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nMP or iMac for 4K
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[Lance Bachelder] “Why not just update your 12-core? “
Right now it’s been upgraded with an internal SSD drive, 32GB RAM and ATI 7950 card. The plan is to move that machine into a secondary slot replacing another machine that’s on its last legs. The new machine would become the prime editing system.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Tom Sefton] “the speeds we have been getting are helped massively by the speed of the raids.”
Oh yes, I have experienced this. A 40 minute Resolve render out to a LaCie Thunderbolt Rugged drive (because that’s what the client provided after I requested a G-RAID) dropped to under 10 minutes rendering out to my MBPr’s internal 1TB SSD drive.
[Tom Sefton] “We never had any servicing required for either, but purchased AppleCare as a fail safe. “
That’s good to have someone with a positive Mac Pro experience, it’s been a sea of negative for me asking and reading around, and I am in the market for something powerful.
[Tom Sefton] “The one place the Mac Pro isn’t as good as the iMac is encoding to h264 – the iMac is faster for this.”
How much faster would you say? I do a lot of H.264 and foresee going to H.265 deliverables potentially next year. Mostly work in XF AVC (with a smattering of ProRes) and starting to bring more 4K into the workflow, but man, it bogs down horribly on my current setup. Have been doing a heavy proxy workflow, but in the end, quick turnarounds for the final render are a consideration for me.
[Tom Sefton] “Can’t praise the new Mac Pro highly enough – suppose the only consideration is whether apple will release something new in the fall.”
That’s my worry, but then again, if it’s like 2013, then they’ll announce it in the fall and it’ll be Feb/March/April before you can actually get one.
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Gotcha – I also had the 7950 – the upgrade to the GTX 980 is significant and gives you near the performance of the dual D700’s in the nMP and works well with 4K material.
Good Luck!
It was at a Vegas premiere that I resolved to become an avid FCPX user.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 -
I think someone has written an online article comparing the iMac with the Mac Pro at speeds for h264 but in our experience the Mac Pro will do it in realtime for a dual pass encode at 4K source to 4K output. The iMac tends to do the h264 encode about 20% faster as it is hardware accelerated with the i7 chip (I believe this is why, but could be wrong). It’s not a huge amount but if you never work with raw, have a reasonably light workload and edit and deliver to h264 it could make a difference. I’ll try and find the online article.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
[Tom Sefton] “t’s not a huge amount but if you never work with raw, have a reasonably light workload and edit and deliver to h264 it could make a difference. I’ll try and find the online article.”
That would be great. 20% doesn’t sound like a whole lot of difference, but I have a lot of longform material that currently takes about 2 hours to render on my MBPr, and I’d like to get that down to a tenth if possible. Not sure if the iMac could get me there or if the Mac Pro could. I prefer raw power, but I do understand the benefit of going with a Skylake i7 vs an Ivy Bridge Xeon.
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[Lance Bachelder] ” the upgrade to the GTX 980 is significant and gives you near the performance of the dual D700’s”
Thanks. That’s good to know.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
https://macperformanceguide.com/iMac5K_2014-video-transcode4K.html
https://barefeats.com/imac5k4.html
https://larryjordan.com/articles/mac-pro-video-compression/
https://videoandfilmmaker.com/wp/index.php/news/imac-vs-macpro-great-debate/
Some interesting, some inconclusive. On the whole it seems to go with the consensus that if you ever work in 4K raw, go pro. If you only ever work in ProRes and stay in short form with limited colour correction and encoding, go for the iMac…
If you go for the Mac Pro, get the d700s, and as much ram as you can afford – aftermarket is fine as long as it’s fast enough. The processors speed performance up but until you compare the 6 to the 12 there isn’t enough difference. Sweet spot is an 8core with everything maxed.
The other thing to note is that if you do invest in a red rocket, it’s pointless if the red camera has been upgraded to dragon sensor. Even if it shoots at 4K on the dragon, the difference in debayer means the original rocket is redundant. Would love for someone to fund a test with the new Titan in an external enclosure with some 6k footage….
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
[Tom Sefton] “Would love for someone to fund a test with the new Titan in an external enclosure with some 6k footage….”
Do it with a Titan X and watch the enclosure melt… 😀
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One of the concerns I have in this upgrade is that a lot of the desirable local storage is shifting to Thunderbolt. So If I want to add a fast local RAID, it almost pushes me into a new Mac Pro as opposed to updating the tower any further.
Unfortunately the biggest negative for the nMP is the lack of any functional upgradability. As evidenced by the fact that we are discussing a several years old tower proves the fact that future expansion has its value over planned obsolescence.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “As evidenced by the fact that we are discussing a several years old tower proves the fact that future expansion has its value over planned obsolescence.”
I mean, really, if ASUS came out tomorrow and said that they had developed drivers for macOS that allowed it to work with their PCIe Thunderbolt expansion card, would you ever consider a 2013 Mac Pro?
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