[Jim Curtis]

I ordered a 24-core w/ AMD2 the day they went on sale. After I installed 256 GB of OWC RAM, I had invested around $15K. I already had a super-fast 8-drive ATTO SAS RAID on my MacPro5.1, which I installed in the new Mac.

I use Premiere, and I’m very happy with the speed and the money spent. The GPU stays pretty maxed out on flavors of MP4 source media, but I still get inferior real-time on accelerated effects to what I got in my older MacPro cheesegrater with Nvidia Titan CUDA GPU (on codecs and frame sizes that played nice with that computer model). I get better performance with OpenCL (which Adobe calls “Deprecated”) to Metal (which Adobe calls “Recommended”): more yellow and less red in the timeline render indicator.

I’m hoping that Adobe will figure out how to optimize Metal to approach the capability of CUDA (now unavailable in the 2019 and 2020 updates) before too much longer. I’m hoping my hope isn’t delusional.

As I get more 4K and lately 8K as source media, upgrading was practically a must (I’m a full time contract post provider). Some compressed 4K on the trash cans is frustrating, and totally untenable on older MacPros without resorting to proxy workflows.

I recently cut a RED RAW 8K source project in which the footage played as smooth as butter at 1/2 resolution with Lumetri color correction effects and downscaling to 4K applied.

Biggest disappointment is that the new MacPros require Catalina, which still has problems at 10.15.3. I’m rebooting about as much as I did under OS9, and have had to reinstall it FOUR TIMES. This isn’t unusual, though. Most versions of OSX had problems until the builds got to 10.x.5 or later.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.3

[Jim Curtis]

Thank you, Tom, for your counsel.

There has been an LTFS option in the BRU PE app going back to version 3, I believe. I have not tried it because of their advice against it.

I don’t suppose it would do any harm to make tapes in both formats and give LTFS a trial run. I have an HP LTO-5 drive, and tape costs have gotten considerably cheaper than they were when even LTO-4 was first introduced – from about $75 each (for LTO-4) to $25 (for LTO-5).

Is there an open source LTFS app for OSX 10.15.x that you recommend?

There’s probably a way to do it in the Terminal, right? I’m not comfortable using the Terminal for anything without expert guidance.

BTW, I tested the latest beta of ArGest Backup (formerly BRU PE) yesterday. There’s still one bug of it over-restoring files not selected for restore during a restore routine, but other functions appear to be working properly. That gives me reason to hope that an official solid update is around the corner.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.3

[Jim Curtis]

To be honest, for me, it’s because of this:

https://www.tolisgroup.com/tapedataformats.html

Is anything in this article inaccurate? I’m open-minded about changing, although at this point, I have a fairly significant number of BRU tapes I’d have do restore and re-write in LTFS.

I first switched to BRU from Retrospect, which was an awful experience. The only other Mac option at the time (before LTFS) that I could find was from a German company whose name I can’t recall. I found some good reviews of BRU PE, even though it was fairly new at the time, on version 2.x. It was a sub-product by Tolis for people who do video, like me.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.3

[Jim Curtis]

Jörgen, the team at Tolis are making headway. They invited me to do some testing on a beta, which I did over this weekend. It’s not ready yet on my system, but shouldn’t be too much longer before they get the bugs fixed.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.3

[Jim Curtis]

Ranier, I decided to take your and Bob’s advice and go with a RAID 6. The rebuild times on a RAID this large are pretty long, and I see the potential for a second drive failure during a rebuild.

Thanks again to both of you for your counsel.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.3

[Jim Curtis]

I tested 4.0.2.262 I believe it is beta, and says so on the splash screen. Supposedly, there’s a fix for one of the bugs, but this version was released around the 17th, and that was around nine days ago. I haven’t gotten anything more current.

Here’s the link, if you want to try it. I hope they don’t mind me sharing it.

https://www.tolisgroup.com/downloads/ArGestBackup/ArGest_Backup_4.0.2.262_macOS.zip

I’d be interested in hearing how you did with it.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.3

[Jim Curtis]

I have a new MacPro, and I have iStatMenus installed. It’s interesting to keep an eye on the CPU and GPU meters. I often notice that the GPU meter is maxed out, but the CPU rarely gets maxed, or even reaching 50% utilization.

I get a variety of footage to edit, but a majority lately has been Sony MXF, a variant of AVC MPEG4. ProRes puts hardly any stress on either processor. Where the CPUs really help is when using crappy Long-GOP codecs, and DJI and GoPro, which never played for me without dropping frames in full rez before.

I figured that since I work with different formats, getting both CPU and GPU horsepower would serve me well.

I’ve learned through experience to buy a better system than I need at the time, because I’ll probably need it later. That’s why I went with the 24-core and Vega II upgrades.

I recently cut a project with 8K RED RAW sources. I was able to play it at half res without frames dropping. Nice.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.3

[Jim Curtis]

Hi Jörgen,

I went about two weeks not hearing from Support also. It would be nice to hear from a person that they got our report and are working on a fix.

Last week, they sent me links to two beta builds to “please try” using. Neither works properly. The last build recognized the tape I inserted (which was a first), but the restore was bizarre. I selected one fairly small (300 MB) movie file from a tape to restore, and the app not only restored that movie, but also about 40 GB of I-don’t-know-what into a private folder it created and named “Volume” until I aborted the restore process, as it was still writing files.

I can’t write to tapes at all, because the app crashes after I click the OK button to begin the tape writing process.

I’ve had a back and forth with Kayleigh in Support, who told me that ArGest 4 is working for some customers. She said that one of my three issues looks like it had to do with how version 3 of BRU PE was writing catalogs, and that it’s been found by their coders. That’s well and good, but it doesn’t help me since I can neither write a tape, or restore from one without this bizarre file bloat happening at the same time.

I wonder why they haven’t sent you the betas to “try.”

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.3

[Jim Curtis]

Thanks for your reply, Bob and Ranier.

Bob, after reading your posts, I did a flurry of research, watching videos, and reading reviews that gave the QNAP very high marks and ordered a QNAP TVS-872XT and 10-16 TB Iron Wolf drives (2 for spares). They should arrive tomorrow.

My next question is why you recommend RAID 6. I’ve had three RAID 5 so far, and while I’ve lost several drives, I haven’t had two fail at once, or have a second one fail while the RAID was rebuilding.

How often, in your experience, a RAID 6 saved the day over a RAID 5?

The closest I’ve had drives fail is in my Enhance RAID was a week apart, both fairly recently as those drives are getting up in age. You are correct that finding new 2 TB SAS Constellation drives of the same model is becoming impossible. This experience is what had me looking into an upgrade of some kind.

Correction: Iron Wolf and Exos enterprise drives have a 5 year warranty according to the Seagate site.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.3

[Jim Curtis]

Bob, thanks very much for the information.

That enclosure looks amazing, with all that functionality and connectivity, and better than what I’ve found by googling. The only thing that gives me pause is the two-year warranty. Should I care?

Sounds like you’re OK with Seagate Exos drives, too. Do you think the Exos are a better choice than the more expensive Iron Wolf drives? I see they have a three-year warranty, whereas the Exos has 5. I wonder why that is. Do you know?

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.2