Camen Hodges
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I'll preface this by saying that for the first time in my life, I understand why Apple is successful. I've been using a mac since my family acquired a bondi blue G3 iMac. Which, turns out, wasn't the most capable editing system. Fast forward through another couple of iMacs, an iBook, and a few macbook pros to now. 8K has changed the topography, and it's time to leave the cult of Apple until they build workstations again.
Apple is successful because they are a marketing machine first, and a computer company second. They have clear lines. An iMac is an iMac, and always has been, and believe me, I'm cool with that. There are things that get my juices flowing, but lime green water cooling loops and RGB LED strips pulsating in coordination with the color scheme of my RAM sticks are not high on my list. Can someone please think of a catchier name than i7 6850k? Can someone please give me a laymen's explanation as to why the i7 5850EQ is a four core processor, and not a six? The previously mentioned i7 6850k is six. The i7 6900k has 8 cores. Is there an 8, anywhere in the god damn name? "K" is for "clocK"?! Why are there ----> 9 <---- versions of gigabyte's, oh wait, Aorus's motherboards - which thanks to a horrendous mobile implementation - are impossible to actually look at on their website.
But that's the world I find myself in. Performance, with the aesthetic sensibilities of a 13 year old boy. Gaming rules the market.
There's next to zero up to date information on the internet about building an editing system. I'm probably not looking in the right corners of the internet, but the only voice of authority worth listening to seems to be Puget Systems. Which, as valuable as it is, simply doesn't cover all the bases when it comes to workflow. Reviews and advice mostly cover performance in benchmarks (read: a bunch of teenagers with a measuring tape) and FPS in the latest and most hardware taxing murder simulation. If you do find any useful information for the creative field, it's almost statistically guaranteed to be a guid to building "the best and most beastly 4K editing beast on the planet." Great. 4K what? From your iPhone? Raw cDNG from a 5dmk3? R3d? H.265? Is your beast going to chew 8K, cuz my buddy, who edits a lot, his 5K iMac kills footage from my old scarlet mx, but the new stuff, it's killing him.
I'm so tired of searching though non-relivent reviews and graphs and use cases that I don't give a damn about. I want to look at a list of specs, trust that it won't slow my RED based edit down (because some person told me it worked for them), and order all the parts with 1 day shipping. - I'm sure I'm not the only one looking for this kind of information, in this specific niche of a niche of a niche.
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So. With a deep breath, let's consider everything above this line a bunch of bullshit.
I propose a simple thread. A database of what works, and what doesn't. No asking for recommendations, or asking someone how they would spend your money in your shoes. Just the facts. ---> I have this machine, and it works this well, for this workflow. <---
What are your components? How does it perform? Doing what?
Like this:
Date: 4/12/17
Computer: Macbook Pro Late 2013
Processor: i7 4850HQ
CPU Cooler: My thighs.
Motherboard: Aesthetically pleasing.
Memory: 16GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M
System Drive: SSD - 256GB
Cache: None.
Working/Footage/Project: Depends on project, usually an external thunderbolt 2 OWC 20TB raid 0. 500+/- RW.
Export Destination: Sometimes USB 3.0 attached SSD. Usually an external thunderbolt 5 disk Raid 5. 500+/- RW.
NLE: Premiere Pro CC 17.
External display: First gen Apple LED cinema display.
Overall Performance: Exceedingly Lackluster. Like, I actually had problems exporting a PDF the other day.
8K RED workflow: 8K 14:1 + 7:1 - Working with 8K is essentially a non-starter in PP. No surprise here. 1/16th playback is smooth, once it gets going, but is below the threshold of usable clarity. Still, any cut or a switch to a new clip takes many seconds to take effect. Changes in lumetri color take between 5 and 50 seconds, and often do not appear at all. Importing a batch of clips can take much longer than anyone wants it to. Warp stabilizer analyzes at roughly 1 frame per 3 seconds. Media Encoder can take up to 28 hours to transcode a 1.5TB batch of clips to 4K ProRes. Also, 15 of the 218 failed. Turning off the mercury render engine allowed them to complete. Even the basic act of importing 218 clips into media encoder took 2 hours. Proxies are the only option. Had a strange bug in Redcine X - quite possibly user error - where footage looked fast forwarded after rendering. Side note: the same 218 clip batch took 4 days to crunch through in Redcine X. Usable files: 0. Clearly the macbook is nowhere near up to the task. No one's fault. Time to find a new hammer.
4K 6:1 RED workflow: Lame to uninspiring, as long as footage is being played off fast drives. Dropping playback to 1/4th to 1/8th is a must. Everything happens roughly 4 times faster than it does working with 8K. Weird. /s. Short form would be potentially possible. Long form would be a mollasus nightmare.
4K Other Codecs: Performance is fair, to crappy. A7S is terrible. Almost as unusable as 8K. ProRes is much better. Once you toss some color on there things get real choppy.
1080p: Sings like it's 2013.
Writing Scripts: Breezy. The "N" key has begun to scratch away.
Recommendations/Notes: Time to pass this one on to my mom and build a PC. My ideal set up would be a big quiet box that never slows me down, and a small laptop with a VPN connection to observe and control render cues. On the plus side, things are stable. Hardly a crash. Never a kernel panic.
What would I have done differently? I don't think I would do anything differently. I don't really have that option, now do I?
Apple is successful because they are a marketing machine first, and a computer company second. They have clear lines. An iMac is an iMac, and always has been, and believe me, I'm cool with that. There are things that get my juices flowing, but lime green water cooling loops and RGB LED strips pulsating in coordination with the color scheme of my RAM sticks are not high on my list. Can someone please think of a catchier name than i7 6850k? Can someone please give me a laymen's explanation as to why the i7 5850EQ is a four core processor, and not a six? The previously mentioned i7 6850k is six. The i7 6900k has 8 cores. Is there an 8, anywhere in the god damn name? "K" is for "clocK"?! Why are there ----> 9 <---- versions of gigabyte's, oh wait, Aorus's motherboards - which thanks to a horrendous mobile implementation - are impossible to actually look at on their website.
But that's the world I find myself in. Performance, with the aesthetic sensibilities of a 13 year old boy. Gaming rules the market.
There's next to zero up to date information on the internet about building an editing system. I'm probably not looking in the right corners of the internet, but the only voice of authority worth listening to seems to be Puget Systems. Which, as valuable as it is, simply doesn't cover all the bases when it comes to workflow. Reviews and advice mostly cover performance in benchmarks (read: a bunch of teenagers with a measuring tape) and FPS in the latest and most hardware taxing murder simulation. If you do find any useful information for the creative field, it's almost statistically guaranteed to be a guid to building "the best and most beastly 4K editing beast on the planet." Great. 4K what? From your iPhone? Raw cDNG from a 5dmk3? R3d? H.265? Is your beast going to chew 8K, cuz my buddy, who edits a lot, his 5K iMac kills footage from my old scarlet mx, but the new stuff, it's killing him.
I'm so tired of searching though non-relivent reviews and graphs and use cases that I don't give a damn about. I want to look at a list of specs, trust that it won't slow my RED based edit down (because some person told me it worked for them), and order all the parts with 1 day shipping. - I'm sure I'm not the only one looking for this kind of information, in this specific niche of a niche of a niche.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So. With a deep breath, let's consider everything above this line a bunch of bullshit.
I propose a simple thread. A database of what works, and what doesn't. No asking for recommendations, or asking someone how they would spend your money in your shoes. Just the facts. ---> I have this machine, and it works this well, for this workflow. <---
What are your components? How does it perform? Doing what?
Like this:
Date: 4/12/17
Computer: Macbook Pro Late 2013
Processor: i7 4850HQ
CPU Cooler: My thighs.
Motherboard: Aesthetically pleasing.
Memory: 16GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M
System Drive: SSD - 256GB
Cache: None.
Working/Footage/Project: Depends on project, usually an external thunderbolt 2 OWC 20TB raid 0. 500+/- RW.
Export Destination: Sometimes USB 3.0 attached SSD. Usually an external thunderbolt 5 disk Raid 5. 500+/- RW.
NLE: Premiere Pro CC 17.
External display: First gen Apple LED cinema display.
Overall Performance: Exceedingly Lackluster. Like, I actually had problems exporting a PDF the other day.
8K RED workflow: 8K 14:1 + 7:1 - Working with 8K is essentially a non-starter in PP. No surprise here. 1/16th playback is smooth, once it gets going, but is below the threshold of usable clarity. Still, any cut or a switch to a new clip takes many seconds to take effect. Changes in lumetri color take between 5 and 50 seconds, and often do not appear at all. Importing a batch of clips can take much longer than anyone wants it to. Warp stabilizer analyzes at roughly 1 frame per 3 seconds. Media Encoder can take up to 28 hours to transcode a 1.5TB batch of clips to 4K ProRes. Also, 15 of the 218 failed. Turning off the mercury render engine allowed them to complete. Even the basic act of importing 218 clips into media encoder took 2 hours. Proxies are the only option. Had a strange bug in Redcine X - quite possibly user error - where footage looked fast forwarded after rendering. Side note: the same 218 clip batch took 4 days to crunch through in Redcine X. Usable files: 0. Clearly the macbook is nowhere near up to the task. No one's fault. Time to find a new hammer.
4K 6:1 RED workflow: Lame to uninspiring, as long as footage is being played off fast drives. Dropping playback to 1/4th to 1/8th is a must. Everything happens roughly 4 times faster than it does working with 8K. Weird. /s. Short form would be potentially possible. Long form would be a mollasus nightmare.
4K Other Codecs: Performance is fair, to crappy. A7S is terrible. Almost as unusable as 8K. ProRes is much better. Once you toss some color on there things get real choppy.
1080p: Sings like it's 2013.
Writing Scripts: Breezy. The "N" key has begun to scratch away.
Recommendations/Notes: Time to pass this one on to my mom and build a PC. My ideal set up would be a big quiet box that never slows me down, and a small laptop with a VPN connection to observe and control render cues. On the plus side, things are stable. Hardly a crash. Never a kernel panic.
What would I have done differently? I don't think I would do anything differently. I don't really have that option, now do I?
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