Helmut Kobler
Forum Replies Created
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I have a Mac Pro 8 core 2009 edition with 5 internal drives, a DVD-R drive, and all three available card slots full. I love the all-in-one nature of the system, but I’m SOOOOO ready to get the new Mac Pro when it comes out, and transition my hardware to Thunderbolt.
I think it’s actually better that the industry moves beyond expansion cards, and towards external Thunderbolt boxes (plastic case, AC adapter and all). An expansion card can only go into a particular kind of desktop machine (one whose ranks are thinning across the entire PC industry). A plastic external case with Thunderbolt can attach to a tiny 11″ laptop, an all-in-one desktop, a workstation, etc.. That’s expands the market for the add-on device, which drops the price. And the vast majority of “power users” need only one or two of those devices anyway, so I think they can manage with a few extra items around their desk.
I also think that Apple did the right thing to focus the new Mac Pro on the one thing that everyone cares about — ie, speed/power. As the texture artists who did the Mari demo showed, not everyone needs maximum expandability, but pretty much everyone wants a computer that’s damn fast. Apple has given us that.
When I get the new Mac Pro, I’ll probably look into buying the Atto ThunderStream external RAID box to replace my Atto R380 card (aging, by the way). It will be another device to power, but it also lets me put my 8 drive Sonnet RAID about 10 feet from my computer, which I couldn’t do when the R380 card was sitting in the machine.
And then I’ll replace my Decklink SDI card (which I only use for monitoring) with a small external device from Matrox or Blackmagic.
And then I can toss my eSATA card, because the native USB3 plugs on the Mac Pro are much faster.
Finally, I’ll consolidate the 5 internal drives into 2 or 3, and can easily find a small Thunderbolt JBOD box to accommodate them — again, up to 10 feet away, so they don’t make a sound.
It doesn’t seem bad to me. I’ll have an amazing computer that’s quieter and that uses less power. And it’s a computer that Apple will likely sell more of, and pay more attention to, than they did the conventional big box with tons of internal expansion.
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Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com -
I wasn’t at the meet, but I watched extensive video of it, and I certainly remember seeing and reading from multiple sources that Randy’s presentation received a standing ovation at the end, when the price was revealed.
To get a standing ovation from an audience is rare and a mark of approval. But fast forward two months later to June and hardly anyone was feeling in a “standing ovation” kind of mood. That’s when the community in general began hammering Apple. That’s when we got the Conan Obrien spoof, the “Apple misfires” articles on CNN, WSJ, etc., the Walter Biscardi post that received 207 replies, the creation of this forum, etc.
All I’m saying is it was June when the sh*t hit the fan for Apple & FCP, not April. I remember hearing a lot of people very enthusiastically talking about the X presentation at NAB, and those people who weren’t enthusiastic were largely taking a wait-and-see attitude. But by the ship date in June, the reaction became fierce and angry.
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Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com -
The article got one notable thing wrong. It says that after X’s NAB introduction, “the backlash was swift and fierce.”
But actually, that backlash came when the software launched a few months later. At the NAB demo, I remember there being a lovefest from a lot of corners. People liked what they saw, and couldn’t imagine that so many “take for granted” features wouldn’t in fact be taken for granted by Apple.
I’m glad to see Apple making a marketing push. Maybe they’re release 1.1 as well.
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Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com -
This is truly outrageous. I’ll pass it along.
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Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com -
No updates shown for me!
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Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com -
I have two C300s, and have been very happy with them. When you look at specs on a sheet of paper, the camera looks less impressive than it is in the real world. Using it is very straightforward. Decent handheld ergonomics. Great battery life. Low weight. Great low light performance. Good filmic look if you stick with LOG mode. 2 hours+ of 1080 video on a single 64GB card. Super easy post-production workflow. It’s an incredibly versatile camera.
My impressions of the Scarlet is that there’s more overhead to using it in the field, and working with content in post. Also, 4K? Most projects are not heading to the big screen. Still photos? Really, how useful is that to most productions. I might go the Scarlet route if I was just doing narrative work. It’s got a very filmic image. But a lot of projects aren’t just about a filmic image, given budget and time considerations.
The Sony F5 looks interesting, but I don’t think it will match the C300’s ease of use on a set (especially for hand-held work). I could still choose it for some projects over the C300, but it’s a bigger camera to manage.
By the way, I’ve always wanted to shoot with 2 cameras, and have been able to do that with the light-weight, pint-sized C300. Even with two cameras, two tripods, two sets of batteries, etc., I’m able to easily transport and manage all my gear myself.
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Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com -
“Check barefeats articles from the last month detailing performance tests of the iMac vs MacPro. While the MacPro wins on some raw benchmark scores, the iMac wins in some real-world situations. The current gen MacPro is not cut and dry faster than the iMac in all situations- depending on what software you’re using.”
Hi Marcus,
All of Barefeats’ recent tests have been done on a *single* CPU Mac Pro, using 6 cores. Yup, the newest iMac scores well against that, but I don’t think it would do nearly as well against a Mac Pro with two CPUs/12 cores, running software that’s multi-core aware like After Effects, Adobe Media Encoder, FCP X and Compressor.Another reason I’m still considering a current-gen Mac Pro is this: I think Apple will ship a new pro machine with one or two PCIe cards, instead of the four in the Mac Pro. Apple will want to put as much momentum behind Thunderbolt as possible, and the prospect of adding more gear outside my machine and worrying about daisy chains bugs me.
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Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com -
I have a 2009 8-core Nehalem MP right now, which is beginning to feel its age in terms of rendering times. I’ve thought about getting an iMac instead, but I would have to buy new raid gear, and a new doohickey for broadcast video output, and at least one multi-disk external drive enclosure to handle the 4 drives I run inside my Pro. I’d have to run all of that off Thunderbolt, which could eventually choke even its 10Gb bandwidth (see tests performed by Macworld), and I’d have to store all that stuff on my desk or near it (instead of inside the machine), *and* I’d have to power everything separately. BLAH.
Honestly, I’ve considered just getting the 2012 12-core Mac Pro as a replacement. I would get performance beyond any iMac, could use all my existing cards (in which case Thunderbolt doesn’t really matter), and keep it all in one tidy case. And I’d get another 3 year warranty. Not really ideal, but compared to trying to make everything work with an iMac, it doesn’t look so bad.
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Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com -
We’re more than an hour into the keynote, and haven’t even gotten to iOS 6 yet.
Hopefully this will be an unusually long keynote with room for iOS 6 and then Mac Pros by the end. 😉
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Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com -
Hi Bill,
You didn’t mention using RAW photos but T. Payton did in one of his earlier posts. And no, I never used RAW files in video either (for the reasons you mentioned) but the fact that someone says they’re having decent performance with raw while using a higher end video card is interesting to me.At any rate, I’ve always used JPEG photos, but at resolutions typically much higher than 1080.
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Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com