[Victor Richardson]

Beyond the continuous crashes, reboots, and outright video card/RAM Riser failures…..there is also a serious problem with export/render artifacts in (at least) Adobe Premier Pro. We find lots of glitches and horizontal color lines extending across the frame. And of course, you don’t realize that until AFTER an hour or two export. Then, have to start over again

We can take the exact same Adobe projects, render and export them on any of our 27″ iMacs an everything is perfect…just takes longer

[Victor Richardson]

Guess what? I just made another service appointment for a particular Mac Pro that I just got back a month ago(replace RAM riser at $1,200). This will be the 4th repair to this particular machine. What’s even worse, is that this machine is actually a full replacement for an original MP that bricked 2 months from new.

[Victor Richardson]

“All I can tell you Rich is that our iMacs perform much faster and better than our 2 2013 Mac Pros. 7 Systems (not including servers) and every day the Mac Pro guys complain to me about AE having horrible render times, FCPX exporting slowly, etc. It seems that even El Capitan isn’t working great with Mac Pros.”

I have to strongly agree with John on this. The iMacs are far superior to the 2x more costly Mac Pros in almost every aspect.
We have four late 2013(bought in 2014) 2.7GHz, 12-core, Mac Pros with 64GB RAM, dual AMD D500 cards, and 2TB Fusion drives.
We also have four 27″ iMacs with 4.0GHz, 4-core i7, 32GB RAM, 1TB Fusion drives

We are a production/post house that does a lot of 4k extreme sports projects, working almost exclusively in Premiere Pro/After Effects. Every Mac Pro has serious render/export problems on complex projects. They just plain fail mid-render or export. On top of that, if there are dual monitors plugged into the trash can, we have found artifacts in the exports. Unplug one of the screens, not artifacts. We can take the exact same project files onto our iMacs and they render/export flawlessly in seemingly less time.

All four Mac Pros have died with critical parts failures, multiple times, several costing over $1k, others covered under warranty. We have had the dual AMD video cards replaced in three of them, one of those twice($546 a repair). There is an actual internal Apple recall on those video cards in systems manufactured between February 8, 2015 and April 11, 2015. They will not willingly offer this information, you have to demand it when you bring in your dead Mac Pro. We had to pay to repair two of our MP’s because they did not fall within that four month range…even though they had the exact same parts failure.

On top of that, two of our MP’s have had critical parts failures with the RAM modules. Not just the RAM memory chips, but the slot with the RAM slides into. As it turns out, there is supposedly a processor on that slot mechanism. As a result, the replacement costs $1,200.

The worst part of this, besides that the MP’s cost $8k-10k fully decked out, is that you will endure months of intermittent crashes, reboots, etc before those parts finally die outright. The lost productivity, frustration, confusion, and missed delivery schedules is insane. And Apple is not owning up to its design problems and QB issues. They are full aware , just not coming clean with their customers.

So, you can get two iMacs for the price of one Mac Pro. They work just as well at editing and after effects, and no parts failures.
And, if notice…..the Mac Pro is the only Apple product that has not had any real parts upgrades in the 4 years since it was introduced. While the iMac has been continually improved. A rep at a primary Mac reseller in Hollywood told me that, alone, should be a fairly big indication that Apple is letting the Mac Pro die on the vine. And that the company views the iMac as their future pro editing/post product, and not the Mac Pro.

Go iMac, young man!

BTW, there is this really strange and infuriating company policy at Apple where they will not give customers copies of their products service history. Sure, you get an email when turning in the machine for repair, and another billing one upon completion. But, try to get a copy after that. There is absolutely no way to do so. You cannot view repair history in your Apple Support profile, only current cases in repair. They cannot give you a copy print out at the Apple Store. And the online/phone reps cannot send you one.

I was hired after as IT Director after my company’s office manager was fired. He did not keep repair files for any of the computers. I have spent countless hours on the phone, and in person, with Apple reps trying to put together a complete history of the computers at our company. It has been one of the most frustrating things I’ve come across, They will give you minimal information on the phone, and in the shop, even though they can see the entire history on their computers. They will NOT give you a print out of such info.

[Victor Richardson]

Thank you for the advice, I truly appreciate it
If the client chooses to go with SNS, then they will likely with SNS’ Sharebrowser

Axle sounds pretty good, especially since they are a Mac-only shop.

[Victor Richardson]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, Bob
I’m still putting together quotes from 5-6 well known solution providers – not to waste vendor’s time – but, to give them a range of options and prices) to choose from. So far, I’ve got one from SNS, Small Tree, ACNC/Jetstor, Maxx Digital, and the non-DV specific 45 Drives NAS()

Let me give a little more background on what they do, what they’ve got currently, what they want to do, and what I’ve proposed
They are a small production company that does documentaries, small features ($1-5 mil), and extreme sports (surfing, snowboarding) interview projects, mostly in 1080 using Premier Pro and After Affects.They have 6 full time editors/post employees, and up to 10 more depending on projects. The 6 fulltime people work on new Mac Pro IIs, the rest a mixture of the same and 27″ iMacs. All work is done locally, no real network outside of shared internet.

They recently got some 4K and 6K cameras and that quickly threw a wrench in the gears. They’ve been adding $7k 64TB G-Tech Studio XL’s locally(via Thunderbolt) every 2-3 months as need be. And are now up to six of them at 80-95% full, along with several other 12-20TB others that are full. They said their average project is 20TB. The old saying “There are producers, and there are Collectors” definitely applies. At least, they recognize they have a problem.

Up to this point, one of their editors have been guiding their tech decisions. They have all gotten used to editing in 4K raw via the Thunderbolt tubs and want to have that option for the 6 primary Mac Pro II editing stations(all in same room). I haven’t gotten a clear answer why they do this and can only guess to save the time spent downscaling(?). Most likely, because they can via Thunderbolt. The other 10 stations will work at lower resolutions

The current goal is the ability to work on 3-4 simultaneous projects(~60-80TB storage) delivering 4-6 4K streams simultaneously(to the 6 primary stations), along with several 1080 streams. We’ll deal with the archive of 500TB later(slowly being moved to tape). I’ve estimated this will take >96TB NAS storage(1 or two chassis),maybe 4TB disk arrays for speed of access, and at least 6 direct 10Gbe card connections and/or a couple of dual port 10Gbe cards to a 10Gbe swtich, and a separate 1Gbe switch for the 1080 stations. Then, 6x Sanlink2 converter boxes

Since doing DV/prod networks is not something I’ve ever done before(manufacturing, ERP, etc), i spent the last 3 weeks crash-coursing the basics. Arrogance had me start at the “roll your own X-san storage” POV, but after reading all the posts about fine tuning it, I’ve wised up to the proven single provider solution. They don’t, and won’t, have IT staff anytime soon. They need something that will work (nearly) out-of-the-box and be stable. And it must be relatively easy maintain.

Now, the final variable is budget. They were given a $300k quote from someone else earlier – I have no idea what that estimate consisted of. Not that they had the ability to buy a $300k system…

By the way, feel free to PM me Bob, if you have a solution(I know you do). I cannot figure out how to PM off Creative Cow