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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 :)

5k Retina iMac

Multiprocessing works fine in Windows most of the time and even if it doesnt AE renders now using multiple threads anyway. The Multiprocessing setting now is multiframe processing and not multithread processing. So a 6 core or a 8 core will still process the ram preview or export faster most of the time. As the complexity of the comp grows so does the ideal threading requirement. Multiframe processing just accelerates the process so much because far more ram is used at 1 time making the memory and thread management far more efficient on the CPU and cores are not having to wait for other threads to process before they can move onto the next frame data.
 
I just pulled trigger on iMac 5k w. quad i7, M295x GPU, 32gb ram as my "hold over" machine until Apple does a nMP refresh. Ben's perspective made sense for my particular timing, as I was having trouble deciding on my needs today vs 6 months from now. I do have a RRX card and will be spending about 50/50 time on road with the RRX hooked up to i7 laptop, then i7 iMac when handling edits/color... so the nMP horsepower is not super critical for me at the moment.

When I have some spare time, I'll share some non-scientific data points on how RCX, FCP, Resolve perform.

Ben Graham said:
The dual GPU in the mac pro are based on older chipsets, and the CPU is end of life. Get a new iMac if you need something now or wait for the V2 update of the mac pro which will have a newer gen CPU and the newer GPU. I have 4 x 5K iMac coming and no plans to upgrade my 4 mac pro cheese graters till the trash can has better hardware.

I plan to connect 4 x 5K iMacs for AE network renders over thunderbolt bridge. With 4GHZ CPU and 32GB ram they are by far the best bang for the buck in AE. If you want a good HD resolve solution throw a Titan Black in a cheese grater and you will get great performace. You could get a mac pro 5,1 with titan, GT120, BM card, raid card, and an iMac 5K for less than a fully configured nMP.
Click to expand...
 
Wesley Walke said:
Still unsure if the maxxed out imac 5k can playback a .r3d raw 5k (or 4k) timeline in Premiere pro without any stuttering. Anyone know?
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I edited a 5K R3D project this weekend in PPcc2014 and colored with Resolve and it was smooth butter using a single G-RAID drive (Non-ssd) - Worked at 1/4th and rendered PR422HQ 4K - Playback of rendered file is smooth at 4K as well and looks stunning on the New Retina iMac.


My specs: 4.0Ghz / 32GB / 295X


I also did some de-noising in AE and simple VFX at 4K and was very surprised how fast AE rendered at 4K. It crunched though those frames as if it was 1080P on my Late 2012 iMac 3.7 with GTX680MX.


I'm very satisfied.
 
How are you powering the Titan Black?

Ben Graham said:
The dual GPU in the mac pro are based on older chipsets, and the CPU is end of life. Get a new iMac if you need something now or wait for the V2 update of the mac pro which will have a newer gen CPU and the newer GPU. I have 4 x 5K iMac coming and no plans to upgrade my 4 mac pro cheese graters till the trash can has better hardware.

I plan to connect 4 x 5K iMacs for AE network renders over thunderbolt bridge. With 4GHZ CPU and 32GB ram they are by far the best bang for the buck in AE. If you want a good HD resolve solution throw a Titan Black in a cheese grater and you will get great performace. You could get a mac pro 5,1 with titan, GT120, BM card, raid card, and an iMac 5K for less than a fully configured nMP.
Click to expand...
 
Just got an upgraded 5k iMac. Editing 4k in Premiere is a breeze! Love this thing.
 
I did a test some weeks ago... this is what i found.

here is my davinci test

well in the standardcandle test my results are....
3 nodes 25 fps
6 nodes 20 fps
12 nodes 12 fps
18 nodes 8 fps
30 nodes 5 fps


Dragon 6k material in a 4k timeline=
12 fps @ full res premium
17 fps @ half res good
25 fps @ quater res good


4 fps @ quare res good with one temp noise reduction node...


25 fps @ qarter res good with one blur node..... and then I'm out of realtime...
 
heja folks,

I'm a real newbie when it comes to handling RED material... I have read through this whole thread, but still am concerned about some stuff...

If I'm to buy the new 5K iMac (maxed out), will this suffice working with 6K and 5K material...??? is it possible to connect a RRX to this iMac and does it make sense...???

does anyone have experience with the following raids, and which would you recommend...???

PROMISE Pegasus2 R4 8 TB (4 x 2 TB) Thunderbolt 2 RAID System / PROMISE Pegasus2 R6 12 TB (6 x 2 TB) Thunderbolt 2 RAID System

or, instead of the iMac, would I be better off with a nMP in the same price range (about 6000USD)...???


I am very, very thankful for you opinions and honest answers, thank you,

best,

p.
 
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Im in the same boat as Peter and would love some help too, not very tech headed with all this hardware stuff.
I need to pull the trigger on a new editing system within the next month.
I dont do a lot of effects work but I need a system that can handle 6K raw editing, ideally with Final Cut X, should I go for the Imac....and get a sweet 5K screen as well or spend pretty much twice as much and go with a nMP...which is now a year old ?
 
This probably isn't very helpful since everyone is asking about 5K and 6K material... but we just purchased a 5K iMac (topped it out, 4 GHz, 32 GB Ram, 295 Graphics card, etc). This isn't to be used as an editing station, but I was curious and tried to see what it could handle. We have a Scarlet, so only 4K material, but it could easily play back 4KHD footage at 1/2 resolution in Premiere Pro CC.

If anyone wants me to try anything in particular let me know! Just keep in mind that don't have any footage above 4K at the moment.
 
Greg, in a quiet room, how loud is the fan at 1200rpm, when you're not stressing it at all?
 
The fan is barely noticeable when not being stressed. I'll be doing some rendering out of AE tomorrow which should stress this quite a bit, so I'll report back on fan noise when that happens too.

The iMac fan is definitely an instance where Apple's design sense fights with practicality. The fan vents downward on the edge of the iMac bezel, right next to the speakers. Now, the speakers are designed to bounce sound down and off a hard surface (desk), which works fine. The problem is the fans are doing the same thing.... bouncing the noise down and off your desk, which will make them somewhat louder. I'm sure Apple took this into account, but I still think it would mitigate the fan noise more if they were vented elsewhere. Anyway, I'll report on the stress-test noise levels when I can!
 
Greg Barley said:
The fan is barely noticeable when not being stressed. I'll be doing some rendering out of AE tomorrow which should stress this quite a bit, so I'll report back on fan noise when that happens too.

The iMac fan is definitely an instance where Apple's design sense fights with practicality. The fan vents downward on the edge of the iMac bezel, right next to the speakers. Now, the speakers are designed to bounce sound down and off a hard surface (desk), which works fine. The problem is the fans are doing the same thing.... bouncing the noise down and off your desk, which will make them somewhat louder. I'm sure Apple took this into account, but I still think it would mitigate the fan noise more if they were vented elsewhere. Anyway, I'll report on the stress-test noise levels when I can!
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Ive seen great results when you use a foam type desktop.

I do this with RED MAT and other materials similiar.
 
Have you done any work in DaVinci with your 4k material? Any issues with playback or editing?
 
Sorry, Paul but we tend to use Speedgrade and don't have Resolve installed on this machine. Again, this isn't meant to be used as an editing station, but we purchased the top-of-the-line version just in case. I opened a short sequence in Speedgrade however and didn't have any issues with playback. I haven't had time to do much else though.

I also used the iMac to render some different things out of AE and while the fan did start to run a little faster, it certainly didn't max out or get super loud. My Microsoft Surface Pro 3 can sound like a jet engine about to take off when I stress it too much. So far the iMac has remained pretty quiet, which makes me happy.

I will have some time in early February to play around with this machine more and we will have some Dragon footage at that point as well... so I'll post back here once I've played around with that!
 
Can anyone tell me if there is a significant performance difference between the SSD and the Fusion drives for working in FCPX?

thanks
 
SSD is a good bit faster, the Fusion drive is just a hard drive that uses a smaller SSD for cacheing. That said, performance on the SSD is still not as good as what you're going to get from a decent external RAID like the Promise or Areca Thunderbolt options. And with those you'll actually have enough space to do real work and you won't be competing with the OS and apps and their drive access needs while reading and writing your footage from the primary SSD.
 
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