion drive or your external drive? Do you plug-ins all run at the same time?”
I put 32Gb in, the max amount, and the 8GB memory the iMac came with are sitting on a shelf by my desk as the memory I bought came as 2 x 16GB. The specs for my iMac are: Processor 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7: Memory 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3: Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB: Software OS X 10.8.4
I edit documentary style programmes shot with a Canon C300. I use FCP7’s Log and transfer to transfer the files onto my scratch drive. I transfer them as native files rather than turning them into Pro-Res 422.
I don’t then import them into FCPX, but simply refer to them. In fact apart from graphics and music I don’t import anything into my Events.
I bought the Gtech 8GB unit. It is not a raid and I have read that one can get much faster speeds using a raid. I also use my older Gtech esata drives via a relatively cheap LaCie eSata Hub. These older Gteceh drives work really well and I will still be buying them for archival / back up purposes.
The other connecter I brought was the Matrox MXO2 Thunderbolt Adapter so that I can use an 32″external monitor. I have to say though that I’ve hardly used this at all as the screen on the iMac is so good. I have an additional 27″ samsung computer monitor for the iMac so that when I am editing I can display my Event library on it’s own screen.
I’ve got too many plugins to list them all. A lot of them came from this forum in the early days. But the main Plugins I use regularly are Core Melts Slice X and Lock & Load. I bought Magic Bullet Looks for FCPX but have hardly touched it as it is a pretty awkward program to use and not key frameable.
I actually think that the FCPX color adjustment tools are really good once you have got used to them and the lack of color wheels. Other Plugins I have got are White Balancer by Cineflare, Hawaiki Autograde, all of the excellent idustrial plugins and transitions. I’ve also got Irudis and Mflare and quite a few from Ripple.
Since shifting over to FCPX when it was launched I think I have probably spent well over $2,500 on various plugins etc. Some you can only use once because they are so identifiable.
But to be honest, having played around with a lot of plugins I often strip them out for the final edit and just do the best grade possible. Plugins are one way to enjoyably waste a lot of time!
All the plugins are kept on the Fusion drive in the Movies folder under Motion Templates apart from a couple which are actually installed as software programmes in the applications folder.
It’s certainly possible to stack up a load of plugins and run them at the same time. The computer can easily cope with that although I tend to render as I go to actually see the finished result running smoothly at full resolution.
I bought my iMac because I was having such a miserable time with my 2008 MacPro which despite installing extra memory and a new Graphics card just didn’t cope with full HD FCPX editing. I plan to buy the new MacPro when it is released this Autumn (maybe next month?) and there are also rumors of a new iMac coming out soon.
But I would highly recommend the current 27″ IMac.
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True, but you could probably do a 2-3 disk SSD that has similar speed and fits in your pocket. 8 HDD’s take a lot of space and use a lot of energy. We’re talking some time into the future of course but SSD’s will hit hard at some point.
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[Christian Schumacher] ”
Sure, but in that testing when using 8 bays over Thunderbolt SSDs don’t have any advantages over HDDs, did you see it? It’s a waste of money.”This is totally dependent on what you need to do, and you can skew the data to fit your particular needs.
There are very few people on this forum and around the world that need one computer to have a hard drive system that pulls 1GB/sec or more. ProRes at 1080 is some,thing like 20MB/sec, 4k is less than 70MB/sec. 4k ProRes 4444 is 225 MB/sec. If I’m editing 1080 ProRes, why do I need more than 1 GB/sec?
Where one would need 1+GB/sec would be in a shared storage situation where you need to be split the theoretical bandwidth.
With a theoretical 1GB/sec, you could thetertically have 4 people editing 4k 4444 ProRes off of one small and efficient raid.
For some, it’s not a waste of money when you start looking at leveraging and scaling storage for more than one machine.
It is my feeling that looking and using fcpx in a shared environment, Apple is gearing fcpx for working in a shared environment, we just can’t see it quite yet. People clown fcpx for its shared capabilities, I see a lot of potential.
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Yes, in the context of using 1080 video on a pair of SSDs, Thunderbolt is definitely a good choice then. But I was originally referring to Rick’s comments on “future” handling bigger than HD video and the use of RAIDs and SSDs over thunderbolt. Then I presented a recent test of a 8-bay RAID inclosure that shows Thunderbolt clipping at 1000MB/s. That should be relevant when discussing “bigger than HD”, no? Fact is there’s a lot of confusion regarding 4K and the new Mac Pro. It will support 4K panels for computer monitoring and UHD over TB as well, but I’m not sure if the new workstation will be the best choice for all purposes when handling 4K, as one will have to cope with its constrains, due to the lack of standard PCIe slots, which can reach much higher speeds on its turn. And the thing is, Thunderbolt 2 isn’t capable of port multiplying either. So, I think Apple will have to prop up their software technologies in order to stay relevant in the content creation arena. Apparently that’s what they’re doing with Open CL and hopefully Macintoshes will stay around for a while. That was the part Rick has mentioned and I agree with. Gotta wait for new OS, new MP, and also, new Pro Apps.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “For some, it’s not a waste of money when you start looking at leveraging and scaling storage for more than one machine.”
J, I was referencing the use of 8 SSDs in a RAID inclosure over TB. It IS a waste of money. This is the second enclosure I believe they tested and had the same conclusions. Is it some extreme corner case? An 8-bay RAID?
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