Computer Struggling!!!

[Adam Griffith]

Hi everyone,

I just took possession of my very first RED - An Epic X Dragon.
I'm very impressed so far however my computer is struggling hard with the 6k footage.

I have a 27" iMac
3.4Ghz i7
32 GB 1600MHz DDR3 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 680MX 2048MB Video Card
The video card is CUDA enabled and I'm using CUDA in Premiere Pro

For drives Im using a Lacie 5Big 20TB drive in RAID 5 (over 700MB/s) via Thunderbolt 2

I have to drop my clips to 1/8 in preview, when ever i try play with the RED Source settings my computer just lags.
The CPU is working hard, the Hard drive isn't work hard - it just looks like its taking a nap.

If i move the gamma curve it literally takes 10 seconds for the image to update. Super hard to work with.


What do I need to do? Do I ditch the mac and go a power mac?
What spec do I need to handle 6K nicely. I don't need to preview at full quality - I just want to be able to grade etc without lag.

Thanks

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

6K Dragon clips take a lot of horsepower to plow through. There's more than 2X the data compared to 4K in that 6K frame. Other factors come into play as well, such as compression ratio, RED's own wavelet structure, the limitations of the iMac, etc.. Which version of Premiere are you running? Having the latest version of CC helps quite a bit, but this is still very dependent on your GPU and CPU abilities. The GPU in the iMac is not really up to the task -- the 680M isn't all that powerful and 2GB VRAM falls short for meaningful R3D performance at 6K.

It's a difficult time for Mac people. The latest and greatest Mac Pro system is a generation behind in terms of having the latest GPU and memory tech. Not only that, but Apple and AMD have done a piss-poor job of supporting the GPUs in the 2013 Mac Pro cylinder. It's actually a very nice little workstation, but for serious R3D workflows, you can accomplish more with a Windows PC at this time. I won't steer you away from the new Mac Pro, it's definitely workable. However, you will find that 6K in Premiere still runs at 1/4 on a 6 core and often on the 8-core as well. 1/2 is often do-able on the 8-core, but can sometimes stutter or run into glitches here and there, depending on what all you have going on. You really need the 12-core to reliable pull off Premiere at 1/2. Forget about full-resolution editing in Premiere. My latest and greatest monster workstations can't always pull this off and we get to a point where some of these systems are more than powerful enough, it becomes the software that is the limiting factor as it doesn't always scale efficiently to multiple CPUs and GPUs. DaVinci Resolve scales better than Premiere and plays back 6K in full quality -- scaled to 4K for display or a 100% crop out of the frame that fills a 4K screen -- on some of the newer systems with 8+ cores and dual GPUs.

To eliminate lag, you really need a 6 or 8 core machine with 1600MHz or faster RAM and at least one good GPU with 4GB or more VRAM.

 

[Marc Wielage]

My opinion is that an iMac is not ideal for working in 5K or 6K. My advice would be to get a much faster computer, preferably one with at least 12 cores and 2 or more very fast GPUs with at least 8GB of RAM per card (like the Titan X). iMacs and laptops are good for some things, but not this.

 

[Stacey Spears]

How about an iPad Pro? J/k