[Tom Sefton]

Rick, I don’t have an OS of choice. I love Mac stuff and have spent plenty on them in the past – if I wasn’t sold, I wouldn’t be bothering to ask where I could find the next machine I want.

There might well have been thousands of posts like this before, but it is all the more relevant now, given that you can’t buy a Mac Pro in Europe anymore and there is no date for release of the new model.

If you read my posts you can see that I am trying to purchase a Mac system for DaVinci resolve work that has thunderbolt ports for fast storage swaps. At present, a single 1 or 2GB GPU isn’t going to cut it for this (which is the only option for the iMac and can’t be upgraded).

I might be thinking yesterday here – if so, can you suggest a Mac system for working on RAW files from the Blackmagic Camera inside Resolve?

I don’t mind the grumpiness – I’m grumpy all the time. I just try and take it out on my B*£@!^d f@**$%g keyboard.

[Tom Sefton]

We’ve tried the friendly thing too – requests just get buried in bureaucracy!

[Tom Sefton]

The council is a south coast one in the county of Dorset.

We completed the consultancy in July of last year, and then went through the process of filling in forms to add our company to their list of accounts, provided bank details, credit history etc..

They have now had the invoice for over 6 months, despite our payment terms being 30 days from invoice date.

[Tom Sefton]

Love it!

Had some teething issues initially with some of the lenses we had (specifically the Tokina), but we’ve been getting used to it and love it now. Love using the ProRes 10bit for greenscreen shoots, and the RAW is stunning in post.

We have the Rokinon cinema lenses, but are starting to think of buying some of the Zeiss primes – have you any of these?

How are you finding the audio?

We saw the iMac was certified for Resolve, but a PC with a similar single 2GB GPU is very limited in performance. I’m hoping the new Mac Pro has some really beefy GPU options, otherwise we might have to rethink and go for one of the new Nvidia Titan GPU’s with a PC rig.

Don’t suppose anyone has tried a BOXX workstation?

[Tom Sefton]

We got the Blackmagic Camera before Christmas. It’s far easier to use with Mac than PC at the moment, and with work stacking up, I’m trying to buy a more powerful Mac (than the 2 Retina MBP’s we have) for rendering and for DaVinci Resolve. We’ve also invested in some great external RAID storage drives that have thunderbolt, and I want to be able to shoot in the field, transfer to the RAID devices via thunderbolt, and then have these dropped off at the studio for editing and grading, while more shooting takes place.

It’s convoluted, I know, but after how BRILLIANT the MBP’s are, and how impressed we are with thunderbolt, I was hoping things might be the same with the big Mac Pro! We’ll wait for the new Mac Pro – I don’t think that the iMac will cut it for DaVinci in the long hop, and although we could afford it, I don’t think its prudent to spend £2500+ on something we can’t upgrade.

[Tom Sefton]

For the same spec as the current top of the range iMac, I built a PC for £1500 less. It can be upgraded with additional GPU’s, more RAM, larger SSD’s for boot disks and have 3 SATA HDD’s for RAID storage. With a 30″ HP monitor alongside it, it was still £500 less. We can afford to upgrade our editing machines every year if we want, but it doesn’t mean it would be a good idea – I’d prefer to buy more lenses : )

I do love our Macbook Pro laptops though – they are some of the best machines we have.

[Tom Sefton]

Hardware choices for Mac at the moment seem poor value aside from the macbook pro retinas. You could build a stonkingly fast PC system with a new 2k resolution HP monitor for less than a top of the range iMac and then be able to upgrade it for the next 5 years of its life….

[Tom Sefton]

It depends entirely on their relationship with the client, and your relationship with the agency. Some clients expect the agency they employ to be the only creative force that they listen to, and a one stop shop for every piece of media that is needed. If you find this is the case, its best to accept that the agency will control the creative decisions behind the project. We’ve been used as a facilities house for shooting and editing whilst an agency staff member sits with us for 3 days of editing and reviews all of the post production; we’ve also been used to polish the concept, write scripts and prepare brief storyboards and then deliver a finished cut.

[Tom Sefton]

Just found the same thing. Want something beefy and powerful to render from AE, and I can’t see the iMac being able to complete with our PC based workstations. I really, really hope that the new Mac Pro comes out soon, and has thunderbolt along with a good graphics card and a reasonable level of base spec RAM.

[Tom Sefton]

P’raps the only saving that can be passed on with SD is the reduced amount of storage required throughout the project…