-
MacBook Pros “underpowered?” Not for FCP X editors. Not AT ALL.
-
Hi Bill –
let me ask you a simple question –
in the past Apple worked hard to make sure that all the “other manufacturers” (you know, AVID, Adobe, AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox, etc.) all worked wonderfully with Apple products, and in fact they did – which is how they created this legacy of “Apple only”.SO – since FCP-X works so wonderfully, and people like you now think that AVID, Adobe, Blackmagic Davinici Resolve, Autodesk, AJA, Blackmagic, Maxon Cinema 4D, Nvidia, etc. are all kind of unimportant in the “big picture” of the FCP-X world –
do you think that it is IMPORTANT that Apple recognizes third party manufacturers, and helps support OTHER companies besides Apple ProApps, to allow OTHER companies to run on Apple Hardware – or is your opinion, is this UNIMPORTANT, as “who needs any of this other stuff – Apple does everything” –So all I need from you is “yes, it’s important that Apple lets other companies get their stuff to work at optimum performance” or “no, Apple does everything, so why bother with these other companies” –
yes, or no ?
bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
I have run FCPX on a 2014 MBP Retina 13″ with 16GB Ram, and it runs reasonably well when using native files from a Canon 70D and a Sony A7sii, and works beautifully with ProRes HQ files.
EVERYTHING runs like gangbusters on my 2016 iMac 5K Retina w/32GB, and Sharing directly or Send to Compressor are both very speedy outputs.
Interestingly, I have a friend with a 2015 MacPro, and he claims he has such slow output through Compressor that he avoids using multi-pass and opts for single pass compression.
I’m sure something is wrong with his setup, but I noticed the anecdotal comment here about MacPro out-performed by the iMac.
Doug D
-
What is your workflow/delivery specs for a final product on Vimeo and sometimes YouTube? For HD, not 4K.
Doug D
-
[Joe Marler] “I have used Premiere since CS4 and have obviously tested this many times on a PC. There is no question that a top-spec iMac can export H264 a lot faster than Premiere on either the same Mac hardware or a comparable PC — and maybe any PC. In theory Premiere on a multi-socket PC with enough cores might eventually beat FCPX on a 4Ghz iMac at exporting to H264, but it would take a lot of cores. If Adobe ever truly supports Quick Sync or the other hardware-accelerated transcoding methods like NVENC or VCE, that would make a difference.”
I am not talking about export. I am talking about playback. Once again FCPX uses Quick Sync on export Premiere Pro does not.
[Joe Marler] “[andy patterson] “…I don’t think Adobe supports Quick Sync. There is a plugin I believe. I think Adobe was concerned about quality over speed and they wanted the same experience for the XEON and i7 computers.”
This is a quote from Adobe’s Premiere CC 2015.3 feature list: “…initial support for Apple Metal and accelerated H.264 decode on Windows using Intel Quick Sync Video.” There was a tiny footnote somewhere (which I can’t find right now) which said “Windows only”. However if Adobe is using Quick Sync, they aren’t doing a very good job of it. https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/features.html“
I think you are confusing decoding for encoding. Apple will use Metal, Windows will use Intel’s Quikc Sync. Below is what is on Adobe’s website. I think it is for real-time playback not rendering.
“Enhanced performance and stability
Apply more real-time effects and reduce dropped frames across your devices with initial support for Apple Metal and accelerated H.264 decode on Windows using Intel Quick Sync Video”.
[Joe Marler] “These aren’t special 4k H264 files — they are from various cameras including Panasonic AG-DVX200, Sony A7RII, GoPro Hero5, DJI Phantom 4 Pro, etc. They all behave similarly on FCPX vs Premiere. They are too big to send but you can download sample files from those cameras from Vimeo or many other places. Just create a 3-camera 4k multicam, enable multicam playback, set the monitor to 1/4 res, then use JKL to scrub back and forth on the timeline. Re playing 5 layers of Red One with multiple effects — I have no idea and have no current need to investigate that.”
What if Premiere Pro plays Red One R3D files smoother than FCPX in muliti-cam? That was kind of my point because not everyone will make use of H.264. Having said that could the JKL keys in multi-cam be a bug?
-
[andy patterson] “Premiere Pro was only brought back to the Mac because Apple opted for Intel CPUs. If Apple opted for Motorola next week Adobe would have to decide if it is worth it or not. Adobe already has to worry about Open CL and CUDA both. I think they should stick to one or the other. I would hate to have them write for the instruction set of a non X86 CPU on top of that. “
I partly agree with you. Many of Adobe’s programs started on the Mac and then went to PC and, AFAIK, Premiere is the only one of Adobe’s major programs that went from cross-platform to PC-only. Adobe went PC-only with Premiere because between Avid and FCP they had no significant market share on the Mac side (it was more about ROI than technical hurdles of being cross-platform). If Apple stayed PPC then Adobe probably would’ve stayed away until FCP 7 was killed. That’s the opening Adobe needed for PPro and if a Mac vesion didn’t already exist you would’ve seen them create one and ship it in record time.
[andy patterson] “Switching would be super easy if you use Premiere Pro because every Adobe user would be forced to do it. You also would not have the option to go Hackintosh if they quit support for OS X. I highly doubt Adobe would do it but it would make things easier for them.
“I’m not just a Premiere user though so the switch would not be super easy. Trust me, I’ve thought about it a lot and once in a blue moon I work with someone that’s on a PC and there’s always bumps in the road that you don’t experience if everyone is all Mac or all PC (and for my needs I might as well consider LA to be all-Mac). I haven’t reached my tipping point yet.
I used to build PCs so I’m not afraid of Windows, it’s just easier being on a Mac in my situation.
[andy patterson] “What if Premiere Pro gets a boost in performance from the new AMD CPUs?
.
.
.
Actually if it was not for Apple Adobe could have kept supporting CUDA only. All PC vendors offer Nvidia but Apple does not offer Nvidia in the Mac Pro.
.
.
.
It is the CPU and GPU that the programmers must worry about. Not hard drives and RAM.
“That’s my point about more variables in PC hardware vs Mac hardware. Even if Adobe picked Nvidia GPUs and Intel CPUs to focus on (leaving out Intel GPUs, AMD CPUs and AMD GPUs) which CPUs and GPUs are they going to pick? Are they going to pick reference or non-reference GPUs? What if computer makes like Dell and HP focus on a different roadmaps? What if AMD CPUs and/or GPUs are a better value? Don’t you think customers will be mad that Adobe only supports a tiny handful of PC parts?
It’s in Adobe’s best interests to support as much hardware as is feasible so they aren’t alienating good sized chunks of their user base (and potential user base). I think a good example of this is that Adobe’s Mercury engine used to be CUDA only on select Nvidia GPUs. Then it went to a wider selection of Nvidia GPUs. Then they started supporting any GPU with at least 1gig of RAM and OpenCL was thrown into the mix as well.
[andy patterson] “They would still be writing for Windows, Intel and Nvidia so it would work on any PC with those components or are you suggesting Adobe actually be like SGI and make their own CPU, GPU and OS”
If Adobe picked one build of Windows, one Intel CPU, one Nvidia GPU and one Mobo and wrote a custom version of PPro (or whatever app) exclusively for those components they could get a sizable performance boost compared to running the ‘works everywhere’ version of PPro on the same hardware.
It’s like console gaming vs PC gaming. An Xbox One is basically a low spec PC running Windows but the games on it can look and perform better than PC games on a similarly spec’d PC because the devs can focus on getting the most of a specific set of components. And the longer into the console’s lifecycle you get the better the games look because the devs have had that much more time to how to optimize their games for the hardware. Contrast that to PC gaming where the older your computer gets the more it struggles to play newer games (forcing you to turn the quality sliders down).
-
Thanks for the extra info, Joe.
-
[Shawn Miller] “That is interesting – I wonder what explains the differences we’re seeing in OS preference… region maybe?”
I mainly do doc/unscripted as well as larger web/digital companies. Especially in LA a lot of the work is directly or indirectly connected to TV and film (and broadcast/film is Mac-country in LA) so I think that has something to do with it. You are either working on a TV/film project or you are working with people that have worked on TV/film projects and bring their workflow with them. Or you have no connection to TV/film, but you aspire to work in TV/film so you mimic their workflows as best you can in order to become knowledgable about them.
But even when I was in Indiana it was Mac-centric for audio and video post production. Corporate guys seemed to be mainly PC and I always assumed that had something to do with their clients and/or IT departments being PC-centric (birds of a feather and all that). Plus (real or imagined) there is always the ‘Apple tax’.
-
[Andrew Kimery] “That’s my point about more variables in PC hardware vs Mac hardware. Even if Adobe picked Nvidia GPUs and Intel CPUs to focus on (leaving out Intel GPUs, AMD CPUs and AMD GPUs) which CPUs and GPUs are they going to pick?”
There is no point in leaving out AMD CPUs since they support the x86 architecture. It is not like AMD has a Sun Micro Systems Spark II CPU. At this point you can do more with CUDA but I think it would be wise to drop them both in another 4 years and go all software only.
[Andrew Kimery] ” What if computer makes like Dell and HP focus on a different roadmaps?”
Why would you think either one is going to start using Motorola, Spark II or a DEC Alpha chip?
[Andrew Kimery] “What if AMD CPUs and/or GPUs are a better value? Don’t you think customers will be mad that Adobe only supports a tiny handful of PC parts?”
That has been my point in almost every thread. AMD does have an 8 Core CPUs for under $500.00. That is why I said Adobe may want to stop support for CUDA and Open CL in 2021. You may be able to get a 16 core CPU for $399.9 by then. I don’t think you understand that Intel and AMD manufacture x86 (IBM) compatible CPUs.
[Andrew Kimery] “It’s in Adobe’s best interests to support as much hardware as is feasible so they aren’t alienating good sized chunks of their user base (and potential user base)”
Not really. If in the year 2022 all Intel CPUs and AMD CPUs can play 10 layers of 8K video with multiple effects the dedicated GPU may become a thing of the past. I don’t doubt it will eventually happen.
[Andrew Kimery] ” I think a good example of this is that Adobe’s Mercury engine used to be CUDA only on select Nvidia GPUs.”
There was always support for any CUDA card with at least 1 GB of RAM and 100 CUDA cores. You had to manually add your card to the list but it would work. In fact there were less bugs back then. Keep in mind the bugs affect all the Nvidia cards when they happen. Things got worse once Open CL was added.
[Andrew Kimery] “If Adobe picked one build of Windows, one Intel CPU, one Nvidia GPU and one Mobo and wrote a custom version of PPro (or whatever app) exclusively for those components they could get a sizable performance boost compared to running the ‘works everywhere’ version of PPro on the same hardware.”
That would be like saying Adobe must write for the AMD Ryzen CPU the i3 and the i5 CPU separately and only support the Zotac GTX 1080 and not the GTX 1060. It doesn’t work that way. Granted trying to make the CC work with Windows 95 and an Intel Pentium 4 CPU would be a challenge.
[Andrew Kimery] “It’s like console gaming vs PC gaming. An Xbox One is basically a low spec PC running Windows but the games on it can look and perform better than PC games on a similarly spec’d PC because the devs can focus on getting the most of a specific set of components.”
Actually there are PC gamers playing XBOX games at 4K instead of 1080 and they can also get more FPS than an XBOX. That is not to say the XBOX does not work good.
[Andrew Kimery] “And the longer into the console’s lifecycle you get the better the games look because the devs have had that much more time to how to optimize their games for the hardware. Contrast that to PC gaming where the older your computer gets the more it struggles to play newer games (forcing you to turn the quality sliders down).”
You are saying an XBOX 360 from 5 years ago can play the newest games as good as a brand new XBOX ONE? If not then consoles become obsolete as well.
-
[Bob Zelin] “Hi Bill –
let me ask you a simple question –
in the past Apple worked hard to make sure that all the “other manufacturers” (you know, AVID, Adobe, AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox, etc.) all worked wonderfully with Apple products, and in fact they did – which is how they created this legacy of “Apple only”.
“My answer is Yes, it’s important to work with other approaches.
However.
(ah, the “devil friendly details” that typically screw up seemingly simple binary choices!)
That also puts a reasonable burden on ALL vendors to similarly KEEP THE PACE OF THEIR INNOVATION UP.
If they do, then it makes sense for ANY company to try to accommodate their development in order to benefit all consumers as the entire industry moves forward.
It’s ALSO inevitable that in today’s business climate, more and more companies will try to LOCK IN customers to their particular vision of where the industry is going.
So you have to pick a vision.
IF any vendor decides (for whatever reason) that their best business plan is to SLOW migration to new thinking and instead try to grow their businesses, not by providing the BEST solutions, but relying largely on the solutions they developed for different eras and different technological landscapes, I believe they are willingly prioritizing things OTHER than moving the game forward.
The race is getting faster. It’s HARDER to keep up nowadays. It’s a global race. Any 10,000 editors – anywhere around the world – are now competing with 1 million other editors doing at least somewhat similar work. That is NOT how it used to be. There likely weren’t 1 million people editing ANY type of video a few brief decades ago. In the future, there will be multiple millions of people editing content going forward.
Some will be well served to use the approaches of the past. But I believe many, MANY more will be far better served if the industry continues to grow and evolve as a whole.
What’s preventing editing tomorrow from looking like editing yesterday is NOT the tools. It’s the tasks.
The tasks are evolving.
So the tools have to evolve as well.
If a company wants to evolve their tools along side their competitors, then I suspect they WILL find willing partners in ALL levels of the industry. If they are NOT willing to evolve their tools won’t they drag down the pace of innovation? Or is it better to narrow the scope of innovation to ONLY the innovation that benefits a specific CLASS of editor?
I can list at least a dozen fundamental changes Apple made with X that were forward looking. Can you name the same for recent changes to the other NLE approaches you’re citing?
Not saying Apple is alone in this, BTW. You cited BlackMagic as an example.
If BlackMagic can handle an FCPXML in Resolve – why can’t Adobes Lumitri accept the same FCPXML? You tell me.
Is that the fault of IP Laws? Apple? BlackMagic? Adobe? or just the way that the game MUST be played today for reasons that have nothing to do with the software and EVERYTHING to do with how digital business is conducted in the digital era?
The ground is shifting faster than ever. Thats the singular reality none of us can deny.
Happy to hear your thoughts.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Andrew Kimery] ”
[Shawn Miller] “That is interesting – I wonder what explains the differences we’re seeing in OS preference… region maybe?”
I mainly do doc/unscripted as well as larger web/digital companies. Especially in LA a lot of the work is directly or indirectly connected to TV and film (and broadcast/film is Mac-country in LA) so I think that has something to do with it. You are either working on a TV/film project or you are working with people that have worked on TV/film projects and bring their workflow with them. Or you have no connection to TV/film, but you aspire to work in TV/film so you mimic their workflows as best you can in order to become knowledgable about them.”
I don’t know very many people who fit that description… not locally. ☺ Of the corporate producers I know, about half of them are on Windows and the other half is on OSX. As (maybe) a curious side note, it seems like the more they lean toward 3D/VFX/mograph work (AE, C4D, Max), the more likely they seem to be on Windows, I’ve also seen a number of people switching in the last few years as they move from FCP, or consider hardware upgrades.
[Andrew Kimery] ”
But even when I was in Indiana it was Mac-centric for audio and video post production. Corporate guys seemed to be mainly PC and I always assumed that had something to do with their clients and/or IT departments being PC-centric (birds of a feather and all that). Plus (real or imagined) there is always the ‘Apple tax’.”This makes sense to me. It used to be that IT departments in general dictated what kind of machine you did your work on – getting anything other than what was available from an approved vendor could be challenging. It’s not so much that way anymore, but probably explains things to some extent. Even in my company, a lot of the designers are Mac centric, but the folks who do more 3D and mograph work are pretty evenly split.
Shawn
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up