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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 :)

desktop vs laptop

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Saumene Mehrdady

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i know this is technically a post hardware section but its the closest thing i can find. I'm in the position to get a new computer and I'm wondering if i should make the jump to a desktop vs sticking with a laptop

backstory: I'm mainly a director but i also edit a lot of my own projects (music videos, short and long form narrative stuff, the occasional commercial). my bigger ones go to post houses for color and all that but my smaller stuff i do myself. most of my work is finished in 2k or 1080 (but is acquired in 4k, etc) and is either web or festival bound.

Ive been using a 2012 15" MBP (2.3 i7, 750gb SSD, 16GB ram, 650m) as my workhorse the past 2ish years and its served me well but it had an untimely death last week when I spilled a cup of water onto it and it fried the motherboard. I sold it on ebay for 700 dollars so i don't feel too bad.

i have a little under 3k to get a new machine, and I'm wondering if i should YOLO it and get a desktop instead of a laptop. i can certainly use the extra power and it seems like a better value for the money. However, i would have to change my workflow because it would be a lot harder to take a big thing with me to shoots, especially outdoors in locations without a steady power source. Studio and indoor stuff should be fine, i guess.

my workflow, until now, has been mobile-centric, taking my laptop with me to set to view and offload footage, and using it for editing and lightweight post stuff, and also taking it with me everywhere i go in my daily life. i mostly use fcp x, resolve (only light grades, transcodes, and viewing), redcine, and adobe illustrator cs6. i don't do anything crazy, mostly HD work that goes online or to disc. In the future I might finish in 4k. I also have an HP z24x that I use mostly as a viewer for FCP and a second screen for illustrator (i design my own title frames). Most of my media is stored on external thunderbolt or usb 3 drives.

but I'm tempted to change it up, potentially sacrificing the portability of a laptop and going with one of these:

1) retina imac w/ i7 and m295x, 1tb fusion drive (don't have the budget for 1tb SSD). it would stay on my desk. 2750 + tax
2) base model nMP w/ 16gb ram, ssd upgrade from ebay. I'm pretty sure the d300 graphics are fine for what i do. 2650 (BH) + 4-500ish for ram and ssd. I could possibly take this with me to shoots, its not that big.
3) play it safe and just get a new or refurb rMBP w/ either 512 or 1tb of space: 2500-2800.

no, i will not build a hackintosh or go the PC route. i grew up with PC's and i felt like a slave. i only like them for gaming

What would be the most ideal price/performance friendly hardware situation for someone that directs primarily but occasionally does his own editing/grading/etc for smaller, lightweight HD projects?

looking forward to hearing y'all input
 
Adam Levins said:
1) retina imac w/ i7 and m295x, 1tb fusion drive (don't have the budget for 1tb SSD). it would stay on my desk. 2750 + tax

That is a $2999 configuration. If you found it for that price I would be interested :-)
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education discount, apple rarely checks/verifies for proof, even at the retail store. i have a student ID tho so I'm clean lol
 
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im gonna go to the apple store with some sample footage from my current project and try working with them on the base model iMac vs the top one.
 
You can cut pretty easily with 4k footage on a macbook retina in FCPx. We just got the retina iMac as well and it seems to be cranking through the 4k as well. That being said we rarely use anything in the 5 or 6k range.
 
was using my rocket x with my rMBP the other day, gotta say its not bad combo with the additional power of the rocket x...
 
yeah i can always rent a rocket x if i need to
 
I've thought about this decision for a while and even considered the new iMac but as you've noted going with the desktop solution means you're tethered to a power source so your mobility is completely eliminated.

Personally, I'm aiming for a mobile solution and then later building a more powerful Windows based x99 solution that can make use of 100% of a quadro or rocket x card's processing power. The latter would be used for the more intensive jobs (such as processing multiple terabytes of ArriRaw footage) with the rMBP being for more mobile solutions that require me travelling to locations.

But as you've dismissed the windows route entirely I suspect that will never be an option.
 
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i certainly see your logic though in using multiple machines for specialized purposes instead of one computer to do everything.

i could get a small 12-13" notebook (pc or mac) with usb 3 just for media offload and then take it home and throw it onto the desktop for cutting
 
I've got a mbp and it works great for mobile tasks (light editing/transcoding onsite). I've got a z820 at work for in the office work but I'm looking for something for home right now. I'm waffling between a loaded retina iMac or a fairly substantial x99 machine (i7 5930, 32GB DDR4, GTX980, 4k 31.5 IPS Monitor, 512GB SSD)... cost is about the same (PC a few hundred more... but both in low $4k range), the iMac would have the much nicer package and 5k res, the PC would have much more power and a bigger display (I've gotten pretty used to having a >30" monitor).
 
Just spent a bunch of time building a super beast PC in hopes that it would be much faster for editing red footage and rendering still images to time lapse. Was all excited to test it out hoping it would be much faster then my 2009 Mac Pro. Turns out is was not much faster, windows is still junk, and certain things in aftereffects were actually slower then on my old G5! Granted I never spent the time to get overlocking going, tried for a bit, but just can hang with bios or windows and all its problems. All in all it was a great learning experience.

So I am going give the iMac a shot with a used red rocket in an enclosure and see how that goes. For sure going to welcome the 5k display, going to be nice to actually see all the pixels I have been shooting when I go to edit!
 
Daniel Kelly Brown said:
Just spent a bunch of time building a super beast PC in hopes that it would be much faster for editing red footage and rendering still images to time lapse. Was all excited to test it out hoping it would be much faster then my 2009 Mac Pro. Turns out is was not much faster, windows is still junk, and certain things in aftereffects were actually slower then on my old G5! Granted I never spent the time to get overlocking going, tried for a bit, but just can hang with bios or windows and all its problems. All in all it was a great learning experience.

So I am going give the iMac a shot with a used red rocket in an enclosure and see how that goes. For sure going to welcome the 5k display, going to be nice to actually see all the pixels I have been shooting when I go to edit!
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I can't imagine that being possible. G5? Really?

You must have built it wrong.
 
AE definitely runs far better on Windows than OSX and the current X99 has far more processing power and performance than any Mac. There were many things not setup or setup right to have such problems with Windows. Adobe itself performs far better on Windows than OSX.
 
Eric Bowen said:
AE definitely runs far better on Windows than OSX and the current X99 has far more processing power and performance than any Mac. There were many things not setup or setup right to have such problems with Windows. Adobe itself performs far better on Windows than OSX.
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That's my first thought too, something setup wrong... or a component that's not working as it should... at the same component level the performance differences between Windows and OSX are generally not noticeable without precise timing (a few percent one way or the other).
 
just ordered a refurb late 2013 rmbp w/ 2.6ghz, 750m, and 1TB Flash. cant wait to start working with it :)))
 
In case anyone else is considering a laptop purchase, UHD displays at 17-inches are hitting the market now, so you'll see them roll out at the end of this year in high-end laptops and trickle down to mid-range ones by 2016.
 
Daniel Kelly Brown said:
Just spent a bunch of time building a super beast PC in hopes that it would be much faster for editing red footage and rendering still images to time lapse. Was all excited to test it out hoping it would be much faster then my 2009 Mac Pro. Turns out is was not much faster, windows is still junk, and certain things in aftereffects were actually slower then on my old G5! Granted I never spent the time to get overlocking going, tried for a bit, but just can hang with bios or windows and all its problems. All in all it was a great learning experience.

So I am going give the iMac a shot with a used red rocket in an enclosure and see how that goes. For sure going to welcome the 5k display, going to be nice to actually see all the pixels I have been shooting when I go to edit!
Click to expand...

It sounds like you had some questionable hardware or software mixed together. Did you do burn-in diagnostics or vigorously test the memory?
 
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