Need some advices for Mac Pro making 4K videos !

[DangThu]

Excuse me, i work in designing & making films feature for television. My company intends to develop the 4K videos system in near future. So, i need a solution for MAC system which supports designing 3D, render film and exporting to 4K standard quickly and exactly. As i know, the Mac Pro system models manufactured before 2010 built with many CPU, many slots of RAM, and many slots of hard drive (so the hard drives can work in RAID mode, can't it?). But since 2013 models and later, the Mac pro only support 1 CPU, 4 slots of RAM, 1 Flash memory. I found those solutions on the Apple Homepage today, but i don't know if those support for my work well. So i have some question, please answer me:

1. Do the configurations of Mac Pro on Apple page support for my work well ? Which supports well ? And which supports best ? I need it doesn't cost a lot of time of my work.

2. With the Mac pro Systems on Apple page, only one CPU Intel Xeon E5 with 4 cores, 6 cores, and 12 cores used. Can i make a system with many CPU work together as the Windows Workstation system? What is the fastest speed of each CPU?

3.How many slots of RAM and how many Gigabytes does the Mac Pro mainboard supports ? The speed of RAM bus ?

4. Mac pro uses Dual VGA AMD Fire Pro D300/D500/D700. Do those VGA support for 4K video excellently? Is there any VGA supports better ?

5. Nowadays, can i use many hard drives or SSDs on one main board to run in RAID mode as Windows Worstation? How many slots of hardrive or SSDs does Mac pro support ?

Many thanks !

 

[DJenkins]

Excuse me, i work in designing & making films feature for television. My company intends to develop the 4K videos system in near future. So, i need a solution for MAC system which supports designing 3D, render film and exporting to 4K standard quickly and exactly.

Hi DangThu, how many workstations do you need and do they need to share storage?
Also we will need to know your budget in total, plus what software you will be running.

1. The new 2013 Mac Pro 8 core or 12 core with D700 will fit your work well. ‘Best’ depends on your budget.

A 2010 based Mac Pro can also be made to handle your work just as well (if not better in a lot of areas) but you will need to perform many upgrades yourself. Some of these upgrades are easy and reliable, whereas others are in continuous development so there may be a higher level of maintenance to perform depending on how far you want to push it.

2. The new 2013 Mac Pro is limited to 1 CPU with a maximum of 12 cores at 2.7GHz. Distributed processing will be dependent on what software you are using. My 3D software can render across a network, but I don’t know of any editing or colour grading platforms that do this.

3. Apple says the maximum RAM is 64GB (4 x 16GB DDR3 @ 1866MHz) although you can purchase and install up to 128 GB yourself and it will work in Mavericks and Yosemite.

4. The D700 is very capable of accelerating some (but not all) tasks in a 4K workflow. A lot of video encoding and rendering is still CPU based. There are other GPUs that are far newer and far more capable but you cannot replace the GPU in the 2013 Mac Pro. MacVidCards is working on a solution to have external GPU working over thunderbolt and I suggest you check his thread here and here. Although you did mention you don’t want to spend a lot of time trying to make things work so it may not be for you.

5. The 2013 Mac pro only has ONE PCIe based flash storage card, which is very fast but won’t hold all of your footage. The biggest upgrade you can install yourself is 2TB. You will need a very fast external thunderbolt storage array if you’re looking to purchase the 2013 Mac Pro.

IN SUMMARY
You can get the same, or better performance from the old Mac Pro but it will cost you in time and maintenance for the extensive upgrades. The newer 2013 Mac Pro will do everything you want but your options are very limited in upgrades and flexibility.

 

[netkas]

Excuse me, i work in designing & making films feature for television. My company intends to develop the 4K videos system in near future. So, i need a solution for MAC system which supports designing 3D, render film and exporting to 4K standard quickly and exactly. As i know, the Mac Pro system models manufactured before 2010 built with many CPU, many slots of RAM, and many slots of hard drive (so the hard drives can work in RAID mode, can't it?). But since 2013 models and later, the Mac pro only support 1 CPU, 4 slots of RAM, 1 Flash memory. I found those solutions on the Apple Homepage today, but i don't know if those support for my work well. So i have some question, please answer me:

1. Do the configurations of Mac Pro on Apple page support for my work well ? Which supports well ? And which supports best ? I need it doesn't cost a lot of time of my work.

depends on which type of SW you are gonna use, does it supports cuda/opencl for acceleration of tasks ?

2. With the Mac pro Systems on Apple page, only one CPU Intel Xeon E5 with 4 cores, 6 cores, and 12 cores used. Can i make a system with many CPU work together as the Windows Workstation system? What is the fastest speed of each CPU?

3.How many slots of RAM and how many Gigabytes does the Mac Pro mainboard supports ? The speed of RAM bus ?

Classic (pre 2013) macpro supports up to 64 gigs of ddr3 ram iirc

4. Mac pro uses Dual VGA AMD Fire Pro D300/D500/D700. Do those VGA support for 4K video excellently? Is there any VGA supports better ?

These do work with both sst and mst 4k displays.
However 980 mac edition from macvidcards supports dell's 5k 27 inch display, much better for 4k editing imho, more here - http://barefeats.com/mpt5k.html

5. Nowadays, can i use many hard drives or SSDs on one main board to run in RAID mode as Windows Worstation? How many slots of hardrive or SSDs does Mac pro support ?

Many thanks !

you can install this fast ssd from 2013 macpro into 2010 macpro - https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1685821/

 

[DangThu]

Thanks all ! The system required will make 4K videos and design 3D by 3D max, Cinema 4D, Maya, Final CUt pro and Adobe CC Colection. Do the Mac Pro systems on Apple Homepage support well, work smoothly and export quickly ?

 

[echoout]

Thanks all ! The system required will make 4K videos and design 3D by 3D max, Cinema 4D, Maya, Final CUt pro and Adobe CC Colection. Do the Mac Pro systems on Apple Homepage support well, work smoothly and export quickly ?

The Adobe CC suite is all over the place as to what resources it uses. After Effects pretty much works best with a high-clock speed, single CPU and lots of RAM, while Premiere utilizes GPUs if you use it instead of Final Cut.

Cinema 4D is CPU dependent and runs reasonably well on a new Mac Pro, faster on other workstations with more cores.

Final Cut X is Apple-only and where the new Mac Pro shines if that's what you use. It's a GPU-accelerated application so if you get dual GPUs you'll have a speedy setup.

Max is a Windows program so you would need to have another machine or boot into Windows on your Mac, ideally.

So, you might consider Mac Pros for designing and editing and Windows workstations with lots of CPU cores for Max/Cinema work and rendering. That's actually what I do. Everything plays pretty nicely together right out of the box compatibility wise.

 

[td2243]

I almost feel like the nMP was built specifically for FCPX, and vice versa, with Apple hoping the industry would make the switch. It's been almost two years and it seems FCPX is still the only program optimized for two GPUs.