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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 :)

New Quad Core iMac

Jerrod Cordell

Jerrod Cordell

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Apple just announced a new iMac with a Quad Core i7 Processor with up to 16GB of RAM and a 2 TB Hard Drive. It also has a 27" 2560 x 1440 screen.

How do you think this will do with RED footage? It'd be great if I can use this thing with the 5K Scarlet. As much as I'd love a Mac Pro, its just way out of my budget right now, and I can get all of this for under $3000.

So, any thoughts?
 
Î assume this will be pretty useful, wanted it to have RAID 0 option inside (like the 2.5inch drive options is some windows laptop) but no, too bad.
It still suffers faster storage short coming, but I'm wondering how it would work with network storage configuration like GraniteStor by Small Tree.
 
More people need to chime in about this one... this is big, important news... we want someone from RED with official comment... can one of these machines handle 4K footage workflow say with at least 8 gigs and the 512 mb video card? Is it possible? Your answers will affect consumer purchasing this holiday season... please let us now ASAP.
 
Jake Houser said:
More people need to chime in about this one... this is big, important news... we want someone from RED with official comment... can one of these machines handle 4K footage workflow say with at least 8 gigs and the 512 mb video card? Is it possible? Your answers will affect consumer purchasing this holiday season... please let us now ASAP.
Click to expand...

Add a RED Rocket, and you betchya. :001_cool:
 
It would be able to handle a proxy workflow but you wouldn't be 4K realtime without the REDRocket.

It looks great for handling 1080p workflow with enough RAM shoved inside which is all you would need for messing with lower rez.
 
Laco Zamba said:
Hm, there is no way how to connect REDRocket :-(
Click to expand...

Good point. Even with prospective third party external stuff like Peter's, it'll still need to port straight into the mobo won't it.

Still don't see why it wouldn't be ok for everyday playing with proxies before you do a conform. Conform might take a while on it but you have to make some sacrifices don't you.

Still, in the UK this was configured to about at £2,238.99 for a Quad i7 2.8GHz with 8GB Ram (2x4GB allowing room for upgrading). Its not crazy money but still I could probably build an 8-Core 3.2GHz version of this in a PC build for noticeably less money.
 
I don't see what all the concern is about whether or not the new iMac will work. The new i5 and i7 27" will plow through R3D files a lot better than a Macbook Pro that many people use on-set right now.

Only drawback to the iMac that I can see is a lack of possibility for external storage. For me, that's a deal breaker for a real "work" system. Single FW800 and USB2 just doesn't cut it for performance applications.

But for general use, even for editing off a fast FW800 external drive system, I bet the new iMacs will be just great. It's definitely no Mac Pro, but it doesn't pretend to be.
 
Is the graphics card in the new iMac capable of running Redcine or Apple's Color?

That is an important factor.
 
There is def a need then for those in the know to state good working specs for budget through to pro work stations.

So with regards to the imac with a 1TB HDD feasibly with good workflow discipline as long as you have the time to move files onto an external raid and obviously have back ups of everything. You could easily work with one.
 
Jerrod Cordell said:
Has anyone used this? Its a FW800 to eSATA adapter.

Not sure if it'd work as good as a direct to drive eSATA port but it might be better than FW800.

http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-spyder/
Click to expand...

I doubt it would be fast enough to edit RED footage on... Maybe a storage server over gigabit Ethernet would though? I was looking at those readymade NAS drives but they seem to be really slow, so maybe a cheap computer with a nice RAID would be fast enough.

According to an article on Tom's Hardware, gigabit should be able to handle REDCODE 42.
 
Stephen Gentle said:
I doubt it would be fast enough to edit RED footage on... Maybe a storage server over gigabit Ethernet would though? I was looking at those readymade NAS drives but they seem to be really slow, so maybe a cheap computer with a nice RAID would be fast enough.

According to an article on Tom's Hardware, gigabit should be able to handle REDCODE 42.
Click to expand...

Just to clarify what you are saying...you suggesting the possibility of using the ethernet port hooked up to a relatively basic pc with a RAID set up...acting as server to the imac
 
Tim Hole said:
Just to clarify what you are saying...you suggesting the possibility of using the ethernet port hooked up to a relatively basic pc with a RAID set up...acting as server to the imac
Click to expand...

Yes, that's it. You could set up pretty good storage server for $400 or something (plus drives) and then you get the benifit of other computers being able to use it too... Provided you had a Gigabit switch or router, they wouldn't even have to be directly connected - just as part of your normal network.
 
Jerrod Cordell said:
Has anyone used this? Its a FW800 to eSATA adapter.

Not sure if it'd work as good as a direct to drive eSATA port but it might be better than FW800.

http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-spyder/
Click to expand...

Waste of time, IMO. Only useful if you're trying to connect something with a SATA interface to FW800 just to get to the data. You will get better performance just by sticking to native FW800 devices.

Rick Allen said:
I'm thinking you could replace the optical drive with a maxConnect and ssd
Click to expand...


I don't think that will do us any good. The slot-load optical drives in the iMac are not the slimline notebook variants as far as I'm aware. I will say that MaxUpgrades enclosure would be sexy for a slimline Blu-Ray drive to throw in my Macbook Pro bag. :)

As for the network storage that Stephen is suggesting, that's another good option for the iMac systems. For those who don't want to build a storage server, there are off the shelf NAS boxes with RAID available. HP makes a really nice one available with either 4 or 8 bays. There's the new drobo Pro with 8 bays and gig-e support too. Really, there's probably thousands of options out there when you really start thinking about it.

For those who can live with an external optical drive for occasional use, it's probably possible to pull the optical drive out and pipe that SATA port out externally.
 
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Jeff Kilgroe said:
As for the network storage that Stephen is suggesting, that's another good option for the iMac systems. For those who don't want to build a storage server, there are off the shelf NAS boxes with RAID available. HP makes a really nice one available with either 4 or 8 bays. There's the new drobo Pro with 8 bays and gig-e support too. Really, there's probably thousands of options out there when you really start thinking about it.
Click to expand...

What are the speeds on those NAS things though - the ones I've seen are really quite slow... But they're mostly consumer rubbish though.

The Drobo looks pretty good though - the normal one only does FW800 (but can apparently sustain 52MB/s which is pretty impressive) but the Pro model can do iSCSI over Gigabit Ethernet which should be pretty fast (I don't see any numbers on its tech specs page though) but it's really expensive at $1500 without drives...

This HP one is apparently under $1000 and looks OK but it runs Windows Home Server, which doesn't seem to be able to RAID - it just has some 'folder duplication' which wouldn't give you any speed advantage... If I could install a Linux distro on it I'd consider it, but I'm not sure if that's possible.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
I don't think that will do us any good. The slot-load optical drives in the iMac are not the slimline notebook variants as far as I'm aware.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure that they MBP takes a 12.5mm slim slot dvd drive and so does the the iMac. IFixit have a break down and it sure looks like the same form factor.
 
Either way, slimline optical drive or not, shouldn't be a big deal to swap it out for something else.

@Stephen; Those iSCSI NAS boxes, or at least the good high performance ones, top out at about 85MB/s or so over gig-E. So about the same overall speed as FW800. I know of people using the HP unit as a RAID setup, but not sure how they're doing it. Lower cost solutions exist anyway. I haven't used any myself, but I've heard positive things about the NAS boxes from Buffalo and some of the other mainstream network appliance vendors like D-Link, IOmega, etc.. All things considered, if I were going to use an iMac as a workstation for offloading and editing RED footage, I would probably get me a NAS box that holds 4 HDDs and had direct hardware support for RAID-5. Then I could have the FW800 port free for offloading from RED Drive, or a decent CF reader or to connect extra storage when working.

I took a look at the new iMacs earlier today as I was near an Apple store. I really like that 27". I'm seriously thinking about getting the family a new computer. But at the same time, the thought of using it for real work just doesn't settle well. I don't think I could get myself to buy the quad-core model. Not when connectivity is so limited. OTOH, that 27" quad-core on its own would make a sweet little workstation for Photoshop, Maya, Modo, etc.. Anything that benefits from decent GPU, a nice screen and doesn't require high performance storage. ...If only Apple gave us an ExpressCard slot on these. Oh well.
 
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