[Michael Hadley]

Yes, I would be interested in learning more about performance with the forked approach (it’s sounds forked up but who knows?). I’ve always put the library and media on my fastest external drives.

Currently, that would be an 8TB NVME SSD Raid (OWC enclosure, Samsung sticks). That’s gets backed up daily to an 8TB G-drive clone with spinning disks.

Given that the new Mac Pros can have up to 8tb of wicked fast storage, I wonder if it would make sense to keep everything on the internal drive (and then back up to clone drive).

Thoughts?

[Michael Hadley]

I’ve used many different options and agree: Riverside.fm is the best compromise solution without spending thousands of dollars. That said, we send kits to participants with a Logitech webcam and two Lume cube lights as well–those help too.

[Michael Hadley]

Thanks for the thorough explanation, Joe.

Interestingly, with this project, a lot of 4K footage. My typical workflow is to transcode everything to Pro Res before I bring it in to the project. But this was a rush project so I did not transcode–they are the original MXF files. I wonder if that had anything to do with it? In other words, would using Pro Res minimize the constant cache frenzy.

[Michael Hadley]

Yes, that stops the cache creep, thanks. Odd, though, I’ve been editing on X for years–usually with background rendering on–I’ve never experienced a cache growing larger than the total size of the media (which is 1.7 tb) and then keep growing to where it filled up an 8tb drive.

Thanks.

[Michael Hadley]

Interesting point. Although I wonder how much additional data generating proxies will add to the total size of the project.

[Michael Hadley]

Well, the iMac seems pretty decent. But my understanding is that the fusion drives run slow–that may be an issue. Even more significant–the Firewire drives/connection speeds. Apple basically moved to thunderbolt 7 years ago. Firewire is likely be too old/too slow for your needs.

Assuming you have your edit media on external drives, your next step might be to get a nice Thunderbolt 3 external drive and see if that helps. I’m sure it will.

And I would hold off getting a new iMac for a couple of months; the rumor is that Apple will be releasing a new one before the end of the year. (But you may not even need it if the Thunderbolt drives helps your performance.). Good luck.

[Michael Hadley]

Glad the Radeon VII is working for you. Me too–I think? Performance gets cut in an external GPU. And thanks for the interesting context/history. That said, wonder why it’s not been a commercial success and not officially on the list of approved cards.

[Michael Hadley]

Thanks for the update. Curious as to why you went with the AMD Radeon VII GPU. I have one, bought as a pre-order before it dropped, and I use it in an eGPU with a full spec iMac. It seems “okay,” aside from the whirring fans when the machine sleeps.

It’s never been an officially supported card for any mac. How is it working for you?

Thanks.

[Michael Hadley]

All good points. Thanks.

I’m currently leaning with putting each take in a compound clip, rotating it, and then using the compound clips as my edit source.

[Michael Hadley]

Thanks, Bret (actually have a few of your plugs).

That is excellent advice.

That said, to see the full clip in the browser, I need to rotate -90, scale it down 55%.

Then, when I pull into my (flipped) 2160×4096 timeline, I need to scale it up 190%.

I’m assuming that will use up a lot of system resources when editing.

With the compound clip, I need to rotate -90, scale it up 190%. But then in the time line, it’s the right size. Although, because it’s in a compound clip, that probably eats up system resources.

Wonder which method is lighter/faster on the system??