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Editing 4K on Mac w/ Thunderbolt

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Brian Lehrer

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Hey all,

Could use some helpful advice on picking up a new editing system. Thank you so much in advance!

Order's in for the Scarlet, and I know I will need to upgrade my editing computer to deal with 4K Raw. (I currently have a Macbook Pro 17" 3.06GHz CoreDuo, 8GB RAM, 512MB Nvidia Card - does decently with 1080p footage, but starts to chug with effects and color correction).

I edit mainly on PPro CS5.5. I'm sticking to Mac just because I just can't go back to Windows OS.

Would get a Mac Pro, but the current ones are old and don't have Thunderbolt tech, and people seem skeptical as to when or even if new Mac Pros will be released...

Unless a new Mac Pro is out soon, I'm gonna go with either a new Macbook Pro 17", or keep my current Macbook and get an iMac 27".

Can someone with experience on editing 4K with machines like these weigh in on the experience with Premiere Pro? Can I edit smoothly from the RAW files with either of the below set-ups?
Will rendering out, or effects take forever?
I don't mind playback at 1/2 red or 1/4 res (is that around 1080?) as long as its smooth and responsive.
What sort of difference can I expect in performance between the Macbook Pro and the iMac?
(if I can manage pretty well on the macbook, I do value its portability - I assume my current macbook pro can't do much with 4K footage, correct?)


POTENTIAL MACBOOK PRO 17" SET-UP:
- 2.5Ghz Quad Core i7 (8 virtual cores)
- 8GB RAM
- 750GB HDD (7200rpm) OR 512GB SSD (how much difference will this make for RED footage? Gonna be storing footage on external drives mainly, and if it's not a huge difference, would rather go with the larger old-fashioned drive and save a bunch of money)
- AMD Radeon HD 6770M graphics processor with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
- Thunderbolt RAID 8-12TB
- Thunderbolt Black Magic Ultra Studio 3D
- Apple Cinema Display (already owned)
- some kind of production monitor to go with the Black Magic

POTENTIAL IMAC 27" SET-UP
- 3.4 Ghz Quad Core i7 (8 virtual cores)
- 16GB RAM
- 2TB HDD + 256GB SSD (maybe)
- AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB
- Thunderbolt RAID 8-12TB
- Thunderbolt Black Magic Ultra Studio 3D
- Apple Cinema Display (already owned)
- some kind of production monitor to go with the black magic

In addition, if neither of these systems will edit RED footage well, I would consider getting something like the Sonnet PCIe Thunderbolt chassis and the Red Rocket card...but its another big expense to tack onto an already expensive machine, so I would love to know whether I could get by on either of the above without the Rocket card.

Would also consider getting a Sonnect PCIe Thunderbolt chassis and something like an NVIDIA Quadro 4000 GPU for it if people think that would help performance significantly? (with PPro CUDA)

One last question, I promise. I'm used to working on Snow Leopard and all my apps run well. If you buy a new mac, does it already come with Lion pre-installed? Or is it an optional thing? Because I would certainly rather remain on Snow Leopard, unless people can vouch that Lion runs apps and plug ins without issues already?

Thank you SO much for your help everyone!

Best,

Brian
 
Hey Brian,
there are many posts here in reduser.net that you can find quite useful.
I also understand that Tunderbolt tech is not largely addressed in this forum, so here few tips:
There are hundreds of setups you can consider, but I don't see how you will be able
to manage 4k footage with your MacBook Pro or iMac.

The current Mac Pros have not been updated in more than 1 year, but that doesn't make them old.
If you want to work on Apple machines Mac Pros are still your best bet.
The reason why you can't use laptops or iMac is for the lack of PCI expansion.

You need at list 4 PCI slots to talk about 4k media:

- one for you nVidia quadro fx 4800 (essential for most of the finishing workflows)
- one goes to your RedRocket card (full 4k deBayer to use with RCX and Adobe PPro CS5)
- one for your SDI output option (for SDI broadcast monitoring and much more) I suggest AJA Kona 3G
- one for a good RAID (4k material requires a good raid of hard drives)

An 8 or 12cores Mac Pro will feel an look new for a very long time, even without TunderBolt options.
The new Apple input is not supported by professional brands yet. I wouldn't even bother about having a Tunderbolt equipped workstation for now... and you can always upgrade you MacPro with a PCI TunderBolt card.

If you want to stick with your portable workstation keep in mind that you'll only get a 1/8-1/4 playback on PPCS5,
At that point you can use your Tunderbolt with some desktop raid drive and cross your fingers.
If this is your target, consider to buy a Red certified RedRocket for MacPro 17" with PCI express:
search for MAXX RedRocket Portable system.

Scarlet users will have lots of headaches this days...
I know you guys are all happy, but I hope you have enough budget for your post production workflow. 4k ain't HD.
 
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Thanks for the info - I see what you're saying.

..although I have a friend who owns and operates a Red One MX (and has a place in line for Epic-X). They run a commercial production studio who work on some pretty large projects, and he has told me that although they do a lot of work on mac pros and HP workstations, he has been able to edit quite easily on a maxed out macbook pro in premiere at 1/4 res. He did say transcoding was still a big headache though.

But you say you really think that a maxed out iMac wont be able to edit smoothly at 1/4 res? (and still be somewhat slow for transcoding/finishing).
I can add the external Rocket to help transcode and playback. It should be pretty quick with the card, no?

Or am I still underestimating all this? Does anybody else want to weigh in?

I have read that the quad-core i7 imacs outperform 8 core mac pros in many tasks...and for expandability, thunderbolt will allow the Black Magic Studio hookup (UltraStudio 3D), Thunderbolt RAID, and even the Red rocket card, and maybe a GPU (although that would def max out the channels...the iMac has 2 thunderbolt ports - can put the red rocket on one, and the Black Magic and RAID on the other)

Thanks again for your input - i do really appreciate it, and I don't mean to sound like I know better. I'm just trying to get the whole picture.
 
I should elaborate that most of my work will be finishing in 1080p or 2K - work is for TV and web.

On another thread, Joseph Hutson said: "With EPIC footage, I'm editing on a MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM...realtime without transcoding with Adobe Production Premium. I bought it for $729. I couldn't be happier (unless I added RED Rocket to the picture). :)

TIP: don't edit EPIC footage on a 5K timeline(if you are finishing for a simple 1080p finish). You can bring those 5K files into a RED 1080p sequence, playback at 1/2 res without stuttering instead of having to work in a 5K environment and playback at 1/8th resolution."

EDIT:
For those that are curious, I just tried for kicks to edit some 5K R3Ds on my current old laptop (3.06Ghz Duo, 8GB RAM, 512MB GPU). With PPro CS5.5, I could actually edit at 1/8 resolution on a 5K timeline with almost no stutter. With a quick render (yellow bar), it played back perfectly. Exported a 17sec sequence in about 25min to 1080p. Now, I know that's far from ideal, and any effects on the footage will greatly slow it down. But...it does give me hope that a quad core i7 machine with hyper threading will do a decent job of editing at 1/4 res...and with a mobile red rocket I'm pretty sure it will go swimmingly.
 
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buying refurb from apple can save you money and still give you applecare, as well as third party ram and ssds/hdds from a company like owc can be bought for pennies compared to apple prices. personally i would wait and see how terrible it is to run on your current mac before buying something else. if its super slow then make a decision at that moment, gives you some more time to think things over and await new mac models... chances are you live near an apple store or they could ship you one quickly... i can cut r3ds on my core 2 duo, its slow as molasses but it can be done if there is no rush to turn a project around... depends really on your usage i would guess
 
Brian Merlen said:
buying refurb from apple can save you money and still give you applecare, as well as third party ram and ssds/hdds from a company like owc can be bought for pennies compared to apple prices. personally i would wait and see how terrible it is to run on your current mac before buying something else. if its super slow then make a decision at that moment, gives you some more time to think things over and await new mac models... chances are you live near an apple store or they could ship you one quickly... i can cut r3ds on my core 2 duo, its slow as molasses but it can be done if there is no rush to turn a project around... depends really on your usage i would guess
Click to expand...

That's good advice. Thank you. I think I may buy a newer generation macbook pro with the quad core processor, and see how that runs. If it still sucks (I don't think it will for my purposes - Premiere Pro CS5, mainly 1080p outputs), I can invest in a mobile Red Rocket.
 
Hey Brian,
If I had a 10k budget I would buy a 12 Core Mac Pro (without RedRocket.. 12 cores will do very well).
Let's say one day you want to upgrade a video card, a raid card, add a RedRocket just to have extra power, add SDI monitoring... with a MacPro you can keep your system for the next 5 years and when you have some extra founds you can update it.
SDI monitoring is very important if you need to perform color correction... and I don't see how you can achieve SDI output with a MacBook pro (without spending another 5k on top of your 10).

What you need is a 10bit 4:4:4 monitoring in order to know what youare doing.

I would love to have a portable editing/grading/finishing system but I am afraid it is difficult to achieve, specially with Apple hardware.
You can find some window's based portable options like 1beyond... but nothing runs like a desktop workstation.
This is my point of view, but you are not wrong if you decide to go with an iMac/laptop. Just remember you can't upgrade these self contained machine and you can't have any realtime performance.
 
I'm not sure exactly what you need. . . I mean really need. . . but we are editing our second feature using PP CS5.5 using a THREE YEAR OLD Macbook Pro using daisy-chained Firewire 800 drives. And it works! I get real-time playback at 1/16th resolution, which is all we need for editing, and I can output pretty much anything using PP.

Now, we do not do our own color work, so that might be an issue with you, but for strictly editing, you'll be fine with pretty much anything. PP CS5.5 is an amazing program!

Stephen
 
nima said:
Hey Brian,
If I had a 10k budget I would buy a 12 Core Mac Pro (without RedRocket.. 12 cores will do very well).
Let's say one day you want to upgrade a video card, a raid card, add a RedRocket just to have extra power, add SDI monitoring... with a MacPro you can keep your system for the next 5 years and when you have some extra founds you can update it.
SDI monitoring is very important if you need to perform color correction... and I don't see how you can achieve SDI output with a MacBook pro (without spending another 5k on top of your 10).

What you need is a 10bit 4:4:4 monitoring in order to know what youare doing.

I would love to have a portable editing/grading/finishing system but I am afraid it is difficult to achieve, specially with Apple hardware.
You can find some window's based portable options like 1beyond... but nothing runs like a desktop workstation.
This is my point of view, but you are not wrong if you decide to go with an iMac/laptop. Just remember you can't upgrade these self contained machine and you can't have any realtime performance.
Click to expand...

Hi Nima,

Thanks again for your informed advice. I am indeed unsure of what to get - the Mac Pro is very attractive, but I just wish it was updated before I splurge on a new one...
FYI you can achieve SDI output through thunderbolt on a macbook pro for $1000 (Black Magic Ultra Studio). Theoretically, such a device plus a broadcast monitor like a Panasonic BT-LH1700 or the Sony OLEDs should be reasonably accurate (when calibrated) for color correction. (Doesn't need to ABSOLUTELY critical, I have a friend with a DaVinci suite for that when need be).

I'll have to debate my options. Thanks again for your help. I'll probably wait a month or two anyway, since my Scarlet won't arrive til then anyway I assume.
 
Stephen Pruitt said:
I'm not sure exactly what you need. . . I mean really need. . . but we are editing our second feature using PP CS5.5 using a THREE YEAR OLD Macbook Pro using daisy-chained Firewire 800 drives. And it works! I get real-time playback at 1/16th resolution, which is all we need for editing, and I can output pretty much anything using PP.

Now, we do not do our own color work, so that might be an issue with you, but for strictly editing, you'll be fine with pretty much anything. PP CS5.5 is an amazing program!

Stephen
Click to expand...

Hi Stephen, see I here this and I am once again tempted to go with a macbook pro for now...if you can get 1/16th real time on a 3 year old laptop, I feel like a brand new quad core macbook pro with thunderbolt RAID drives should be able to edit pretty decently at 1/4 realtime, and maybe have to do some rendering for color correction playback, but honestly, my current computer usually needs to do rendering for my color correction anyway

Thanks for your help everyone!
 
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