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New iMac R3D performance ?

Tom Gleeson

Tom Gleeson

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While everybody is getting excited by the new iMac Pro as a professional cinematographer rather than a post production professional the iMac Pro looks like overkill with a serious price tag to match. I was wondering what people thought of the new iMac line up? I was looking at an up-specced machine with the 4.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 and the Radeon Pro 580 with 8GB of video memory. I would like to play with my 8K Heluim footage and I was wondering who had taken the step to order one and whether they would be happy sharing their experience of the machines ability to deal with Red footage?
 
It's still just a quad core i7, so you're gonna be looking at 1/8 res playback from the Helium r3d's.
 
That's not much, but realistically, what about products with GPU acceleration like future resolve, FCPX?

Aren't they going to do an i9 version?
 
Speaking as a cinematographer I don't need ultimate performance on my home machine. If it did 1/4 res playback I would be happy and if it could do a full debayer transcode at @4fps I would be satisfied. I understand Post professionals have very different requirements. The cameras ability to create proxy files as I shoot has relieved most of my heavy lifting computing needs. I will be very interested in peoples real world experience of these new machines when they are delivered.

* What the hell I went and bought one day. I'll report my results in a couple of weeks when the machine is delivered.
 
I hear where you're coming from Tom. As long as your expectations are realistic, you should be happy with the iMac.

I think the question many are pondering, is whether the new iMacPro promised by year end can:

1) playback R3Ds at 1/2 rez, premium debayer, and not cook.
2) full debayer transcodes from 8K to 2160p RGB formats like ProRes/DNxHR @ 15fps or better, and not cook.

Yes, a config that can manage the tasks noted may be above the $5K base version, but if it can be done for under $10K then it could suit a lot of RedUsers.

Cheers - #19
 
Any comments about the new iMac performance is just speculation unless the contributor actually owns one of the new machines. While the guesss may turn out to be correct I will wait to hear from somebody who has done an actual test on the actual machine. I have ordered one although its 2 weeks away. I will report my results if nobody beats me to it.
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
Is that with 8K Helium footy? I'd also note that the GPU you are using with a particular CPU makes a significant difference as well.

Cheers - #19
Click to expand...

Yes. 6K footage I can do 1/4th playback. GTX 1080 here. Bought it as a transition into a new system build. But if processors aren't doing much better these days... maybe I will wait until the better i9's start shipping.
 
I have a new one coming next week, will keep you guys posted.
 
The r3d decompression performance seems to be pretty consistent with cpu speed. I get 20fps with 1/4 res helium, with Skylake 4ghz quad core i7, so the new Imac that has the slightly faster Kaby Lake processor, you'd might get 1/4 res with 24/25fps. Also rendering Helium footage on my machine is around 5fps.
 
I took my new iMac for a test run.
The iMac is the 4.2 GHz Intel Core 7
32 GB RAM
Radeon Pro 580 8GB VRAM
512 SSD

Using both RCX 42 and the 50 beta playing 8K footage I was getting 25fps playback at 1/8 debayer but the iMac could not manage 1/4 debayer in playback which would have been nice. I will leave it to someone else to test 6K footage but good chance it might manage 24 or 25fps at 1/4 debayer

Transcodes times from RCX 50beta

Full Debayer of 10 minutes and 11 clips of 8K Heluim footage RC 8:1 to Pro Res HQ took 1 hour 43sec or 4.1 fps
Half Debayer of 10 minutes and 11 clips of 8K Heluim footage RC 8:1 to Pro Res HQ took 40min 38sec or 6.1 fps
Half debayer of 10 minutes and 11 clips of 8K Heluim footage RC 8:1 to Pro Res LT took 39min 18sec or 6.3 fps

Resolve 12.5 plays these files at Quarter Debayer at 19fps but runs up to 25fps at 1/8 Debayer


This leaves me in a happy place with the iMac as a rushes transcode could easily happen overnight and I can deal comfortably with 8K footage something my older machines could not do. I would also add it has an amazing screen.
 
I should add transferring from my Red Reader via USB3 with Mini mags to the internal SSD I am getting a sustained 480 mbs. I used to use external speakers but the sound straight out of the machine makes them superfluous.
 
Hi Tom,

In case you have any 4K MX/6K Dragon footage handy, it would be great to know how RCX handles buffering/playback of that footage. If you have the time to take a look :)
Thanks for any insight you can provide!

Edit: Missed the point about 6K footage in your original answer, ignore this post :)
 
Some more testing with 6K footage from my Weapon Helium Camera with the new iMac and a surprising increase in transcode performance. Nearly double the performance. Also I can run RCX and Resolve at 1/4 Debayer at 25fps. If I push to 1/2 Good debayer in Resolve I drop back to 12-13fps playback.

Full Debayer of 10 minutes and 9 clips of 6K Heluim footage RC 8:1* to Pro Res HQ 1920x1080 took 35 minutes 15 sec or 7 fps

*Lower RC rates would see an increase in transcode times
 
Ok I dug up some older 5K MX Footage and got even faster numbers. I will qualify that this was high speed footage so they have higher compression ratios than I normally use but I can just manage 24fps playback at 1/2 Debayer

Full Debayer of 10 minutes and 13 clips of 5K MX footage RC mix of 9:1 and 12:1* to Pro Res HQ 1920x1080 took 20 minutes 5 sec or slightly better than 12fps

*High RC rates decrease the transcode times
 
Note the above performace specs are from the new iMac, not from the iMac Pro - which will be released later in the year.
 
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