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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

To wait or not to wait...MacPro Thunderbolt vs. Macbook Pro Thunderbolt

Cameron Dunlop

Cameron Dunlop

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I am starting to lose it waiting to buy a new MAC for home. I am hoping that Scarlet is going to be in my price range and I want to have a home computer that I will be able to effectively edit Red footage on. I waited all summer for a new Sandy Bridge/Thunderbolt MacPro to emerge and nothing. Then I red an article today indicating that a new MacPro is not likely to appear until 2012 due to supply chain on Intel server class processors that it would likely use (http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/21...est-no-new-mac-pro-until-at-least-early-2012/). It also looks like speed bumped MacBook Pros are coming shortly after the Scarlet announcement in November. During this wait I have been debating the power vs. portability of the two different machines for a while and the lack of spec vs. spec comparison has been a challenge. Do I give up the power of the desktop for the ability to edit anywhere or do I really need the power. So I am putting it to the community. Is the latest MacBook Pro able to get the job done for a Red workflow or is a MacPro a must? Keep in mind that I am looking at smaller projects like commercials and shorts opposed to feature length.

As an aside I am also looking for comments on where the Ivy Bridge processors would fit in this picture. Everything I have read tells me that the performance benefit will be in small mobiles like the MacBook Air. I haven't seen anything that tells me that it will be a huge improvement to the MacBook Pro and Pro lines. If it does perhaps the decision just got more complicated.
 
I feel your pain. As we stand today the value proposition of the Mac laptops with Thunderbolt is compelling, but an updated tower might offer a whole different level of performance.

One issue you might want to consider in terms of R3D workflows is whether you would get a Red Rocket or not. A thunderbolt enabled portable enclosure that could host a Rocket was recently announced and it could theoretically be mated with a MacBook Pro for a very capable and very portable solution. Jeff Kilgroe feels like with enough CPU horsepower you might be OK without a Rocket, but that would take serious tower power - 12 core Westmere. Jeff, correct me if I am misrepresenting your position.

All this waiting is almost enough to make we go Windows - welllllll... maybe not ;-)

Cheers - #19
 
Depending on your intended workflow, you may get by without a Rocket. If you spend a lot of time in Redcine-X, then you will need the Rocket, regardless. Redcine-X has been optimized for the Rocket and thus far does not scale well across multiple processors as the only Redcine did. Hopefully Redcine-X Pro will do be much better at this... Within the next year or so, workstations will outpace the Rocket card in terms of R3D crunching power. In many ways, the latest E-Series Xeon CPUs, especially the 10-core monster ones, already have.

As an interim solution, there's the possibility of an iMac as well. The current 27" iMac performs on par with an '08 Mac Pro in most situations. The down-side to it as a real workstation is the lack of CUDA acceleration and none of the Thunderbolt PCIe expanders have hit the market yet. We'll probably see a new Mac Pro about the time we get the peripherals to really turn an iMac into an R3D power-house. Probably will see updated iMacs about then too.

For now, if you're on the fence and trying to add a system for R3D workflow, you would probably do better (money-wise) to build an i7 6-core PC with a RED Rocket. If you need to go the Mac route for ProRes workflows, then maybe take a look at a used or refurbished Mac Pro, perhaps a 2009 model or a 2010 Westmere model with slower, less expensive CPUs. Just be sure you get two CPUs (8 cores or better), so you can maximize the memory bandwidth in the system.

If Scarlet is to be the primary camera, then don't do anything until after the Scarlet clarification on the 3rd. If Scarlet remains 3K at 12bit, then I would be hesitant to purchase a Rocket card. My '09 2.93GHz 8-core system rips through 3K R3D footage pretty well without the Rocket. The Westmere systems are a bit faster, an 8-core 2.6GHz Westmere is pretty similar in performance to my '09 tower.

If you're working primarily in Adobe CS5.5, you can get by without a Rocket in many situations because you can still assemble and edit footage with real-time performance and then your system only has to concentrate on rendering out your edit. If you will be transcoding for clients or for use in other workflows, that Rocket may still be worth it, even for 3K Scarlet.
 
The iMac is massively overlooked in this current dilemma. You could even call one portable if you got a carry bag for it, and it's surely a hell of a lot better on set than a laptop for viewing.

Also, my i7 quad core iMacs smoke my 08 Mac Pros at FCP, PPro and AE. I don't doubt CUDA is good in Resolve, but it's massively overrated in PPro - it's just too limited in what it does. Buying a top of the line iMac is like buying a powerful workstation with a free 27" screen. In a few months, thunderbolt expansion options will get rid of all but the CUDA concerns.
 
FWIW, the Promise Pegasus Thunderbolt RAID is a great storage solution for the iMac. Also, the LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk is great too -- Kinda heavy for its size, but I keep one with my Macbook Pro (a 2TB one) and it's pretty snappy.

A 27" iMac with the Promise RAID and a thunderbolt PCIe box to hold a RED Rocket would be a really nice solution. It has dual Thunderbolt ports, so upcoming TB to eSATA will also be great for connecting RED Station Modules or other such things.
 
Wait for the Mac Pro for your main edit system.

You can definitely handle some Red work on the 2011 MacBook Pros, but not enough to really edit a non-trivial project. On set stuff, and portability.

I aim to own the next revision of MacBook Pro ... but I'm hoping I can just buy a graphics card/Thunderbolt update to my current 2010 Mac Pro, and purchase whatever comes out in late 2012/2013 as its replacement.
 
All good advice gentlemen.

The one question I can answer is that between a Scarlet and a computer the Rocket won't likely fit into my budget. No question of its value to the workflow just a cost issue.

I do use Premeire so that further helps with the Rocket question. I would put myself in the sort of DSMC fashion photographer category of workflow (I shoot sports opposed to fashion) Does that make the MacBook Pro even more viable if editing 3k in Premeire?

I haven't necessary written off an iMac. I have looked at, but I would prefer a desktop that I can upgrade more than ram and a hard drive though. I look at it this way...if I am going desktop I might as well go all the way to the Pro and have the option to beef it up later with add ons like a rocket, more RAM, etc. My leaning is to a Pro, but I don't want to drop $4000 on an older model; I want the investment to last multiple years. My thinking with the MacBook pro is that if it is capable then maybe it would fill the gap at a lower cost for a year or two until I perhaps "need" to be at the highest level of performance and then invest in a Pro. Portability would just be a bonus in the short term.

Definitely not purchasing anything until after the Scarlet announcement. I have waited this long so a couple more weeks isn't going to kill me. Off course if Scarlet ends up being what I want when announced I could be in a situation where I have a kick ass camera with no computer to edit the footage with! Haha.
 
Also, probably it will take a few months before you actually have the Scarlet in your hands, so that leaves space for waiting out the MacPro tower... I will wait for the tower, even if it means working in ProRes meanwhile
 
Sounds like Scarlet could ship before a new MacPro, but we will see on that. I guess the wait will continue.
 
Craig Schober said:
spec bumps to macbook pro just posted on apple store...
Click to expand...

Umm... not really. No new options there, they just upgraded the base configurations and kept the price the same. So, as an example, the 17" base model was a 2.2GHz CPU with the option to upgrade to the 2.4 or 2.5GHz. Now it just comes with the 2.4GHz with the option to upgrade to the 2.5GHz.
 
Getting my Stage 3 Epic in a few weeks, I hope. I have faith in Red and know they're everything they can to get our gear. Thanks for the hard work Red crew. I have got a MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz i7, 8Gb ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M and Intel HD Graphics with 500Gb SSD running 10.6.8. I won't be doing a lot of heavy editing on it, but would love to be able to use in the field for back up and some light editing work. What is the best hardware/software config to let me do that now? I will upgrade to a tower system for home archiving, coloring, editing, etc. I will entertain almost any solution that does not force me back to PC world. I am so very happy living in Apple land. Thanks.
 
Another FWIW: Just about to start DITing a feature with my 17" MacBook Pro 2.2 GHz i7... doing preliminary tests with my primary data drives housed in the Promise Pegasus R6 Thunderbolt enclosure... this thing is ridiculously awesome so far...

I hope more indie projects start handing me these or let me work out of one of my own... does anyone have any experience removing a set of physical drives that comprise a volume from this enclosure and trying to mount the configuration somewhere else? Trying to figure out if there are any proprietary barriers, or if their "prepare for transport" functionality is really more useful than for just moving to another Pegasus enclosure.
 
Zack CC said:
does anyone have any experience removing a set of physical drives that comprise a volume from this enclosure and trying to mount the configuration somewhere else?
Click to expand...

I've done this on a regular basis with G-Raid. Done it with Raid 0, 5 and 6. You can even stick drives in any slot and G-Raid correctly identifies them and mounts the set in the new enclosure. Obviously, I would recommend doing this only between the same enclosures or enclosures with the same Raid controller. And please, test it first:-)
 
Zack CC said:
does anyone have any experience removing a set of physical drives that comprise a volume from this enclosure and trying to mount the configuration somewhere else? Trying to figure out if there are any proprietary barriers, or if their "prepare for transport" functionality is really more useful than for just moving to another Pegasus enclosure.
Click to expand...

Have not tried this with the Pegasus (and I do own the 6-bay model), but I wouldn't count on being able to pull a drive set from the Pegasus and put it into a different brand or type of enclosure and having it work. There are a lot of variables there involving how the controller sets up the drives. You can easily use their transport feature to move to other pegasus enclosures... As Jake points out, you can swap drive sets between G-Tech units pretty easily. Somehow I doubt you would be able to pull a drive set from a Promise RAID and drop it into a G-RAID and have it work.

I've seen too many drives and RAIDs fail over the years. I don't pull drive sets out of RAID enclosures unless I have a backup first anyway... So, given that, I don't really see the attractiveness of pulling a drive set and trying to make it work elsewhere. If you're going to transport the data, you're better off spanning it onto common drives or LTO media that anyone can read without trying to put a RAID back together.
 
Yeah, kinda what I figured you guys would say. :/ Thanks for the feedback though!

ALSO, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Just trying to figure out what I would do if i wanted to own an enclosure as part of my kit and get the full benefit of the bandwidth on set. (not that I really have the CPU to make it fully worthwhile in many cases, but being able to playback large files with no stutter and move days worth of data fast is killer.)

I just dont know that productions that I work on will spring for their own thunderbolt enclosure every time, I normally get stuck with a fleet of G-Drives, but I love having all my drives dealt with by just the TB port, because then it frees up my esata or FW800 for pulling from camera media / red-stations or on ALEXA jobs, the Expresscard Slot.

For this show im testing running 2 6TB Raid 0 volumes in the enclosure, which will each hold a full copy of the data (I assumed that you needed striped volumes to fully take advantage of the thunderbolt connection) and as an additional safety precaution, I also have 2x 3TB G-Drives for a physically separate copy that can travel separately from the rest of the data each night. These can also be used anywhere, as they are "common" drives

I suppose I could use the pegasus as a main workhorse during the day on set, but I would still have to offload either during the course of the day, or at the end of the day, to however many drives the production has, since most people wont want to have a bunch of bare drives as a deliverable... the only other option would be if the enclosure supported JBOD and I could merely use it as a dock then mount the drives in other enclosures later... but I dont think the enclosure supports it?

theres methods im not thinking of.... but ive only had time to think about it for about a day.

I feel like im really close to making a MBP Laptop truly work as a DIT station for small features, but its not quite easy yet. Also still waiting to get final approval on the Magma or Sonnet enclosures for a TB Rocket. THAT will be pretty cool

Tme to EAT!
 
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