new mac pro maxed out running Davinci with Epic & Dragon

[sam windell]

Been searching the forums and haven't seen a lot of in depth feedback on what the results are with the new mac pro running davinci resolve 10 with red epic & dragon footage. I really don't want to go the PC route, but will if I have to do in order to do edits in real time and have decent performance. Would absolutely appreciate any advice/feedback on anyone's experience.

All the best!

Sam

 

[Zeb B]

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...-RED-footage&p=1329955&viewfull=1#post1329955

 

[Terry VerHaar]

IIRC there is some discussion about Resolve and the new MP in here that indicates BMD are still tweaking it a lot:

https://vimeo.com/87067275

 

[Jason Diamond]

I'll have an article out soon on Studio Daily with a spreadsheet of different formats and how resolve, scratch and RC-X handle them.

 

[M Most]

If you really expect things to work perfectly as soon as they're released, and have all features enabled, tested, and reliable, you're living in the wrong century.

 

[Jason Diamond]

If you really expect things to work perfectly as soon as they're released, and have all features enabled, tested, and reliable, you're living in the wrong century.

exactly Mike. Thats really the basis for my article in a sense. The New MacPro's and pro apps running on them are currently really a worst case scenario for benchmarks and we it can only get better from here

 

[Kenny Mosher]

I have the maxed out 12 core Mac Pro and Resolve doesn't handle our Dragon 6K footage yet. I am still waiting for our RRX to see how that helps out. Currently we are getting around 1-2 fps playback in Resolve at 6K.

 

[sam windell]

Thanks guys, I don't expect it to work perfectly. I was just curious what everyone was dealing with that has actual hands-on experience.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I have the maxed out 12 core Mac Pro and Resolve doesn't handle our Dragon 6K footage yet. I am still waiting for our RRX to see how that helps out. Currently we are getting around 1-2 fps playback in Resolve at 6K.

Play it at 1/4-resolution in decode and it's acceptable. Users over on the LiftGammaGain discussion group report that they see further improvements if you view the material in 8 bit.

I'd bet you for sure that Blackmagic will have a new "tweaked" version of Resolve that will be better optimized for the new Mac Pros in the next two months. One thing I can say for certain is that the program works better with the D700 GPUs. My temporary solution for some time has been to simply use lower-res proxies for color correction, then reconform with the original R3Ds for the final render.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Play it at 1/4-resolution in decode and it's acceptable. Users over on the LiftGammaGain discussion group report that they see further improvements if you view the material in 8 bit.

I'd bet you for sure that Blackmagic will have a new "tweaked" version of Resolve that will be better optimized for the new Mac Pros in the next two months. One thing I can say for certain is that the program works better with the D700 GPUs. My temporary solution for some time has been to simply use lower-res proxies for color correction, then reconform with the original R3Ds for the final render.

Uh, just set Resolve to playback at 1/4 1/8 or anything you like. No need for proxies. Then Force Render to highest Debayer" at the end to get back full quality.

 

[Jason Diamond]

I can tell you Resolve on the nMP w D700's absolutely destroys most other formats.

 

[Mike P.]

Which is pretty weird given that BM states they're more optimized for CUDA. Makes me wonder if it would have been any faster with dual nVidia's instead of D700s.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Uh, just set Resolve to playback at 1/4 1/8 or anything you like. No need for proxies. Then Force Render to highest Debayer" at the end to get back full quality.

Try that with four or five layers of video and 9 or 10 nodes and let me know how you do. For me, I have no problem using proxies; it's trivial to do and takes very little time to swap them out.

 

[David Kudell]

Why would someone grade in a 6K timeline? Wouldn't you grade at 1080 or UHD then switch to UHD or 4K when rendering? That's what I do when outputting for 4K.

How does the new Mac Pro do grading Dragon footage in a 4K timeline?

 

[Jason Diamond]

Which is pretty weird given that BM states they're more optimized for CUDA. Makes me wonder if it would have been any faster with dual nVidia's instead of D700s.

Its because Resolve hyperthreads insanely well. we saw over 1400% CPU usage in activity monitor during our testing. BMD also did optimize for OpenCL as well.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Just so I understand, are you guys trying to render 6k realtime or from 6k down to UHD in realtime?

 

[Marc Wielage]

Why would someone grade in a 6K timeline? Wouldn't you grade at 1080 or UHD then switch to UHD or 4K when rendering? That's what I do when outputting for 4K.

Exactly. Swap out the proxies at the end and then do the rendering that way. Otherwise, almost any machine is just going to choke.

We'll eventually get to the point where dealing with 4K/5K/6K is trivial, but we're not there yet. And the file sizes aren't getting smaller, just as the file transfer/backup times aren't getting any shorter.

 

[Paul Russell]

I have the maxed out 12 core Mac Pro and Resolve doesn't handle our Dragon 6K footage yet. I am still waiting for our RRX to see how that helps out. Currently we are getting around 1-2 fps playback in Resolve at 6K.

That doesn't bode well. My 3yr old self built PC gets 25fps at 5K on a 1080p timeline without a Red Rocket.

 

[Paul Russell]

Why would someone grade in a 6K timeline?

To give Neat Video a proper chance at noise reduction, perhaps. Of course, that will choke anyone's graphic cards.

 

[Eric Jonson]

Been searching the forums and haven't seen a lot of in depth feedback on what the results are with the new mac pro running davinci resolve 10 with red epic & dragon footage. I really don't want to go the PC route, but will if I have to do in order to do edits in real time and have decent performance. Would absolutely appreciate any advice/feedback on anyone's experience.

I have the fully spec'd 6 core and I'm really pleased with its performance in Resolve 10.1

I get realtime playback with R3D 4K 1/2 Debayer Good 5:1 and renders at 20fps. It goes up to 35fps if I put the debater at 1/4 for things such as dailies.

Also, realtime playback at 1/4 Debayer R3D 6K 5:1

Tracking is insanely fast and so is the general feel of everything. If you throw in a RRX, I imagine playback and render simply becomes a non-issue.