Building a MacPro to grade R3d files with Resolve Lite

[Antonio Ribeiro]

Ok, I have a few tech questions, as I'm trying to turn my MacPro into a basic colour grading suite. Let me first let you know what I have:

Mac Pro

• Processor 2 x 3 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
• Memory 12 GB 667 Mhz DDR2 FB-DIMM
• Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB
• Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63)
• ARECA (ARC-1880X) 6GB/s SAS Raid controller, connected with two miniSAS cables
• RAID array 24TB
• Multibridge Pro 2

I know I will need the following cards:

ATI Radeon HD 5770 for GUI to replace the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
NVIDIA Quadro 4000 for image processing

I was also told I will need to replace the Multibridge Pro 2 and buy a Decklink HD extreme card as a replacement. This is a bit of a blow, and will take me over budget.

My question is:

Can I operate Resolve Lite to grade R3d files which will be output onto 1080p without the Decklink HD extreme card?

Thanks
Antonio

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I have a similar machine 2x2.8ghz that has 24GB RAM, SSD boot drive, internal and external RAIDs that do between 300-500MB/s, GT120, GTX285, and Red Rocket. As long as I use 8-bit mode playback is realtime V8 actually performs slightly better with my setup but 9 is fine too. I have a Decklink SDI card ($295) but if you want 444 RGB you'll need the better card.

Our machines are right on the borderline of being supported, so keep that in mind moving forward.

 

[Joseph Bailey]

Our machines are right on the borderline of being supported, so keep that in mind moving forward.

By whom, Apple or Red?

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Blackmagic Design. If your Mac is 3.1 generation it is on the border in their recommended config. If it's newer than that, you'll probably be fine.

 

[Will Keir]

Make sure to get fast drives. On a Mac Pro Tower get 2-3 SSDs in RAID 0. If you are over 400MB/S Read/Write you'll do well.

 

[Antonio Ribeiro]

But with my specs what I don't understand is, if I edit from 4K using R3d in Premiere Pro but output in 1080p to colour grade, do I need the Decklink HD extreme or the 4K extreme?

Thanks

 

[Christopher Barrett]

Antonio,

You're not talking about rendering 1080p prior to grading are you? The coolest thing about the Premier -> Resolve workflow is maintaining a RAW pipeline until you render out of Resolve. If you render from Premier first, you're throwing a whole lot of flexibility and quality out the window.

Cheers,
CB

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Only only need the Decklink 4K if you're going to drive a 4K monitor while you work. And that isn't going to happen from this system, no way, no how.

Anyway, you have a Mac Pro 2,1 based on your specs. It is going to be very difficult to run DaVinci Resolve on this thing, even with upgrades. Your memory bandwidth is only 667MHz, which is going to seriously hamper your work speed and is the biggest bottleneck in this old system. This is technically not a supported system these days, not in the eyes of Apple or BlackMagic.

This system does not have PCIe v2.0 slots... All 4 slots are PCIe v1.1. You can select a few different lane assignment configurations using the PCIe config tool. Without v2.0 PCIe slots you're going to have a difficult time driving these newer GPU cards properly or the DeckLink HD Extreme or similar.

For video cards, combining the an ATI with nVidia seems to be causing issues with Resolve acceleration. You will get much better performance from a GTX570 card than you will from a Quadro 4000. This older system only has a 32bit EFI, so it's going to have difficulty accessing all the RAM on a bigger GPU and avoiding PCIe address conflicts, even if you get a GPU with a properly flashed EFI.

First thing you're going to need is more RAM. This system only supports 1, 2 or 4 GB DDR2 FB RDIMMs @ 667MHz. You must add in pairs and they all really need to be matched in all the sockets. You can get to 16GB by adding 2 x 2GB. Which isn't going to give you a whole lot over what you have now. The maximum supported in this system is 32GB. And that's the amount you should aim for, but it's going to run you $800+ with the prices on these old DIMMs to get there. You could do a bit better buying used or oddball third-party RAM, but you may not be doing yourself any favors by taking that approach.

All things considered, the cost of RAM, the age of this system, what you need to buy, etc.. You can build a much more capable PC for about the same cost as your upgrades. And by much more capable, I mean build a system that will run circles around this old Mac.

 

[Antonio Ribeiro]

Only only need the Decklink 4K if you're going to drive a 4K monitor while you work. And that isn't going to happen from this system, no way, no how.

Anyway, you have a Mac Pro 2,1 based on your specs. It is going to be very difficult to run DaVinci Resolve on this thing, even with upgrades. Your memory bandwidth is only 667MHz, which is going to seriously hamper your work speed and is the biggest bottleneck in this old system. This is technically not a supported system these days, not in the eyes of Apple or BlackMagic.

This system does not have PCIe v2.0 slots... All 4 slots are PCIe v1.1. You can select a few different lane assignment configurations using the PCIe config tool. Without v2.0 PCIe slots you're going to have a difficult time driving these newer GPU cards properly or the DeckLink HD Extreme or similar.

For video cards, combining the an ATI with nVidia seems to be causing issues with Resolve acceleration. You will get much better performance from a GTX570 card than you will from a Quadro 4000. This older system only has a 32bit EFI, so it's going to have difficulty accessing all the RAM on a bigger GPU and avoiding PCIe address conflicts, even if you get a GPU with a properly flashed EFI.

First thing you're going to need is more RAM. This system only supports 1, 2 or 4 GB DDR2 FB RDIMMs @ 667MHz. You must add in pairs and they all really need to be matched in all the sockets. You can get to 16GB by adding 2 x 2GB. Which isn't going to give you a whole lot over what you have now. The maximum supported in this system is 32GB. And that's the amount you should aim for, but it's going to run you $800+ with the prices on these old DIMMs to get there. You could do a bit better buying used or oddball third-party RAM, but you may not be doing yourself any favors by taking that approach.

All things considered, the cost of RAM, the age of this system, what you need to buy, etc.. You can build a much more capable PC for about the same cost as your upgrades. And by much more capable, I mean build a system that will run circles around this old Mac.

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for your reply.

So you're saying the combination of the ATI Radeon HD 5770 with the GTX570 is a better match for Resolve? That's great, as the card you suggest costs half of the price.

So I guess I have two options:

A) I rather kit out my existing Mac, knowing I am not utilising the cards to their full capability and at some point upgrade to a new 12-Core Mac (although I rather not be spending £3,000 on a Mac right now!)

Or

B) I could just give Mac the finger and change to a PC, maybe get someone to build/config for me a new tower as I am no engineer. I am out on a limb here and way out of my comfort zone, so your advice (as in the past) will be much appreciated.

A

 

[Antonio Ribeiro]

Antonio,

You're not talking about rendering 1080p prior to grading are you? The coolest thing about the Premier -> Resolve workflow is maintaining a RAW pipeline until you render out of Resolve. If you render from Premier first, you're throwing a whole lot of flexibility and quality out the window.

Cheers,
CB

Hi Christopher,

No, I meant that the output will always be 1080p, as it's either broadcast or for the internet. Although what I do want is to be able to take advantage of colour grading in 4K using Resolve.

A

 

[Antonio Ribeiro]

Only only need the Decklink 4K if you're going to drive a 4K monitor while you work. And that isn't going to happen from this system, no way, no how.

Anyway, you have a Mac Pro 2,1 based on your specs. It is going to be very difficult to run DaVinci Resolve on this thing, even with upgrades. Your memory bandwidth is only 667MHz, which is going to seriously hamper your work speed and is the biggest bottleneck in this old system. This is technically not a supported system these days, not in the eyes of Apple or BlackMagic.

This system does not have PCIe v2.0 slots... All 4 slots are PCIe v1.1. You can select a few different lane assignment configurations using the PCIe config tool. Without v2.0 PCIe slots you're going to have a difficult time driving these newer GPU cards properly or the DeckLink HD Extreme or similar.

For video cards, combining the an ATI with nVidia seems to be causing issues with Resolve acceleration. You will get much better performance from a GTX570 card than you will from a Quadro 4000. This older system only has a 32bit EFI, so it's going to have difficulty accessing all the RAM on a bigger GPU and avoiding PCIe address conflicts, even if you get a GPU with a properly flashed EFI.

First thing you're going to need is more RAM. This system only supports 1, 2 or 4 GB DDR2 FB RDIMMs @ 667MHz. You must add in pairs and they all really need to be matched in all the sockets. You can get to 16GB by adding 2 x 2GB. Which isn't going to give you a whole lot over what you have now. The maximum supported in this system is 32GB. And that's the amount you should aim for, but it's going to run you $800+ with the prices on these old DIMMs to get there. You could do a bit better buying used or oddball third-party RAM, but you may not be doing yourself any favors by taking that approach.

All things considered, the cost of RAM, the age of this system, what you need to buy, etc.. You can build a much more capable PC for about the same cost as your upgrades. And by much more capable, I mean build a system that will run circles around this old Mac.

Hi Jeff,

Just found an article online with a suggestion for a super "HackPro" by Lifehacker and I quote:

"Here's a high-end Hack Pro you can build for $2,012, or slightly more than a quarter of the cost of the comparable Mac Pro:

Cooler Master RC-692-KKN2 Case ($90)
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H Motherboard ($190)
Intel Core i7 3770K 3.5 GHz CPU ($350)
MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti (448 Cores) PCI-E 16X Graphics Card ($300)
16GB Corsair DDR3 1600 MHz RAM, 4x4GB ($95)
2TB Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM Hard Drive ($195)
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB Solid State Drive ($600)
Corsair Professional Series 650W Modular Power Supply ($117)
Asus 24x DVD-RW Serial ATA Internal Drive ($17)
SYBA FireWire 400/800 Card ($28)
Mac OS X Lion Download ($30) or Thumb Drive ($69)"

 

[Antonio Ribeiro]

bump

 

[david_winters]

I'm running a 2008 macpro 3.1, 8GB ram, SSD system drive, GTX580, Red Rocket. Getting 24-27fps 1080 renders to prores and DNxHD. Read / Write to a single Esata drive.

 

[Antonio Ribeiro]

I'm running a 2008 macpro 3.1, 8GB ram, SSD system drive, GTX680, Red Rocket. Getting 24-27fps 1080 renders to prores and DNxHD. Read / Write to a single Esata drive.

Interesting, but are you able to grade your work in 4K using Resolve? Curious to know what your colour grading workflow.

Thanks
A

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for your reply.

So you're saying the combination of the ATI Radeon HD 5770 with the GTX570 is a better match for Resolve? That's great, as the card you suggest costs half of the price.

No, not both cards. Just use the GTX570 by itself. You won't be able to install both cards inside the Mac Pro -- each one takes up two PCIe power leads and are two slots wide. you only have two power connectors and one double-width slot. Resolve supports OpenCL acceleration, but it seems problematic using ATI and NVIDIA cards together. You need to run only NVIDIA or only ATI. Performance on NVIDIA with CUDA is the better way to go for Resolve and also the only way to accelerate Premiere (with the exception of a couple mobile ATI GPUs that Premiere supports).

If you want a boot-up screen or to install a new OS or do anything on the Mac other than what you can do in OSX after the video drivers are loaded, you will need to get a GTX570 with a proper EFI ROM image flashed to it. Best ones out there come from the guy MacVidCards on ebay. Unfortunately, he seems to have gone flakey lately, doesn't respond to emails, only sells obscure versions of graphics cards... It's kinda weird.

A) I rather kit out my existing Mac, knowing I am not utilising the cards to their full capability and at some point upgrade to a new 12-Core Mac (although I rather not be spending £3,000 on a Mac right now!)

This is an option, but you will get much better performance with a new system, PC or Mac.

B) I could just give Mac the finger and change to a PC, maybe get someone to build/config for me a new tower as I am no engineer. I am out on a limb here and way out of my comfort zone, so your advice (as in the past) will be much appreciated.

I'm running Resolve on Windows these days as I have more hardware options and I'm happy with it. However, if you need to work with ProRes regularly, this becomes an issue. Of course, you already have the Mac, so you can always generate ProRes finishes there.

Just found an article online with a suggestion for a super "HackPro" by Lifehacker and I quote:

"Here's a high-end Hack Pro you can build for $2,012, or slightly more than a quarter of the cost of the comparable Mac Pro:

Well, I don't recommend the Hackintosh route. OSX hasn't kept in step with all functionality of the newer desktop and workstation/ server class Intel CPUs, since they have no product offerings there. So the reliability under strain of these Hack Pro systems are dubious at times. You have to be careful when updating apps and especially the OS and drivers. Lots of people are using them with varying degrees of success. Personally, I feel that if you want to build a workstation like this, run Windows on it and be happy. Other than FCP7 or FCPX, you can pretty much run everything on Windows anyway, even some stuff you can't run on OSX. And when they list a configuration like this and talk about it being "comparable" to a Mac Pro, they're off their rocker a bit. It's not comparable, it's a different class of machine. The catch is that Apple doesn't offer a machine in this classification... For some tasks this will outperform most Mac Pro configurations. The Mac Pro wins out in situations where higher CPU to bus bandwidth or better memory management are required, use of more cores, and things like that.

As for the hardware configuration below, it looks alright, but I would make some changes to make it better for Premiere and Resolve. Some of the prices listed look out of date. You're going to want dual GPUs for Resolve and more RAM -- 32GB+. 650W PSU is too small, especially if you add another GPU or even a higher power GPU like a GTX580. Premiere only uses a single GPU unless it can utilize an nvidia maximus arrangement, meaning Quadro combined with a secondary Quadro or Tesla card. In this config below, I would go with a 1100W PSU and either dual GTX580's or dual GTX680's. You can overclock that CPU to around 4GHz with liquid cooling too, if you're adventurous. The OCZ Vertex4 is a great SSD, but that price is out of date and the Vertex5 is shipping now. The single 2TB HDD isn't going to help you. You need at least 3 or 4 of those in a RAID. And you can now get 3TB drives for roughly the same price -- about $160 each right now for the "good ones".

It doesn't hurt to try OSX on it, create a partition to boot to OSX. You'll probably be running Windows most of the time though as it will serve a system like this much better.

Cooler Master RC-692-KKN2 Case ($90)
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H Motherboard ($190)
Intel Core i7 3770K 3.5 GHz CPU ($350)
MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti (448 Cores) PCI-E 16X Graphics Card ($300)
16GB Corsair DDR3 1600 MHz RAM, 4x4GB ($95)
2TB Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM Hard Drive ($195)
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB Solid State Drive ($600)
Corsair Professional Series 650W Modular Power Supply ($117)
Asus 24x DVD-RW Serial ATA Internal Drive ($17)
SYBA FireWire 400/800 Card ($28)
Mac OS X Lion Download ($30) or Thumb Drive ($69)"

 

[david_winters]

Interesting, but are you able to grade your work in 4K using Resolve? Curious to know what your colour grading workflow.

Thanks
A

All my jobs are TV and web. 1080 output from r3d sources. Render speed is based on 2 nodes with basic correction. Listen to Jeff though. I have a 570 in a macpro 5.1 machine. That card is better less hassle.

 

[Antonio Ribeiro]

This is great stuff, thank you so much Jeff for your valuable insight. Maybe as a first step, I will get the GTX570 card for now and wait until a bigger job comes in to upgrade proper.

Is this the card you suggest?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mac-EVGA-...n-GTX-285-MFR-Refurb-/290871400472#vi-content

Thanks
Antonio

No, not both cards. Just use the GTX570 by itself. You won't be able to install both cards inside the Mac Pro -- each one takes up two PCIe power leads and are two slots wide. you only have two power connectors and one double-width slot. Resolve supports OpenCL acceleration, but it seems problematic using ATI and NVIDIA cards together. You need to run only NVIDIA or only ATI. Performance on NVIDIA with CUDA is the better way to go for Resolve and also the only way to accelerate Premiere (with the exception of a couple mobile ATI GPUs that Premiere supports).

If you want a boot-up screen or to install a new OS or do anything on the Mac other than what you can do in OSX after the video drivers are loaded, you will need to get a GTX570 with a proper EFI ROM image flashed to it. Best ones out there come from the guy MacVidCards on ebay. Unfortunately, he seems to have gone flakey lately, doesn't respond to emails, only sells obscure versions of graphics cards... It's kinda weird.




This is an option, but you will get much better performance with a new system, PC or Mac.



I'm running Resolve on Windows these days as I have more hardware options and I'm happy with it. However, if you need to work with ProRes regularly, this becomes an issue. Of course, you already have the Mac, so you can always generate ProRes finishes there.



Well, I don't recommend the Hackintosh route. OSX hasn't kept in step with all functionality of the newer desktop and workstation/ server class Intel CPUs, since they have no product offerings there. So the reliability under strain of these Hack Pro systems are dubious at times. You have to be careful when updating apps and especially the OS and drivers. Lots of people are using them with varying degrees of success. Personally, I feel that if you want to build a workstation like this, run Windows on it and be happy. Other than FCP7 or FCPX, you can pretty much run everything on Windows anyway, even some stuff you can't run on OSX. And when they list a configuration like this and talk about it being "comparable" to a Mac Pro, they're off their rocker a bit. It's not comparable, it's a different class of machine. The catch is that Apple doesn't offer a machine in this classification... For some tasks this will outperform most Mac Pro configurations. The Mac Pro wins out in situations where higher CPU to bus bandwidth or better memory management are required, use of more cores, and things like that.

As for the hardware configuration below, it looks alright, but I would make some changes to make it better for Premiere and Resolve. Some of the prices listed look out of date. You're going to want dual GPUs for Resolve and more RAM -- 32GB+. 650W PSU is too small, especially if you add another GPU or even a higher power GPU like a GTX580. Premiere only uses a single GPU unless it can utilize an nvidia maximus arrangement, meaning Quadro combined with a secondary Quadro or Tesla card. In this config below, I would go with a 1100W PSU and either dual GTX580's or dual GTX680's. You can overclock that CPU to around 4GHz with liquid cooling too, if you're adventurous. The OCZ Vertex4 is a great SSD, but that price is out of date and the Vertex5 is shipping now. The single 2TB HDD isn't going to help you. You need at least 3 or 4 of those in a RAID. And you can now get 3TB drives for roughly the same price -- about $160 each right now for the "good ones".

It doesn't hurt to try OSX on it, create a partition to boot to OSX. You'll probably be running Windows most of the time though as it will serve a system like this much better.

 

[M Most]

Other than FCP7 or FCPX, you can pretty much run everything on Windows anyway, even some stuff you can't run on OSX.

Everything? You can't run Smoke. Nor can you run Baselight, Flame, Inferno, Mistika, and a number of other programs that are either Mac or Linux specific.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Everything? You can't run Smoke. Nor can you run Baselight, Flame, Inferno, Mistika, and a number of other programs that are either Mac or Linux specific.

I think Jeff is referring to the small shop folks who are running the Adobe CS6/Resolve all-in-one systems where you do your editing, graphics, sound design etc all from within one machine. The tools you mentioned tend to be more targeted.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

This is great stuff, thank you so much Jeff for your valuable insight. Maybe as a first step, I will get the GTX570 card for now and wait until a bigger job comes in to upgrade proper.

Is this the card you suggest?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mac-EVGA-...n-GTX-285-MFR-Refurb-/290871400472#vi-content

That is indeed a hacked version of the GTX570 card. I guess I would ask them for clarification as to whether or not it will work in your Mac Pro. Where the EFI ROM comes from and all that. It says you need a Mac Pro 2008 or later, according to your specs, you don't have that.

I think Jeff is referring to the small shop folks who are running the Adobe CS6/Resolve all-in-one systems where you do your editing, graphics, sound design etc all from within one machine. The tools you mentioned tend to be more targeted.

Yes, a somewhat generalized term of "everything". As it applies to most people on these forums. And within the context of the systems being discussed in this thread. Perhaps I was a bit too liberal with the term "everything". OTOH, those softwares will all run on the PC configuration discussed here, especially with the upgrades I mentioned. Not that one would necessarily do that and not that all those applications are available to purchase on their own for operation on such hardware.

Baselight, Flame, Inferno and Mistika are all awesome, but you're not going to be running them on any of the systems being discussed in this thread. You're going to be dedicating them to purpose-tuned, turn-key systems. Often only on hardware provided by OEM system partners. But if we're just talking about software that needs a different OS. You can run Windows and Linux on any [Intel] Mac. The PC configuration listed here is great for running Linux and Windows, even passes for a system to run OSX, as we discussed that to some extent as well. The thread was about upgrading an EOL Mac Pro to run the freebie version of Resolve Lite... If Antonio spends the going rate of $800+ to put 32GB RAM in that system and another $500+ to put in a GTX570 or similar video card, he's probably spending too much on that old system. ...How much is the base price for Mistika? Last I checked, right around $50K and I don't recall that including any hardware to run it on. And we are now quibbling over stupid things.