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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 :)

HP 820 Tower - RED EDITION

Mathieu Ghekiere said:
And for those who berate FCP X: it's immature, but it got a lot better the past year. There are things in that program that no other NLE can match.
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Can you give an example of something no other NLE can match?
 
Paul S. said:
I hear you. But I have to be pragmatic on the matter, so I'm thinking I'll pick up a specialized PC and alongside that run a mac mini - through a switch so that one of my monitors can be flipped over to the mac. PC will only be connected to internet when necessary; all admin stuff and recreation on the mini.
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I forgot to add that we're considering the HP offering but not the RED option. We have an extra ROCKET here that can use a decent workhorse and would entertain a new Maya box that also works with RED clips ;)
The extra card was deemed for a Thunderbolt option but nothing of date has our attention.
 
Tom Lowe said:
If you wait for Apple, what do you hope to gain from this? Do you think their hardware will surpass what you will be able to build in a PC at the time? Very doubtful, especially for specific tasks like 4K editing.

If you are somehow under the impression that PCs "get viruses and crash all the time", I can assure you, this is false. I have been using an i7 machine I've had since April 2010 and I have never had a single crash, blue screen, or virus.... EVER. Plus I have swapped out nVidia cards three times, added all kinds of drives and swapped out RAM twice, building the rig just how I needed it for editing.
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Same experience here...I am running 2 Quadro's and a Nvidia 470...2 different drivers....no stability problems...changed RAM....moved the OS onto a faster drive....no viruses...no malware.
 
ProRes without a Mac... IF you can generate SDI output...

ProRes without a Mac... IF you can generate SDI output...

Just as a point of reference vis a vis writing ProRes; Back in 2008 I was using Assimilate Scratch on a PC with a nVidia Quadro 5600 w/SDI daughter card feeding an AJA io/HD box over SDI that did an hardware ProResHQ encode over FW800 to a MacPro in real time.

Makes me wonder if one could take the SDI output of a Red Rocket into something like the PIX 240 (or a KiPro, etc) that would hardware encode ProRes onto a drive?

Point of reference #2; Gary Adcock did some testing a while back of software vs hardware ProRes encodes. The short take is that the software encodes would dynamically adjust the bit rate as needed to accommodate system resources but the hardware encodes were full bit rate all the time.

My point is that if you go PC/Windows but still need ProRes deliverables you might be better off getting a PIX 240, AJA or BM recorder that can hardware encode ProRes from an SDI feed rather than fussing with a ffmpeg on PC based approach or a Mac mini kludge. As a bonus, you now have a stand alone recorder solution that can be very useful for any number of production challenges, including making ProRes media directly from the SDI out on camera.

Cheers - #19
 
Mike Harrington said:
Can you give an example of something no other NLE can match?
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Sorry for the quick off-topic: the whole metadata driven underpinnings of it. Keywords overlapping, quick, fast searching trough your timeline trough database, smart collections, the roles feature (which comes from that), and the flexibility of the Multicam feature (what doesn't mean it doesn't have issues), ...
 
Whats makes this machine very attractive is that Promax is the vendor in the west. They are an experienced turn key company that is certified by Adobe. Which mean they will install CS6 and make sure it works with all of the components that you order with the Z820. And there is always tech support from a company that knows video. Thats worth its weight in gold.
 
Apple has a very clear product strategy.

Starting with iPods, then reinventing mobile phones, then inventing new category „tablets“ and now the first Retina-Laptop. Did anyone expect something like the Retina Macbook Pro last year?

I‘ll bet Apple will reinvent „Pro-Computing“ next year with a new redesigned iMac/MacPro/Mac X or whatever. They have a good time to market approach and they know when the time is right to sell something new to millions.
In a year or so Canon and other competitors will come up with 4K+ DSLRs for less than $10k. I don‘t think that these clients or at least not many of them will buy desktops for $10k+. They will buy a new and smart 4K or 5K Retina Device from Apple....

IMHO HP is a falling knife..

I guess HP will sell less than 1,000 HP820 Red Tower. Why not team up with Adobe and other Partners and box something around Retina Macbook Pros: mobile/portable, modular and fast.

If I would be Canon I would stress the point that when you buy a $15k Scarlet you‘ve to buy a $10k computer to manage the Red workflow.
We all know that this is wrong but we know as well what happens when someone does good marketing..

Just my 2ct
 
Claus Mueller said:
Apple has a very clear product strategy.

I‘ll bet Apple will reinvent „Pro-Computing“ next year with a new redesigned iMac/MacPro/Mac X or whatever. They have a good time to market approach and they know when the time is right to sell something new to millions.

Just my 2ct
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Apple can't really do anything to reinvent pro computing....Intel Nvidia and AMD can....
All apple can do is put it in a nice box.
 
Mike Harrington said:
Apple can't really do anything to reinvent pro computing....Intel Nvidia and AMD can....
All apple can do is put it in a nice box.
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Over the years I have seen a few try. SGI Unix (O2 and Octane for us) did a decent job but the cost was just stupid. I even got into their Windows offering which was a complete farce and should have been sued but they imploded on their own.
Intergraph then Dell, BOXX and HP has all been there done that in the past and some still in present/future.
Sure Nvidia and AMD (ATI remember FireGL?) can help but ultimately its the OS experience that wins it for me.
The HP offering from RED is a step forward for most of us.
Now some of us hack away on Avid (me), now wondering if the 820 is certified.
 
I guess it all depends...
In my opinion if you are running a full screen app, and that is the primary thing you do on your workstation, I dont care what the OS looks like or what it is doing....I want it out of the way. As long as its efficient.
If the OS is getting in your way (as in can't run certain Nvidia cards) and wont let you get done what you need to do, then for me that becomes a problem.

If you are not running into problems, then power to you...stick with what you love...mac OS is a much nicer experience.

I also totally understand your Avid certification concerns....I edit about 25% of the time on Avid and it is very picky in terms of hardware and drivers
 
I am still shocked to see how many of you like to "limit" yourself to a specific OS.... When both OSX and win7 64bit are very identical and are both as stable as each other. We run both platforms and I can assure you that the days of windows crashing all the time and being unstable are gone. We have machines that have been running windows since 2010, upgraded, and changed configuration and never once has it crashed, blue screened or gotten a virus. But honestly the biggest advantage is windows machine simply run much faster in most of our tasks. There was a time where we only dealt with Apple...but that time has gone. It's time to open your minds a little and discover that you now have a viable (and sometimes much better) alternative to your MACs...
 
Maz Mawlawi said:
I am still shocked to see how many of you like to "limit" yourself to a specific OS.... When both OSX and win7 64bit are very identical and are both as stable as each other. We run both platforms and I can assure you that the days of windows crashing all the time and being unstable are gone. We have machines that have been running windows since 2010, upgraded, and changed configuration and never once has it crashed, blue screened or gotten a virus. But honestly the biggest advantage is windows machine simply run much faster in most of our tasks. There was a time where we only dealt with Apple...but that time has gone. It's time to open your minds a little and discover that you now have a viable (and sometimes much better) alternative to your MACs...
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Great post, Maz.
 
Maz Mawlawi said:
..There was a time where we only dealt with Apple...but that time has gone. It's time to open your minds a little and discover that you now have a viable (and sometimes much better) alternative to your MACs...
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Indeed there was a time when all I ran was Windows period when it came to heavy lifting. Now of course Im talking full on 3D and Motion Graphics here and not NLE.
I never found NLE software requiring much in resources (CPU/Display Cards).
Back then I kinda looked at NLE as a glorified Word Processor, you know a means to put all the rendered frames composited into After Effects.
Of course I was young and naive then :)
I think most of us are open as you can tell from the posts.
No ones slinging mud from my end here ;)
 
Now if we could only get the HP logo replaced with a RED logo.

Jarred Land said:
We have teamed up with HP, NVIDIA and ADOBE and are releasing some uber Liquid Cooled HP RED Z820 workstations next month. HP has built custom dual RED MAG card readers into the front with internal RED ROCKET acceleration card(s) plus tuned ADOBE CS6 suite installations... These things scream.


These will be sold through HP professional resellers such as ProMax and TEKSERVE starting in July. These are being shown next week at the ADOBE roadshow touring the country, some of you might of seen and used the prototypes at REDUCATION this last week.


There will be a builder to add whatever you want. RED ROCKET, CS6, and all drivers etc are pre-installed, starting around $10,000.

Sample Build :

HP Z820 (16) 3.21GHz Cores, Liquid Cooled, 32GB 1600MHz Quad Channel Memory, Nvidia Quadro 5000 GPU, RED ROCKET, (1) Internal BluRay/REDMAG Reader, 300GB, 2.5" 10K SAS 6Gb Boot Drive, HP 3-3-3 Global Warranty on HP Components (does not have: Any RAID volume - these need to be added by TEKSERVE or ProMAX)


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I'm totally fine with windows, as long as it is 7 and not 8 with that crappy metro-stuff. ;)
BTW, i love that new workstation, great move RED.
 
Jarred Land said:
We have teamed up with HP, NVIDIA and ADOBE and are releasing some uber Liquid Cooled HP RED Z820 workstations next month. HP has built custom dual RED MAG card readers into the front with internal RED ROCKET acceleration card(s) plus tuned ADOBE CS6 suite installations... These things scream.


These will be sold through HP professional resellers such as ProMax and TEKSERVE starting in July. These are being shown next week at the ADOBE roadshow touring the country, some of you might of seen and used the prototypes at REDUCATION this last week.


There will be a builder to add whatever you want. RED ROCKET, CS6, and all drivers etc are pre-installed, starting around $10,000.

Sample Build :

HP Z820 (16) 3.21GHz Cores, Liquid Cooled, 32GB 1600MHz Quad Channel Memory, Nvidia Quadro 5000 GPU, RED ROCKET, (1) Internal BluRay/REDMAG Reader, 300GB, 2.5" 10K SAS 6Gb Boot Drive, HP 3-3-3 Global Warranty on HP Components (does not have: Any RAID volume - these need to be added by TEKSERVE or ProMAX)


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Just one word:

FINALLY!
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
Seriously, this industry could really use a popular, scalable and platform agnostic codec for everything from initial transcoding to deliverables. DNxHD and ProRes are too tied to their respective NLEs.
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Actually DNxHD was ratified by SMPTE a few years back as VC-3 making it an open standard removing the worries by broadcasters and others as an archive format. MXF wrapper is also an open standard. QT versions of the codec are freely downloadable for both encode and decode for both Mac and Win. I think Cineform is a great codec as well, and once it goes through a standardization process, it could very well become that codec as it has some nice advantages at this time compared to DNxHD for greater than HD size images.

Michael
 
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