iMac Pro Really Will Be The Fastest Mac

[Trebuin]

Seeing how they took great care to finally remove that nasty self-serviceable RAM door the price of the device will probably double in case you want 128 GB RAM. Thanks Apple, but no, thanks. That's just too much of a slap-in-the-face move accompanied by a nice giggle. Even for me as a devout Apple sheep, this is where the buck stops for me. Hard.

I could see myself cutting a door for it 8)
[doublepost=1508860849][/doublepost]

I have replied to another thread about these Geekbench scores. These number do not make any sense to me. 8-core MT about 23000 (current nMP 8-core is 22000) and 10-core about 35000. This is inconsistent. Expect about 10% higher (or lower) MT performance between 8-core and 10 core. It wold be depressing if the new 8-core in iMac Pro is "only" about as fast as the old 8-core in nMP.

I saw somewhere else that the iMac Pro ST 8 core had about 3500 score while to 10-core was about 5500. No logic in that either. Usually lower core counts have higher ST performance.

I am looking forward to see some appropriate (and believable tests) soon.

At least one of the scores were fake. The original 8 and 10 core had the single core performance of the 10 core faster than the 8, which is absolutely backwards. To add more cores, Intel drops the single core speed to compensate for the heat...this says they increased it. Likely two separate generations. They have been faked before, and I'm not saying that one of them might actually be the real machine, but one is definitely incorrect.

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My own input:
The Vega GPU is nothing to thumb your nose up at. That being said, it barely meets the performance of the nVidia 1080's from last year and is a bit slower than this year's 1080's. They will essentially crush the current iMac's peformance.

The CPU will dominate multi-core. the i7 4 cores show 8 cores, but the extra 4 cores are build of the unused transistors from the 4 actual cores. The 8 core will have 8 full cores and 8 hyperthreaded cores which should give it a significant multi-core increase.

I7-7700K 4.2GHz base up to 4.5 is the highest end 2017 iMac chip.
Intel W series 2145 3.7GHz base up to 4.5 is the 8 core chip.

When thinking about gaming, an earlier poster said that they're not designed well for multicore, that is correct. The difference in single core is 500MHz provided the chip is maxed out and downclocking to the base. Anyone who has also overclocked a CPU realizes you can maybe squeeze about 10% max extra performance out of the game by maxing out a CPU. If the cooling works better, that 3.7 should work up to match or beat 4.2GHz. Between the CPU and GPU, gaming should be better on the 8 core. If you go with more cores, it may swap ends and get worse as the small gain from the CPU becomes more significant.

bases-
8 core: 3.7 (-500)
10 core: 3.3 (-900)
18 core: 2.3 (-1900)

Now for work that involves CPU such as encoding without using built-in Intel settings (I do a lot of this), the performance will be a massive difference. Handbrake and other apps rely heavily on multi-core and allow these tasks to perform better.

Unknowns: The GPU in theory should be for "professional" use. This means that it should be chosen to help for certain tasks such as rendering. ATI/AMD seems to lack over nVidia for this purpose. If you need this tech, you'd definitely be better off waiting for the modular version, or use an external GPU.

 

[jjjoseph]

There must be a market for it tho as Apple wouldn’t of made the iMac Pro. They are also working on a Mac Pro update which will either be next year or in 2019, so I guess you will be able to choose. Personally I love the all in one form factor but this machine isn’t for me since I only edit videos and write.

I have worked in Film, Animation and Broadcast television for over 20 years, I define the market that Apple is trying to get back.. This computer is to try and appease the market that is very frustrated with Apple's very limited Pro Offerings and no one I know would buy this. Apple makes all kinds of things like consumer products and computers that never really find a niche and are a one off in that market. I have a feeling this computer will be exactly that.

Power Mac G4 Cube, The Apple Xserve, Apple Newton, The Apple Pippin, Apple Quicktime Camera where all made by Apple with plenty of research and never found a place. Actually Apple Xserve was awesome, I loved it.. but Apple killed it..

Most all animation, VFX and Compositing facilities are on Windows/Linux already, a few companies like the one I work for, are hobbling along with MacOS, and we are a minority of a small market. Go to big facilities MacOS is only used to writing emails and doing social networking type jobs and some graphic design..

The iMac Pro is for someone doing Final Cut Pro X at their house or in a small mom and pop environment, which is a tiny market. All freelancers I know dong Adobe CC buy a ThreadRipper and GTX 1080ti and run circles around anything Apple has to offer.. My company will spends 40k to 80k on computer hardware a quarter at times, but the iMac Pro will never work in our pro environment. It is a very small niche computer, very small. Apple was very closed lip about this product and for good reason, they didn't want the market to tell them they didn't want it.. and wanted a Pro Tower.

Apple has lots of cash, I don't think they will notice much if this computer fails.

 

[DesterWallaboo]

I'm also shooting and then editing multi-cam 4K projects using FCPX. I have a G RAID Shuttle XL Thunderbolt 2 which will be running into the iMac Pro 10-Core 16GB VRAM if I can afford this. I've been saving since the announcement and look likely to have £6K to throw at it... I can probably go higher if I have to.

From my research online, it seems as though the CPU is quite beneficial for all things without effects, whereas the minute you start doing a lot of intense video effects, the GPU will help out enormously. It's a shame that there's no white paper for FCPX which helps us to decipher what works best / what is used the most.

I tend to keep my projects simple - with colour correction and saturation over heavy grades, but I will be shooting some 10bit 4K 50p eventually, so I want a system that can keep up with that move in a year or two, whilst keeping my current edits swift.

I'm interested as you're in the same line of work:

What would you upgrade in order of performance boons?

I'm thinking:

#1: Go 10-core
#2: Go 16GB VRAM
#3: Go 64GB RAM

Would you say to stick with 8GB VRAM and 32GB RAM and get the most cores as I possibly can instead? I think FCPX runs optimally on maxed out MacBook Pros, and they're only 16GB RAM, so I'm not so sure if the move to 64GB RAM will make much of a difference if I'm only using iTunes alongside FCPX and limited tabs in Safari. 16GB VRAM seems more for effect-heavy work, which I'm not currently aiming to do.

Do you think FCPX relies as heavily on the CPU as Premiere does?

I'd love to see your activity monitor with Premiere Pro... because I've never, ever seen Premiere suck up CPU.
[doublepost=1508863121][/doublepost]Go to BareFeats.... they benched MacPros vs 2013 iMacs... and the iMacs slaughtered the 12-core Mac Pros on every task except 3D.

 

[Trebuin]

I'd love to see your activity monitor with Premiere Pro... because I've never, ever seen Premiere suck up CPU.
[doublepost=1508863121][/doublepost]Go to BareFeats.... they benched MacPros vs 2013 iMacs... and the iMacs slaughtered the 12-core Mac Pros on every task except 3D.

they're pretty close:
http://barefeats.com/tube17.html

Also, be aware that both machines are nearly identical: the CPUs are both 4 cores, not 4 core vs 8 core. That extra 4 will make a massive difference if the process can utilize all 8 cores. The benchmark here actually points out another thing: Xeons are a workstation processor, they are a bit more limited than the i7 series in what they can do, but have a bit more security and stability features that the i7's don't have. On a level playing field, the i7 should beat out a xeon, and barefeats proves that.

 

[DesterWallaboo]

they're pretty close:
http://barefeats.com/tube17.html

Also, be aware that both machines are nearly identical: the CPUs are both 4 cores, not 4 core vs 8 core. That extra 4 will make a massive difference if the process can utilize all 8 cores. The benchmark here actually points out another thing: Xeons are a workstation processor, they are a bit more limited than the i7 series in what they can do, but have a bit more security and stability features that the i7's don't have. On a level playing field, the i7 should beat out a xeon, and barefeats proves that.

That's the 4-core pro vs the iMac... 12-core Pro does much, much worse as the clock speeds are significantly lower.
[doublepost=1508865597][/doublepost]I know this because we partnered with BareFeats to build the projects in AE and test on our machines as well as his.
[doublepost=1508865909][/doublepost]The whole thing came about because we were in the middle of a crunch and we ended up rendering the same project on multiple machines. We noticed our iMacs were consistently beating our 12-core Mac Pros and new Mac Pros. Taking the 7 hour render on our Mac Pros and churning the same thing out in 5 hours. That's when we contacted BareFeats to see if they had ever done the test.

 

[joema2]

...The iMac Pro is for someone doing Final Cut Pro X at their house or in a small mom and pop environment, which is a tiny market...

Apple has reached two million seats of FCPX, which is more than all prior versions of FCP combined. In fact FCPX users outnumbered FCP7 users within one year of FCPX being released. I agree that successful production teams using FCPX will be interested in the iMac Pro, but this isn't a "tiny market".

In the book "Behind the Seen" about Walter Murch, he frequently laments how small the Hollywood editing market is from a financial standpoint and how difficult it was to get software vendors to commit to anything because of that small market size: http://a.co/aR8dkCx

So the editing market outside of Hollywood is not small -- it is Hollywood that's the tiny niche market. It is such a small market that Avid (which has an approx 95% lock on it) can barely make enough money to stay in business. As of Q3/Q4 this year, Avid is still laying off people. If most of the people you professionally know are in this tiny niche, that is not representative of the larger film production market -- including "new media", independent film, corporate/documentary, vloggers, and music video -- whether done by mom and pop or otherwise.

E.g, the most popular music video on earth was edited on FCPX, and it wasn't done in Hollywood but in a small boutique studio in Miami: http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/art...t-music-video-in-the-2017-latin-grammy-awards

...All freelancers I know dong Adobe CC buy a ThreadRipper and GTX 1080ti and run circles around anything Apple has to offer...

Yes, exactly right. You have well described one reason Apple is making the iMac Pro. How will it compare to turnkey workstations at similar price points? We will know that soon when it's released.

However we can already compare the closest all-in-one workstation Dell has (the Precision 5720) to the current 2017 iMac 27. It is about the same CPU and GPU performance, slower I/O performance and higher cost. However the Dell 5720 does weigh about 2x the iMac so if the contest is pounds per dollar the Dell wins.

If we compare the available details on 18-core iMac Pro to the closest Dell Precision Workstation with roughly similar cores, GPU performance, and SSD capacity, the Dell is roughly $10k (not including monitor). We don't know what the 18-core iMac Pro will cost, but we will pretty soon.

So the comparison is between the iMac Pro vs professionally-assembled and supported workstations at similar price or performance points, whether all-in-one or not. Apple is not competing with home-built PCs and they are not trying to.

If the iMac Pro were to somehow equal the price or performance of an equivalent Dell Precision Workstation, that's just a bonus for Apple (and Mac users). The iMac Pro isn't Apple's tower workstation product -- the upcoming modular Mac Pro will be.

 

[CWallace]

Also i wonder if we will see Touch ID on the keyboard? the iMac Pro will have support for the secure enclave.

The issue with Touch ID in a wireless keyboard is how does the secure enclave communicate with the OS? Is Bluetooth Encryption sufficient?

I personally think that it will be Face ID and not Touch ID, but we will not see it in the December model due to lack of components (the entire stock is dedicated to the iPhone X), but the late 2018 model could have it.

Also, production of the VEGA 56 and VEGA 64 GPUS for the iMac Pro is now in process per media reports.

 

[Trebuin]

That's the 4-core pro vs the iMac... 12-core Pro does much, much worse as the clock speeds are significantly lower.
[doublepost=1508865597][/doublepost]I know this because we partnered with BareFeats to build the projects in AE and test on our machines as well as his.
[doublepost=1508865909][/doublepost]The whole thing came about because we were in the middle of a crunch and we ended up rendering the same project on multiple machines. We noticed our iMacs were consistently beating our 12-core Mac Pros and new Mac Pros. Taking the 7 hour render on our Mac Pros and churning the same thing out in 5 hours. That's when we contacted BareFeats to see if they had ever done the test.

Do you have the link to that benchmark? The only thing I can think of that given the extra usable transistors is 1: that rendering was using the GPU and the pro didn't have the required support, and/or 2: the software didn't use all the cores or even 100% of the cpu. One of my projects falls in this case using only exactly 50% of the CPU design speed and on 1 core only.

 

[jjjoseph]

Apple has reached two million seats of FCPX, which is more than all prior versions of FCP combined. In fact FCPX users outnumbered FCP7 users within one year of FCPX being released. I agree that successful production teams using FCPX will be interested in the iMac Pro, but this isn't a "tiny market"

The installed seat for FCPX is argued a lot, but installed seat doesn't mean used in real world productions, or at least my market, Film and TV.. No one in my market uses FCPX... Yes of course, MacOS is the professional social media platform.. Everyone making videos for social media uses it.. It is very easy to install FCPX on your MacOS computer, but that is a totally different market than I am referring to. You can then edit a video and put it on instgram or youtube or Facebook.. Again a different market... and iMac Pro would definitely be overkill for that market.

E.g, the most popular music video on earth was edited on FCPX, and it wasn't done in Hollywood but in a small boutique studio in Miami: http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/art...t-music-video-in-the-2017-latin-grammy-awards.

It is not about the ONE job that FCPX did, but the millions it does not do, again that video is more social media related, than my market.. If it where a heavy VFX driven music video or Shot on the Phantom of 8K Red Dragon sensor, brought through NUKE with heavy CG on top, I would be more interested in that article. I have heard of "Despacito," but I honestly thought it was a soup not a song.

Social Media creation, i.e. MacOS FCPX has a market, but it is a different market than high end VFX, Animation, film and TV market. That is the market I was referring too. That is an intended market for the iMac Pro.. Social Media Creation doesn't really need an iMac Pro.

 

[RuffDraft]

Based on GeekBench 4, the top-spec 2017 iMac 27 is about 2x faster on CPU and 20x faster on GPU than your 17" MBP. It would be a huge improvement, and the 8GB/512GB SSD model is only $2,700 brand new, maybe $2300-2400 if it was available on the Apple refurbished site. Of course you'd more RAM but a 32GB OWC RAM kit is only $368.

The problem is the entry level iMac Pro is $5k and it might not be much faster than the top iMac 27. Time will tell but early numbers indicate that's a possibility. It looks like the 10-core with Vega 64 would be considerably faster, maybe 1.7x maybe 2x depending on workload and whether CPU or GPU. But it will be considerably more expensive -- how much, nobody knows. If it doesn't have Quick Sync or some other solution to hardware video encoding, that will be yet another complication.

As a documentary editor I may get the 10-core model, but if and only if the FCPX benchmarks -- esp. for H264 and H265 - show it can really deliver a major performance improvement worth the cost.

However if the real-world application benchmarks (not synthetic benchmarks) show the 10-core Vega 64 iMac Pro is only 1.4x faster on CPU/GPU, does not have Quick Sync so it's actually slower on H264 encode/decode, yet is $7k, $8k or more, then I won't be getting it. It would be cheaper to get another iMac 27 and manually split the workload, such as dedicating a machine to transcoding.

Joema2 - really, really helpful post - appreciate it! I'm actually leaning towards your logic, which is the first time I've considered not getting the iMac Pro.

To be honest, I've been looking for the best possible Mac to date. I'm tired of transcoding like crazy and importing a project tends to take over a day once multi-cam clips have been produced with Plural Eyes (300GB footage off GH4s 100mb/s, 20GB Audio). My project folders balloon to a TB min once Master Files have been exported and proxy files have been produced. Whilst I know the iMac will be a considerable improvement over my current setup, I've purposefully avoided buying them to get the iMac Pro instead. I assumed with all the transcoding that I do, the iMac Pro will be able to handle that better long-term and do a better job due to the higher core-count, but the more I learn about QuickSync keeping everything faster on the iMac vs the iMac Pro, the less favourable it looks to spend so much money on the iMac Pro for potentially no gains as an average.

I didn't realise the GPU alone in the iMac would be 20x faster than the 2011 MacBook Pro - that's insane! However, I'd love to have another 2x improvement over the iMac 27" by going 10-core, 16GB VRAM because I do 30+ projects per year and every minute spent waiting is adding to my overall backlog of weddings. I just want to edit without any waiting. If this can be achieved more so with the iMac Pro, then that's what I'll be jumping on because I can probably edit enough in one year to justify the costs through being able to take on more work - an extra three weddings, and the difference is sorted for three weeks work - no great loss. I really didn't want to wait for benchmarks though - do you think we'll have more information before release day, or do you think we'll have to wait for the YouTubers to get a hold of it?
[doublepost=1508879219][/doublepost]

iMac Pro would definitely be overkill for that market.

Actually, the social media market is driven on speed and speed alone. They need to shoot, cut and export their films all within a day most of the time and FCPX helps them to achieve this. If they can get more speed and deliver faster to their followers, then that will mean more money and popularity for them. I really don't see YouTubers as inferior - there's one who uses a RED camera as his main camera... these guys aren't messing around. The iMac Pro certainly isn't overkill for the professional YouTubers.

My market is completely made up of FCPX editors: wedding films. Around the world, thousands of people utilise Macs and FCPX for their wedding films. Whether you'd clump us in with the YouTubers is another thing, but we're producing one-hour long, multi-cam documentary shoots with multiple 4K cameras and audio streams, so it's hardly as low budget as it once was.
[doublepost=1508879919][/doublepost]

I'd love to see your activity monitor with Premiere Pro... because I've never, ever seen Premiere suck up CPU.
[doublepost=1508863121][/doublepost]Go to BareFeats.... they benched MacPros vs 2013 iMacs... and the iMacs slaughtered the 12-core Mac Pros on every task except 3D.

I don't use Premiere - I was going off what I've read - just asking questions to see how much I can learn. Apologies if it was an incorrect statement.

 

[joema2]

....I'm tired of transcoding like crazy and importing a project tends to take over a day once multi-cam clips have been produced with Plural Eyes...My project folders balloon to a TB min once Master Files have been exported and proxy files have been produced....I'd love to have another 2x improvement over the iMac 27" by going 10-core, 16GB VRAM because I do 30+ projects per year and every minute spent waiting is adding to my overall backlog of weddings. I just want to edit without any waiting....

Editing 4k H264 without transcoding (esp. multicam) is a very tall order. I'm not sure any editing software on any computer can do this with fluid smoothness. I recently tested a top-spec 12-core D700 nMP and it was definitely slower than my 2017 iMac 27. The transcoding rate to proxy was 3.5x slower. The nMP is a great ProRes machine but my team can't use all ProRes acquisition -- we can't put Atomos recorders on a fleet of drones, gimbal cams, motion-control cameras and 15 GoPros. So the idea of "just use ProRes acquisition" is from people unfamiliar with this type of work. Out of our drone fleet we have exactly one -- the DJI Inspire 2 -- that can record in ProRes.

The top-spec 2017 iMac 27 is marginally capable of editing a single stream of 4k h264 without transcoding. This varies somewhat based on exact codec, but I've done the GH4, GH5 and DVX200 without transcoding but only for smaller timelines. If you need to skim a huge event fast or do multicam you still want proxy. However the 2017 iMac can transcode to proxy very fast -- 2x faster than the top 2015 iMac 27. But for my large documentaries that still equates to several hours (effectively overnight) for a big multicamera shoot.

For my team it doesn't make much difference since I have several downstream editors and we use a proxy-only workflow. The proxies must be generated regardless.

For fast-turn-around event shooting, if you're a single editor, yes it would make a big difference not having to transcode. The question is whether the iMac Pro is fast enough for that. Nobody knows, and the big question is how it will handle H264 content. No Xeon to date over four cores has Quick Sync.

Intel sometimes does custom versions of their CPUs for big customers but it's usually small changes, such as an additional instruction. To my knowledge Intel has never made a fundamental design change and adding Quick Sync to a 10-core Xeon would be a major change. AMD GPUs have H264 hardware acceleration for H264 encode/decode but this isn't well supported and few developers use it. However since Apple controls both OS and their applications, in theory they could add this to both macOS and FCPX and it would be a competitive advantage over other video applications.

If the iMac Pro has an answer to the Quick Sync conundrum and if actual tests show it's nearly 2x faster than the top-spec iMac 27, it might be worth it. If it handles H264 poorly like the previous nMP and if the real-world CPU/GPU advantage is 1.4x, it may not be worth it for 4k H264 video editors.

 

[jjjoseph]

Actually, the social media market is driven on speed and speed alone. They need to shoot, cut and export their films all within a day most of the time and FCPX helps them to achieve this. If they can get more speed and deliver faster to their followers, then that will mean more money and popularity for them. I really don't see YouTubers as inferior - there's one who uses a RED camera as his main camera... these guys aren't messing around. The iMac Pro certainly isn't overkill for the professional YouTubers.

I would say anybody who needed this kind of speed doing YouTube or other social media spots... "SPEED AND SPEED ALONE," like you said.. Are NOT waiting for Apple to release an iMac Pro to get their work done. They probably moved to PremiereCC on Windows with NVIDIA a long time ago, since Apple hasn't had a high end computer options in a while..

Example. Linus Tech Tips, uses RED shoots 8k, makes lots of media. Uses Premiere CC on Windows with Nvidia GPU's. Are they going to jump their whole pipeline to iMac Pro and FCPX. I highly doubt it.

 

[4God]

....Nobody knows, and the big question is how it will handle H264 content. No Xeon to date over four cores has Quick Sync.

Or H.265 for that matter.

 

[Trebuin]

EThe question is whether the iMac Pro is fast enough for that. Nobody knows, and the big question is how it will handle H264 content. No Xeon to date over four cores has Quick Sync.

I've actually done a lot of encoding including using quick sync earlier this year. I was actually quite disappointed by how restricted quick sync is & the low quality it produced. That was the first computer I've used that was capable, but I learned quickly from a few friends that it is fixed to the intel instructions. If you prefer that quality, it would be significantly faster with quick sync. If you prefer smaller, better quality files, you'd have to go back to the standard x265 HEVC & just suffer with what the CPU is normally capable.

 

[alien3dx]

in the end this thread become final cut pro for mac pro..

 

[RuffDraft]

Editing 4k H264 without transcoding (esp. multicam) is a very tall order. I'm not sure any editing software on any computer can do this with fluid smoothness. I recently tested a top-spec 12-core D700 nMP and it was definitely slower than my 2017 iMac 27. The transcoding rate to proxy was 3.5x slower. The nMP is a great ProRes machine but my team can't use all ProRes acquisition -- we can't put Atomos recorders on a fleet of drones, gimbal cams, motion-control cameras and 15 GoPros. So the idea of "just use ProRes acquisition" is from people unfamiliar with this type of work. Out of our drone fleet we have exactly one -- the DJI Inspire 2 -- that can record in ProRes.

The top-spec 2017 iMac 27 is marginally capable of editing a single stream of 4k h264 without transcoding. This varies somewhat based on exact codec, but I've done the GH4, GH5 and DVX200 without transcoding but only for smaller timelines. If you need to skim a huge event fast or do multicam you still want proxy. However the 2017 iMac can transcode to proxy very fast -- 2x faster than the top 2015 iMac 27. But for my large documentaries that still equates to several hours (effectively overnight) for a big multicamera shoot.

For my team it doesn't make much difference since I have several downstream editors and we use a proxy-only workflow. The proxies must be generated regardless.

For fast-turn-around event shooting, if you're a single editor, yes it would make a big difference not having to transcode. The question is whether the iMac Pro is fast enough for that. Nobody knows, and the big question is how it will handle H264 content. No Xeon to date over four cores has Quick Sync.

Intel sometimes does custom versions of their CPUs for big customers but it's usually small changes, such as an additional instruction. To my knowledge Intel has never made a fundamental design change and adding Quick Sync to a 10-core Xeon would be a major change. AMD GPUs have H264 hardware acceleration for H264 encode/decode but this isn't well supported and few developers use it. However since Apple controls both OS and their applications, in theory they could add this to both macOS and FCPX and it would be a competitive advantage over other video applications.

If the iMac Pro has an answer to the Quick Sync conundrum and if actual tests show it's nearly 2x faster than the top-spec iMac 27, it might be worth it. If it handles H264 poorly like the previous nMP and if the real-world CPU/GPU advantage is 1.4x, it may not be worth it for 4k H264 video editors.

Thanks a lot for this.

I am going to have to wait and see what news comes before the pre-order or arrival of the iMac Pro. 2x faster than the iMac makes it an instant purchase, but 1.4x as you say probably puts me on the iMac instead.

Out of interest, on a 27" 2017 iMac, how long would it take for three GH4 4K streams to transcode to proxy in a multicam project? On my current setup, I usually do two lots at once and it takes about 12 hours.

Thanks for all your help!!!

 

[joema2]

I've actually done a lot of encoding including using quick sync earlier this year. I was actually quite disappointed by how restricted quick sync is & the low quality it produced. That was the first computer I've used that was capable, but I learned quickly from a few friends that it is fixed to the intel instructions. If you prefer that quality, it would be significantly faster with quick sync. If you prefer smaller, better quality files, you'd have to go back to the standard x265 HEVC & just suffer with what the CPU is normally capable.

Using FCPX I have tested this many times on various 4k H264 codecs and I can barely see any difference between using Quick Sync (ie FCPX "H264 Faster Encode") vs not using Quick Sync (ie FCPX "H264 Better Quality"). At least I don't see a difference on recent versions of FCPX and recent hardware -- maybe there was a difference several years ago.

If you are talking about some other encoder using Quick Sync besides FCPX or Compressor, yes it's possible the developers did a poor job. Hardware-accelerated H264 encoding has a reputation for being lower quality than software encoding. However I don't see evidence of that in recent tests on FCPX and using recent CPUs.

There have been multiple updates to the Quick Sync hardware since it was originally released with Sandy Bridge in 2011, and there are various ways for the software to harness this. In FCPX I'm not saying there is zero difference but it's very hard to see just after export, much less after web upload. I'd estimate that 99.9% of viewers in a double-blind controlled test on a large screen could would not notice the difference.

Re H265/HEVC that is not yet supported in FCPX so it cannot yet be tested on that software, which is the software that RuffDraft had all the questions about. We expect it will be supported by the next update to FCPX which might be released or announced this weekend at the Apple Creative Summit.

 

[joema2]

...Out of interest, on a 27" 2017 iMac, how long would it take for three GH4 4K streams to transcode to proxy in a multicam project? On my current setup, I usually do two lots at once and it takes about 12 hours....

I don't have readily available numbers for the GH4 but I did several transcoding tests to proxy for the Panasonic DVX200 and Sony A7RII. This was on a 12-core D700 nMP, a top-spec 2015 iMac 27 and a top-spec 2017 iMac 27 using FCPX 10.3.4 and macOS 10.12.6. Media in each case was on a 32 terabyte RAID-0 Thunderbolt 2 array.

Much of the DVX200 and A7RII content was synced as multicam interviews but this doesn't affect the transcoding time.

Total media size: 122.5 GB
Media type: UHD 4k H264
Total media program time: 3 hr, 4 min

Transcode to Prores proxy conversion time:

12-core D700 New Mac Pro: 2 hr 28 min 30 sec

2015 top-spec iMac 27: 1 hr 18 min 15 sec

2017 top-spec iMac 27: 42 min

 

[RuffDraft]

I don't have readily available numbers for the GH4 but I did several transcoding tests to proxy for the Panasonic DVX200 and Sony A7RII. This was on a 12-core D700 nMP, a top-spec 2015 iMac 27 and a top-spec 2017 iMac 27 using FCPX 10.3.4 and macOS 10.12.6. Media in each case was on a 32 terabyte RAID-0 Thunderbolt 2 array.

Much of the DVX200 and A7RII content was synced as multicam interviews but this doesn't affect the transcoding time.

Total media size: 122.5 GB
Media type: UHD 4k H264
Total media program time: 3 hr, 4 min

Transcode to Prores proxy conversion time:

12-core D700 New Mac Pro: 2 hr 28 min 30 sec

2015 top-spec iMac 27: 1 hr 18 min 15 sec

2017 top-spec iMac 27: 42 min

Thanks Joema2!!! Those results are amazing! The top-spec iMac 27" is really something!

I think whichever setup I go for - iMac or iMac Pro - it's going to be life-changing. I could transcode and edit all doc-edits in a day (ceremony, speeches and first dance) before doing favouriting the day after and starting a highlight film, and finishing it on Day 3 quite easily... even if it stretches to Day Four, I'm still way up on my usual time frame.

Thanks for sharing this test with me - really helpful!

 

[jjjoseph]

in the end this thread become final cut pro for mac pro..

This computer is intended for the Pro Market using Pro Applications. We could make it about Blackmagic Resolve, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3DS Max, Autodesk Smoke of Mac, The Foundry NUKE, Premiere CC etc.. but the simple fact is that FCPX is the only Application that Apple makes that is close to using Pro level hardware resources, so it will always degrade to that conversation.. If you are just doing Graphic Design, Social Media and Photoshop, I don't see where a iMac Pro is going to be a valuable investment.

 

[Trebuin]

Using FCPX I have tested this many times on various 4k H264 codecs and I can barely see any difference between using Quick Sync (ie FCPX "H264 Faster Encode") vs not using Quick Sync (ie FCPX "H264 Better Quality"). At least I don't see a difference on recent versions of FCPX and recent hardware -- maybe there was a difference several years ago.

If you are talking about some other encoder using Quick Sync besides FCPX or Compressor, yes it's possible the developers did a poor job. Hardware-accelerated H264 encoding has a reputation for being lower quality than software encoding. However I don't see evidence of that in recent tests on FCPX and using recent CPUs.

There have been multiple updates to the Quick Sync hardware since it was originally released with Sandy Bridge in 2011, and there are various ways for the software to harness this. In FCPX I'm not saying there is zero difference but it's very hard to see just after export, much less after web upload. I'd estimate that 99.9% of viewers in a double-blind controlled test on a large screen could would not notice the difference.

Re H265/HEVC that is not yet supported in FCPX so it cannot yet be tested on that software, which is the software that RuffDraft had all the questions about. We expect it will be supported by the next update to FCPX which might be released or announced this weekend at the Apple Creative Summit.

Quicksync is not a developer controlled function, only the bitrate is adjustable pretty much. All the tuning parameters are fixed to what intel designed them to be, which is why other configurations do better. Granted, if you increase the bitrate to the point of not being able to distinguish between settings, then it's a moot point. I am actually taking advantage of the compressibility of 265 over 264, but I did find a significant difference between the faster quick sync & a well tuned encoder. If you care to do some googling, you should be able to quickly find what I'm talking about.

As far as my test, I used the Disney intro with the train in HD to see pixilations & blocking. The bricks & windows on the castle are the key items to watch. My second involves a Chinese firework scene in 4K & I focused on the firework particles & blocking of the darker background. If I recall right, the blocking on dark scenes were handle better than quicksync & the windows were just slightly more disfigured with quick sync. I don't know if they have a visual term for audiophile, but that's basically what I am. Also, having helped to develop DIVX, I have quite a few friends in the xvid scene that keep me up to date every time I look to update my encoding techniques. I'd go into more details, but I'm restricted by an NDA for good reasons.

Rendering is a different beast altogether. If you're rendering as well as encoding, then what you say makes sense. Currently I consider it different as the rendering data is completed first, then it is encoded into whatever codec you choose. Most software handle rendering differently & this can trick people into thinking the encoder is at fault.

When I finally get the iMac pro, I'll be able to test my work against the 2017 iMac that broke on me.

 

[alien3dx]

This computer is intended for the Pro Market using Pro Applications. We could make it about Blackmagic Resolve, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3DS Max, Autodesk Smoke of Mac, The Foundry NUKE, Premiere CC etc.. but the simple fact is that FCPX is the only Application that Apple makes that is close to using Pro level hardware resources, so it will always degrade to that conversation.. If you are just doing Graphic Design, Social Media and Photoshop, I don't see where a iMac Pro is going to be a valuable investment.

That's the real issue, if the apple seem desktop for PRO people they will rarely update because income so low, better they sell yearly 1 grand iphone instead of 3 grand imac pro.Iphone sell like hot cake while macpro and mac mini sales ouch..

 

[Diving Capers]

With the current state of Apple’s desktops being the fastes of the bunch isn’t that much of an achievement.

The fact that it happens to also be an iMac is ridiculous.

 

[alien3dx]

With the current state of Apple’s desktops being the fastes of the bunch isn’t that much of an achievement.

The fact that it happens to also be an iMac is ridiculous.

i prefer usability ,expansion rather then fastest..Or apple should cease to be manufacturer then become phone compnany

 

[nerdynerdynerdy]

The installed seat for FCPX is argued a lot, but installed seat doesn't mean used in real world productions, or at least my market, Film and TV.. No one in my market uses FCPX... Yes of course, MacOS is the professional social media platform.. Everyone making videos for social media uses it.. It is very easy to install FCPX on your MacOS computer, but that is a totally different market than I am referring to. You can then edit a video and put it on instgram or youtube or Facebook.. Again a different market... and iMac Pro would definitely be overkill for that market.



It is not about the ONE job that FCPX did, but the millions it does not do, again that video is more social media related, than my market.. If it where a heavy VFX driven music video or Shot on the Phantom of 8K Red Dragon sensor, brought through NUKE with heavy CG on top, I would be more interested in that article. I have heard of "Despacito," but I honestly thought it was a soup not a song.

Social Media creation, i.e. MacOS FCPX has a market, but it is a different market than high end VFX, Animation, film and TV market. That is the market I was referring too. That is an intended market for the iMac Pro.. Social Media Creation doesn't really need an iMac Pro.

This is overstating things a bit.

I agree that FCP is not extensively used in Film and TV and high-end VFX is pretty much PC only.

But Macs are very much in use in the TV world, and I'm talking about top-rating and fast-turnaround TV, not little cable shows.

I would say 50% of the facilities I freelance at have Avid Media Composer running on iMacs, the other 50% Dell/HP workstations. Five or six years ago all those Avid stations were on a PC, so Apple have done something right.

Nowhere, anywhere I have ever worked use custom built nerd-fantasy gaming-spec computers.

My own small studio running Avid is all on Mac. I like the way the computers look and operate, and don't have time to learn to troubleshoot Windows and the various PC driver issues that go with that.

Most creative tasks are not testing the hardware at maximum capacity all day long. There are usually many hours of tinkering and thinking and experimenting at proxy resolution, followed by some render time where people make a coffee, take lunch or wait until the morning. If that's not appropriate for a deadline, more machines are bought, more staff are put on, or the schedule accommodates the time required.

I actually find that smaller facilities tend to have more high-spec machines than big ones. The big facilities throw more machines at the task - i.e. dedicated ingest and transcoding machines, render farms, online suites.

Maximum resolution footage is really only used at the very end when all the creative decisions have been made and approved on the proxy footage.

Film and TV workflows have been like this for decades.