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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 :)

Jeff's Dragon Machine... Let's do it Jeff... ;)

Ketch Rossi

Ketch Rossi

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Jeff...

The more I continue to read all your insanely detail and well informed replies all over the forum... The more I think...

We... Reduser Communityl... Would benefit from a "Jeff's Dragon Machine"

While I am working with 3 different companies to bring to life a System to handle Dragon... One of them been Discussed here: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...X-Full-Rez-What-Station-you-r-doing-this-with

What I suggest we should simply do is a "JEFF's DRAGON MACHINE"... And be DONE with it!!!


I'll be happy to arrange a Group Buy with any manufacturer... Currently have 3 willing to be my Sponsor and supply a Machine built to specs... So I would definitely have some significant pool with any one of this to create a "JEFF's DRAGON MACHINE"... Unless we do it form scratch... ;)


My knowledge is limited yet I am managing to move forward and get some impressive results... But the costs are prohibitive to most, for this I have decided to open this thread up, and see how many here think like i do and would go for a "JEFF's DRAGON MACHINE"!!


I can only immagine with your precious and the well versed knowledge base you have, that we can come up with one or two solutions as far as the perfect Machine... :)


And yeah I know, we all have different needs, but I imagine that a machine that plays Dragon 6k R3D in RCX @ Full Rez and smoothly runs Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X and DaVinci Resolve would serve well to most...

And to possibly have room for expendability so that if some one later on wishes to put in an additional chosen card or two, it can be done, mating such a machine even faster, especially for Rendering and multitasking.

So there you go Jeff, don't hate me to call you out... But Mac has pissed me off and no one better then you can do this here... So forgive me and let's see if we can do this... :)

BTW... It can also definitely be a MAC (older tower) Set up, as I still PREFER 100 Folds the OSX environment vs the Windows one... Just saying... ;)
 
Mystika handles Dragon on a very low spec machine with ease. In some ways a lower version of Mistika would be the cheapest way to get fast Dragon workflow, even though Mistika is not cheap software.

All this to say...

There is no single hardware solution for all workflows - it all depends on which software are needed to be used around that workflow.

Editing on Premiere and finishing in After Effects/Mistika/Davinici/Speedgrade we have various deadline shortness adapted workflows here, and none can't work on a very basic machine config.
 
New CPU (Haswell-E), memory (DDR4) and motherboards (X99) are coming late May. Hold off a month would be my advice, unless you need more than 8 cores/16 hyperthreads, in which case you could go with a current offering.
 
It will probably be October before working X99 hackintosh systems are fully up and running, but they will be more ideal for a true dragon workflow.
 
Why couldn't apple at least have an option for an x8 or x16 lane ipass port, or TB2 to ipass adapter, even if they had to charged an extra $500+. It would have made the nMP an instant upgrade vs just an alternative.
 
apple has been strongly encouraging unlimited options and power for quite some time now. it's called a pc... ;)

sent from my rmbp
 
Ketch,
I really love you...I do.
You have a big heart, good taste, and strive for perfection.

I've been a PC guy for as long as I can remember.
In a few weeks Intel is going to announce some new (or rather: refreshed) processors for all segments.

According to cpu-world.com:
"At the end of Q3 2014 we will see a new Grantley-EP platform, that will feature the third incarnation of Xeon E5-2600 server microprocessors, coupled with C610 series chipset.
The E5 v3 processors will utilize Haswell-EP core, and use socket LGA2011-3.
Some improvements on these chips will include AVX2 and TSX instructions, quad-channel DDR4 memory controller."

The real innovation is going to be with Broadwell CPUs, but that's only going to happen a year from now.
I know you want a really powerful machine, which can handle 6K R3Ds with ease. We all do.
In computers - Speed is the name of the game.

Technology takes time to evolve, and it looks like media is a bit ahead of current hardware.
It all comes down to price, eventually...and other factors are also important, such as noise and physical size.
Apple seems to have tackled noise and size with their new Mac Pro, and let's see how the PC industry is going to answer.

I can promise you that by next year, computers will be faster and cheaper, at the same time.
You could probably get 2x 12core CPUs, 2x powerful 8GB GPUs, 128GB DDR4 RAM and 12TB PCIe SSD RAID for a relatively good price, compared to what's available today.
 
New Mac Pro is slower than old 12 core with good graphic card like Titan. i don't see how anyone can consider a New Mac Pro a good way to spend money when you can go on eBay and get a much faster Mac system for much less.

New PC chips sound great, but there is no mention of actual speed benefit. I don;t really care what the pamphlet says about what's under the hood, only how it affects my work. Lately CPU progression has been very slow.

Also, most of editing and posting Red footage is now about GPU and hard drives.

Meanwhile I get 24fps Dragon playback in full resolution with no Rocket card on old Mac pro 12 core - I have a Titan, good drives, and lots of RAM - in Premiere and DaVinci.
 
Ahh, I'm sure 10 years from now the computers will be really fast, but that does not really do much difference now....

There is a leap forward about every 6 months for computers so it does not matter much when you jump into the game, a few months later you will not have the best machine around, it's simply how it's always been.

For the moment I think the best advice for a work station is the HP z820... then it's of course up to each an every one to decide how much money they are willing to poor into such machine. But to me it's the best base at the moment HP got far better suport than apple and their machines are built just as good if not better then the old MP's. but most important they got enough room / slots and are build in a modular way ( same like the old macros but better) and they got the thunderbolt and all other things you can think of.

The z820 also works very well as a hackingtoch.

If you max it out with memory, graphics boards and Xrocket, and CPU's and set it to run a SSD raid etc then you could probably put a dragon sticker on there somewhere and be all happy about it.

To me "building your own machine" and order the different bits from different / small vendors, or having a vendor assembling a machine according to a spec sheet or such has always been a struggle... You ofcourse might save some buy doing so, but for me that always ended in a shitty situation and no one to turn to when things starts to go downwards. Find it better then to trust in whatever big company that are on the top of their shit for the moment, that has been SGI then Apple / IBM and now HP, at least the way I look at it. Discreet/autodesk and I kind of followed the same route trough the years. lol.
 
Björn Benckert said:
To me "building your own machine" and order the different bits from different / small vendors, or having a vendor assembling a machine according to a spec sheet or such has always been a struggle... You ofcourse might save some buy doing so, but for me that always ended in a shitty situation and no one to turn to when things starts to go downwards. Find it better then to trust in whatever big company that are on the top of their shit for the moment, that has been SGI then Apple / IBM and now HP, at least the way I look at it. Discreet/autodesk and I kind of followed the same route trough the years. lol.
Click to expand...

I must say I agree with you Bjorn. I don't think I will build that many more machines. Every day building is a day I really should be out shooting.
I really like the Apple ecosystem which is making things harder though. I wish I could have a dual 10 core Xeon for example instead of a single core.
/Andreas
 
Thanks guys for playing along, and thanks Eric for the very kind words!!

For me staying head of the curve is always a matter of been able to present both any client and my self with the best tool available to do any given shoot, paid or not.

I agree on the point made here, but we also need to try, in order to see which is really the best option, if we don't do our home work, and test different options then we just simply only choose form what is available, and I really never do that, I always have invited and pushed industry leaders in to come up with new options given the possibility.

This is one of those cases.

Harder for me in one way, because this is one of those fields that I don't know as much as I would like to, but fortunately there are always those ready to jump in with me and assist and help were needed to see what can be done.

I also agree that progress moves double fast on Computer tech... Yet not fast enough... The goal here remains that of building the best station for Dragon 6k NOW.

Be it from an already complete system as the Devil & Demon form Silver Draft and or the HP z820 or an old Mac tower, (the nMac trash can seems to be out at the start) or a personalized machine to our particular needs, it can be done.

I believe that it an be done using a system already in commerce just need to tweak it to our best needs with specific GC's and this can be done via discussing option with specific manufacturer, I have already done this, and about to actually bring it to fruition, this and the other thread I starred are exactly about this... But just figured that before I pulling the plug I would see if there was an other option and what this option would bring to the table for every one...

Of course exactly because we know how fast Graphic Cards change, I wanted to be sure to present a System that is both upgradable and scalable as needed.
 
Stacey Spears said:
Supermicro should be announcing the Haswell-E DP motherboards this summer. I believe they are the X10 line of MBs. At least this is what I was able to get from them at NAB.
Click to expand...

Should be. Although, I'm not expecting the CPUs to ship in the open channel until Q1 of next year. I may be wrong, but I don't see Intel dropping a new line of Xeon chips in less than 14 months from the last. We might see a few trickle out before and typical soft-shipments from HP and the like where we can order, they claim they're shipping, but no one actually has them. OTOH, while there will be a new chipset (C610) to accompany these CPUs and offer up PCIe v4 and a couple other minor tweaks, these Haswell EP chips should still drop into current C600 series chipset motherboards. Although, I don't expect them to offer anything in that situation over current E5 V2 chips. Other than PCIe v4, they won't be offering anything anyway. It's a minor tweak, minor update, one that has been on and off over the past year or so in the roadmap. Most likely coming forth with the pushback on Broadwell.

FWIW, I don't see any reason to run out and upgrade to Haswell-EP. Especially if you already have an E5 platform system. Like I said, PCIe v4 is the only new addition of note. Kinda like the E5-V2 really only brought us 1866MHz RAM support. It did however give us a couple CPU options with more cores, although at lower clock speeds. Haswell-EP isn't changing anything in that department. I think there's a couple new additions coming to the E5-16xx line for single-CPU use such as a 3.4GHz 8-core, but official chip numbers and speeds have not been released yet.
 
KETCH ROSSi said:
Thanks guys for playing along, and thanks Eric for the very kind words!!

For me staying head of the curve is always a matter of been able to present both any client and my self with the best tool available to do any given shoot, paid or not.

I agree on the point made here, but we also need to try, in order to see which is really the best option, if we don't do our home work, and test different options then we just simply only choose form what is available, and I really never do that, I always have invited and pushed industry leaders in to come up with new options given the possibility.

This is one of those cases.

Harder for me in one way, because this is one of those fields that I don't know as much as I would like to, but fortunately there are always those ready to jump in with me and assist and help were needed to see what can be done.

I also agree that progress moves double fast on Computer tech... Yet not fast enough... The goal here remains that of building the best station for Dragon 6k NOW.

Be it from an already complete system as the Devil & Demon form Silver Draft and or the HP z820 or an old Mac tower, (the nMac trash can seems to be out at the start) or a personalized machine to our particular needs, it can be done.

I believe that it an be done using a system already in commerce just need to tweak it to our best needs with specific GC's and this can be done via discussing option with specific manufacturer, I have already done this, and about to actually bring it to fruition, this and the other thread I starred are exactly about this... But just figured that before I pulling the plug I would see if there was an other option and what this option would bring to the table for every one...

Of course exactly because we know how fast Graphic Cards change, I wanted to be sure to present a System that is both upgradable and scalable as needed.
Click to expand...


It's a bit depending on what you want to do ofcourse, but what is your need to hurd 6k material through a machine? Faster is off course always better but it comes with a price that in 3-5 years time from now is worth zero. So it's more a question of how much money you and or your clients demand that you toss on this problem. some clients have just like you the taste for "the fastest" and does not care what it cost other dont mind to wait over night to have their proxies rendered so they can start editing... etc.
 
Björn Benckert said:
It's a bit depending on what you want to do ofcourse, but what is your need to hurd 6k material through a machine? Faster is off course always better but it comes with a price that in 3-5 years time from now is worth zero. So it's more a question of how much money you and or your clients demand that you toss on this problem. some clients have just like you the taste for "the fastest" and does not care what it cost other dont mind to wait over night to have their proxies rendered so they can start editing... etc.
Click to expand...


Yeah, I don't look for Faster per say, but for a Full Rez 6K workflow to be able to actually edit and finish and put out the full 6k, from which then make different DCP packages to 4k, UHD4k etc.

But at this time I am not overly concern with the Rendering times.

However having a system that does have the capacity to upgrade and scale up to get better Rendering times would b entice too.

Bottom line, this Machine has to be economically a great deal for what it does in order to make it a good Machine for many here, which might not yet be on the Dragon wagon as of yet, but will be soon.
 
Haswell-E is coming out in May? Are you sure, I was hearing more like October.

The Haswell i7-4790 is coming out soon, but it's a quad core with just a small frequency increase.
 
Ketch, I think that when the current SDK is propagated to all the apps, finally supporting GPU-accellerated debayer everywhere,
the bottleneck would be the GPU card then...so even an old Mac Pro tower (6-8-12 cores) with a couple of really fast OpenCL cards (ATI) will scream... ;)

I was looking at the HD7950 Mac Edition for a cheap upgrade of my office machine, do you know guys why it has been discontinued??

Maybe ATI / Sapphire are prepping something new for Mac, and better? ;)

I say this because it's a simple and cheap recipe for R3D playback accelleration and many editing / post workstations are Mac Pros...
 
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