[Erik Lindahl]

One note here is that the i/o meter in the Activity Monitor isn’t entirely accurate. I’ve measured faster than theoretically possible i/o over the network when judging from that app.

But I think if you are right. ProRes is a very scalable / dynamic format that will raster down when needed. In multicam you might only read every 4th pixel or something i.e. lowering the bandwidth a lot.

[Erik Lindahl]

Also all the figures mentioned here are reffering to Thunderbolt 1, the MacPro will have six ports of Thunderbolt 2. We know that each port will have at least 2X the bandwidth. We however don’t know how / if the ports share bandwidth between one another in some way (I’d think not). So, connecting:

– 2X video displays to 2 ports
– 1X disk array running at 1500 MB/s or so to 1 port
– 1X video i/o to 1 port

…mot sure what else is needed? You still have 2 ports to spare on top of the native HDMI output.

The only thing TB2 will be limited in some way is when dealing with extreme processing cards and external GPU’s. But there is a big might be there.

Not sure what all this has to do with iMacs and Fusion Drives either… 🙂

[Erik Lindahl]

True, but you could probably do a 2-3 disk SSD that has similar speed and fits in your pocket. 8 HDD’s take a lot of space and use a lot of energy. We’re talking some time into the future of course but SSD’s will hit hard at some point.

[Erik Lindahl]

HDD vs SSD depends on what you’re doing also. Random r/w will be vastly supperior on SSD and Tb2 has 2X the speed of Tb 1. At 1600-1800 Mb/s I have a hard time seeing that being a limit for storeage. Getting to 2GB/s requires a lot of HDD’s

[Erik Lindahl]

I think as a concept the fusion drive could live for a long time.

2012-2013: 128GB SSD + 2-3TB HDD
2013-2014: 256GB SSD + 2-4TB HDD
2014-2015: 512GB SSD + 2-4TB HDD

And so forth. The larger the SSD-portion the more the HDD-portion becomes pure “archival” storeage. I think a few tech-savvy sites noted the 128 GB portion Apple uses today is a little on the low side.

[Erik Lindahl]

Are you sure you’re using exactly the same projects in CS6 and CC?

I’ve noticed sertain filters will kill GUI-performance in CS6, or maybe a combination of filter. Did a spot last week with a few instances of Color Finess and was loosing my mind due to slow GUI-respons. The odd this is rending wasn’t that slow. My speculation is either GPU-accelerated filters hog the GPU even for simple redraw-tasks or there might be a conflict between multiple filters accessing the GPU. I can’t say for sure but I’ve had projects in CS6 bog the GUI down.

[Erik Lindahl]

https://www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/16540-titles-quality#25697

Lots of talk and tests in that thread, even som work-arounds. I’ve heard from other source Apple sadly isn’t looking to fix this. A bit odd as even in HD-land we have various non-square formats (ProRes even supports these rasters natively).

[Erik Lindahl]

Even if we’re drifting off topic I’m not sure FCPX has issue monitoring SD, the main issue we’ve found is down converting or rendering SD to SD material. Here you run into the non-square pixel FCPX handles quite poorly. If you always use external hardware down conversion you might not run into the issue (i.e. working in HD and letting a Kona or BMD card do the SD-converision to another system or deck).

Monitoring in every NLE I’ve used should always match the sequence (i.e. SD sequence = SD monitoring, HD sequence = HD monitoring). This leaves the conversion on the card. FCP7 has terrible software output / cross-conversion. You get a picture but it looks like garbage.

[Erik Lindahl]

I can add to the fact TVC Broadcast delivery in Sweden, Scandinavia and lots of countries in Europe are file-based, primarily SD. ProRes is widely accepted as a format for a lot of work. Here FCPX could be a brilliant master-dub delivery editor, however, it doesn’t quite hold up (probably why its been poorly accepted). It renders SD-material worse than Legacy and the GUI isn’t very optimized for multiple version outputs. Lack of batch-export is problematic too.

[Erik Lindahl]

A few comments:

– I can’t fill out the form on my iPhone. Site layout is to large and the pop-ups are not scrollable
– I can select multiple choices, i.e FCP, AVID, FCPX, but only one date

Aside from that I’d love to see what’s on the site… 🙂