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The Cheese Grater is back
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[greg janza] “There’s a certain amount of irony that I’m working on a new imac pro at my current gig but using a Das keyboard and Logitech mouse due to the fact that both the mac keyboard and mouse are ergonomic disasters.”
I don’t mind the mice, but it would not be hyperbole to say that I hate the new keyboards and trackpads.
Doug Metz
Dalton+Anode
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[greg janza] “but using a Das keyboard and Logitech mouse due to the fact that both the mac keyboard and mouse are ergonomic disasters.”
But that’s a personal preferences that others don’t necessarily share. The shop I’m at has 9 stations (MP, iM, iMP) – all with stock Apple keyboards/mice. In fact, I had purchased a set of regular Logitech mice to go around and everyone has gravitated back to the Apple mice. The only thing extra is a tablet that the main AE designer uses.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Bill Davis] “In the new MacPro approach, there’s a specific solution (Afterburner) that moves the transcoding load off of both the CPU and the GPU and onto a special programmable processor that is designed to eliminate playback bottlenecks.
“I think it should be noted that this is an extra-cost option. And it’s essentially what RED did with their RED Rocket cards years ago, and now again through their deal with NVIDIA. It’s a nice addition, but frankly, ProRes/PRRAW was not a heavy lift on Apple hardware to begin with. Let’s see if people develop for it beyond those codecs.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Oliver Peters] “Let’s see if people develop for it beyond those codecs.”
Craig Federighi on John Grubers latest Daring Fireball WWDC video interview specifically said the Reason they created Afterburner in the form of a flash programmable ASIC was so that they could re-code it “at will” to do other things apart from accelerating and moving ProRes and ProRes RAW processing off both the CPU and GPUs.
It sounded to me kinda like they already have a variety of “white board stage” use cases they are looking at.
Time will tell.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
As Bill says, it’s all about productivity – and paying the mortgage, sending your kids to school, etc. In the US, you unlucky people, paying your medical bills. Thank God for the NHS, I’ve used it a good bit in the past few years.
Anyway – productivity, and profit. You need the cheapest gear that will do the job effectively, in this case editing. Long ago I used to spec this sort of thing for the BBC. Customer loyalty – or drinking someone’s Kool Aid – wasn’t part of the equation in any way at all. I bought a G4 on a BBC budget because FCP was the best editing system ever.
Some people have to do lots of editing on a laptop to earn a crust. I have, but it’s something I really don’t enjoy. I want two big screens, a decent sound system, a comfy chair. Already I’ve started the desired spec. How much will I pay for the comfy chair? As little as possible, provided it does its job. Who will make it? Who cares? How much am I going to pay for the magic box on the floor here that allows me to create art – or just hang a few shots together? As little as possible in order to get the job done. Clients don’t give a stuff about what gear you have, any more that what car you drive.
So what kind of magic box do I want? If I was making feature films, a reasonably fancy one – but I would want to spec it myself, and probably build it too. A pretty box wouldn’t be part of the deal. If I’m not making feature films, and I’m not, I don’t need something that will run 8k with effects in real time, so I can cut the price I pay considerably. If I build, or have built, an appropriate pc, I can have an infinite choice of components to fit whatever spec level I need at the time. If I was starting from scratch the software would be Resolve, quite obviously, because it’s a class act in rapid development, and free. Don’t care about the operating system as long as it works – I’ve used lots of them. A pretty box still isn’t part of the deal.
It’s 25 years since I first built a pc . It’s easy, like doing Lego, and the results are very very reliable. Since the first ones were for our production unit at the BBC, and we were turning out two half hour arts shows a week on a tiny budget, they needed to be.
So – I would have thought that anyone in business who want to make a profit, really doesn’t care who makes the gear, only that it does the required job. I passed through the Apple world as an independent a few years ago now – a G4 and two successive Hackintoshes. From standing on the outside it’s a prohibitive small world, with big walls, like some religious cults. Why pay for some massively over-specced pc in a fancy box running a different operating system (with no CUDA), when you can have whatever you want tomorrow, or the day after, probably for rather less money?
As Bill says, it’s about productivity, and profit. I look forward to the first buyer of this machine coming on here telling us how amazing it is – of course it is, it must be because you paid a fortune for it.
Bernie
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[Bill Davis] “It sounded to me kinda like they already have a variety of “white board stage” use cases they are looking at. “
Probably. I would imagine that RED would be one of the first. Maybe also BMD for Blackmagic RAW.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Oliver Peters] “A day rate for a home studio – editor + gear/room – should be minimum of $1K-2K/day in most medium US markets. “
Of course this brings up the point of if you’re charging by the day or hour what’s the financial incentive to speed up the process slightly with a Mac Pro? Do you think clients will be convinced to pay a higher day rate because you have a slightly faster Mac? I don’t think so. In these cases, the smart money is on a well-fitted iMac (not even iMac Pro).
Even if in Herb’s case you bid out whole projects. Unless you’re turning down other projects that you could take on with a slight speed boost in productivity, the financial incentive for getting the fastest possible machine isn’t there either.
The Mac Pro is a machine for workflows that do not work well with existing Mac hardware.
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[Brett Sherman] “Of course this brings up the point of if you’re charging by the day or hour what’s the financial incentive to speed up the process slightly with a Mac Pro?”
Possibly to preserve your own sanity ☺
[Brett Sherman] “the financial incentive for getting the fastest possible machine isn’t there either”
I don’t think it’s a matter of replacing what you have, just because something new is out there. You replace a machine when the time is right – it’s too old, it has problems, you want to run newer software, your video requirements get more demanding, etc.
So then when it is time to make a change, you pick the best machine to match your business projections. Do you have 10 years of productive and improving (or at least not decreasing) business prospects? If so, then maybe this machine becomes attractive. If not, there are plenty of alternatives from Apple and elsewhere.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Oliver Peters] “Possibly to preserve your own sanity ☺”
There’s nothing possible about that, it’s definitely the reason. That’s why I spent 1K on my chair, and it’s why hammock breaks are part of my working day. I’ve spent too long working in situations we’re I’m fighting my own gear as I’m fighting the clock, it leads to sleeping on facility couches and rising bleary eyed to unproductive outcomes. I’ve often said that an editor’s best, most creative tool is time spent away from a project, to that I will add a positive working environment.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
[Bernard Newnham] “Clients don’t give a stuff about what gear you have, any more that what car you drive. “
They “give a stuff” about what kind of car you drive in they have to ride in it. If you pick them up at the airport and your car can’t get them to the job, yeah…… they would care.
They care what type of gear you have also. They will request a certain type of camera and some will even say they want it shot at a certain frame rate and if you can’t do that you’re out. When you say “gear” you must be talking strictly about the computer you are cutting on.
I see the new MP as an investment. I’m looking at that machine as something I could run for the next 10 years or likely longer. I’m guessing that’s why it cost so much. They know people are gonna sit on it for years like the old one so they need to get paid now.
I also look at long term dependability. My last grader has been solid every day for years and that’s what I expect from this new one. I want to be able to do high level work on this machine well into the future. I’m not just looking at now, I’m looking way down the road.
I would think that the resale value of the new MP would be higher than some pc I snapped together myself, if I had to guess.
Since you know about our healthcare system (hopefully soon to be improved) you ought to know that a machine like that is a tax write-off here. You just hand the receipt for that box to your accountant at tax time and get a lot of money back.
People were happy with their graders. They wanted another one. They gave it to you.
Btw, if you get that monitor you likely won’t have to buy another one of those for a long time either. Also a write-off.
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