[John Perez]

I’m having a similar problem auto-mounting. GB Labs Space NAS, works fine on Catalina but Big Sur won’t auto mount the NAS after a restart. It mounts fine if you mount it ‘manually’ though…could this be a Big Sur bug?

[John Perez]

Softron Movie Recorder will do everything you need (and a lot more)

https://softron.tv/products/movierecorder

[John Perez]

Hi Manish,

I’ve only used an iMac Pro 10-core, 64GB, 1TB SSD, Vega 64 for a short time (I don’t own one) but even when being pushed hard rendering a long complicated project it was virtually silent and certainly much quieter than an iMac Retina 5k 4GHz being pushed to it’s ‘limits’. During ‘general’ editing use the system was practically silent unless you put your ear to the rear vent, a near-by Blackmagic unit and the rooms air conditioning were audible but not the iMac Pro.

I’d hazard a guess it’s quieter compared to a tower Dell or HP workstation.

Others have posted reviews online that indicate the new iMac Pro thermal cooling system is very good and noise levels stay low even when the systems CPU’s and GPU’s are pushed hard.

[John Perez]

Hi Alex,

With careful choices of hardware and software it is of course possible to build your own storage system, especially if advised and guided by very experienced people such as Bob.

However there are several very robust and fast ready made solutions that can be purchased and got up and running with very little ‘heart ache’ from manufacturers that specialise in storage systems for video. The ‘guarantee’ that they work and can scale and the peace of mind there is a support team available might be invaluable if your company will relies on the storage system to make money.

There are plenty of others (which are easy to find and Bob has listed them many times before) but have a quick look at https://lumaforge.com as they some of the best FCPX support on their systems. I’ve used one of them in action and it worked like a dream with FCPX (and all other software).

Best of luck either way.

John Perez

[John Perez]

So it sounds like this SMB performance issue did NOT get fixed in Mac OS X 10.11.6

Is that correct?

[John Perez]

Hi Jake,

The iMac you have there is a great system, but if you can stretch your budget a bit further I would HIGHLY recommend going for the R9 M395X 4GB GPU and replacing the Fusion drive with a 512GB SSD (or 1TB if you can afford it).

The M395X 4GB GPU is actually a generation newer GPU than the M390 and will really help accelerate apps like FCPX that utilies the GPU for rendering and effects etc and if you run a second screen the 4GB memory helps performance also.

For editing or any kind of Professional use I’d avoid Fusion drives, it’s a tiny SSD with a 5400rpm HD. A ‘pure’ SSD is going to make a lot of difference to you going forward.

Good luck with your new Mac 🙂

JP

[John Perez]

I’d still like Apple to keep them as separate applications….BUT with each application having a unified (or very similar) GUI.

As long as the round tripping is vastly improved (with as little re-rendering required as possible) and some key features (most editors need these days) are borrowed from Motion and duplicated in FCP (masking, tracking, better basic animation etc) then this would be the best of both worlds.

If you want a single application that does everything then Smoke for Mac is the baby for you.

[John Perez]

You should check out these guys https://www.adstream.com.

They specialise in (amongst other related things) storing and distributing TV content to broadcasters and the post industry, they can do this ALL round the world.

As well as their online based services have a turbo charged stand-alone file delivery system called nVerge which is reasonably priced, very quick and 110% secure.

I’ve used them in the past and was very impressed.

[John Perez]

Sorry, but I beg to differ:

>>However, when we ran Adobe Photoshop CS (certain filters), Adobe After Effects (render), Maxon’s Cinema 4D (render), and Deep Shredder (Chess game analysis) we saw usage of over 390%<< Also, even if an application doesn't use all 4 core's at once, you will be able to run 2 or 3 tasks EACH of which will use one or two cores. So you can (for example) be compressing MPEG2 video and editing without taking a performance hit (compared with a DP Mac). A 3D developer who tested their application (Modo) on a Quad reported a 200% increase in speed over a DP2.5 (without any updates to the software) on his blog. Also, the Quads have PCIe video cards which will bring significant speed advantages to GPU based apps, and in the near future video cards and other cards specifically engineered for PCIe. I don't see Kona releasing a 'Kona3' for PCI-X based systems. You are 100% correct that not ALL applications will run significantly faster on a Quad than a 2.7 today. It depends on the software and the type of work you do. But SOME do, and those that don't probably will do in the near future. Surely it's a good investment now for Deadhead, myself and many others now....I hope so as I've just purchased 9 Quad Macs from Apple. Our current DP2.7's and 2.5's will be moved into a render farm or relocated to Quark and InDesign guys. Shampoo 🙂

[John Perez]

>>Last time I looked, a Quad machine is no faster than your current dual 2.7, this will change when Apple updates FCP to use the 4 processors.<< Actually, it seems FCP and After Effects are two applications that REALLY benefit from 4 processors (and 4 Velocity Engines). Typically FCP and AE are rendering 50% faster on most functions...and this is without any updates to FCP. Check out this link, A Quad G5 owner made a video of an old G5 dual 2 GHz and a new Quad 2.5 GHz working side by side: https://www.hardmac.com/news/2005-11-29/#4790

I have seen 3 other reports indicating the Quads really benifit FCP, AE and 3D apps. Barefeats.com reports:

>>Not all MP aware apps fully use the four processors. When we ran Apple’s own applications (including iMovie render and QuickTime Player export, and Motion RAM Preview render) we didn’t see more than 160% usage. Some readers reported as much as 230% usage when they did Final Cut Pro renders and DVD encoding. However, when we ran Adobe Photoshop CS (certain filters), Adobe After Effects (render), Maxon’s Cinema 4D (render), and Deep Shredder (Chess game analysis) we saw usage of over 390%. .
Quad processors will help you if you are running simultaneously active apps. Four active applications (rendering, encoding, et.) that use only 100% CPU will complete their tasks in parallel. Run the same four apps on a Dual-Core G5 and they take twice as long to finish.
We think the Quad-Core is an awesome G5 Power Mac. Once new owners learn to utilize its power, I think they will agree.<< I'm guessing Professional Intel PowerMacs are probably a year away, and we know they will emulate PPC software via 'Rosetta' until all the applications, Plug-Ins and hardware drivers are updated - that's going to take quite a while. I'm jumping on the Quad bandwagon and reaping the speed benefits now rather than waiting... JP