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Ridiculous Feature Request: MacPro as Target Disk & GPU/Priciest External Ever
I suspect this is impossible, but man would I love it if you could connect the new 5k iMac via thunderbolt2 to a MacPro, and run Resolve on the iMac using it’s internal ATI card for the GUI and use both of the dual graphics cards in the MacPro as GPU’s. Sort of like when you boot into target disk mode, but instead you’d boot the MacPro into a target GPU mode.
Slightly pricy for what’s basically a GPU box at that point, but a solution that might work in certain situations, especially if you work in a multi use facility that only colors a few times a month (if you are coloring every day a dedicated GPU thunderbolt box would make more sense). Sometimes the Mac Pro is used for color GPU support, other times it’s free to do other jobs as an independent system (which doesn’t work with a normal GPU box). Especially if the Mac Pro’s processor and memory could also be used in target mode, though I suspect that is even harder to configure than using the GPU’s. Especially since the Mac Pro is Xeon and the iMac is Core i7. Though it is possible to spec them to match, both Quad Core 3.7Ghz, I believe.
5K Resolve GUI interface, dual workstation class GPU’s, $5500, sometimes it’s one computer sometimes it’s two, like a GoBot, kind of a dream.
Maybe he reverse would be possible/easier, running Resolve on the MacPro (for the processor power), using the iMac just for it’s 5k display, but using the graphics card in the iMac to power the display so that both graphics cards in the MacPro are available to Resolve as GPU’s. All probably impossible, but would be nice. And if it worked it might sell more Da Vinci dongles, since you’d need the full Resolve and not just Lite to use the extra GPU power.
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6 Replies
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Not gonna happen. But it would be interesting to see if somebody could figure out how to use a render farm from Resolve. You figure we’re almost there, having the ability to have three people work on one project at the same time.
Using multiple processors and GPUs already works fine in Linux, but that costs real money.
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The best renderfarm for Resolve at this point is a second nMP and shared storage.
What I always wanted to see is a render manager which could just spilt projects and render them on the available machines.
So you can buy a couple of macMinis for example and stack em and let them to the number crunching while you are working with the client on new material.A slice of color…
Resolve 10.1.4 – Smoke 2015
Colorist / VFX / Aerial footage nerd
https://vimeo.com/saschahaber -
[Sascha Haber] “What I always wanted to see is a render manager which could just spilt projects and render them on the available machines. So you can buy a couple of macMinis for example and stack em and let them to the number crunching while you are working with the client on new material.”
That works for me. Love to see that kind of feature added.
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What would be the way of making the creation process faster on the imac, for color grading? Which external video card I would be able to use?
Thanks in advance,Guilherme
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In a sense, this is how the Linux version distributes processing.
Remember “Apple QMaster?” It didn’t work, either.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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Last I checked OSX does not support external video card for GPU acceleration yet. That is something you will have to wait on besides the limitation of Thunderbolt bandwidth for GPU usage.
Eric-ADK
Tech Manager
support@adkvideoediting.com
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