Custom PC or Mac for Resolve?

[Desmond Ford]

I decided against a Hackintosh on the advice of this community and others. So now I have to chose between a custom built PC or a Mac Pro. I will use the machine primarily for color grading on DaVinci Resolve. However, I still want to do some light work on Premier Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, and transcoding footage in Redcine X.

The one downside to PCs that I can think of is the lack of support for ProRes. However, the bright side is the infinite customizability of pcs and the price, of course.

Macs are great. I love the OS and customer support, but I hate feeling trapped by their configurations and unpredictable updates. Also, there is no USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt support, only 3 PCI slots with limited power capacity, and who knows when the new Mac Pros will be out, it could be January 2013 or December 2013, and I can't wait another 14 months for a new computer.

What are the downside to PCs? Any deal breakers?

If need be, is it possible to color grade on a PC, copy the DaVicni Resolve Project File to a mac and render out to Prores?


dezzy

 

[Harva Raj]

Having same dilemma now. :cryin:

 

[Nicos Ambatzis]

I am on the same boat too. But I am examining a PC way with Supermicro Superserver 7047GR-TRF with a motherboard X9DRG-QF, chassi CSE 747TQ-R1620B and two CPU either the E5 2620 2.0GHz (6 core) or the E5 2650 2.0GHz (8 core) plus 32 GB DDR 3 1600 ram. As for cards, one Quadro 600 for desplay and one GTX 680 4GB for Resolve for up to 2K and later on another one for 4K. The motherboard has 4 x 16 dual width slots, 2 x 8 and 1 x 4 . I don't know if anybody have any experience, but any help will be welcomed.

 

[Mohammed El Sharqawy]

Nicos I think you are on the right track for choosing the hardware.. just go with the dual 8 core config plus add more ram.. the board takes 16 chips while 8 gb chips sells for $60.. so a 64gb or 128gb config would be of beneficial to apps like ae and pr as they split the available memory on the working threads which will be increased to 32 threads running.. do the math and you'll find that you'll need 128gb to fill less than 4gb per thread..
the super server is really amazing in terms of the upgradability and scalability .. just was wondering if someone can figure out a way to install osx on this configuration.. then that would be a Win/Win all purpose workstation.. except for thunderbolt connectivity..

maybe mr. luigi of the famous hackintosh thread can come to aid.. :-D

 

[Peter Proniewicz-Brooks]

I decided against a Hackintosh on the advice of this community and others. So now I have to chose between a custom built PC or a Mac Pro. I will use the machine primarily for color grading on DaVinci Resolve. However, I still want to do some light work on Premier Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, and transcoding footage in Redcine X.

The one downside to PCs that I can think of is the lack of support for ProRes. However, the bright side is the infinite customizability of pcs and the price, of course.

Macs are great. I love the OS and customer support, but I hate feeling trapped by their configurations and unpredictable updates. Also, there is no USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt support, only 3 PCI slots with limited power capacity, and who knows when the new Mac Pros will be out, it could be January 2013 or December 2013, and I can't wait another 14 months for a new computer.

What are the downside to PCs? Any deal breakers?

If need be, is it possible to color grade on a PC, copy the DaVicni Resolve Project File to a mac and render out to Prores?


dezzy

Currently PCs have a fair performance lead over Macs for resolve, mainly GPU based (are the mac Quadro k5000s out yet?).

I belive but probably best to get confirmation of this that RED projects can be exported and moved freely between versions, though of course taking a 2k+ project into a lite copy would either fail or be downscaled to 1080p. I think the PC version can read ProRes it just cant export it. Would have to double check.

The big question is how important is ProRes to your needs, if everyone you work with/for uses it and wants it dleivered then a mac is difficult to get around.

 

[jake blackstone]

Yes, you can move projects between ANY platforms, including Linux, as long as Resolve is the same version. I just did a remote grading job with Linux and Mac versions. But because of lack of Prores support on linux, we used DPX on Linux and Prores on Mac. I have both Mac and PC Resolve and PC Resolve is faster, but lack of Prores support on a PC is a deal breaker for me. Moving projects between computers, moving drives, changing directories is PAIN IN THRE ASS! Hence, I wouldn't do it.

 

[Alex Carr]

I've actually never owned a MacPro, i currently have a Asus Z9PE-D8 with x2 8-core Xeon, 64GB RAM and gtx680. it's a rackmount system with watercooling. It has x3 SSD's, Linux, Windows7, and Mountain Lion. So if something is wrong with one OS, I can boot into another. So far, The only problem with 2011 socket processors is that they are not supported by OSX... which means you need to have NullCPUPowermanagement.kext loaded at all times.

The performance simply doesn't match a current MacPro. Especially for the professional market, apple's current model is severely limited. Although, OSX on a PC is really just for advanced users who have the extra time to configure the PC for osx.

 

[Nicos Ambatzis]

[QUOTE So if something is wrong with one OS, I can boot into another. So far, The only problem with 2011 socket processors is that they are not supported by OSX... which means you need to have NullCPUPowermanagement.kext loaded at all times.

The performance simply doesn't match a current MacPro. Especially for the professional market, apple's current model is severely limited. Although, OSX on a PC is really just for advanced users who have the extra time to configure the PC for osx.[/QUOTE]

Sorry Alex but can you be more explicit since I don't have such experience in these fields but I realize that I have to go in as well. Thanks

 

[Alex Carr]

The CPU 2011 socket is supported but you have to turn off CPU power management. it doesn't cause any problems with performance. it's not supported because Apple hasn't added the 2011 socket processors to their OS, because there isnt a MacPro with a 2011 socket.

 

[Christopher Reig]

Yes, you can move projects between ANY platforms, including Linux, as long as Resolve is the same version. I just did a remote grading job with Linux and Mac versions. But because of lack of Prores support on linux, we used DPX on Linux and Prores on Mac. I have both Mac and PC Resolve and PC Resolve is faster, but lack of Prores support on a PC is a deal breaker for me. Moving projects between computers, moving drives, changing directories is PAIN IN THRE ASS! Hence, I wouldn't do it.

I feel your pain, not having ProRes encoding on PC. These days it is the only thing that is stopping me from fully transitioning to Windows 7 for my Resolve system.

 

[Michael Auerswald]

I feel your pain, not having ProRes encoding on PC. These days it is the only thing that is stopping me from fully transitioning to Windows 7 for my Resolve system.

In that case you may be glad to hear that all recent builds of ffmpeg support ProRes encoding on Windows. Get e.g. http://www.stuudio.ee/anothergui/ which comes with presets for up to 185mbit prores encoding. Has been working like a charm for me so far.

 

[jake blackstone]

In that case you may be glad to hear that all recent builds of ffmpeg support ProRes encoding on Windows. Get e.g. http://www.stuudio.ee/anothergui/ which comes with presets for up to 185mbit prores encoding. Has been working like a charm for me so far.

No pain here whatsoever. I'm happy to use my Mac as is and I have no plans to move to PC. Prores encoding on PC is not new and it does work quite well, but it is a two step process, unlike it is on a Mac- hit render and forget. And do not forget the need for the roundtrip, which means you need to be able to render each event separately. So, no PC Resolve for me until BM implements Prores encoding on PC.