MP 7,1 Final Cut Hardware Utilization

[Rr697]

2019 7.1 16 core,4TB, Pro Vega II Duo 96gb

MacOS 12.3
FCP 10.6.1

NLE : Final Cut

Footage : 8K RAW .R3D and 8K ProRes Raw HQ

Questions….. for my editing fam. I ordered a max spec Mac Studio but I need to keep my 7.1 current so other than the Afterburner card what can I do to speed up render and export and (ProRes Raw) playback. I appreciate the folks that will tell me to use proxies but everyone has their flow.

1: I want to upgrade the 4TB SSD to 8 or 16 TB. Does Final Cut works best (fastest) on apple SSD’s being the boot drive or? IF I’m not limited to that I’m looking at the OWC Pcie cards…. What memory speed can final cut utilize? They have 12,000mbps SSD’s is that over kill? Can Final Cut use it?

2. My machine edits 8K 5:1 R3D all day but 8K ProRes Raw w/NR wont even play. I know I should get the afterburner card but given that I have the Vega II Duo should I upgrade to two of them? Or should I get two of the newer Duo? (Getting afterburner)

3. Final Cut doesn’t even use 4% of my 16 core CPU so I take it that doesn’t need to be upgraded?

4. RAM I have 96GB and Final Cut only uses about 30GB. I take it I’m good on Ram?

Activity Monitor

Disk (4 TB Apple)
Read in/sec 30
Writes out/sec 0

Data read/sec 11-14.6MB
Data Written/sec 0KB sometimes 5KB

Ram (96gb Apple)
Memory used 52GB
Cached files 42GB
App memory 25GB
Wired memory 11GB
Compressed 15GB

GPU ( Single Pro Vega II Duo)
GPU A 75% utilization
GPU B 10% utilization ?

CPU (16 Core Apple)
7.5% utilization (93% Free)

Thank you in advance.

 

[randy85]

I was going to suggest the W6800X Duo, but you could buy another Mac Studio for the cost.

The Afterburner might be worth it if you're cutting 8K Prores Raw.

I would imagine that there's no impact on performance once your drives are fast enough for the bitrate of the footage. I get super smooth playback off of external Samsung T7 drives, so I would personally get more adequately fast SSD storage rather than spend on the Apple SSDs.

With RAM it sounds like you're also fine, as you say you can't force the software to use more than it needs.

The 7.1 is in a bit of a curious spot now that some of the modules cost as much as a Mac Studio that would overall possibly be better at some tasks. I am personally going to hold off further upgrading my Mac Pro now. The next update I might go for is the AMD 7XXX GPUs should they give a good performance boost and Apple supports them.

 

[Rr697]

I was going to suggest the W6800X Duo, but you could buy another Mac Studio for the cost.

The Afterburner might be worth it if you're cutting 8K Prores Raw.

I would imagine that there's no impact on performance once your drives are fast enough for the bitrate of the footage. I get super smooth playback off of external Samsung T7 drives, so I would personally get more adequately fast SSD storage rather than spend on the Apple SSDs.

With RAM it sounds like you're also fine, as you say you can't force the software to use more than it needs.

The 7.1 is in a bit of a curious spot now that some of the modules cost as much as a Mac Studio that would overall possibly be better at some tasks. I am personally going to hold off further upgrading my Mac Pro now. The next update I might go for is the AMD 7XXX GPUs should they give a good performance boost and Apple supports them.

The Apple SSD I think is around 2700/3000 read write so are you saying that is sufficiently fast? I don’t want to throw away money on “fast” ssd storage if FCP can’t utilize it. Final Cut Pro is pretty much the only area I would care about faster memory. I see 3000 and 6000 and 12000 speeds listed on OWC memory and wonder if I had 12,000mbps speeds if my playback/render/export would speed up sufficiently.

I shoot around 3-4TB per month of 8K RAW footage so I have just been buying cheap $150 8TB WD drives and offloading footage onto those drives for deep storage after I edit the project. So my random extra drives are stacking up and I have been thinking more about my working and deep storage.

As for GPU would the w6900x beat out my Pro Vega II Duo in Final Cut? If it’s 25% or more gain in render or export time I would consider that worth it for me.

The machine currently edits RED fine I’m pretty happy with it….smooth playback and 24fps render and export has me happy. It’s the ProRes Raw and noise reduction that is driving me nuts.

Maybe I will end up using the mac studio for the edit and let my my Max Pro render the project once its complete. But I’m getting tired of 16-24 hours to render and then 16-24 hours to export a 35 minute 8K video with NR.

 

[Soba]

The Apple SSD I think is around 2700/3000 read write so are you saying that is sufficiently fast? I don’t want to throw away money on “fast” ssd storage if FCP can’t utilize it. Final Cut Pro is pretty much the only area I would care about faster memory. I see 3000 and 6000 and 12000 speeds listed on OWC memory and wonder if I had 12,000mbps speeds if my playback/render/export would speed up sufficiently.

I shoot around 3-4TB per month of 8K RAW footage so I have just been buying cheap $150 8TB WD drives and offloading footage onto those drives for deep storage after I edit the project. So my random extra drives are stacking up and I have been thinking more about my working and deep storage.

As for GPU would the w6900x beat out my Pro Vega II Duo in Final Cut? If it’s 25% or more gain in render or export time I would consider that worth it for me.

The machine currently edits RED fine I’m pretty happy with it….smooth playback and 24fps render and export has me happy. It’s the ProRes Raw and noise reduction that is driving me nuts.

Maybe I will end up using the mac studio for the edit and let my my Max Pro render the project once its complete. But I’m getting tired of 16-24 hours to render and then 16-24 hours to export a 35 minute 8K video with NR.

Your posts mention a number of stats for CPU and RAM usage, but unless I've misunderstood, you only quote hardware specs for disk performance and don't mention the real-world disk performance you're seeing on your system.

The Disk tab in Activity Monitor will show you read and write data rates, so I'm curious what it shows while your system is busy. If it looks like your disk is constantly being maxed out for read or write speed, that's a good indication your SSD is your bottleneck.

 

[Rr697]

Your posts mention a number of stats for CPU and RAM usage, but unless I've misunderstood, you only quote hardware specs for disk performance and don't mention the real-world disk performance you're seeing on your system.

The Disk tab in Activity Monitor will show you read and write data rates, so I'm curious what it shows while your system is busy. If it looks like your disk is constantly being maxed out for read or write speed, that's a good indication your SSD is your bottleneck.

Hey thanks for taking the time to respond, I looked at Activity Monitor and have the following info so hopefully this helps! This info is during an 8K ProRes Raw export with noise reduction because…..ya know #proresraw

Activity Monitor

Disk (4 TB Apple)
Read in/sec 30
Writes out/sec 0

Data read/sec 11-14.6MB
Data Written/sec 0KB sometimes 5KB

Ram (96gb Apple)
Memory used 52GB
Cached files 42GB
App memory 25GB
Wired memory 11GB
Compressed 15GB

GPU ( Single Pro Vega II Duo)
GPU A 75% utilization
GPU B 10% utilization ?

CPU (16 Core Apple)
7.5% utilization (93% Free)

Appreciate it!

 

[Soba]

Hey thanks for taking the time to respond, I looked at Activity Monitor and have the following info so hopefully this helps! This info is during an 8K ProRes Raw export with noise reduction because…..ya know #proresraw

Activity Monitor

Disk (4 TB Apple)
Read in/sec 30
Writes out/sec 0

Data read/sec 11-14.6MB
Data Written/sec 0KB sometimes 5KB

Ram (96gb Apple)
Memory used 52GB
Cached files 42GB
App memory 25GB
Wired memory 11GB
Compressed 15GB

GPU ( Single Pro Vega II Duo)
GPU A 75% utilization
GPU B 10% utilization ?

CPU (16 Core Apple)
7.5% utilization (93% Free)

Appreciate it!

Your disk is barely being used, which is interesting. 11MB/s wouldn't even max out a hard drive from 25 years ago. Nothing seems saturated there so I'm curious what your system might be doing.

Someone else might have suggestions, but just to have the data points, please post back with the version number of macOS you are running (Apple menu > About This Mac) and the version number of Final Cut.

 

[Rr697]

MacOS 12.3
FCP 10.6.1

 

[Soba]

MacOS 12.3
FCP 10.6.1

Something I don't understand: You posted about 2 years ago showing your CPU and SSD being very heavily used during a render, but your current numbers show your system mostly idle during a render. Did something change?

Upgrading to 28 core

ram gets to about 50% max I have 96GB. This is during r3d rendering 8K footage with a few color adjustments.

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Rr697]

Something I don't understand: You posted about 2 years ago showing your CPU and SSD being very heavily used during a render, but your current numbers show your system mostly idle during a render. Did something change?

Upgrading to 28 core

ram gets to about 50% max I have 96GB. This is during r3d rendering 8K footage with a few color adjustments.

forums.macrumors.com

The change that happened was Apple and RED software has been optimized a great deal since then. My 16 core CPU use to max out before FCP became more GPU intensive and less CPU intensive.

Just checked on another metric for anyone curious. Not sure if it matters much for me but I get 225-325mbps read speeds when playing 8k ProRes raw footage (with effects) in the timeline. Will check R3D later