xMac Mini Server with RED Rocket-X questions

[Marcus Friedlander]

I've been looking into the idea of a single mobile workstation that can be used to deal with RED footage from ingest to edit to color to "projection" (by projection I mean being able to output a 4k master or 1080 downsample to any screen I come across). As of now I'm going to purchase a fully spec'ed Mac Mini and put it in this rack mount setup http://www.sonnettech.com/product/xmacminiserver.html with a RED Rocket-X in the full length slot.


Questions.

1. If I have just the mac mini and the RED Rocket-X, will I be able to edit .R3D files in FCP-X in realtime, or does the Rocket-X only handle transcoding? Also, if the Rocket-X does accelerate editing is it still worth it to create proxies and reconform after the edit?

2. What should I put in the half length slot so I can get 4k output? OR Is there a better use for the half length slot than 4k output?


Thanks for taking the time to read this. I'm computer literate when it comes to operating a computer but I'm clueless when it comes to computer parts so any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

I'm thinking of getting this card http://www.coremicro.com/blackmagic-design-decklink-4k-extreme-12g.html to put into the half length slot. I'm hoping that this card will help offset the weaknesses of the Mac Mini and give me a boost for the small percentage of time I wont be working with .R3D files.

Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Decklink 4K card is probably your best choice. I wouldn't do it unless you have the Thunderbolt 2 upgrade to the XMac and a Thunderbolt 2 connection on your Mac Mini, though. Even then, you're asking that little computer to do a lot and as great as Thunderbolt 2 is, the bandwidth is still severely limited. It only provides about 1/5th of the bandwidth useable by the Rocket-X card and then you're going to be asking the system to share that bandwidth with the Decklink card. The Decklink card is not going to accelerate or boost anything, it's just a means for input and output of video monitoring/ recording signals.

You would actually do better to get the new UltraStudio 4K that connects via Thunderbolt and connect it to the secondary Thunderbolt 2 port, assuming you have one of the new Mac Minis that has dual TB2 ports.

And going that route, the AJA io4K is a far better solution for all of this, but it doesn't work with Resolve, if that is a concern for you.

Rocket-X accelerates the decoding, debayer and scaling of R3D frames. So it aids in all aspects of that, including editing. However, the way the wavelet files work, it's fairly quick to extract low-res samples out of it, so the Rocket-X isn't going to provide better performance than editing in 1/16th resolution on most desktop systems. With the Mac Mini, it might because the computer itself isn't very powerful. Which leads to the next round of questioning and further thought... A Mac Mini and an expansion like this for use with Rocket-X and R3D workflow is really not ideal. If you already have the XMac unit and the Mac Mini, then I understand you're committed somewhat. If you don't already have the hardware, then I would steer you in a different direction entirely.

I would probably not bother with anything else in that second slot in the Xmac unit if you don't need it. Let the Rocket-X have and use all the available bandwidth all the time. Someday in the near future, we should hopefully have video output on the Rocket-X card that will display from Redcine-X. That's probably it, though. If you can live with 1080p monitoring -- which I would recommend off the Mac Mini anyway, you would probably do better to buy a USB3 solution and connect that way. But we don't even know which Mac Mini you have...

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Dear Santa,
All I want for Christmas is the video outs on my RR-X enabled.

Visions of 4K dancing in my head - #19

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Oh, and don't waste your money with a DeckLink 4K Extreme 12G model. All it does is add the 12G HD-SDI option for 6G and 12G support -- only necessary if you have other monitors or equipment that can use it.

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

Sorry Jeff for not giving enough info. I have not purchased anything at all yet (which apparently sounds like good news). I was planning on buying the Mac Mini with TB2 and the Sonnet xMac Mini Server with TB2 as well, but I guess this setup is not ideal for my needs. I'm really pushing for both 4096x2160 and 1920x1080 outputs and I don't really want to compromise there unless I absolutely have to. Would you suggest going with a Mac Pro instead? I want to stay in the apple world but I don't really want an iMac right now because I need the portability and I don't really like being tied to one screen, but I guess a laptop wouldn't be a terrible compromise if it was powerful enough.


What do you think would better suit my needs? (.R3d ingest and one-light in RCx, transcode, cut in FCPx, XML to Resolve, Relink to .R3D and Color Correct, XML back to FCPx to sync music, Output to Projection formats, Playback finished project on any tv I would reasonably come across in professional and consumer world) I know that is asking a lot of one PORTABLE machine to do but I feel in todays age it might be possible.

Mac Pro - $7,125
3.7GHz quad-core with 10MB of L3 cache
64GB (4x16GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC
1TB PCIe-based flash storage
Dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM each
Apple USB SuperDrive
AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro - Auto-enroll
AirPort Time Capsule - 3TB
Final Cut Pro X
Resolve lite
Red Cine-X
(I already own an apple monitor that I would use for home use or on set if I had too.)
+
Echo Express III-D - $1,000 http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpress3d.html
RED Rocket-X (with new brain discount) - $4,500

Approximate total - $13,000


OR

Macbook Pro - $3,750
3.0GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
1TB PCIe-based Flash Storage
Intel Iris Graphics
Apple USB SuperDrive
Backlit Keyboard (English) & User's Guide
Final Cut Pro X
AppleCare Protection Plan for MacBook Air / 13" MacBook Pro - Auto-enroll AirPort
Time Capsule - 3TB
+
Echo Express III-D - $1,000
RED Rocket-X (with new brain discount) - $4,500
(Whatever card(s) that would also fit into the Echo Express that would help what i'm trying to do) - $????

Approximate total - $9,250- 12,000

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

Or should I go for a fully speced out Mac Pro trash can and forget the rocket card?

Mac Pro - $10,625
2.7GHz 12-core with 30MB of L3 cache
64GB (4x16GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC
1TB PCIe-based flash storage
Dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM each
Apple USB SuperDrive
AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro - Auto-enroll
Final Cut Pro X
AirPort Time Capsule - 3TB

 

[Eric Bowen]

The 12G also gives HDMi 2.0 which right now is the only card in the Blackmagic lineup with that.

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

It's looking like I may be better off with two machines than one. I need something right now that can handle .R3D workflow better then my four year old laptop, but with broadwell right around the corner this seems like a bad time to invest in a fully spec'ed out rig. To me, it looks like the best solution is to buy a the xMac Mini Server and Rocket-X card for my mobile needs (ingest, transcode and projection) Then, I can limp through the more processor intensive parts of post production until broadwell comes out. My company doesn't really focus too much on post production (but we want too!) so we can survive with just the Mac Mini for 6-12 months if we need too. When broadwell does come out, i'll have the money to reinvest in a significantly more powerful rig that will hopefully take care of the duties of everything between transcode and projection.


Thoughts?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Hmmm.... I guess I'm trying to figure out what makes a Mac Mini along with an XMac rack mount unit "portable"? The Mac Mini and MacBook Pro are very similar in specs or performance. With the Macbook Pro, you actually get a portable computer with a nice, high-DPI screen to go along with it. Full UHD/4K would be better, but at a 15" size this isn't bad and these mobile GPUs really are not up to the task of driving a 4K display anyhow. Speaking of GPUs, with the Macbook Pro, you get a functional NVIDIA GPU that supports CUDA acceleration. It's a bit dated now and not terribly powerful, but still offers some acceleration benefits. With the Mac Mini, you just have the Intel integrated graphics, which don't offer a whole lot. It does have OpenGL/ OpenCL support, but it's definitely not performance oriented. Both systems are currently bottlenecked by the maximum of 16GB RAM. This has become a huge problem for me and my work with the Macbook Pro. I have a mid 2012 first-gen retina MBP and other than Thunderbolt 2, there was no need to upgrade this past year. I'm hoping that with Broadwell, we'll see some more compelling reasons to upgrade in 2015, but I won't be upgrading it at all until I can get *AT LEAST* 32GB RAM as a configuration option.

For a "portable" system to work with Dragon footage, all while staying within the Mac ecosystem, you don't have many options. I would steer you away from the Mac Mini for this. Mostly because of the lack of decent GPU. At least with the MacBook Pro, you have a computer which is functional on its own. The Mac Pro is going to be your best choice. And fully loaded with a 12-core CPU, it's a very capable system. Once again, we run into a memory ceiling -- 64GB is passable on an 8-core. On a 12-core, it will be a bit restrictive if you do a lot of compositing work or multi-stream editing, cacheing of large clips, etc..

To decide whether or not to go with a Rocket-X will depend on the software you use most. So I would ask which software you will be using most often and what will you be doing with it? I understand you want to work with Dragon footage, but will you be doing a lot of transcoding? Or will you be doing mostly editing? Or color grading? Or...?

The 5K iMac is also something to consider. With the Mac Mini or Mac Pro you will be lugging around a monitor, so a 5K iMac is just as "portable" as either of those two options. You can fit a lot of stuff on a 5K screen. like a full resolution 4K image plus controls and such. It's a more powerful CPU than what is available in either the Mac Mini or Macbook Pro and double the cores too. It has a decent GPU option, although no CUDA support and once again, Apple has chosen a GPU that is nearing the end of its life cycle.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Sorry, forgot to address this earlier and I feel like I'm picking nits, but...

The 12G also gives HDMi 2.0 which right now is the only card in the Blackmagic lineup with that.

Since when? And do you know something I don't? Nowhere in the online specs does it claim HDMI 2.0, and it clearly states up to 4K 60p with 4.2.0. When I queried BMD if their 12G card will get full HDMI 2.0 and 60p 4.4.4/ 10bit, etc.. The answer was "no." and that I would need to use the 12G/SDI connectivity for that. I guess we could always run the SDI into an HDMI 2.0 converter and then out to our displays... Both BMD and AJA should have those converters shipping by NAB. I can drive my 4K projector @ 60p 4.2.0 now with the 4K Extreme card. But I'm going for 4.4.4 at 24/30 Hz since that's where all my stuff is finishing for now.

Not trying to be a pain in the ass here, just hoping you're right and I once again don't have all the info!

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

Hmmm.... I guess I'm trying to figure out what makes a Mac Mini along with an XMac rack mount unit "portable"?

hmmm perhaps portable isn't the best adjective for this situation. The reason I like this setup is that with everything inside a server mount it makes things simple and organized. Sort of like a very basic, pre made, DIT cart for someone who doesn't know enough about computers to custom build a proper one.

The Mac Mini and MacBook Pro are very similar in specs or performance. With the Macbook Pro, you actually get a portable computer with a nice, high-DPI screen to go along with it. Full UHD/4K would be better, but at a 15" size this isn't bad and these mobile GPUs really are not up to the task of driving a 4K display anyhow. Speaking of GPUs, with the Macbook Pro, you get a functional NVIDIA GPU that supports CUDA acceleration. It's a bit dated now and not terribly powerful, but still offers some acceleration benefits. With the Mac Mini, you just have the Intel integrated graphics, which don't offer a whole lot. It does have OpenGL/ OpenCL support, but it's definitely not performance oriented. Both systems are currently bottlenecked by the maximum of 16GB RAM. This has become a huge problem for me and my work with the Macbook Pro. I have a mid 2012 first-gen retina MBP and other than Thunderbolt 2, there was no need to upgrade this past year. I'm hoping that with Broadwell, we'll see some more compelling reasons to upgrade in 2015, but I won't be upgrading it at all until I can get *AT LEAST* 32GB RAM as a configuration option.

For a "portable" system to work with Dragon footage, all while staying within the Mac ecosystem, you don't have many options. I would steer you away from the Mac Mini for this. Mostly because of the lack of decent GPU. At least with the MacBook Pro, you have a computer which is functional on its own.

If I went with a Macbook Pro instead, could I make use of anything on this page? http://www.sonnettech.com/product/macbookaccessories/index.html
Or do I still need to get an PCIe expansion?

To decide whether or not to go with a Rocket-X will depend on the software you use most. So I would ask which software you will be using most often and what will you be doing with it? I understand you want to work with Dragon footage, but will you be doing a lot of transcoding? Or will you be doing mostly editing? Or color grading? Or...?

List of tasks or programs in order of importance.
1. RedCine-x (75% for clients. 25% for myself.)
2. Transcoding (75% for clients. 25% for myself.)
3. FCPx (25% for client. 75% for myself.)
4. Resolve (Probably 100% personal use.)

The 5K iMac is also something to consider. With the Mac Mini or Mac Pro you will be lugging around a monitor, so a 5K iMac is just as "portable" as either of those two options. You can fit a lot of stuff on a 5K screen. like a full resolution 4K image plus controls and such. It's a more powerful CPU than what is available in either the Mac Mini or Macbook Pro and double the cores too. It has a decent GPU option, although no CUDA support and once again, Apple has chosen a GPU that is nearing the end of its life cycle.

I was really excited when this came out because of the 5k screen. It seems like the perfect fit for the DRAGON, but I'm afraid to bring something like this into a production environment. My fear is that if the screen gets damaged the whole investment is damaged (I'm not as worried with the Macbook Pro because it's a laptop).

 

[Eric Bowen]

Sorry, forgot to address this earlier and I feel like I'm picking nits, but...



Since when? And do you know something I don't? Nowhere in the online specs does it claim HDMI 2.0, and it clearly states up to 4K 60p with 4.2.0. When I queried BMD if their 12G card will get full HDMI 2.0 and 60p 4.4.4/ 10bit, etc.. The answer was "no." and that I would need to use the 12G/SDI connectivity for that. I guess we could always run the SDI into an HDMI 2.0 converter and then out to our displays... Both BMD and AJA should have those converters shipping by NAB. I can drive my 4K projector @ 60p 4.2.0 now with the 4K Extreme card. But I'm going for 4.4.4 at 24/30 Hz since that's where all my stuff is finishing for now.

Not trying to be a pain in the ass here, just hoping you're right and I once again don't have all the info!

Well actually it looks like my turn to eat my hat maybe. I saw the 60P frame support which I knew the other 4K cards dont have and assumed that was HDMi 2.0 since they would have to update the driver like Nvidia did to add that for 1.4b. However on their website now it says HDMi configuration: Deep color 1.4b so it looks like they just went with the restricted 4K bandwidth for the 60 frame. I have some people to apologize to. Might also explain why it took them so long to start shipping the cards. I swore I remember email blasts regarding the HDMi 2.0 on that card and it was going to be the only 1 so far. Sorry for the miss information.

Example of what I am talking about is here on Aja's device for why I thought was HDMi 2.0

https://www.aja.com/en/products/mini-converters/hi54k#techspecsHDMI Standard Type A connector

• HDMI v1.4a 30/36 bits per pixel, RGB or YUV
• HDMI v2.0b (3840 x 2160p 8-bit 4:2:0; 50, 59.94, 60)

Blackmagic lists the frame rate max on all the other 4K cards to 30 frame and specifically lists the studio 4K as HDMi 1.4b on the Decklink page while excluding that description for the 12G model instead stating 60 frame support. Got to love marketing if so. Have to call Casper and find out for sure.

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

@Jeff Kilgore I've been doing more research and i'm liking what i'm seeing from Adobe CC. So I have a question, If I was going to use Adobe CC (Premiere and AE) instead of FCPX would you still suggest getting a 5k iMac? or would that require a more powerful computer like a Mac Pro?

Thank you again for your help.