Mac Pro AfterBurner Video Editing and Workflow; Graphics Cards

[Justin Byrd]

For regular 4k, 6k, and 8k footage how much does the AfterBurner on the Mac Pro help with your video editing and overall workflow? What Graphics cards do you recommend if we want to actually work with 8K? On the PC side in RED is there any accelerator card that is like the AfterBurner that is recommended if you are working with Red Footage?

 

[AndreeMarkefors]

Afterburner accelerates ProRes and ProRes RAW video codecs, so it wouldn't help with .r3d. There is no current direct equivalent card in the Windows/Linux space as far as I know.

Red's own RED ROCKET card was discontinued after being outpaced by normal graphics cards.

 

[Bérenger Brillante]

Video cards are not the only solutions. You have to be careful with any bottlenecks that can slow down your machine.

I have an i7 7820x at 3.6ghz, 64gb, a 1080ti, nvme SSD and HDD in RAID. I still can't play 8k files realtime.
Probably because of my processor and the raw decompression 8:1 I use.
But if I shoot closer to uncompressed, the drives become the bottleneck.
It's a sweet spot to find.

I have zero problems below at 5k (never tried 6k but I'am sure it's ok) with full debayer from my Scarlet-W at 7:1, but 8k from my former Monstro is an another level.

Anyway, a good nvidia GPU like in TI version is always a good way to achieve better performance.
If I had to change my GPU, I would switch to the RTX 2080ti.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

Afterburner accelerates ProRes and ProRes RAW video codecs, so it wouldn't help with .r3d. There is no current direct equivalent card in the Windows/Linux space as far as I know.

Red's own RED ROCKET card was discontinued after being outpaced by normal graphics cards.

Normal graphics cards on Windows platforms or working within Apple's FCPX software running on a very well-spec'd 2019 Mac Pro. RR-X makes it tolerable to use the latest, best-spec'd iMacPro running DaVinci Resolve. There is still a wide gap for many who have R3D media but don't want to run Windows or who don't want to run FCPX.

 

[AndreeMarkefors]

RR-X makes it tolerable to use the latest, best-spec'd iMacPro running DaVinci Resolve. There is still a wide gap for many who have R3D media but don't want to run Windows or who don't want to run FCPX.

A fully specced iMac Pro should be more than tolerable with .r3d, I'd say.

Its CPU performance is just shy of a 16 core 2019 Mac Pro and it's got 16GB of video RAM. As Resolve does love GPU power, for additional grunt in a eGPU, something like a Radeon VII (with a fitting 16GB of RAM) would be a readily available, logical choice.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

A fully specced iMac Pro should be more than tolerable with .r3d, I'd say.

Its CPU performance is just shy of a 16 core 2019 Mac Pro and it's got 16GB of video RAM. As Resolve does love GPU power, for additional grunt in a eGPU, something like a Radeon VII (with a fitting 16GB of RAM) would be a readily available, logical choice.

I thought eGPUs, in the Mac space, are for helping hopelessly underspec'd machines, like laptops, play in the Resolve space. I was not aware there was any performance to be gained stringing an eGPU along with an iMac Pro kitted with a ega64 GPU. Thankfully I know I'm missing nothing whatsoever as Apple continues to make a mess of Catalina and the RR-X makes up for a lack of suitable GPU cards in the Apple space. But I'm getting pretty tired of all this non-innovation that the current RED/Apple ecosystem represents.

 

[AndreeMarkefors]

I thought eGPUs, in the Mac space, are for helping hopelessly underspec'd machines, like laptops, play in the Resolve space. I was not aware there was any performance to be gained stringing an eGPU along with an iMac Pro kitted with a ega64 GPU.

eGPUs do the same to whatever system they are attached to, I guess. They add computational power filtered by the interface in use, e.g. Thunderbolt 2 or 3. The filtering is more or less severe depending on use case.

A benchmark at Barefeats states that a Radeon VII in an eGPU case increases playback performance of an iMac Pro with a Vega64 16GB GPU from 13 fps to 21 fps with 3 NR nodes. It's a decent boost that might be worth while from a price/performance view.

You mentioned using a RRX with a fully specced iMac Pro in post #4. I was assuming you had it installed in an external case. Since the card is discontinued I was offering advice that is on the market today.

 

[Justin Byrd]

Thank you all so much for your extremely helpful feedback! We are weighing out the pros and cons of the Mac vs the PC for editing Red footage in both 6K and 8K and want to get the best value we can for the money. From you responses I'm gathering PC might be better suited for editing Red Footage? Please correct me if I'm wrong

 

[Brian Timmons]

For the moment, the PC has the edge with playing back R3D given the latest NVIDIA CUDA developments.

In December 2019, RED completed their initial support for METAL GPU support on the Mac.
It still has to be implemented by Apple.

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?179139-Apple-RED&p=1879301&viewfull=1#post1879301

https://www.cinema5d.com/red-and-apple-announce-metal-gpu-r3d-acceleration-integration/

Once this is done the landscape for R3D support on the Mac will change considerably.

April NAB may not happen this year but the developments slated for that time will likely still be announced and/or released.

I wouldn't be surprised if R3D Metal acceleration gets released relatively soon.

That acceleration would likely not just benefit Apple software like FCP X, but Premiere, Resolve and any other software that supports Metal and R3D on the Mac.

Pure speculation - but this might open the door for R3D support on iPads and iPhones.
Again, pure speculation.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA

 

[Misha Engel]

Thank you all so much for your extremely helpful feedback! We are weighing out the pros and cons of the Mac vs the PC for editing Red footage in both 6K and 8K and want to get the best value we can for the money. From you responses I'm gathering PC might be better suited for editing Red Footage? Please correct me if I'm wrong

Something like this can do anything you want.

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/MwswHB

CPU: AMD Threadripper 3990X 2.9 GHz 64-Core Processor ($3739.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X72 Liquid CPU Cooler ($199.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock TRX40 Creator ATX sTRX4 Motherboard ($459.99 @ B&H)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 128 GB (4 x 32 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($579.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($164.00 @ Amazon)
Storage: Sabrent Rocket 4.0 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($399.98 @ Amazon)
Video Card: NVIDIA TITAN RTX 24 GB Video Card ($2489.98 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Define 7 XL ATX Full Tower Case ($216.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair 1600 W 80+ Titanium Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($429.99 @ Amazon)

Total: $8680.89

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-13 14:35 EDT-0400

You can pick some things a bit lower or upgrade to even better.

 

[Matthias Aderhold]

You might wanna wait just a tad longer for RED to release their Metal SDK.
It will open a lot of doors for Mac-based users.

 

[Mike P.]

You might wanna wait just a tad longer for RED to release their Metal SDK.
It will open a lot of doors for Mac-based users.

It's actually been released for months, but no one has implemented it yet (including RED in RCXp). Hopefully the software updates are inbound (what would've been NAB timeframe), but I think Komodo has taken a lot of development attention.

 

[Misha Engel]

You might wanna wait just a tad longer for RED to release their Metal SDK.
It will open a lot of doors for Mac-based users.

That won't help when you also have to proces ARRIRAW, X-OCN, CanonRAW, etc.. even people like Phil Holland shoot with a non RED camera every now and then.