“It’s been twenty four hours since we started to use the new Mac Pro with Final Cut Pro 10.1. We thought we would post our initial findings on the hardware, the software and the combination of the two. We also publish a jaw dropping video showing just how many effects you can apply to a RED 4K clip without frame dropping,” fcp.co reports. “A must watch!” [see below]
“It’s been a busy but exciting time in the office over the last day, we’ve been testing out the new 10.1 update for FCPX on a new Mac Pro,” fcp.co reports. “Let’s start off with the hardware. Our Mac Pro is a fairly well specified machine. Inside, the processor is 3.0GHz 8-core Intel Xeon with 25MB of L3 cache (there is a 12 core BTO), 64GB (4 x 16GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC RAM (maxed out), 1TB PCIe-based flash storage (largest available) and Dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM each. That’s a lot of grunt.”
“I’ve been testing editing 4K media with FCP X 10.1 on a new Mac Pro. It’s been points out to me that I could quite possibly be, at this moment in time at least, the person with the most experience of working with FCP X and the Mac Pro outside of Apple,” Editor and Trainer, Chris Roberts reports. “So, here’re my thoughts…”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
But but but……the internal bus is way faster than the access bus to external feriferals (spelling intentional).
How can this work???
/s
I don’t understand your point.
He was sarcastically mocking those people that are pre-complaining that “since the new Mac Pro externalizes everything, that can’t possibly be fast enough”. (It may well be true that components going through the internal bus would always be faster still, we’ve just reached the point where the processors can handle everything, internal or not, for most things for the target buyer).
I was raked over the coals for merely referring to this very claim. I should have realised it was a religious tenet and a test of the initiated.
Apparently there are hot button issues for every walk of life, arousing a lunatic fringe and awakening an army of fanatics. Why must life be like a journey through a series of minefields? Even when you speak the language, you face execution if you don’t know the password.
Typical hannah psudo-intelectual claptrap.
I readily agree. You have found me out. I am not ashamed however as it is a common avocation on the Internet. I hope you can accept that admission as your fulfillment for my having challenged you (or whatever led to your stalking me). If not, I can easily take my leave, and the blogosphere will not miss me.
You’re trying to be too clever by half.
Your writing style is a like fresh air after an evening in smoke filled Quebec City pub. Please don’t take Paul’s put downs with any credence.
Sure, great writing style.
This is the comments section of a news site.
Get a blog, lady! (In the most kind way)
There are many types of people interested in Apple news. I defend her right to post clever, well written opinions rather than some of the tripe posted by several low brow types on this site. You could have stayed awake in English class and read a few books to also appear well informed and intelligent.
Good riddance!
Once you learn to stop writing your “airy fairy” condescending BS I’d be happy to see you back.
… Says that brave, intelligent, helpful generic anonymous coward ‘Paul’.
‘Paul’, get off the ignorant hater soap box. I’m betting you can do a lot better than hating other people who are not you.
Thanks for the vote down, ‘Paul’. Kind of inevitable. Really, personal growth is the most incredible aspect of living, IMHO. You can do it! There’s nothing meritorious about wallowing in a mud hole.
hannahjs, don´t you dare quit on this audience 🙂 It´s always a delight reading your comments, in fact one of the reasons I still visit this site.
Just give a f*xk about guys like the Paul´s and like, there is already too many of such.
I will miss you.
Typical response to a missive that someone who’s last book was read in grade 9 and still moves their lips while reading.
pseudo and intellectual are bad words to misspell.
Maybe it’s just not welcome, your deeply thoughtful well conceived and precisely written commentary in the comments section of a weakly to moderately grammatically edited news aggregator with its own brand of commentary.
Such public displays of overt intellectual attention grabbing makes one to consider that you “get a blog”
This reminds me the new series of Sherlock starts Boxing Day
Hannah, you’re describing my family: …a journey through a series of minefields
Some people have innate skills to walk through most minefields. I don’t. I’m a brainstorming collaborative type and don’t appreciate the contentiousness. Therefore, I’ve learned (obvious around here) contention skills applied through the medium of humor and strategic trampling of noise generators. Or something. 😉
Thanks. How could people miss that HERE of all places. 😎 WIth TB2, the bus speed is again exceeding the drive throughputs.
I’m getting all misty. Want!
I’m afraid to ask where the mist is occurring….
(might I suggest RainXXX?) 😉
18 effects and no frames dropped. I don’t know much about film editing but I would think it would be nice a pro could just go out and buy an off-the-shelf Mac Pro and get their work done without any problems, it would be a godsend at almost any price. After the industry laughter stops, I’m so curious to see if any other company is going to try to copy this design. Will this start the age of cylindrical-shaped desktops? Normally, some other company always has to copy whatever Apple does just so they can say “Me, too.”
Jeez, you could have four of those tiny Mac Pros on your desk to use as a render farm and they would hardly take up any space at all.
It’s funny how some reviewers say it’s a fingerprint magnet. Seriously, once it’s set up, you’d only be plugging in TB or USB cables occasionally so there’d be no need to touch the polished part of the case at all. There’s always some nitpicking over nothing.
Ya and those 18 effects were being applied real time on a RED 4K RAW file. Impressive is not even the word. And this machine he was using was the 8 core not the top of the line 12 core. If you read the article he states that the mac pro does want a $2000.00 RED Rocket card does without the card and works with more filters.
And in the video he shows setting playback quality to “better performance”. This setting reduces working resolution to a quarter of the sequence resolution. This has been a regular feature of many pieces of software that try to deal with video playback while trying to reduce the need for constant rendering. A reduced quality (and resolution) mode to let you see effectively a preview of your work before committing time to render.
So, just 1K playback. Test then, irrelevant.
Sure irrelevant, unless you really know whats the percentage, in AE we work 50 percent after 10 layers, now imagine more that 15, wait, now add 4K. Sh!t man, have you ever work on real post, let alone pro post?
The current Redcode RAW codec is not OpenCL optimised so what you saw was the Mac Pro brute forcing it. Once the codec is configured to work with OpenCL full 4K full debayer will be possible.
Working at 1/4 res 4K is nothing unusual in post, it’s simply not necessary to see full res while editing only during finishing would you want 4K output to monitor and that looks like it’ll be the case with Redcode optimisation and is now possible with ProRes at 4K.
So, your comment, irrelevant…
You know I was thinking. With a computer like this would it be possible to just have one Mac Pro and set up about three displays and keyboards around the house and be able to run something like multiple virtual machines using Parallels with Mac OSX on it so it would seem as though there’s a computer for each remote station? I know that Thunderbolt cables can be run up to 300 ft and support audio and video.
It’s just a wild thought to buy the $3999 model and share it among three separate remote stations. I wouldn’t be needing to run anything close to FCP.
Interesting thought, maybe the central computer theme isn’t so dead after all just very different in practice.
You got me interested Laughing_Boy48. I know cabling is the limiting factor, especially the cost. It will be expensive. But Apple apparently has a solution via Xsan:
http://www.apple.com/osx/server/features/#xsan
Xsan allows any Mac with a Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel adapter to access an Xsan volume. OS X Server includes the Xsan Admin application for hosting and configuring Xsan volumes.
Therefore, you get a few of these, at $800 a pop, along with the required cables:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/H7293LL/A/promise-sanlink-thunderbolt-to-4gbits-fibre-channel-adapter?fnode=5f
MDN freaks when using more than two links in a post so…
… You can check out the Xsan 2 (out-of-date) Admin Guide here:
Click to access Xsan_2_Admin_Guide_v2.3.pdf
Considering the cost of using Thunderbolt cabling and interconnects at this point, you might want to settle for good old Ethernet 1000base-T for now. (801.11ac Wi-Fi is theoretically just as fast, but no doubt less reliable).
That was fun. 😉
Oh and: Boot your cheap Mac Mini workstations off your server to keep things simple. They won’t need their own OS and you won’t need Parallels.
If you instead just want terminals at each of the displays, that I don’t know how to do with Macs. I’ve done SPARCstations connected to a mainframe. Mac Mini’s are the closest thing Apple has.
The whole reason this is big news in the video industry is because people have been giving FCPX a lot of crap for not being a industry editing system and going all consumer friendly. First off, screw off industry people for saying you want to be the elite few to be able to do editing. giving editing tools in the hands of more people will do more good than bad.
Back to my main point, the final cut pro team is proving with every upgrade to FCPX why it is a professional program. The Mac Pro is a great marriage to FCPX, and this video is only one of many great demonstrations that will soon exist. Even back in May, when apple had the guys from the foundry show off the real-time 3d modeling they could do with this computer, with textures that are 8k in size!
Avid and Adobe have great editing systems, and they will run on these new machines extremely well. But FCPX is just as professional, and to hear the industry say Apple isn’t creating professional editing software, is ignorant and ignoring the facts.
Broadcast pros do not think they are elite. they just have to get video Productions to play on broadcast television To spec. That is the Programming that comes in on your cable box. Some people can still get it with an antenna. network television. They usually require eight channels of audio export to MPEG-2 files and wrapped to MXF container they also have to be closed-captioned Final Cut Pro X cannot do any of that without third-party workarounds that are in the thousands of dollars but simply are such a pain in Fcpx that fxpx is not usable. Final Cut Pro seven did this perfectly. It’s really not a big deal will just use something else for now. Maybe one day Final Cut Pro X will catch up. Although I don’t see it with the Silly Way, Final Cut Pro X handles audio. I’m glad it works for you though my Apple stock depends on it.
I work for a post house that goes to TV and they have never needed to use mxf containers, at least not my department. And maybe FCP7 use to do this, but it also use to cost 1000 dollars. Now its only 300, and for the extreme few who need that mxf container, they will purchase it without even thinking about why FCPX has it or not. And you can still export multi-channel audio in FCPX, you just need to learn how to use roles in FCPX to do that.
Closed captioning? FCP 7 never really had this feature to begin with. The most effective way was buying a 3rd party app anyway. Compressor was the best option that came with the program, and that feature is still available in Compressor.
I understand maybe your upset about the mxf container, but given the amount that the FCPX team has done for the program, thats not enough to say that FCPX isn’t professional. Bring some more stuff to the table please.
And that my friends is why Apple takes its time releasing new things.
Of course the other companies will copy it and claim they did not violate and patents. After all…you can’t patent just rounding corners.
I don’t want one. It’s not snappy.
I. Want. One.
I am tempted to buy one just to open it up and look at it.
Then again, maybe I will turn it on.
I would love to have one of these, but that is lust talking and not the rational mind. I have no real need for one since I just edit small videos and photos for my youtube channel, but still it is incredible and I still want one.
I updated to 10.1 seemed great but I shut down the computer and now it crashing when trying to load the New Libries it runs for about 30 seconds then freezes and quits.
I opened the library file and copied some to a new libray and it worked but I could not relink any of the files but then after a while it will crash again and when I try to reopen it keeps crashing again
It’s my first problem I’ve ever had with a mac and it’s a BIG one as all my sons movies could be lost 🙁
I had a similar problem but I tracked it down to an old Motion Template I had made that used a depreciated effect. I used it a lot in my projects so every project I loaded crashed.
I was crashing and even had kernel panics and removing the offending template from the template folder cured the problem. 10.1 is now very stable and very fast.