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DIT Station - Mac or PC

John Saunders

John Saunders

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So we are designing a DIT station and we were planning on putting our 8 core 2010 mac in it but with the cost of having to put in an expander does it make sense to just put in a custom PC? It seems like all the software software we use (except FCP) will run on either and being able to put more than 4 cards in a PC would be a plus. Also with the Mac pro line being up in the air what are people's thoughts? We are a Mac shop but I am starting to wonder if we should just do a PC. Although I am not sure how we would deal with Mac hard drives and other normally mac deliverables.

Am I missing any major advantages or disadvantages either way.

I don't want to invest in another mac pro right now although I suppose a used one wouldn't be out of the question.

So I guess the desision would be use our main octo core and move it between the cart and the edit suite (with the addition of a expander) or just get a dedicated used Mac pro or PC.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
 
I mostly use PC now whenever I'm dumping data on set. Only time I use mac is when the client wants me transcode to prores. I use Macdrive 8 and Teracopy (checksum) and the process hasn't had a hitch when off loading to Mac formated HD.

I have a Macpro but I will likely purchase a PC system with more than 4 PCIe slots and install both windows 7 and hackintosh on it. But that will have to wait until they start selling PC mobos with thunderbolt (soon!!) :-P I was never really sold on the expander, given how expensive they are and reduced speeds since the expanded slots are all sharing the same PCI lanes. But then again my builds and system are a bit more outlandish than most so thats not a problem most people have hehehe:-P
 
John Saunders said:
So we are designing a DIT station and we were planning on putting our 8 core 2010 mac in it but with the cost of having to put in an expander...
Click to expand...

On a union shoot, with kit rental, and a little overtime, a DIT can easily pull in over $1000 a day. So saving a grand or 2 on gear, especially if you're a Mac shop to begin with, seems like a misplaced priority...
 
joe hedge said:
On a union shoot, with kit rental, and a little overtime, a DIT can easily pull in over $1000 a day. So saving a grand or 2 on gear, especially if you're a Mac shop to begin with, seems like a misplaced priority...
Click to expand...

Yeah it's not so much the money saved as I guess it is the uncertainty of the Mac pro line. Basically if they are going to discontinue it I want to have other options. Plus I like the idea of not HAVING to use an expander. I haven't used any as of yet bu I can only imagine that built in pci slots are better than strapping on extras. I could be way off base though.

You do make me think of a point that I hadn't considered yet and that is will our clients be more comfortable with a Mac system over a pc one. I dunno, it's worth thinking about though.
 
What are you doing with your DIT station?

How many drives are you connecting to your Atto cards? R680 can be used to raid and connect single drives with one card.

What do you need two GPU? Are you doing real multi node grading in Resolve or just simple one node dailies grade? I don't think two GPU does much is you are just doing simple one node grades.


Dusty
 
Dustin Cross said:
What are you doing with your DIT station?

How many drives are you connecting to your Atto cards? R680 can be used to raid and connect single drives with one card.

What do you need two GPU? Are you doing real multi node grading in Resolve or just simple one node dailies grade? I don't think two GPU does much is you are just doing simple one node grades.


Dusty
Click to expand...
Yes we run full davinci with the tower now but I don't expect to do heavy grading with the station. However if we do make the machine pull double duty I would prefer not to be always moving cards around.

I did not know the r680 could do this although the raid I am looking at needs 2 sas connections so I still would probably need the esata card as well. I plan on having 4 red readers (2 1.8s and 2 cfs). And I would also like to have at least 2 additional for client drives and backups.
 
George Tsai said:
I mostly use PC now whenever I'm dumping data on set. Only time I use mac is when the client wants me transcode to prores. I use Macdrive 8 and Teracopy (checksum) and the process hasn't had a hitch when off loading to Mac formated HD.

I have a Macpro but I will likely purchase a PC system with more than 4 PCIe slots and install both windows 7 and hackintosh on it. But that will have to wait until they start selling PC mobos with thunderbolt (soon!!) :-P I was never really sold on the expander, given how expensive they are and reduced speeds since the expanded slots are all sharing the same PCI lanes. But then again my builds and system are a bit more outlandish than most so thats not a problem most people have hehehe:-P
Click to expand...

Nothing is quite as reduced speed as Thunderbolt though. Seeing as how inexpensive desktop class motherboards have upto 7 PCIe 3.0 slots (PCIe 3.0 = 2x PCIe 2.0 bandwidth), the need for expander has greatly diminished. Of course, there are specialty workstation/HPC motherboards which give you even more slots, if you need them. Beyond which you can chain multiple motherboards through InfiniBand for quite literally infinite PCIe slots - as supercomputers do. No shortage of options.
 
Yeah we have the new i7 iMac and I love it. What I don't love is the idea of daisy chaining thunderbolt devices and the possibility of one thing getting unplugged and lossing everything in the chain after that. Plus I don't like the connector. I know most computer connections can come out if pulled but the TB connector just kinda scares me. Maybe my worries are unfounded though.
 
I'm in the process of upgrading my onset DMT station from a laptop just capable of data transfer to a small workstation running Resolve and RedCine-X. I'll be getting a Radius EX (http://www.nextcomputing.com/products/portable-workstations/radius-ex) built on the new Sandybridge-E processors/motherboards.

I really like the compact size, common highspeed connectors like eSATA (both 3Gbps and 6Gbps) and USB3.0, slots for RR/Quadro cards, available slots for SAS card, space inside for internal RAID. Fancy AND schmancy.

Nextcomputing are a Reduser sponsor and Leanne over there has been very helpful in researching all the components and calling BlackMagic to make sure the system will be set for Resolve PC when it is finally released.
 
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