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Which Mac desktop to get for FCP Studio or FCP X
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The mercury playback engine doesn’t utilize the GPU. The newer models in December should becuase they’re using nVidia cards. The only current macs that Premiere mercury accesses the graphics card are the macbook pros. There is a hack where you can get it to recognize the radeon in the iMac as compatible, but in my experience it actually hampered performance, and eventually made the machine crash. Perhaps some updates have changed this in the last 4 months.
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Well, the pegasus raids are nearly silent, and they don’t get overheated, and they do have fans. The fan in my blackmagic or occasionally the iMac is louder. Certainly none of it can be heard over the speakers. It’s a non issue.
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You’re wrong about the raytracing. And AE doens’t even support OpenGL. They ditched it. You can’t render OpenGL now. They completely admitted defeat on that one.
Maybe raytracing isn’t the right phrase. But if you want to render extrusions, you have to use the raytracing engine. Here’s the problem on the iMac. It doesn’t support CUDA, AND if you use the raytracing engine, it disables multiprocessor rendering. Your’e using 1 core. That’s a double whammy. I’ve set up some very basic stuff to render with the 3D engine, and it literally wanted hundreds of hours to complete the task. And this stuff was just using the extrusions. I didn’t even attempt to put the reflections and such in that you see in the demos. Adobe itself claims that using the CUDA is the equivalent to hundreds of processor cores. Maybe thousands, I forget. It’s ridiculous. But if you’re doing the same old AE 5 type stuff we’ve all been doing for years, the iMac cranks it out as good as any old MacPro just about did.
I run premiere on it. It gets by ok without the acceleration, about like FCP 7 in terms of layers of playback, but once again it’s reliant on the processors. All in all, it’s not as big a deal or nearly an issue at all compared to the AE issue.
You know, I don’t think you can even buy a current iMac from Apple right now. I don’t see them on their site. Just a note the new ones are coming. That’s not their usual style. Obviously they knew they needed to at least show it off, even if they can’t produce enough to sell yet. But that’s a pretty decent wait for Apple. December that is. And it’ll probably be late november for the 21.5 and that’ll probably be limited or delayed.
I’m getting one. Might just make it my AE station.
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er, oops? I hadn’t checked the openGL preference thing in ages – I didn’t realise the thing was actually gone? ermm, anyway…
yeah, you know what you’re talking about way better than me on the raytracing thing – I vaguely knew It kicked in with extrusion, but I didn’t realise it was that much of a pain. I’ve barely touched it. Also I found that Stu Maschwitz post https://prolost.com/cs6
he saying the exact same stuff as you – CUDA, or the lack of it, has a ginormous impact on render times.
And yep – I’m thinking new IMac for me AE station too.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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Guys,
I really appreciate all this amazing info!
So, i think iMac it is, (the new one coming out) and maybe with some sort of raid thunderbolt drive.
In all honesty, last time I edited was a year ago or so when I was still using FCP 7 on various Mac towers (not my own) and my trusted 17 inch Mac Book Pro (my own) and external drives. I completely skipped the FC Studio debacle, btw.. I was in a cave. 😉
So, this new Mac that my university grad department wants to get may be multipurpose — it may ALSO be used for game design and development.
In other words, if I get the new iMac coming out with some sort of external drive set up (thunderbolt raid drive) can I load FCP X, some Adobe stuff (like AE, Photoshop, etc), AND Unity Pro (game development software) all on the same machine? Will the new iMAcs work with 3D software?
Also, if I get a thunderbolt external drive, WHICH BRAND is best (G-Raid with thunderbolt??) I have had bad experience with Lacie in the past…
Other things to do with this new iMAc will be hooking it up via HDMI cable to a PS3 and record game action on the computer via capture screen software (which I don’t think will be hard).
Anyway, I’m listing all the things I may be doing with this computer! Jeez…
Many thanks!!!
SandraSandra Danilovic
Independent Filmmaker, Toronto, ON
Rodna Films Inc. -
[Bret Williams] “Here’s the problem on the iMac. It doesn’t support CUDA, AND if you use the raytracing engine, it disables multiprocessor rendering. Your’e using 1 core. That’s a double whammy. I’ve set up some very basic stuff to render with the 3D engine, and it literally wanted hundreds of hours to complete the task. And this stuff was just using the extrusions. I didn’t even attempt to put the reflections and such in that you see in the demos. Adobe itself claims that using the CUDA is the equivalent to hundreds of processor cores. Maybe thousands, I forget. It’s ridiculous. But if you’re doing the same old AE 5 type stuff we’ve all been doing for years, the iMac cranks it out as good as any old MacPro just about did.”
The ray-tracing renderer does disable multiprocessing, but it does not use only a single core. Ray-tracing is highly parallel, multi-threaded, and will run on all available CPUs. Watch Activity Monitor during a ray-tracing render — your CPU should be maxed out.
Multi-processing (running multiple separate instances of the renderer for multiple separate output frames) is a completely different idea. Instead of multiple separate copies of the renderer working on multiple separate frames, the ray-tracing renderer uses all available CPUs to render the current frame.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Shows what I know. But I do know it’s butt ugly slow without CUDA!
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[Bret Williams] “But I do know it’s butt ugly slow without CUDA!”
Yes! It’s so slow without CUDA that I only use it for projects I know I can complete entirely on my workstation in my studio. If I even suspect that I’ll have to take it on the road on a laptop at any point, I go some other route.
In fairness, though, ray-tracing in general is very slow. (3D artists are used to render times measure in minutes per frame, but Ae artists may not be.) For a little more background, it’s helpful to know that the Ae ray-tracing renderer uses OptiX, an NVIDIA-based ray-tracing library. (See the announcement of the tech demo [link] back from 2011.) The ability to accelerate ray-tracing on a GPU is very important not just for rendering, but also for giving an artist feedback as he or she works.
To bring this vaguely back on-topic, it’s very exciting to see Apple working well with NVIDIA again. I would love to see the long-standing GPU gap in Macs vs. PCs shrink.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
I think a few posts gave mentioned the Promise Pegasus R4 or R6. I think that’s your best prosumer option which us fine if you only have one user on the iMac at a time. But I’m concerned about that $4,000 limit in your budget, that’s why I suggested a fast raid may need to wait. You’ll be happier making sure you allocate enough funds to ensure you can buy an iMac with more memory and a Fusion drive now.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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Anyone notice that the new iMacs dropped FW800? Only USB3, Gig-E and T-bolt. Hmmm…. Kiss those FW800 removable drives goodbye when the MacPro-replacement comes out.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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