Tom Sefton
Forum Replies Created
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In regards to the $8K Mac vs $800 PC, I am sorry but the day I start working on PCs that cheap I might as well get out of this business.
Couldn’t have put it better. Cheaper isn’t always a good thing.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
Yes thanks for the link – my first edit suites were Matrox powered.
Most of the video walls we need are either interactive or require some form of show control for which Dataton Watchout is usually perfect for us.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
Hi Darren,
This is on new mac pro systems, either a 6 or 8 core, both maxed ram and GPU. Footage on a Gtech 48TB Studio XL at RAID5 over thunderbolt2. FCPX in better performance. It plays, but is sluggish with 8K. 6K is fine.
Happy to put some 8K footage from the new Helium sensor in a dropbox for anyone to do some benchmarks with – esp hackintosh or PC systems.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
There aren’t any 8K monitors available for playback at present, just a couple of models announced. Much of our work goes to large projection screens for install in visitor centres/museums where high resolution displays are achieved via edge blended projection or video walls. We’ve got quite a few 4K displays for playback tests in our studio though. A recent project was filmed in 6K WS and delivered to a 4200 x 1200 (ish) resolution in a 3 blend projector theatre.
We’ve worked extensively in 4K and 6K where the CPU and GPU of the new Mac Pro is worked extremely hard, but performs incredibly well – offering realtime encoding from 4K Dragon to ProRes footage, and butter smooth playback. The new 8K Helium camera is stunning but obviously taxes your desktop machine even more for editing and post – hence my interest in what a PC can do with similar budget to a maxed out new Mac Pro with an external RAID.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
Yes I can upload some shorter clips for you.
I’ve done plenty of my own testing with Red One media – I’ve also noticed vast performance differences from CC to FCPX with raw media on more recent cameras from Red.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
If you are willing to try, I’ll dropbox you some 8K r3d files for you to test performance with via an internal RAID and an ATX system.
I can see that an internal RAID is cheaper, I’m just not convinced that cheaper is always better when it comes to hardware, especially when you have a revenue stream available with the external peripherals that are now widely available.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
The benchmark for playback and editing with current camera files in raw 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8k footage is what I am interested in most, but I can’t ignore that someone is wiling to hire an external RAID from me, when a home built PC is worthless aside from the work I can do with it.
The Red One is now an obsolete camera. The new colour spaces with the Helium and Weapon cameras take up far more computing power than 4K red one footage. A 2013 mac pro system with maxed GPU and RAM can playback 8K raw and edit, but after a while performance gets sluggish. 6K is fine at 25p. Weigh up the cost of a system that can do this, with tech support and external thunderbolt 2/3 access against a mac system. Then it becomes clear just how much we need a new mac pro system, with thunderbolt 2, 3 PCIE, USB 3 and upgradeable GPUs.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
The cost of each raid is £5-£7k but you can get £100-£130 per day for hires. Nobody wants to hire a full machine for DIT, they want the raid only, in a flight case that can be shipped to set and then back to edit. Same goes for GPU – the red rocket x isn’t relevant anymore but a GPU inside an external enclosure with thunderbolt 2 or 3 is available from most hire companies for DIT and post work. It’s portable because it’s light and can go inside a rucksack.
What devices are capturing r3d? Either you use the usb3 or thunderbolt 3 device that red sells or you can put a single bay inside your gtech raid and capture to your storage that way.
If there wasn’t a use for external 80TB raids nobody would be building and selling them. They are, they work great and they give great performance with replaceable drives and can be networked if required. I understand internal raids, but someone needs to build that for me or I buy it with a dell or HP machine and the cost goes up.
How is the performance kick ass? Quantify it. Put some 8K or 6K raw footage on a timeline and play it back. What resolution are you playing back in premiere – 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 or do you get full? From 8K raw how long does it take to spit out a prores or dnxhd file of the same length – say one minute. How many nodes do you get in resolve for colour correction? I’ve written extensively about the performance with the new Mac Pro and 4K raw, and I’m finding That 6K is possible, but 8K sluggish on the new Mac Pro. Yes everyone will scream about proxIRS but I just want to benchmark from the highest resolution and quality.
I’m not PC bashing. I want to understand what performance you get with PC over the new Mac Pro. Yes the new Mac Pro is more expensive, but I get tech support with Apple care and immediate repairs or replacement. I’m not tech savvy enough to spend time fixing a PC I’ve built myself – I want either dell or HP to offer me tech support with the better performance. From what I’ve seen, a HP machine with top spec isn’t cheaper than a new Mac Pro but I don’t know how quick it is.
It all adds up to a new Mac Pro being very much wanted and needed – just perhaps with a few more connection ports and the ability to add a second ssd and upgradeable gpu…
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
i can hire out all my raids and get good prices for them as DIT kit. External raids can be used for capturing direct from redmags. 3 of the raids we have are more than 64TB in size and are more than fast enough via 10gIgE to let multiple users access data without drop frames. The point about the GPU is exactly that it is portable and can be used via a laptop or at home by a desktop. Specifically so that a GPU can be hot swapped from DIT to grade on-set to start building LUTs once dailies have been made.
Being Mac based, I’m still curious about PC performance.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
Removable raids and GPUs are brilliant for DIT work and any projects where multiple users want to access the raid at once or share the GPU for the intensive parts of a project. One removable high speed GPU could go to set for dailies with a DIT and then come back to studio for the grade.
I really want to see a new Mac Pro, but still would love to hear what performance people get from their maxed out PC workstations when it comes for 6 or 8K raw workflows.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk