Multithreading capability of red workflow...

[Jeff Brown]

Chaps,

I'll be trading in the G5 for a MacPro when my red ships. Question is, what is the advantage of the octocore over the quad (other than speed!) Is a FCP2 /Redcine/ Color workflow going to benefit drastically from 8 cores over 4 or will the applications not really utilise all of them.

Am I better off putting the saved cash in to extra Ram for example?

Also I'm in the December batch for the camera - are we expecting any huge advances in the MacPro setup betwen now and then that I should wait for before buying?

Thanks in advance for any tips.

Jeff Brown


Red 708

 

[Mike McCarthy]

Major CPU improvements are set to be released by Intel on Nov 12. Rumor has it that Apple will use these in the first MacPro refresh in the last 12 months. As far as the difference between 4 and 8 cores, you may be better served by investing that money into more Ram, if you intend to edit 2k or 4k, but it will really depend on what specific applications you plan to use.

 

[Jeff Brown]

Thanks for that. I'll be using FCP Studio 2 and Redcine for indie film work aquired 4K and downressed and output at 2K max (more likely 1080). No 4K finishing as I'm not that foolhardy!

So I suppose it depends if Redcine will utilise all the cores. Rob/ Stuart?

I can probably find out whether Color and FCP do - unless someone already knows and wants to share...

Cheers

Jeff

 

[Emery Wells]

RedAlert! is already aware of multiple processors. So the more the merrier.

In addition, your future workflow will likely include doing your transcoding in a third party app such as compressor.

You can never have enough horse power, get as much as you can afford. Dont forget about the GPU either.

p.s. I have a write up on red software over on the http://projectred.net blog.

-Emery

 

[Emery Wells]

Major CPU improvements are set to be released by Intel on Nov 12. Rumor has it that Apple will use these in the first MacPro refresh in the last 12 months. As far as the difference between 4 and 8 cores, you may be better served by investing that money into more Ram, if you intend to edit 2k or 4k, but it will really depend on what specific applications you plan to use.

A single application can only address up to 4GB of RAM right now. If you want to edit in final cut, while running after affects and photoshop at the same time, then your system will use more than 4GB. Leopard will be a true 64bit OS and so that 4GB limitation will go away, however the apps will have to be updated as well.

If you do want to max out your ram id stay away from buying through apple. They charge an arm and leg for their ram. Better off getting some corsair RAM from newegg and installing it yourself.

 

[Rob Lohman]

More CPU's is more important than memory for our stuff at the moment. I would get 4 GB of memory, and if you're running multiple memory hungry apps side by side you can get more than 4 GB.

For OS X I would advice the ATI card for REDCINE

 

[Emery Wells]

More CPU's is more important than memory for our stuff at the moment. I would get 4 GB of memory, and if you're running multiple memory hungry apps side by side you can get more than 4 GB.

For OS X I would advice the ATI card for REDCINE

Rob do you recommend the ATI over the Nvidia Quadro FX 4500?

 

[Simon Blackledge]

The FX 4500 is oldish.. and over priced imho. We don't even have our Maya team use them. No real issues.

s

 

[Kevin Halverson]

More CPU's is more important than memory for our stuff at the moment. I would get 4 GB of memory, and if you're running multiple memory hungry apps side by side you can get more than 4 GB.

For OS X I would advice the ATI card for REDCINE

And from the demo I have seen of SCRATCH, I would expect that the recommendation for a Windows environment would be an NVIDIA graphics card. Is this correct?

 

[RivaiC]

Nvidia card with SDI output i guess

 

[Rob Lohman]

Rob do you recommend the ATI over the Nvidia Quadro FX 4500?

Absolutely NOT. Avoid the Quadro FX 4500. Waste of money (in this case)

 

[Rob Lohman]

And from the demo I have seen of SCRATCH, I would expect that the recommendation for a Windows environment would be an NVIDIA graphics card. Is this correct?

Yes, NVIDIA on Windows

 

[Rob Lohman]

Nvidia card with SDI output i guess

Not if you're just going to use it for REDCINE. It does not support monitor outputs through SDI (on graphics cards or on a thing like the Kona).

If you're also going to use it for other apps that do support it (like Scratch), then sure

 

[Kevin Halverson]

More CPU's is more important than memory for our stuff at the moment. I would get 4 GB of memory, and if you're running multiple memory hungry apps side by side you can get more than 4 GB.

For OS X I would advice the ATI card for REDCINE

And from the demo I have seen of SCRATCH, I would expect that the recommendation for a Windows environment would be an NVIDIA graphics card. Is this correct?

Yes, NVIDIA on Windows

Good to have the confirmation. I am assuming that the performance will rely heavily on the GPU. If this is correct, can you give an estimate of performance returns for various NVIDIA options? In other words, what would you recommend as a minimum (7 series) and a preferred (8 series) configuration?

 

[Rob Lohman]

Don't have numbers for that yet. Faster memory is better (both in general as well as on the graphics card). Where it gets important is in the 4K stuff, then you're really taxing things. For lower resolutions (mostly preview) you're good. In REDCINE you can select different decode resolutions on the fly so you can more easily work with the footage in motion.