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Will Apple abandon pro-users all together?
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[Frank Gothmann] “No, external SAS is cheaper, faster and much more expandable. I posted about this earlier.”
This has not really been my assessment when a good controller is factored in, particularly with Mac-compatable controllers.
[Frank Gothmann] “TB Expansion is PCIe 4x, so half the performance you get from a modern Raid, Fibre or 10Gig Controller.”
Err… huh? You appear to be assuming that since PCIe cards that support those things are sometimes 8x, they actually require that bandwidth. But that’s not actually the case. Thunderbolt’s has two full-duplex 10 Gbps channels. That’s a total external bandwidth of 2500 MB/s. And higher-end iMac models have two independent ports. This is significantly more bandwidth than is required by e.g. 10 GbE.
[Frank Gothmann] “AJA’s forthcoming TB solution only handles 8-Channel audio which is useless to me. I need 12 so I need a Kona 3. “
You’re essentially going down a list of edge cases here. Perhaps it’s possible that Thunderbolt is useless to you, but it’s entirely suitable for the vast majority of pro video work. You’re not really complaining about Apple abandoning the pro video niche here, but about Apple supposedly abandoning a niche within that niche.
Blackmagic’s UltraStudio Pro Thunderbolt interface does 16 channels of audio over HD-SDI, incidentally. There’s no Thunderbolt-related limitation in play here; your complaint seems to be with the production features AJA has chosen to include.
[Frank Gothmann] “I don’t care what might be in 5 or 10 years. I need to run a business today.”
We’re talking about Apple’s future product decisions. Today, the Mac Pro is still on sale, and I’d be quite surprised if it didn’t receive an update in Q1 2012.
[Frank Gothmann] “Try running 4k DPX files off your TB raid on a laptop for film restauration and let me know if one or two weeks difference in render time matter to you and your business.”
Even most Hollywood feature films are not being finished at 4K. You are, again, not really talking about pro video editing here, but about a niche within a niche. 4K DPX is effectively the only format that Promise’s Thunderbolt RAID can’t handle in real-time, and Thunderbolt itself actually is fast enough for 4K DPX on paper.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “Err… huh? You appear to be assuming that since PCIe cards that support those things are sometimes 8x, they actually require that bandwidth. But that’s not actually the case. Thunderbolt’s has two full-duplex 10 Gbps channels. That’s a total external bandwidth of 2500 MB/s. And higher-end iMac models have two independent ports. This is significantly more bandwidth than is required by e.g. 10 GbE.”
We get a good 800 Mbs throughput with our SAN, 1.300 with individual SAS Raids. The 6-drive TB enclosure peaks at 550 Mbs as various benchmarks show. So, it is substantially slower then other solutions. These are real-world tests and easily verifiable. The theoretical bandwith is of no use to me.
[Chris Kenny] “You’re not really complaining about Apple abandoning the pro video niche here, but about Apple supposedly abandoning a niche within that niche.”
I am complaining about “less choice”. We are talking about three small raid boxes atm compared to dozens and dozens of options. Same for video io, other connectivy etc. Give me TB but don’t drop PCIe.
[Chris Kenny] “Blackmagic’s UltraStudio Pro Thunderbolt interface does 16 channels of audio over HD-SDI, incidentally. There’s no Thunderbolt-related limitation in play here; your complaint seems to be with the production features AJA has chosen to include.”
Again, I am talking about “less choice”. If TB only is the future I’d have exactely ONE product to go with. Great!
Most of theTB stuff isn’t cross platform so… all the work that requires windows via bootcamp. Need to buy it all again plus another windows workstation.[Chris Kenny] “You are, again, not really talking about pro video editing here, but about a niche within a niche.”
Yes, I am. So? That’s the kind of work that I do. This threat isnt called pro video editing but pro users. A 6000 dollar workstation obviously isn’t a mass market product but for a niche. And if Apple doesn’t want to serve that niche anymore… let people know so they can move on.
[Chris Kenny] ” 4K DPX is effectively the only format that Promise’s Thunderbolt RAID can’t handle in real-time, and Thunderbolt itself actually is fast enough for 4K DPX on paper.”
This wasn’t even with regards to TB but with regards to Apple dropping dual-cpu towers. How would you want to work and render such files? On an iMac, your Laptop or on a cluster of dual-cpu workstations? That’s a serious question, please answer it.
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[Frank Gothmann] “And what’s the advantage of all that?
You get an iMac for 2.000 dollars. Then a TB Raid enclosure for 6 drives that will set you back another 1.800 (the same amount of drives you can easily fit into a proper modern workstation), two TB expansion chassis to have 4 pci slots (running at a 25 per cent speed), another box for video io and another one for dual-link ethernet. And possibly another one for…”I was wondering about the display cards. The release of FCPX had tower owners out buying new display cards for compatibility. Can you swap display cards in an iMac these days… didn’t use to be able to, which meant scrapping the entire iMac. That would be a rather expensive difference between an iMac and a tower?
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com
http://www.insightproductions.com“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill
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[Frank Gothmann] “I am complaining about “less choice”. We are talking about three small raid boxes atm compared to dozens and dozens of options. Same for video io, other connectivy etc. Give me TB but don’t drop PCIe.”
This is a consequence of Thunderbolt having been on the market for a very short period of time. It has essentially no relevance to the subject being discussed, namely whether high-end towers will continue to be necessary for professional video production in the future.
[Frank Gothmann] “This wasn’t even with regards to TB but with regards to Apple dropping dual-cpu towers. How would you want to work and render such files? On an iMac, your Laptop or on a cluster of dual-cpu workstations? That’s a serious question, please answer it.”
I’m not disputing that there are still some tasks better performed on towers, but I think people are overstating the extent to which this is actually necessary. It is, objectively, largely not necessary for any task you were performing prior to the last couple of years, because, as noted previously, today’s MacBook Pros are about on par with 2008 dual processor Mac Pros, and only really ~30% slower than today’s base-model 8-core Mac Pro.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “This is a consequence of Thunderbolt having been on the market for a very short period of time. It has essentially no relevance to the subject being discussed, namely whether high-end towers will continue to be necessary for professional video production in the future.”
Sure it does. When a company repeatedly drops features and flexibility from its soft- and hardware in favour of what they think might one day become a standard then such company is a liability for any business and I won’t play along. I want to decide what workflow and what hardware works best for my needs, I don’t want or need Apple bullying me into this.
[Chris Kenny] “It is, objectively, largely not necessary for any task you were performing prior to the last couple of years, because, as noted previously, today’s MacBook Pros are about on par with 2008 dual processor Mac Pros, and only really ~30% slower than today’s base-model 8-core Mac Pro.”
That statement doesn’t make sense. I want to get things done quicker and faster today on top of getting them done at all. If I can save 40 per cent render time by using a tower today then that’s a of money saved stretched out over a year or two, regardless of wether a 40 per cent longer render time was normal and acceptable years ago.
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https://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/11/stale-mac-pro-lineup-has-pro-users-concerned.ars
The natives are getting restless…Apple have already thrown a lot in the trash bin.
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[Frank Gothmann] “Sure it does. When a company repeatedly drops features and flexibility from its soft- and hardware in favour of what they think might one day become a standard then such company is a liability for any business and I won’t play along. I want to decide what workflow and what hardware works best for my needs, I don’t want or need Apple bullying me into this.”
Apple has not yet canceled the Mac Pro, and by the time they do, there will be more Thunderbolt devices on the market.
[Frank Gothmann] “That statement doesn’t make sense.”
It does in the context of people talking about Apple “abandoning pro users altogether”. That implies Apple selling only machines that pro users couldn’t plausibly use to get their work done, not just machines that are a bit slower than what they could be offering (but still faster than what anyone was using to do that work a year or two earlier).
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Mitch Ives] “I was wondering about the display cards. The release of FCPX had tower owners out buying new display cards for compatibility. Can you swap display cards in an iMac these days… didn’t use to be able to, which meant scrapping the entire iMac. That would be a rather expensive difference between an iMac and a tower?”
You still can’t upgrade the graphics. Though external GPUs via Thunderbolt might be viable. (Yeah, it’s only 4x, but if you look at GPU benchmarks with cards in slots of various speeds, this matters less than you might think.)
But anyway, an iMac probably costs half as much as a tower. Just buy a new one twice as often, sell the old one, and you’ll almost certainly come out ahead vs. trying to keep a tower twice as long and buying upgrades for it along the way.
And if you’re the sort of person who needs a laptop, a MacBook Pro is certainly a lot cheaper than a MacBook Pro plus a Mac Pro. You can probably afford to replace the MBP three times as often if you quit buying Mac Pros as well and just use the laptop for everything, which has now become remarkably viable.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Christian Schumacher] “https://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/11/stale-mac-pro-lineup-has-pro-user…
The natives are getting restless…Apple have already thrown a lot in the trash bin.”
Saw that in Ars nearly a month ago and it instantly reminded me that this whole discussion of “dumped the pros” is like deja vu.
I heard the EXACT same things when I tried to talk folks into giving FCP V1 a try back at the end of 2000.
I’ve learned to take all the “it’s NOT for PRO use” talk with a huge grain of salt since I’ve watched countless times as the market decided that something totally inadequate for “professional” work – swept the market and eventually became the darling of the same pros who dismissed it most loudly upon inception.
Off the top of my head…
DV vs Beta-cam
Laserwriters vs Linotronics
H4ns vs Nagras
LEDs vs HMIsClearly I’m NOT saying that the former is superior to the latter. (in most cases, the exact opposite is clearly true.) I’m saying that the VALUE PROPOSITION of the former created an income stream so significant that the marketers of the former eventually BECAME the companies who were healthy enough to continue to advance and grow and move their products firmly into the professional space.
If the “laptop lines” are the production lines humming in the manufacturers plants around the world – it just stands to reason that they resources are going to go there first.
Personally I’d LOVE to see Apple ZAG once again while the market keeps ZIGGING and introduce some new component-able building block monster desktop array that lets you pick and choose the blocks you need right up to the bleeding edge. That makes a LOT more sense to me than building heavy blocks of (albeit beautifully milled) aluminum that cook away under the desk and are a kind of a hassle to transport, connect, and upgrade.
I’m doing end of year cleaning in the studio, and I just came across a big box of about 2 dozen AppleTalk boxes and maybe 150 feet of attendant cable. I also know that there’s probably 200 feet of various signal and power cables in service to the Audio/Computer/Cinema Display and NTSC monitors around the system I’m typing this on.
It seems SO old fashioned when compared to my MacBook Pro that does nearly everything the MacPro does, but without all the attached crap.
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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I don’t know maybe I’m just old school, but even after reading your posts I’m thinking wouldn’t it be safer to revert back to AVID on PC ? Even if they laid off 200 people and the stock is trading at a record low, they certainly look well positionned to reclaim some market, no?
Dreamworks went with linux a while back and there pushing it ever farther…
Their key concern was scalability of software, hardware and network.
https://www.redhat.com/summit/dreamworks/index.html
It’s hard to foresee just how scalable and how well the new generation of Apple hardware and software will “play with others” . But FCX certainly has failed in that department so far (see Walter Murch’s interview: https://www.macvideo.tv/editing/interviews/?articleId=3316346)
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