Brad Bussé
Forum Replies Created
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Sorry, I couldn’t resist:
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This is what I’ve been doing since getting my nmp. I’m going to keep a bootable clone of the boot drive so that I can occasionally wipe the boot free to clean up any trim ssd garbage that has accumulated from running the cache on my PCIe shared boot drive.
I’ve noticed that sometimes AE tells me that I don’t have enough free space to accomodate the level of cache that I’ve set, even though I actually do have plenty of free space. For instance, I’ll set 350-400 GB for AE cache, and have 600GB free, but I get that error message and I have to clear cache and set it lower, like 250-300 GB.
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Anyone know if Adobe has announced when they will have an update to AE that allows it to utilize the full VRAM of the d700, and the use of both GPUs?
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A couple of hours into editing today on the update and the new beta driver for my Ultrastudio, and all appears to be good and stable so far.
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Yeah, the 10.9.2 worked like a charm for a few weeks. 10.9.3 is really where all of the instability was introduced. This is really the worst OS X update that I’ve personally dealt with, at least in regards to the nmp … it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem on the 5,1 Mac Pros.
In regards to upgrade-ability, unlike the trend with the Macbooks and iMacs, the nmp still retains the ability to upgrade parts. The CPU is apparently just swapping the chip, and I think the GPUs reside on a daughterboard which can theoretically be swapped out for an upgrade down the road. I’m not positive on the PCIe flash drive, but I think that is also an easy swap.
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Bob, we’re working with PC game footage, cg comps, and a C100 for green screen, so there really wasn’t a need to swap the 1223x out for a 1883x, but I’m sure someone will post results of that match soon for 4K usage. I’m not populating the unit today, so if you are really dying to see the results and you know of someone in LA who has a 1883x and 2 8644 to 8644 cables who is willing to drop them off at our El Segundo office today, I’d be willing to rebuild and test the numbers for you.
I had actually ordered the 1223x along with the v1 case, but then got an email from B&H saying that the item that had been ordered was no longer in stock (B&H is great but they’ve been very slow on updating items in a timely manner the past few months). So Jon connected me to Thomas Kloeffler at Safe Harbor since they had the v2 in stock. Thomas was also very helpful and the original cables I had were through Safe Harbor so he helped arrange an RMA so I could order the 8644 to 8088 cables that I needed.
I already mentioned it, but when I considered ProAvio they were a new kid on the block to me but they seemed to be offering a solid product at a very affordable price. I can definitely attest to the very solid build quality of the unit. But above and beyond that, as you well know, when dealing with storage solutions having a vendor who is accessible and provides great customer service is a very important thing. ProAvio is top notch in that department.
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Yeah, I ran roughly a dozen Lumetris applied to an adjustment layer in Pr when I first got my nmp w/ d700s. Then I upgraded to 10.9.3 and everthing went to sh*te. I have GPU support disabled in Pr and AME until Apple gets their OpenCL act together hopefully with 10.9.4.
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In hindsight, I got sucked into computer art as a career from the moment I invested in my first computer, a Woz edition Apple IIGS. It took me a decade to really realize that, and by then I was into Strata Studio Pro on a PowerPC 6100 (which had the 486 card in it for running games on Windows 3.1). Mac dropped the ball hard on 3D back then so I invested heavily into a hardcore NT workstation for Max, Softimage and later Maya. I don’t regret that, it was pricey but a steal compared to an SGI, and the NT OS back then was very stable (the backbone for the current Windows OS), and it had security through obscurity. Then I got into video on an Avid on OS X, then FCP and later Shake for several years, so OS X was the only consideration. Shake died, FCP more or less died, and I’m on Premiere Pro which now works very well and has adopted lots of features from FCP and Avid, and it plays well with Ae which I use extensively as well as C4D which I’m trying to get the time to get into further.
I really like OS X, I’m very comfortable with administering and handling hardware upgrades on Mac Pros, and I like the stability provided by both security by obscurity and the coordinated driver automation between limited hardware and well tested driver matches. Now that I’ve converted to Premiere Pro, I’d definitely consider a workstation built around Windows. If I were to become a full time freelancer or LLC/Inc., I’d probably build out a custom box that I’d upgrade continually on a component basis. However, the company that I’m at now is all Mac in the Creative dept. that I’m a part of, so I just invested in an upgrade to a new Mac Pro. I went with the 8-core since I did research on the 12-core and it felt like a large premium that had some limitations. I maxed out Apple’s offering of 64 GB RAM (another reason I kept with the octacore since I’d need more RAM to get more power out of a dodecacore with Ae), and the large investment was the dual d700s which are really a long-term future proofing for GPGPU (OpenCL) support. For Premiere, I wouldn’t worry too much about compatibility–you can read HFS+ drives with MacDrive and Premiere project files shouldn’t have much of an issue with opening legacy saves using newer versions either Mac or PC. If you’re going to go PC and aren’t technically oriented, look only at the HP Z– series.
That being said, I’m pretty happy with the Mac Pro so far. My RAID and video card are Thunderbolt2 based and with some growing pains, are working very well. Mainly what’s a major thorn right now is that the OS 10.9.3 update seemed to have some major issues on the OpenCL implementation on Apple’s behalf that has created instability that I haven’t seen on a Mac in many years for professional apps. I have upgraded drivers from BMD that appear to have fixed some audio issues in Premiere and Audition, but I’m having to completely bypass my GPU acceleration in Premiere and AME. Before I upgraded to 10.9.3, I had tested out the GPU power with Lumetri. On my 5,1 Mac w/ Radeon 5770 I had a hard time getting realtime preview with a single Lumetri applied. With the dual d700s on 10.9.2 I was able to apply roughly a dozen Lumetri’s while retaining realtime preview. And soon the wrinkles will be ironed out, and Adobe is focusing heavily on optimizing Ae for speed over features this year. GPGPU support is absolutely the next major breakthrough in optimizing realtime iteration, and as Nick of greyscalegorilla will attest, iteration is king not just in increasing speed, but in increasing creativity.
If you do go with a Mac Pro and want to also run Windows via Bootcamp for gaming like you mentioned, realize that Windows can’t boot from an external drive install like Mac OS X. So, make sure you get the 1 TB PCIe flash drive. I invested in that and found quickly that I absolutely needed that amount of space on the boot just to support my OS install and Ae cache. Ideally you’d have an external SSD via Thunderbolt for your Ae cache, but I’m sure when I add that to my system I’ll find a need for the additional space on the 1TB PCIe boot. For now I’m dealing, and when the Ae cache thrashes my boot too hard I’ll superduper clone a bootable clone of the OS, wipe the drive, and clone back. I’ve run Windows via VMWare before, but now I just find it’s not worth wasting the resources. At home I have an SSD internal boot for Mac and an internal SSD boot for Windows via Bootcamp. At work I keep my Windows needs on a separate Windows box.
Well, I hope that some of that can be helpful. 🙂
-Brad
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So a quick update–I just rebooted and ran the AJA System Test, Disk Read/Write, 1920×1080 10-bit RGB, 16.0 GB File Size and file system cache disabled. This is on a 2010 5,1 Mac Pro running 10.9.2. I populated with Seagate Constellation ES.3 2TB drives (Enterprise SAS w/ 128MB cache) and striped as RAID-6 w/ 1MB Stripe. Areca 1223x w/ latest firmware then latest BIOS before initialization:dis
Write: 950.5 MB/s
Read: 916.1 MB/sI just ran the same exact test on my Pegasus2 R6 connected to my 2013 6,1 Mac Pro which I got last month and is currently 30% full (6 disk array striped as RAID-5):
Write: 811.0 MB/s
Read: 848.8 MB/sBoth of these arrays are being used primarily for ProRes HQ 1080/60p.
edit: To clarify, the EB800MSv2 has a 12GB backplane, but I’m connecting it to an Areca 1223 which is only 6GB.
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Bob,
I indeed have a EB800MS that I received as a bare unit that I populated with Seagate enterprise drives and I have the 12GB to 6GB cables since I’m connecting to an Areca 1223x. It’s currently in the middle of initializing as RAID-6 as I type this, but I’ll post later when I’ve had a chance to test the speeds etc. The build quality is great, very sturdy and I like the thumbscrews for easy swapping of the 80mm fans and the locks too. Jon and his team have been extremely helpful–top notch customer service.
-Brad