Mac Pro spec

[JustinC]

Hi,

I own a Mac Pro and have been playing with some R3D files from relay, thanks to all you guys who are kind enough to share your footage, and am having some playback issues which Im guessing it down to my machine's speed.

My Mac is a 2x 2Ghz Dual Xeon with 3gigs of Ram (installed in pairs of course). It will play Apple Pro Res HQ from a 2k timeline but not the 2k half res proxy. I understand that this takes a lot of processing power to play in realtime but wondered what Mac Pro specs are necessary.

Is there anyway we could start a Poll to cross reference machine specs and ability?

Alternatively, what is everyone else using?

Thanks,

Justin

 

[Uli Plank]

First of all, you'll need a RAID. Some more RAM doesn't hurt either.

 

[skim08]

Would probably be good to get at least 1 more GB RAM (I believe FCP maxes at 4 GB).

You need drives that are fast enough to play those ProRes files in FCP.

It probably means you'll need to get some kind of external RAID-0 drives at least. Then, on top of this, you should also get additional external drive(s) just for backup of all your footage, in case the RAID-0 goes out...

I was burned by drive speed. I have a brand new octocore 2 x 3.0ghz Mac Pro with 8 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT card. Also - I'm in 10.5.5 and using FCP 6.0.5. My 4K R3Ds were transcoded to 2048 x 1024 ProRes (HQ) in Red Alert.

however - on my fast machine, the external (non-RAID) eSATA drives I'd gotten choked badly on playback of my 2048 x 1024 ProRes (HQ) footage, in both the Viewer and native timelines with same specs (aka no rendering needed). Most of my research told me I needed a RAID-0, ideally with 20% more performance than I needed, and at least 30% more space than I need, in order to maintain performance (a SATA RAID will slow down when the drives start to fill).

Depending on how much footage you have, and if you are really on a shoestring, you may be able to get away with using your internal hard drives... I have two 1TB internal drives, non-RAID, and I used them a temporary solution for editing some of my 2048 x 1024 ProRes, and they performed fine. It was ultimately not a good long term solution for me for a few reasons (it maxes out on space, and I didn't want to mix my work material with my personal material - better to have a clean dedicated external RAID for my work, etc).

anyway ...only way to know what works is to test with your footage on your own system.

Hope that isn't too much of a digression from your question about Mac specs - but I learned the hard way that drives are essential, and should be considered part of your setup.

best of luck,
Susan

 

[JustinC]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the advice. Ive worked in broadcast for a decade now and most of my days spent on well specced systems have been on AVIDs and storage speeds have never been an issue on systems as its never my own money buying them! And while ive owned a mac of some sort for FCP work for a few years its suddenly getting to the stage where I need to shell out proper cash for a system to play with at the weekends.

As I said in my first post, my Mac will play 2k ProRes HQ at the moment but not the proxies. I used a system on a job earlier this week that had 14gigs of ram and was the same model mac as yours, Susan. It performed v well even off a firewire800 media drive. It played REDCODE 2k proxies made in RED Alert and outputted them to one of the 30 inch cinema screens at full frame rates. 4k proxies wouldnt play, again using a REDCODE proxy and on a RECODE timeline.

Does anyone know how to set a poll/chart up for reference? Including processor speeds, ram amounts, hard drive types/makes/speeds and which level REDCODE and ProRes HQ proxies can be played without any jittering? I for one would find it very useful.

thanks

Justin

 

[skim08]

Hey Justin,

just to clarify - is your 2K proxy on the timeline rendered, and are you set in Unlimited RT?

Also I'm curious - the 2K proxy will neither play in FCP nor within Quicktime, yes?

... Sounds like you already know your system won't work... but just thought I'd ask.

I agree a chart for reference with different specs would be very helpful for many people.

(Didn't mean to derail focus from your post --
Good to know that FW800 worked for your ProRes on a faster system.

Do you happen to remember what brand of drives they were? Do you remember how large and how filled to capacity they were? I'd love to know.)

best,
Susan

 

[Krishius]

We just bought a new Mac Pro (2.8 Ghz octacore, 8 Gigs of RAM, internal 3Tb RAID0 disk massive) and discovered that 2K QT proxies (references to 4K R3D files) still play back quite jerky.
The highest resolution proxies that can be played back normally are medium ones.

And what are the minimum requirements for normal 2K QT proxy playback?

 

[Tim Wainwright]

Hi - new user and red owner here - I have a mac pro with 2 X 3 GHz quad core Intel Xeon - 13 GB ram - Bus Speed of 1.33 GHz. Could someone suggest the best raid drive to get for this machine - make and model would be appreciated - I was thinking of using swapable raid drives to manage and archive client work for the time being.

I would like to be able to use the 2K files and spin them out to apple pro rez. I shot for TV so probably using HD resolution and not the 2k files would be fine.

 

[Dave Blackham]

Hi,

I own a Mac Pro and have been playing with some R3D files from relay, thanks to all you guys who are kind enough to share your footage, and am having some playback issues which Im guessing it down to my machine's speed.

My Mac is a 2x 2Ghz Dual Xeon with 3gigs of Ram (installed in pairs of course). It will play Apple Pro Res HQ from a 2k timeline but not the 2k half res proxy. I understand that this takes a lot of processing power to play in realtime but wondered what Mac Pro specs are necessary.

Is there anyway we could start a Poll to cross reference machine specs and ability?

Alternatively, what is everyone else using?

Thanks,

Justin

Your best bet is to go through the system and find the bottle necks, when you find the slowest part of the processing chain and improve it then another will crop up.

My guess is you need a faster GPU, I think the prefered card is a Radion X1900 for your machine but there may be newer card to check out also. They are not expensive. Next Drives, Id use a dedicated system drive, what ever you have will be almost certainly far bigger than needed, then create a raid 0 with the other three Drives or use an external Jbod or preferably raid.

If internal make the drives 3Ghz by changing the drive setup (small strap on the drive if your machine supports 3Ghz Drive interface)

2.5Gb of ram absolute minumum but the more the better.

Are you using a video HBA, ie AJA Kona or Blackmagic card ?

Hope this helps,

Dave

 

[Dave Blackham]

Hi - new user and red owner here - I have a mac pro with 2 X 3 GHz quad core Intel Xeon - 13 GB ram - Bus Speed of 1.33 GHz. Could someone suggest the best raid drive to get for this machine - make and model would be appreciated - I was thinking of using swapable raid drives to manage and archive client work for the time being.

I would like to be able to use the 2K files and spin them out to apple pro rez. I shot for TV so probably using HD resolution and not the 2k files would be fine.

Im using Sonnet Chassis with their eSATA card for HD work, it works fine there is a whole bunch of similar devices available though.

Dave

 

[Curran Giddens]

Hi - new user and red owner here - I have a mac pro with 2 X 3 GHz quad core Intel Xeon - 13 GB ram

13GB RAM is a bit of an unlucky number to have. It is best to keep them in matched pairs and all the same size.

See this diagram:

http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/5267/memconfigzf4.jpg

Could someone suggest the best raid drive to get for this machine - make and model would be appreciated - I was thinking of using swapable raid drives to manage and archive client work for the time being.

I'm lookin' to get an CalDigit HDPro myself.

 

[Steve Johnson]

Hi All,

This is my first post here. I am getting set to purchase my first Red One camera within the next few months and am getting ready to purchase my Mac Pro Edit Station.

The spec of the system I am purchasing is:

Mac Pro 2 x 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
16GB RAM
4 x 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB
Two 16x SuperDrives
2 x 30" Cinema Displays


Now my questions:
1. Will this spec deal with 2K & 4K files whilst editing in FCP?
2. Should I get the Mac Pro RAID Card which is on the Apple Store site or another one?
3. Should I RAID the 4 x 1TB internal drives together?
4. Has anyone had any experience with the Drobo Storage Solutions as I was looking at using one of these for file storage - it only has Firewire 800 - is this fast enough for FCP and Red files?

Thanks for you help in advance.

Regards

Steve

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Steve,

System specs look fine. However, if you're planning in the next few months, then I would say don't stress right now. New Mac Pros are due to ship within the next 20-60 days or so, when Intel ships the Intel Nehalem Xeon CPUs.

I recommend buying your HDDs and RAM from a source other than Apple. Apple charges huge mark-ups on them. Be sure to get memory that's certified for Mac Pro use with proper heat spreaders, and a good warranty. OWC is a good source. However with the imminent system update, the RAM spec will change, requiring faster modules. However, with you being in Scotland, that may restrict your access to places to buy quality RAM and drives on the cheap. But look into it, you can save 30% off your total system price pretty easily by doing this.

Anyway, other comments on your specs above... Take a look at the new 30" panels from HP, Samsung and Dell. They are much nicer than Apple's 30", which has not been updated in quite some time. IMO, I think we'll see Apple give us a new 30" when they update the Mac Pro line. I'm thinking Mac World coming up here shortly will have a lot of answers for us. ...I hope. You can also skip the second 16X SuperDrive and put in a Blu-Ray drive yourself, if you use Adobe CS4 or other software that can use it.

Your questions...

1. Yes, this spec will edit from 2K and 4K files in FCP. Either via the proxies or the new native L&T. Read the forums and familiarize yourself with the current limitations of these workflows. And what other options are out there.

2. DO NOT BUY THE APPLE RAID CARD. It is crap. See the 1.5TB Drive thread in this forum.

3. Maybe, depends, what do YOU need? I prefer one drive for system, 3 drives in a RAID-0 for workspace. Combine that with a good backup. Or do all 4 drives internally as a RAID-5, carve that into what you need for partitions. Use a faster external RAID for your performance storage.

4. Drobo sucks. It's way slow. Terribly inefficient. It's like "RAID for dummies", but taken to the extreme. Too bad, because it is a really nice idea. If they were to offer an eSATA and/or NAS version with gig-E and conventional RAID-5, I think a lot of us would be all over it.

 

[Steve Johnson]

Wow Jeff,

Thanks for that reply.

Yeah I was holding out for the updates of the Mac Pro - monitors are always debatably, but I will look into these, thanks.

RAID CARD - okay - thanks - wasn't really wanting the cost of getting one but that helps.

Regarding RAID-ing the internals together - I basically want some system space to put FCP, Pro Tools etc onto my system, then have somewhere to store all my media. Any suggestions. I do have a budget, but if I save some in the cost of the system throught Apple Developer connection then there will be some there for a semi-decent storage for my RED media etc.

Storage - what your thoughts about the best way to store all RED footage and access that on the Mac Pro?

RAM - I never buy Apple RAM - too expensive - I do have some good options here in the UK for RAM - Cruical is good here - they also have a US site.

Thanks for the feedback Jeff.

Steve