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Mac Mini with 8 Gb RAM for slave export and rendering Compressor, FCP X
The reason why I plan to use a Mac Mini is because of real estate space and low wattage consumption. It’ll be used in a small mobile production minivan. There’s very little space left. I’m planning to use this as a secondary companion Mac in which my MBP 15″ Retina 2015 model is the main one. Will use screen sharing as the primary method to access the Mac. Space is severely limited that I can’t even bring another small 15″ LCD. If I could, I’ll use the 25″ IMac in a heart beat. It’ll be serving mostly slave rendering, file data transfer, etc.. It’s super compact and low power consumption makes it very favorable in a mobile van production truck. Any thoughts on using the 2.8 Ghz/8 Gb RAM for Final Cut Pro X, Compressor slave export?
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5 Replies
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I have used a 4 core mini with 16 gb ram for editing off an on for a couple of years. If you are editing HD – most of my camera originals are C300 mxf’s- the mini ran FCPX rather well. Most of my edits were relatively simple cuts, dissolves, some graphics, color correction etc.
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Am guessing it won’t make a big difference in overall throughput, but won’t hurt.
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP eXchange – FCPX Workshops -
Just yesterday I noticed a surprising drastic Compressor export time on my tiny MBP 15 Retina 2014 model vs the 2011 Mac Pro 5,1. Exporting a typical 1080p H264 for Youtube with time code filter applied to lower right took only 1 hr 2 min on the MBPro Retina w/ 16 Gb RAM vs a whopping 7 hr 4 min on the Mac Pro 5,1 with 64 Gb RAM! Both Macs use USB3 hdd interface and USB3 hub (4-port). The Mac Pro 5,1 have a PCIe USB3 add-on card. That’s about a 6 hour saving in waiting time plus power consumption of about 400 W cut down to 1 hr at 85W on the newer MBP 15″ Retina. I was expecting to wait at least 10 hrs but it was indeed a pleasant surprise.
The biggest annoyance in FCP 10.2.2 is the abnormally long time it took to relink media file. I only have 39 files and it took a staggering 3.5 hours just to relink it as I copied to another new hdd with a different volume name.
This tells me newer model is a worthwhile investment. I hope the 2.8 Ghz Mini Mac can be faster than the legacy Mac Pro 5,1.
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That’s because there’s a hardware encoder for H.264 in the Intel CPU of your MacBook Pro that didn’t exist for the CPUs of the previous generation of Mac Pros.
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP eXchange – FCPX Workshops -
Do you know when exactly did Apple incorporate the h.264 hardware acceleration into the CPU? I assume starting with late 2013 with the new black cylindrical Mac Pro, iMac, Mac Mini , Mac Air and Mac Book Pro?
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