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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Just announced: BlackMagic Design Thunderbolt/ SDI/ HDMI / 3D.

I think Michael means that it's now available. Yes, it was announced at NAB. It's now shipping as of just a couple days ago.

One of these an a Thunderbolt RAID could turn an iMac into a real power-house for most video editing tasks.
 
I'm curious as to how people would utilize this. The laptop would be pretty limiting for Resolve. FCP? What other Apps would you use (in the field) that would take advantage of it?
 
Mark, you probably can use it to connect to the new Apple Thunderbolt displays...if you have another peripheral in the chain with 2 Thunderbolt jacks... which brings me to another point: since all the Thunderbolt people keep on touting the daisy-chaining possibilities of Thunderbolt, why are there so many peripherals with only 1 jack? My MacBook Pro only has one, as does the Apple Thunderbolt displays, as does the new Blackmagic interface... :(
 
Based on this Thunderbolt device, I am thinking about getting another work station and considering the 27 " 3.4GHz Intel Quad-Core i7 iMac loaded up with RAM. Im curious about thoughts about how this will perform with final cut and premiere compared to my current machine: 2 X 2.4 Quad Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro. My thinking is use the current machine to transcode red files with the red rocket and use the imac for editing/grading. Would Resolve be an option on the imac?
 
Dan McCain said:
Based on this Thunderbolt device, I am thinking about getting another work station and considering the 27 " 3.4GHz Intel Quad-Core i7 iMac loaded up with RAM. Im curious about thoughts about how this will perform with final cut and premiere compared to my current machine: 2 X 2.4 Quad Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro. My thinking is use the current machine to transcode red files with the red rocket and use the imac for editing/grading. Would Resolve be an option on the imac?
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Your Resolve will be limited by CUDA-less AMD GPU performance, which is bloody shame, considering Macs do not use nVidia GPUs anymore. It will work, but not as well as Mac Pros with FX4000 or GTX 285. Also, I'm not sure, if i7 quad proc is capable of debayering RAW at 1/4 resolution in real time. But, if you do not care about real time performance, then it's fine choice.
 
From what I understand, today's Mac Mini is about as fast as my 2007 Mac Pro (provided that it's decked out with 16gb of RAM from OWC and an SSD hard drive). So for most things you'll be fine, even editing RED footage.

However, as has been said already, nVidia graphics aren't on any Mac other than a Mac Pro with a Mac-version Quadro card. That takes out Adobe Premiere's CUDA performance, Da Vinci Resolve, and a bunch of 3D modeling features and plug-ins for iMacs, Macbook Pros, Macbook Airs, and Mac Minis.

The biggest hope we have is the PCI-Express expansion units currently in the works at a few companies, including Sonnet, that would allow for graphics cards, editing cards, RAID cards, and other PCI-Express cards to be used over Thunderbolt connection. Much like the Cubix GPU Expander system, you would simply connect the cable (Thunderbolt in this case) and have one or more additional devices for your computer. This way, you would be able to do just about any kind of creative post job with nothing more than a Macbook Air.

Now, about the Blackmagic Design box, I'd certainly consider it for it's potential alone. Although, I've had a bit of a time with my Multibridge Eclipse though, so I personally would wait and see some reviews first.
 
Christopher Barrett said:
I'm curious as to how people would utilize this. The laptop would be pretty limiting for Resolve. FCP? What other Apps would you use (in the field) that would take advantage of it?
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capture, playout, and deck control, on one simple port and the ability to still have a fast raid with a laptop or imac is really powerful in itself. Fits into a lot of productions.

field one lights using resolve lite, or even fcp or premiere on set.

if and when new mac pros come out, and has thunderbolt. this bad boy will save you a slot, so no need for the decklink internally. although if the sonnet expansion chassis for TB works well, you can just throw your decklink in there and save yourself a slot and accomplish the same thing. always good to have options. I'm ordering a ultrastudio in a few weeks can't wait!
 
Philip Powell said:
This is very cool. But what kind of throughput are they suggesting is required on the hard drive (Raid) side of this, for capture and playback of two ful rez HD stereo streams? My Macbook pro certainly can't handle that.
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Found the answer, they are looking for around 237mb per second for HD two streams of uncompressed.
 
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