iMac set-up & workflow

[Jon Thomasberg]

While I know it is not a professional tool like an 8-core (or soon to be 12-core) MacPro, and thus has many more limitations, has anyone figured out a good workflow for RED ONE footage using an iMac since you can't add a RED Rocket to the system? If so, please elaborate on what hardware config & add-ons you are using and what software you are using to accomplish it.

If this has been addressed before, sorry in advance. I have not been able to find it. Thanks!

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

There are no "good" solutions for an iMac with RED.

The best you can do is an AJA ioHD and USB 2 or LAN storage- and that's pretty bad.

All iMac and Mac Mini solutions limit you to software rendering of RED footage on the system CPU. Since you are buying much less powerful CPU's expect long render times. To with 2-3 hours of footage can take DAYS to process on older 8 core Mac Pro's, and the current Core i7 machine aren't as fast as those "old" Mac Pros.

The key piece of hardware for working with RED is the RED Rocket

A MacBook Pro 17" is a far better choice than an iMac. You can get an external enclosure for a RED Rocket connected via Expresscard and get a reasonable performance level with FW800 storage.

If you are on a very tight budget I really recommend a mid range Core i7 Windows 7 desktop machine with a good Mercury accelerated video card and Premiere CS5.

If you have to use Final Cut Pro, then bite the bullet and get a Mac Pro. You can probably get a good deal on a refurbished or used machine.

If you are using Avid MC5 then, while my preference is for a Mac Pro, you can get a great system built around a high end Core i7, a solid midrange video card and a RED Rocket.

Another economical option is to build yourself a DIT machine built around a midrange Core i& and RED Rocket. Don't even bother to edit... just rocess your RED footage to ProRes or some other codec that works in your workflow, then you can drop that on external storage and use that on your iMac if you choose.

So... it becomes a multi workstation pipeline... and your iMac wouldn't be handling RED footage directly for the most part.

 

[sbcooler]

Would you make the same recommendations if one was going to buy the Scarlet Fixed?

Is not the iMac Quad Core with a new SSD (256GB) as a main drive for Final Cut Studio not good enough? I believe the iMac has FW800 for an external drive with the footage so should that be fast enough. I figure if Final Cut Studio is running off the SSD that should help I'd think?

Also I believe Apple is rewriting Final Cut Pro to take advantage of more than just 2 cores (CPU) so that should help, but who knows when that is coming out (end of year?).

I wish the new iMacs had a USB 3.0 or Light Peak or FW 3200 or SATA (express card) so we could have fast access to massive amounts of video data. Well, maybe the next update!

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Would you make the same recommendations if one was going to buy the Scarlet Fixed?

Is not the iMac Quad Core with a new SSD (256GB) as a main drive for Final Cut Studio not good enough? I believe the iMac has FW800 for an external drive with the footage so should that be fast enough. I figure if Final Cut Studio is running off the SSD that should help I'd think?

Also I believe Apple is rewriting Final Cut Pro to take advantage of more than just 2 cores (CPU) so that should help, but who knows when that is coming out (end of year?).

I wish the new iMacs had a USB 3.0 or Light Peak or FW 3200 or SATA (express card) so we could have fast access to massive amounts of video data. Well, maybe the next update!

Yes I would make a similar recommendation for a Scarlet fixed. 3K RED footage is a bit easier on the computers than 4K is or 5K will be but its still a lot of horsepower.

You are far better off getting an older quad core Mac Pro and a RED Rocket than you are with even the upcoming 12 core Macs (without a Red Rocket).

I would only plan on working with the iMac for editorial after the footage has been processed to ProRes or Cineform 2K.

the iMac just doesn't have any expandibility, and that makes it next to impossible to use in professional editorial.

Any MacBook Pro with Express Card and a Rocket will perform better than the fastest current iMac- no matter how you try and upgrade the iMac.

Even if the iMac included Lightpeak, USB 3 and FW3200, it would be some time before I could recommend it for professional video editing. I expect Black Magic (and others) will have i/o options for all those interfaces (like they do now for USB3) and you can probably safely run a RED Rocket off a Lightpeak interface- but those solutions would take time to come to market.

So... for right now I feel you need a RED Rocket equipped desktop computer with a quad core processor or faster.

 

[Tamas Harangi]

Jon,

For what it's worth, I've been playing around with RED footage on my iMac to see what I can get away with. My machine is an early '09 model and using RedCine-X will render an off line Pro Res file(720p LQ 1/4 Debayer) at 4x real time. Less than ideal, but seems good enough to do an offline edit at least. I haven't played around with matching back to proxies and send to Color etc. so I'm not sure if it's fast enough for that but at worst case scenario, you should be able to offline in Pro Res 720, then re render the select clips in Pro Res 422 HQ 1080 (there will be a looooong coffee break involved with that one) for a Pro Res Finish.

Someone may correct me on all this but if you're short on cash, the iMac will still get a lot of work done.