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What Mac Pro Configuration for 5K R3D in an HD Timeline?
I’m in the market for a Mac Pro to run Premiere Pro. I need to be economical with the purchase, as I don’t often work from home, but I can’t find much info on which upgrades will really improve performance with Premiere. I’ve worked on a previous generation iMac that could kind of play back 5K R3D files in a 1080 timeline, and a fully loaded new Mac Pro that did pretty well with them. So I need something better than the iMac and something cheaper than the $9600 mac pro. I’m looking at the base $2999 model. I plan to upgrade to 32GB of ram right off the bat (probably 3rd party), but if I were to go for another upgrade would I be better off upgrading to dual D500s versus a 6 core processor? Or is the base 4 core version with dual D300s a configuration that will let me edit projects like the one above with reasonable responsiveness? I know these are very specific questions, but I’m hoping someone out there knows the answers to some of them.
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9 Replies
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I would suggest waiting for Haswell E on X99 for 5K work which will be available soon and far better for 4K+ workflows. However if the nMPro is the only option then you need the 6 Core and the D500’s. Premiere does not have nearly as good performance with the AMD cards as Nvidia cards nor is the dual GPU going to help with realtime playback. Dual GPU support is only on render/export and the performance increase is not that efficient ie good right now.
Eric-ADK
Tech Manager
support@adkvideoediting.com -
Thank you for your thoughts. But if the dual GPU support only really helps with render and export then what is the reason for upgrading to the D500? Single GPU support? I did consider PC options, but usually when I work on a side project at home I’m inevitably handed a thunderbolt drive that is Mac formatted. I know I could use a driver to read a mac formatted drive on Windows, but when you start to work with non-standard equipment all eyes turn to you when there is a problem. Plus I believe the nMP is certified for Avid as well, so it’s nice to have support available for that as well.
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Avid works fine on Windows as well. The reason to get the D500 is because the D300 is not nearly a good a card. The performance would already be far less with the Open CL and AMD card. Now your adding a far lower end card on that. The goal is 4K+ and the req’s are what they are. Lowering the video card is just going to further degrade the performance.
Eric-ADK
Tech Manager
support@adkvideoediting.com -
Thanks. Yes, I know Avid runs great on PCs, I use it all the time. I was only speaking to their certification process, which would necessitate me buying something like an HP z820, z620, or something like that on the PC side. A lot of people make the argument that you can build a beefy i7 based PC for cheap, but you end up with a non-certified machine that won’t be supported by Avid. Then I would still need to deal with mac formatted drives, and I’m not sure how solid support is for that on Windows, which I believe would require some type of 3rd party support. But all that is really beside the point, I decided it is better for me to go with a Mac for side projects as it is what is expected by many indy producers, and using anything else is another battle that I don’t want to deal with.
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Well Mac Drive is what you use for OSX formatted drives on Windows. Yes it is 3rd party but it works fine since it’s just adding support for HFS+ Partitions. If PC is not an viable option then those are the nMPro specs your looking for with that goal. Less than that and the performance will likely be an issue with Adobe right now especially with the current state of Open CL in Adobe. BTW that is not the ideal spec for that media. That is just a spec that should be able to work with it provided you have atleast 16GB of ram.
Eric-ADK
Tech Manager
support@adkvideoediting.com -
I’m truly much obliged. Thank you!
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If you can budget out 32GB of ram you really need to with R3D media of that resolution. 16GB is bare minimum and I cant say how much it will limit performance with the CC 2014 GPU accelerated debayering if your using 2014.
Eric-ADK
Tech Manager
support@adkvideoediting.com -
What is your target deliverable? If it is 1080, then check the option in Premiere Pro’s preferences to scale all media to frame size, start any 1080 timeline and start editing. Premiere Pro will automatically scale and raster the image @ 1080.
If however, you want to edit and deliver 5k, the more you spend the better you will perform. Also note the new ‘set to frame size’ option which re-scales but does not raster the image so you can do pan and scan type work with the large frame material.
32GB is a minimum in my book and obviously some kind of semi-decent RAID to push the media through. The GPU’s come in handy because with Premiere Pro CC 2014, we utilize the GPU to help debayer RED material so that you can get a higher quality playback with effects than previously. D500’s & 6core sounds about right but ultimately see if you can test it on a system to get a sense of performance to make sure it meets your expectations and then plan accordingly.
Hope this helps,
Dennis – Adobe guy -
Great, this is exactly the kind of info I was looking for! I don’t see much point in scaling all of the footage if that makes it difficult to resize using the full res clips. I have been working with ‘set to frame size’ for that reason. Sounds like I know what I need. Thanks!
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