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New Blackmagic eGPU
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you know –
Steve Connor started off this thread very respectfully, just mentioning a new hardware product from Apple.
And then some jerk named “Bob Zelin” started trouble ! The trouble that seems to (according to Steve) drive people away from forums like this, because in 2018, editors need their “safe space” where everyone is nice to them.The ONLY reason a generic forum exists (as opposed to a company sponsored forum, that will frown upon criticism) is to COMPLAIN and WHINE about problems. For me, that is what draws me to open forums, like Creative Cow – to find out about PROBLEMS when the company forum (or the company phone call) says “gee – this is a great product – and we never heard anyone ever mention this problem before – we are sorry that you are having these issues”.
My first memory of this on Creative Cow was with Walter Biscardi on the AJA forum. BOTH of us were having problems with Panasonic AJ-HD1200A 720P VTR’s with AJA cards – and both of us wound up calling AJA (a company I love) – and AJA tech support told BOTH of us (almost at the same time) that “they were not aware of any issues with 720P and the AJA cards”. It was because of Creative Cow that both of us were COMPLAINING and I was able to use Walter’s information to confront AJA about the issue – and the technical issue was identified quickly, because THE COMPANY was not able to “B.S” us, because we were on a public forum, and we knew there was a problem.
Since this is an FCP X forum (and will soon not be a “debate” forum) – I will take this opportunity to complain about what many people dislike on this forum – Adobe Premiere. Adobe Premiere has this incredibly horrible “feature” called Media Cache – which after a few months, fills up, and I don’t care if you have the software set to delete the cache after a certain number of days. IT FILLS UP, and if you don’t go into the /Library/Applications Support/Adobe/Common folder, and DELETE the damn files in the Media Cache and Media Cache Files folders, your system will soon start to crawl, and stutter, and you won’t be able to play anything back, and you will blame your computer, and your storage array, but the PROBLEM is Adobe Premiere Media Cache.
So if this was a “politically correct” Adobe Premiere forum (and I know that most people here hate Adobe Premiere) – then you would say “stop saying such back things about Adobe Premiere – it’s a great program used by thousands
of professionals, without issue” – But that is the POINT. The public forum is to expose problems that the companies don’t have the time or the capacity to deal with.When FCP X first came out, and Apple refused (probably intentionally) to allow for a library to be stored on a network drive, I complained very vocally about this right away, and many people got offended. I eventually discovered about the use of Sparse Disk Images, and then thanks to a young lady at Florida Atlantic University, that the use of NFS network protocol would allow for the ability to write a FCP X Library to a network volume. And then Apple finally gave in, after all the complaints, and as of FCP X 10.3, we could all use SMB to write to network volumes, and things were back to normal. Why is complaining about this, and saying how horrible Apple is because of this – a bad thing?
But this relates to ALL the manufacturers – every damn manufacturer in the world is guilty – and is the point of public forums like this to be “nice”- or to expose all these companies ? My beloved QNAP – which I make my living with these days – they make mistakes ALL THE TIME – and I am on THEIR FORUMS, saying “why isn’t this working – why does this bug exist” – and I am aggressive, and not polite, because people pay their hard earned money to purchase these products, and if these products have problems that prevent these users from making a living with these products, then these companies MUST ANSWER in a timely manner. And if they do not – well, there is hell to pay.
As I often say in social circles when I am not in a business situation – “I am not prejudice – I hate everyone”.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Bob, your post was brilliant and made my day!
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[Winston A. Cely] “But isn’t this a common practice in some high-end facilities? “
Not in my experience – I work at rather large A/V agency and we are on 2010 cheesegraters..time’s probably 50 or so. No plans on ugrading according to IT.
Lot of other places still on cheesegraters and back when i was at NBC we were on 10 year old hps.
Seems like the smaller boutique places stay more up to date – most places have Imacs now.
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I was just going to ask How many people are still using the old mac cheese graters. There is a computer that is like the Mars rover of computers. It had a certain anticipated life span and 14 years later its still ticking…..
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[Neil Goodman] “Seems like the smaller boutique places stay more up to date – most places have Imacs now.”
I had a feeling that was what it might be in real-world practice. It does make sense to some extent, too. Easier to replace a few than an entire building.
I also see not wanting to upgrade for all the problems that seem to happen every time there is a software or hardware update. If the system is operating the way you need it to, why upgrade if there’s a better than a small chance you’re going to encounter some kind of problem, right?
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC17″ MacBook Pro | 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 3 | FCPX | Motion 5 | Compressor 4“If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject, you can create the consoling illusion it has been mastered.” – Stanley Kubrick
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Bob, thanks as always for writing the most concise and clear minded posts on this site.
Windows 10 Pro | i7-5820k CPU | 64 gigs RAM | NvidiaGeForceGTX970 | Blackmagic Decklink 4k Mini Monitor |
Adobe CC 2019 13.0 | Renders/cache: Samsung SSD 950 Pro x2 in Raid 0 | Media: Samsung SSD 960 PRO PCIe NVMe M.2 2280 x 2 | Media: OWC Thunderbay 4 x 2 Raid 0 mirrored with Resilio -
The new eGPU should replace the original one with the original price. It’s what the original one should have been. Not a 2 year old GPU.
This new one now is waaaaaaaaay too overpriced and inflexible in terms of upgrades.
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[Winston A. Cely] “I also see not wanting to upgrade for all the problems that seem to happen every time there is a software or hardware update. If the system is operating the way you need it to, why upgrade if there’s a better than a small chance you’re going to encounter some kind of problem, right?
“Yea, we recently went from ppro 2017 to 2018. It almost brought the whole building down. AE’s couldnt get reliable AAF’s out to the mixers.
Would be nice to have blazing fast new computers but at the end of the day we’re doing offline editing with low res media and dont really need the extra juice.
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[Winston A. Cely] “But isn’t this a common practice in some high-end facilities? Upgrading hardware and computers on some sort of x-year schedule?”
I’m with the rest here. Most facilities try to get a lot out of their gear for as long as possible. Up until the past few years, people had been running on Avid Media Composer, Vegas, Edius, or Final Cut Pro “legacy”. Those software products seemed to be less dependent on hardware changes, except for I/O. And then that was largely only for the jump from SD to HD. You could run gear longer without a refresh.
More recent software, like FCPX, newer versions of Premiere Pro CC, etc., has become more tied to hardware changes especially on the Mac platform. That’s mainly because of the need to tie in more closely with the OS, because of how it integrates with the hardware. So if you were running mainly Avid MC, you could still be quite comfortable on older machines with Apple or PC hardware.
OTOH, some of us are running trash can Macs, which are old, too, by this same standard ☺
[Mark Smith] “I was just going to ask How many people are still using the old mac cheese graters.”
The real question is how many are running cheese graters with their original hardware ☺ If you have a Mac Pro that’s mid-2009 or newer, then you can still get up to High Sierra. A lot of us have upgraded internal drives to SSDs, upgraded GPUs, upped the RAM and so on. These changes are simple plug-and-play. The more adventurous have even upgraded the Xeons. All of this is possible in these “ancient” machines and gets them pretty close to modern performance. For most editing tasks – especially Media Composer – you still have a current, viable machine.
But the question is, if you tally the cost of all of those upgrades plus your time, have you really saved that much money?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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Come on now, Steve. Do you really want to be the stick in the mud taking the fun out this forum?
Let me go on record as saying I welcome, appreciate, and LOVE the honesty, frankness, and truthfulness
of Bob Z’s posts. 99.9 per cent of what he has to say is on point, relevant, and may NOT be what you want to hear… but it’s always heartfelt and honest. The other .01 per cent may be the wine talking’… I’m not sure!Keep it up, Bob.
Mark “Big Fan Boy of Bob Z” Raudonis
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