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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 :)

Computer for Scarlet

an old thread has some red one MX r3d files you can play with to test your system that are 4.5k i believe. it has 6 clips at 5 seconds each. so its not like your taxing your system with realisitic duration conditions but it should give you an idea of if your system meets barebone specs... they are also super fun to play with. i hope both red and various users put more r3d files on the net for workflow training/testing purposes... i really had a blast grading them and would love some more to see if my system/various software suites can cope with longer durations, more intense layering, grading, effects, etc and at what point will beach balls become an issue for me.
 
Asked the guy in the shop how much a top of the line Mac Pro costs out of curiosity, he replied "$32,000". He then brought up a order screen and specced it out to show me. Anyway, eventually I got a sensible answer, when I spied $6.5K on the order page. I think I'll stick to waiting for a cheap Imac to come into spec or PC ;) .

He seemed like one of those people anyway, just add the highest spec solid state drives, anything else expensive that he could find, when much cheaper hard drives combined with a small solid state drive/card (on PC) would do nearly as well.
 
and the GPU?

and the GPU?

hi, i notice you talk about proc and ram spec but not gpu. Is there no graphic card which the configuration is not cpu limited? or are the softs programmed with foots so it can't use the possibilities of the GPU? Or is GPU rather used for gaming and not really for big amount of pixels (i see max resol is 2500*1600)? What are the specs, specials spec of the rocket?
 
Asked the guy in the shop how much a top of the line Mac Pro costs out of curiosity, he replied "$32,000". He then brought up a order screen and specced it out to show me. Anyway, eventually I got a sensible answer, when I spied $6.5K on the order page. I think I'll stick to waiting for a cheap Imac to come into spec or PC ;)

Yep, the next iMac with a nice Thunderbolt raid would make a great editing system. Finally the last barrier (fast, external storage) will be broken down!

Also, you could get that Mac Pro (or any computer, really) a lot cheaper if you buy the lowest RAM and storage options and buy 3rd party. It will cost me half as much to double the ram on my new MBP than it would have been to order it with 8GB. And then I can sell the 4GB it came with, which further offsets the price! Eventually, when good SSDs become higher capacity and cheaper, I'll probably put one in as the system drive too.
 
Yep, the next iMac with a nice Thunderbolt raid would make a great editing system. Finally the last barrier (fast, external storage) will be broken down!

Also, you could get that Mac Pro (or any computer, really) a lot cheaper if you buy the lowest RAM and storage options and buy 3rd party. It will cost me half as much to double the ram on my new MBP than it would have been to order it with 8GB. And then I can sell the 4GB it came with, which further offsets the price! Eventually, when good SSDs become higher capacity and cheaper, I'll probably put one in as the system drive too.


a very practical concept but i worry that it would void applecare as well as other support from the various editing suites. cutting corners has its risks at well....
 
a very practical concept but i worry that it would void applecare as well as other support from the various editing suites. cutting corners has its risks at well....

No problem with AppleCare when doing your own RAM and HD upgrades. The last few generations of Mac Pros have been designed to make it easy for owners to do that. I recently did exactly that with my new 6 core MP. I highly recommend buying the lowest configuration from Apple and doing upgrades yourself. You save a ton of money. :cheers2:
 
a very practical concept but i worry that it would void applecare as well as other support from the various editing suites. cutting corners has its risks at well....

Well, my graphics card went out on my 2008 Mac Pro with less than a month left on AppleCare. I took out the hard drives mounted in bays 1-4 before bringing it into the Emeryville CA store, just because they were not necessary and I'd rather keep them at home. I left in my OWC SSD system and scratch drives, mounted in an dual ssd OWC carrier in Optical Bay 2. Also left in my 16 GB of third party RAM. Got it back in a few days with a new graphics card, bill for $0, and no notes or complaints about non-Apple parts.

I also have a self-installed third-party hard drive and non-Apple RAM in my 2007 15" MacBook Pro. A few months before Applecare ran out, the power control board needed to be replaced. Again, no charge, no problems.

Maybe I'm just lucky (in more ways than one).
 
hi, i notice you talk about proc and ram spec but not gpu. Is there no graphic card which the configuration is not cpu limited? or are the softs programmed with foots so it can't use the possibilities of the GPU? Or is GPU rather used for gaming and not really for big amount of pixels (i see max resol is 2500*1600)? What are the specs, specials spec of the rocket?

Read some previous posts. The current use of GPU card is limited (and in Red software I don't know if used). Ok,this has been cleared up in another thread, hopefully I can find and post here. Final cut pro was not fast and that is the problem. I have read vegas will edit on dual core with appropriate gpu support on Pc. Adobe apparently will on the mac, and new finale cut pro x will have gpu support of some sort. So top imac has nice gpu card and maybe enough power for other things. But the advice might be mistaken, as regularly people think things are happening that are not (like rendering to lower view resolution during edit instead of full resolution).
 
Apple Question. Based on using the Scarlet, would the current Mac Pro line be able to handle work flow of the Scarlet using their OEM graphics cards? Or is a Red Rocket a must have, when putting together a system. Or, are their other graphics card upgrades suggested?
 
Apple Question. Based on using the Scarlet, would the current Mac Pro line be able to handle work flow of the Scarlet using their OEM graphics cards? Or is a Red Rocket a must have, when putting together a system. Or, are their other graphics card upgrades suggested?

I'd wait for an upgrade if you can, just because it will be better value for money. But it should be fine... RED ONE footage works with my MacBook Pro in RedCine X and Premiere CS5. You only need a RED ROCKET for working at half or full resolution (I usually use 1/8 or 1/4 on my laptop), or for rendering out footage in real time.
 
There may be another computer rev before Scarlet is released. Just save your money and wait. For sure wait until NAB and all the Thunderbolt announcements.
 
I edit 4K RED 1 MX footage on a late 2009 Mac Pro with 6 GB of RAM, both in Final Cut Studio 3 and in Windows 7 Bootcamp on Sony Vegas Pro 10. I prefer the Sony Vegas editing experience. Just drop the R3Ds on the timeline...
Wow, nice to see I'm not the only person on the planet that uses Vegas for editing RED files:) Such a smooth experience and getting the same hardware as a mac for half the price doesn't hurt either.
 
Do we need to upgrade to CS 5.5 to handle Scarlet R3D files ?
 
I edit 4K RED 1 MX footage on a late 2009 Mac Pro with 6 GB of RAM, both in Final Cut Studio 3 and in Windows 7 Bootcamp on Sony Vegas Pro 10. I prefer the Sony Vegas editing experience. Just drop the R3Ds on the timeline...

Are you using a red rocket card with this setup?
 
Do we need to upgrade to CS 5.5 to handle Scarlet R3D files ?

i really hope not, otherwise i would of done it when they had the NAB discount coupon. cs5 works great with R1 files i am hoping it will be the same with scarlet
 
Ok new Imac has been released. Pretty much very little difference from the last 27 inch model apart from the latest processor ( Something like 1.3 time increase in 27 inch model) faster graphics card and two thunderbolt io ports that canbe used for two extra displays. So untll gpu processing is used the top level imac will still have the simular level of adequacy to the old model. Pity there is no solution with more than 4 cores.

No higher res screen, different screen format, hopefully.no blurry movement, laydown touch feature or 3d. Looks like most of these present technologies will be next year, unless a seperate digital cinena display comes out with some of them.
 
So, does anybody know of a future shd/4k multi touch pc that i can vegas on or shd/4k screen ;) ?
 
Does anybody know what is the data rate as Megabytes per second for scarlet footage (from to depending on the compression)?
 
update on performance

update on performance

Ok, update: I have been informed by Jeff, that the reason for the performance figures is the performance of final cut pro. Vegas can can edit at much lower processor counts on the Pc realtime native redcode, and adobe on the mac. Final cut pro x adds gpu processing, so we may see a boost there. Gpu processing on a high end gpu is something like ten times that of pc cpu cores with simular complexity from memory. So scream, yes.

www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.ph...ausible-to-Use&p=761751&viewfull=1#post761751

www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.ph...ausible-to-Use&p=761765&viewfull=1#post761765
 
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