Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
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[Rich Rubasch] “What about the new Apple monitor? Same problem? Is there an adjustment for saturation? Because the rest of the world is not looking at content on an Apple monitor.”
From the FCP.co article in Bill’s post I get the idea that James Tonkin trusts the new Apple monitor as reference monitor.
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[Oliver Peters] “The issue I’ve always had with dual displays – especially as we’ve gotten to using much larger displays than in the early Avid and FCP legacy days – is that you often tend to scoot your chair over in front of one display or the other. Our main AE artist has a 27″ iMP + 27″ Dell and he only puts a few panels on the right edge of the left display (Dell). Not even using the full real estate. He fills out the rest with Spotify ☺”
Yeah, seating distance becomes an issue. At my last gig I had 3 27″ 1440p displays and I l-o-v-e-d it, but they took up a lot of desk space (no monitor arms) and I had to sit about 3ft back from the center display in order to have all three comfortable in my field of view (the two flanking displays were angled in maybe 30 degrees or so).
Similar deal with my 43″ at home. It has to be about a yard away which just means I have it positioned all the way at the back of my desk. I use about 70% of the screen for my main app, and then the 30% remaining on the left I use for email/web, scripts, Finder windows, etc., I mainly use PPro at home so the extra height gives me plenty of room to pancake.
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The question I’ve always had with curved monitors is do they distort your perception of what’s straight vs curved in a meaningful way? When I’ve looked at curved monitors at the store I’ve always been aware of the way the UI, GFX, etc., ‘bend’ when I’m looking at them, but I don’t know if that bend ‘goes away’ (you mind compensates for it) after you’ve used one for a while. Also, the viewing angle isn’t supposed to be as wide as flat monitors (obviously the curve is designed for someone sitting dead center), but that might not be a problem if you don’t have clients looking over your shoulder.
When I built my Hack over the summer I decided to replace my monitors too (they were both over 10yrs old) and I looked at curved monitors, but I ended up going with a 4K 43″ LG that Costco had at a great price. I’m used to using dual monitors for the GUI (2×27″ at my most recent gig, and a 24″ and 23″ at home) so getting used to one big, 43″ screen has taken some time (my 17″ b’cast monitor looks very diminutive now), but I’m enjoying the extra vertical real estate.
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[Tim Wilson] “It was probably inevitable going back to higher-than-expected failure rates of NVIDIA chipsets in MacBook Pros back in 2008.”
Maybe… but AMD GPUs were in the 2011-2013 MBPs that required an extended warranty/repair program, the nMPS that had GPU issues, and, going way back, the OG Mac Pros (which had some faulty ATi X1900 cards). Apple just seems to have a history of GPU-related issues (and part of it is due to thermal issues since size and weight are so high on Apple’s list of priorities).
The crutch of the current issue isn’t that Apple doesn’t want Nvidia silicon in Macs, it’s that Apple doesn’t want to support 3rd party APIs (including CUDA) in MacOS. If Nvidia started supporting Metal then I’d bet Nvidia cards would still be an option (at least as eGPUs and user upgrades to Mac Pros).
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While there is probably justified finger pointing from both sides, I think it boils down to Apple wanting their operating systems to be Metal-only.
Apple stopped updating support for OpenGL and OpenCL around 2011. Metal was first released to the public in 2014 (presumably the creating of Metal took years). I don’t think Apple ever support Vulkan. Coincidence? It looks like Apple let CUDA stick around until they thought Metal could get similar performance and then they shut the door.
People that primarily stick to the 1st party Apple ecosystem aren’t going to feel a thing, and even most run of the mill post operations probably won’t in the near future as well because, to Jeremy’s point, GPUs just aren’t typically heavily hammered in typical video post (yeah, back in the day PPro leaned on CUDA hard, but customer demand got them to improve OpenCL and Metal performance so people weren’t ‘forced’ to get an Nvidia card). From what I’ve read very data intensive fields like deep learning, self-driving cars, VR, AR, etc., get a lot out of CUDA (and are places Nvidia has intentionally expended over the years) so the new Mac Pro plowing into big-iron PC territory probably won’t happen. Apple-centric places will get beefier machines, but it’s hard for me to imagine the Mac Pro will pull in a significant amount of switchers or retain users that really benefit from using CUDA.
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I Googled “how to stream on youtube mac” (I assume you are on a Mac) and got a ton of tutorial hits (I didn’t take the time to go through them because there were so many). From what I can glean though you use free software to live stream from you computer and you can setup a private/password protected YouTube channel.
For talking back and forth you and the director can just hop on the phone or use an app like Discord.
If you try out no budget solutions and they are rocky that might open the director up to paying for a better experience.
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[Herb Sevush] “Did you go Vega over Nvidia for OSX comparability?”
Yes. If I was building a straight Win10 machine I would’ve gone with Nvidia.
[Herb Sevush] “Also was there any reason to put your OSX boot on the sata card as opposed to the NVMe?”
I think it was recommend for this particular build of Hack (something to do with specific UEFI settings). Also, since I’m running a separate Win10 it was recommend to disconnect the MacOS drive prior to installing Win10 (to prevent he Win10 installer from overwriting some files on the boot portion of the Mac drive) and it’s easier to pull a plug on the SSD than unscrew the NVMe.
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[Herb Sevush] “Can you describe the components you used for the Hack ?”
Of course. It pretty much sits between the high-end iMac and the entry level iMac Pro.
3.6ghz, 8-core i9
Gigabyte Z390 mobo (Thunderbolt 3 and USB C)
64gig RAM (3200 Mhz)
AMD Vega 56
BeQuiet! Dark Base 700 case (I’ve yet to hear the fans ramp up even when doing long exports or transcodes).
1TB SSD SATA (MacOS)
1TB SSD NVMe (Win10)
43″ 4K LG display (Yes, that’s huge, but CostCo had a great sale going on). I didn’t set out for a 4K monitor, but the deal was too good to pass up.Including a new keyboard (my 2007-era white Mac keyboard was dying a slow death), the total cost (with tax and shipping) was about $2600.
It’s the first machine I’ve built in about 20yrs so I was a little slow in getting it put togther (it took me the better part of a day), but it was a lot of fun. Getting MacOS installed took me the better part of three days. I found a very good online guide and mirrored the build, so it wasn’t hard per se, but it was a lot of steps to follow mixed with a little bit of trouble shooting.
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I’m happily running a Hack I built a few months ago so I’m out of the running for the foreseeable future. TBH though, a nnMP (new, new MP) would probably be borderline overkill for the typical projects I do out of my home studio.
I’ve also been doing a lot work in the world of esports recently and that’s all been PC-centric (for obvious reasons). The sinew connecting me to Apple-centric workflows is probably the weakest it’s been in 20yrs.
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Just watched the live action “Charlotte’s Web” a few days ago. Surprising good.