Tim Kolb
Forum Replies Created
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[Tim Dowse] ” I really like the option with the Origin to have a 120 GB SSD for the system and a 750 GB HDD for media, when I have to edit on the move. Doesn’t seem like Lenovo has that option?
“Actually the W530 I specifically mentioned in my long post above had a 180 GB SSD and a 500GB 7200rpm HD…
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor
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[Tim Dowse] “The Lenovo does look like good value. But to my mind it’s certainly got a face for radio. I am prepared to step away from the Mac, but I’d prefer not to have to go home with the ugly stepsister.”
Yeah…I guess I’ve never made a purchase decision on a computer based on looks…it’s a tool. I don’t worry so much about what it will look like in the morning…it stays on the desk.
I have no experience with Origin…they certainly appear to have the neon gamer thing down as that’s their heritage.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor
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[Paul Jay] “I thought you meant 10 bit output as in 10 bit SDI Monitoring.
For example in DaVinci, on project level it’s always 16 bit processing even if you monitor 8 bit on your DVI monitors.”
I have questions about this…and I’ve already sent some emails to try to track this down as I am not certain how this would work, and it likely changes for each piece of software…
I know Adobe’s Mercury Transmit creates a very efficient hand off to the I/O card after the GPU completes the frame, but I don’t know how that’s done exactly in the context of whether or not a display card’s output limitations (if a gamer card is 8 bit for example) would actually affect this…
Now…why you’d want to trust an 8 bit display to be your window into what you’re doing in a 16 bit image pipeline…that I guess I’d also have some questions about. I assume there is a pretty specific LUT needed to even make that possible.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor
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Sorry Aza, manual gathering of anything that isn’t actual media and isn’t imported into the project is necessary to compile everything in a given project outside of Premiere Pro…which includes AE specific project and asset files as well as Audition. Typically Photoshop files that are actually imported into PPro are recognized and moved.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor
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we need more data. How many sequences? What type of data? Are you trimming or just gathering/moving…
People use the project manager and it works (with format caveats), but without any info, the only question you asked that I can answer is:
“Anyone get Project Manager to work?”
Yes.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor
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[Tim Dowse] “And i can’t find anywhere that says their graphics cards work with cs6 gpu acceleration. Am I missing something?”
Adobe has said that the next version of Premiere Pro will be able to utilize any installed OpenCL or CUDA GPU…all the display cards I saw in the mac configurations would be compatible with CS6 now (GeForce cards are CUDA).
With Adobe software I have simply never regretted any RAM upgrade I have ever made…it makes a significant difference. That said, the GPU does help as well, and I think the GPUs I see in the Mac configs of the moment are about as small as I’d go…but they qualify.
I switched away from Mac back when OSX Cheetah came out and Premiere (not Pro) 6.5 ran on it, and FCP had to boot into OS9 until Puma (which I thought a strange state of affairs)…so I’ve been on Windows a while, but switching OS’s is not a trivial thing when you’re trying to get work done…the posters in this thread on modern MBPs seem happy enough…I guess you can be in the army and still hate the war.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor
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Hi John,
That’s a pretty good synopsis I would say, though since I don’t have a Sager currently, I can’t comment on that… I’ve had some Sagers and Clevos re-badged as other brands…I actually delaiminated a DVD in one one time, but I haven’t had to slip on the asbestos pants since I retired my Dell M90…(knock on wood).
Stronger processors/configurations affect battery life…no question about that. Apple has traditionally done a really good job of balancing power draw with computer power in my opinion, but video production remains a demanding task.
All that said, I haven’t shopped for a Mac in some time now, and I know that the price gap has closed up somewhat, so I checked on what the actual price would be to compare to my Lenovo W520 from 2011. The 15″ Non-Retina MBP seemed the most comparable to build on…
The processor is a quad core, hyper threaded i7…faster one is available the new Mac, but mine was current when it was purchased…I’m running at 2.3 GHz with an 8 MB L3 cache, and the new 15″ MacBook Pro has 2.3-2.7 available…with an 8 MB L3 cache
Memory…I have 16 GB in the Lenovo, the Mac maxes out at 8 GB
Graphics card…the new Mac has a GeForce 650M with 1 GB of DDR5 on it…the Lenovo W520 came with a Quadro 2000M with 2GB of DDR3
The W520 has 2 USB3 ports, a USB2 port, and a USB/eSATA port as well as an Express34 slot (that all work at expected speeds), DisplayPort, VGA port, etc. and the 15″ MBP has 2 USB3 ports, a FW800 port and a Thunderbolt port.
Hard drives are both 500 GB, with the Mac at 5400rpm (longer battery) and the Lenovo at 7200 (editing with the internal drive is practical)
Displays…the Lenovo with a standard 15.6″ display, 1920×1080…LED backlit… The MacBook about the same physical size with a resolution of 1680×1050 as a 100.00 option (1440×900 standard)
Overall, I got the two to come out nearly even on price…April 2013’s MacBook Pro 15″ (non Retina) and September 2011’s Lenovo W520 configured as described for 2350-2450.00 USD (actually the Lenovo was 2366.00 before tax and the Mac was 2449.00 without shipping, etc).
My biggest concern with MacBook Pro for Adobe video post production use remains the RAM limitations.
If a Mac laptop is truly your preference, I’d recommend looking closely at dropping another 4-500.00 so you can get a max of 16GB of RAM on the Retina 15″ MacBook Pro as well as another Thunderbolt (2 in total) port and an HDMI port…a 512 GB SSD…lots more resolution, though you may want to wear a jeweler’s monacle to see some of the detail…unfortunately you’ll still be stuck with a 1 GB gamer card with 8 bit color precision for GPU acceleration for Mercury…
But…they really aren’t THAT far off in price in the grand scheme of things…the fairest comparison, the W530 which is the current Lenovo model comes out about the same that I paid, right around 2500.00 USD with a 180GB SSD and a 7200rpm 500GB drive, 16GB of RAM (upgradable to 32GB), a Quadro 2000M (10 bit precision over DisplayPort) and a quad core i7 clocking out at around 2.8 GHz.
The price difference between a Retina 15″ and the W530 ends up being about 500.00 unless you up the W530’s RAM to 32 GB for 360.00…if you’re comfortable with Mac, I guess the question is whether you’ll need 10 bit output from a Quadro card and will gain enough performance from double the potential RAM to learn a new OS and save 500 bucks.
Not as clear a decision as it once was…that’s certain.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor
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It’s been about 10 years since I was “Mac-based” so that may make me a partisan, however I think anytime you are looking at power for the price, Windows just wins. If you’re talking about product design, or other considerations, Mac has several categories where it’s still preferable in my opinion.
Unfortunately we’re all still categorized as creatives in the aesthetic of what we do, but in order to be productive, we also need to be a heavy-lift processor of motion imagery…so processing power results in better system response, which gets out of the way of creativity…so my Lenovo laptop, which has the design aesthetic of a tool box relative to a MacBook Pro is actually a creative tool.
As far as RAM vs processor, Adobe is RAM, RAM, RAM intensive…I have older machines that I’ve been able to extend by just stuffing them with RAM. When buying a new machine, I typically look at the fastest processor available, drop down one notch (usually a nearly undetectable speed difference with a very detectable price difference), and divert those funds (and more sometimes) to RAM.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor
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[Paul Jay] “Get a 800 dollar Decklink Extreme PCIe card for your 10 Bit HDSDI monitoring and save yourself some money.”
For a couple hundred bucks I guess the price of an HDSDI monitor is assumed…
However with Mercury Transmit, keep in mind that I/O cards are downstream from your CUDA card…I am curious how that affects things.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor
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[Chris Tompkins] “We’ve taken to archiving the project of course, and mastering to the P2 format.”
P2 is a data format, but not a video format. You archive in AVC-I 100 then?
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor