Serious question about loyalty.

[filmdude]

All this pro vs pro **** is hilarious.

People work in different fields, have different requirements for specs, CPU vs GPU, I/O's etc.

I work in the film/commercial industry in LA and I love this thing. All of my equipment (~150k of it) fits onto a cart that's something like 2.5'x5.5' with two shelves. Including two reference grade 25" monitors, computer monitor, scientific waveform monitors, color panels, laptop, backup battery, every type of media reader you can think of, video hub/switcher, hundreds of feet or bnc and fiber cable and a lot more **** than I can list.

My point being, I have a lot of **** and minimal real estate available to me. And I still have to find room to charge the boss' iPhone. And I still have to push this **************** around. And it has to fit into a village blackout tent that's 8x8 and all the cases for all of this gear has gotta fit into a 144" high roof Sprinter.

Now, I don't like to toot my own horn or **** like that, but I can't imagine anyone having a more computer or generally intensive job as me. I'm the middle man between production and post. I work for the DP all day and advise on decisions relative to the camera. Then I manage all the media shot. Then I color correct everything. Then I sync all audio. Then I create deliverables for post. All the while I'm chasing around the ****ing camera all day with a bnc cable in my hand so that I also have picture up in the tent. And imagine my day if we've got three or more Alexa's or epics.

All of this, by the way, has to be done at the same speed of which we are shooting. No one can wait on me or a lot of money is wasted. And I need to have drives available to overnight to editorial in NYC that have cam and audio original, sound synced colored deliverables, and logs, ALL within about 20 minutes of camera wrap.

 

[flat five]

Now, I don't like to toot my own horn or **** like that, but I can't imagine anyone having a more computer or generally intensive job as me. I'm the middle man between production and post. I work for the DP all day and advise on decisions relative to the camera. Then I manage all the media shot. Then I color correct everything. Then I sync all audio. Then I create deliverables for post. All the while I'm chasing around the ****ing camera all day with a bnc cable in my hand so that I also have picture up in the tent. And imagine my day if we've got three or more Alexa's or epics.

All of this, by the way, has to be done at the same speed of which we are shooting. No one can wait on me or a lot of money is wasted. And I need to have drives available to overnight to editorial in NYC that have cam and audio original, sound synced colored deliverables, and logs, ALL within about 20 minutes of camera wrap.

@filmdude.. you should move into the director chair then just pay other people to do your current job.

(i kid, i kid)

 

[beaker7]

fits onto a cart that's something like 2.5"x5.5"

Are you an ant?

 

[AVonGauss]

Deleted.

 

[flat five]

Are you an ant?

 

[filmdude]

Are you an ant?

Haha. I meant feet!!!

 

[wonderspark]

Are you an ant?

Haha, I thought it sounded like a lot of gear on a tiny cart myself.

And doing all sound sync *and* color correction within 20 minutes of wrap... he's amazing!

 

[azentropy]

As a matter of fact I have, for the last 20 years or so. Plugging in an external device will not get you walked out, plugging in a non-approved external device is what could get you "walked out".

I guess you haven't worked for the companies/agencies I have.

 

[flat five]

I guess you haven't worked for the companies/agencies I have.

aren't the drives inside the mp1 pretty not-secure?

 

[filmdude]

@filmdude.. you should move into the director chair then just pay other people to do your current job.

(i kid, i kid)

Nah.

Directors may make a lot more than me per hour on their timecard/contract, but I work a hell of a lot more than them. And I don't buy that gear for fun, the rentals make me more money than directors.

 

[filmdude]

Haha, I thought it sounded like a lot of gear on a tiny cart myself.

And doing all sound sync *and* color correction within 20 minutes of wrap... he's amazing!

To be fair, Resolve does a really good job of syncing audio at the push of a button as long as time code between camera and the sound mixer match up. Having lockit boxes riding on the camera makes the job a lot easier.

 

[wildmac]

I guess you haven't worked for the companies/agencies I have.

Actually... things get certified, and then used in secure and classified environments. Then those external drives get locked in a drawer at the end of the day. Or the whole room is locked down.

But I've worked in a few rooms where EVERYTHING was on external drives, which were all locked away when you were done.

There's a bit of a difference between thumb drives and external drives, even though their storage capacities may be getting closer these days..

 

[Spinland]

I guess none of you have ever worked in the banking or government industries or another high security level position and needed local workstation level processing and storage. Where plugging in any external device would get you walked out immediately.

Actually, I have worked in secure government labs (not even counting my 23+ years in uniform). In fact, plugging in a spinning (approved) external drive is very much in favor, whereas other things like thumb drives might not be. It depends on the device, of course, but being able to unplug a chassis of sensitive data and safe it is much, much more secure than having it internal.

 

[MattDSLR]

As others have mentioned you can use the REDROCKET card in external boxes and swap them between your computers.
The new REDROCKET-X is five times faster than the original (costs $6500), but TB2 is not fast enough to use it at its full potential, but you can still have a great benefit from it on a new Mac Pro.
However, if you need a REDROCKET-X you are better off using it with a PC.

I'm aware of all this, I edit on a beast of a PC, I do however prefer to be in a OSX environment, no doubt about it. FCX has come a long way with its latest release, and I think it's very wise to stay on top of that as well.

I have a REDROCKET-X on order, but. Not sure if I will get it.

I'm a Director of Photography, not an editor, ill admit as much. I do however edit and CC quite a bit (even spent 6 months as one of the editors on a documentary series I shot)

Price of the new Mac Pro is my biggest worry, as I rather spend my money on Camera gear than computers.

I so agree
Computers as such a small puzzle of a big picture

 

[wallysb01]

I want to preface this post that I say the following with all due respect to the various forms of 'pro' users out there. This is purely my opinion, but I am trying to look at this situation realistically

...

Change is hard. But one of the greatest skills we have is the ability to adapt and change.

Nothing you said was wrong, but I do think you’re missing the cost of conversion issue that many people have. Sure, thunderbolt is pretty much just as good as internal SATA for something like 4 drives, but its more expensive, especially if you already have the drives. For a lot of people a simple update to Ivy (really Sandy) Bridge with the same form factor would have only cost them the retail price of the machine. Now, many people are being forced to figure out some sort of storage solution. For those with things like NAS/DAS already, its not a big deal, but that wasn’t everyone.

Also, this update really is leaving people with heavily parallel CPU tasks and few GPGPU tasks out in the cold. Many would argue GPGPU is the future, so this computer helping to push us there, but people are buying computers to get work done today and the near future. They aren’t buying computers hoping that their software will eventually support the hardware they have, at least I wouldn’t call that a wise choice. Anyway, the 12-core is a pretty terrible value for someone that could hammer roughly as many cores as E5 2600v2s could give you (i.e. up to 24). In duel socket workstations you could be getting 20 cores vs the 12 in the nMP, which would be clocked about the same too, at roughly the same price. So for those that want to stay with OSX but would like to update to current technology and need lots of CPU cores this update is lackluster, to say the least, and unlike the internal storage issue, there just isn’t any fixing it. The only thing you could really do, while staying on OSX and inside the same budget, is buy a relatively cheap Linux/Windows box with the CPU cores and get a Mac Mini or MBP as its “head” (if your software will allow it).

Personally, I jumped the ship last January after Apple failed to give us a Sandy Bridge Mac Pro, so I’m not in the market regardless. But if I was one year behind on needing a computer, this nMP wouldn’t really make sense for me. And I’d have loved to stay with OSX. Linux is very nice for somethings, and its treated as a bit of a badge of honor to work with linux in some circles, but its just not as well supported overall compared to OSX. In any case, I’m glad I still have my MBP to get a lot of work done while remotely connected to the linux box. However, I’d be much happier if that linux box was a Sandy Mac Pro.

 

[matoch]

I guess none of you have ever worked in the banking or government industries or another high security level position and needed local workstation level processing and storage. Where plugging in any external device would get you walked out immediately.

That requirement isnt likely have anything to do with internal/extrrnal storage. It will have everything to do with bringing in your own storage and hooking it up. The idea being 1. You will steal information. Or 2. People are stupid and will infect the internal network by bringing in a virus or other malware. If a workstation was purchased and relied on some das storage like a promise raid its no different then today. If they need it "secure" bolt or lock it to the desk.

 

[2128506]

I guess none of you have ever worked in the banking or government industries or another high security level position and needed local workstation level processing and storage. Where plugging in any external device would get you walked out immediately.

You've guessed wrong.

These institutions use custom-built workstations from major "enterprise" vendors. Not macpros.

And even then, I've never seen any sort of "local workstation level processing" (whatever that might be), since data is always crunched server-side - it is too much hassle (and pretty expensive and pointless to boot) for IT dept to set up Oracle/DB2/etc instance on workstations.

Data analysis like that is done server-side, using BI systems (Oracle BI, Business Objects, what have you). Hell, most of proper reporting/analysis guys I've seen use just SQL for that.

EDIT: Not mentioning that having copies of classified data on workstations throughout the building is several times less secure than keeping it in secured server room with controlled access. It's just too probable that someone might walk out of the building with hard drive full of credit card numbers. Or even with workstation itself (yey, very small case and no Kensington!).

EDIT2: I can imagine a use case for local data crunching - guys doing science need to test their code before shipping it out to clusters. They might want dual CPUs for that, but even then, they don't need "secure local storage".

 

[theSeb]

I guess none of you have ever worked in the banking or government industries or another high security level position and needed local workstation level processing and storage. Where plugging in any external device would get you walked out immediately.

I have spent many years working in banking and a little bit in government. This use case makes no sense and it has about 0 validity when it comes criticism of the new Mac Pro. This is getting silly, frankly.

----------

You've guessed wrong.

These institutions use custom-built workstations from major "enterprise" vendors. Not macpros.

And even then, I've never seen any sort of "local workstation level processing" (whatever that might be), since data is always crunched server-side - it is too much hassle (and pretty expensive and pointless to boot) for IT dept to set up Oracle/DB2/etc instance on workstations.

Data analysis like that is done server-side, using BI systems (Oracle BI, Business Objects, what have you). Hell, most of proper reporting/analysis guys I've seen use just SQL for that.

EDIT: Not mentioning that having copies of classified data on workstations throughout the building is several times less secure than keeping it in secured server room with controlled access. It's just too probable that someone might walk out of the building with hard drive full of credit card numbers. Or even with workstation itself (yey, very small case and no Kensington!).

EDIT2: I can imagine a use case for local data crunching - guys doing science need to test their code before shipping it out to clusters. They might want dual CPUs for that, but even then, they don't need "secure local storage".

Spot on.

 

[haravikk]

Thunderbolt will soon go the way of FW400 and 800

I'm not sure where you're getting that impression from; Thunderbolt is based on PCIe, which doesn't show any particular signs of going anywhere. So long as Thunderbolt continues to push forwards with more PCIe lanes on newer standard I don't see Apple dropping it anytime soon, after all it's a technology being developed by Intel so compatibility is relatively simple. USB has been making a big push to remain relevant, which is something that FireWire just couldn't do; it was a good standard, but it just languished. Thunderbolt meanwhile is already better in many ways (other than price of peripherals, for now) but it's still only using a fraction of the performance that PCIe can deliver, so it has a pretty clear future roadmap to follow, especially as Intel will most likely be adding more PCIe lanes to processors in order to support it better.

Besides which; dropping old standards isn't a bad thing, it's not as if Firewire just disappeared completely, as Macs with Thunderbolt can use Thunderbolt to Firewire adapters if they have old devices they absolutely have to hold onto. IMO it's one of Apple's better features, namely a willingness to drop the old rather than getting themselves mired in a huge backlog of ancient standards; I mean, PCs only fairly recently dropped the PS/2 connector!

They killed Shake, Soundtrack, Studio Pro, Final Cut, destroyed Quicktime

I can't really speak for the others, but I wouldn't say Apple have "destroyed" Quicktime, more realistically they've removed tons of features that are now better suited to iMovie and Final Cut Pro. My main grievance with Quicktime X was that it also broke compatibility with some codecs, and added various playback annoyances, without introducing anything really new; the new UI is slick enough, but behind the hood it still has no support for common streaming formats like .mkv files. But it is what it is; a program for playing movie files, to be honest I'm surprised it's even still called Quicktime and not "Movie" or something.

Apple has always been about focusing on a smaller set of products, which has always been shown its limited Mac lineup. A lot of programs that Apple provided were also purchased from other companies, and many were always going to end up being rolled into other products eventually, as it doesn't make sense for Apple to try to maintain a wide library of programs.

Why on earth would anyone invest the kinda money required for a nMP setup when Apple has clearly shown the professional market the door?

Not saying Apple hasn't made mistakes, but personally I don't think Apple has shown the professional market the door at all. I think Apple's new Mac Pro is showing us the way forward.

Also, it's important to remember that Apple's business isn't primarily in software, in fact it's amazing that Apple provides so much of their own software at all; a lot of the professional software is after all limited mainly to a subset of Mac Pro users to begin with. Of course I want them to keep going with their software, and I think that the combination of pro machine and pro software to take advantage of it can continue to be profitable to them, even if it isn't exactly lucrative. It's also worth remembering that the Mac Pro is almost an image thing for Apple; they're a company that likes to show off creativity, and it's very much supposed to be a machine for creative tasks such as movie editing.

Think of it this way; if Apple had dropped the Mac Pro, it would raise questions about how long their other desktop or even notebook lines were then going to last. They almost have to keep it updated if they want to remain in the desktop market IMO.

 

[yoak]

Great post haravikk.
Saw from your join date that you have been around here for a while. Figures.

As for people that still think FCX is just iMovie pro and the nMP is only a Mac mini, here is a quote from REDUSER of an upcoming even:


"On Saturday Jan 18th we'll be having our monthly 2 hour informal meeting (10am through 12 noon) where we'll go over the "new" version and the new Mac Pro cylinders. As well as demoing the new 10.1 features and how best to organize your Libraries working off a Pegasus2 R8 RAID, I also be showing FCP X running across Xsan 3 on a high speed SAN network and sharing projects between multiple editors. In my mind the collaborative possibilities of the new Library functionality is what is really exciting about the "new" version.

On Saturday Feb 15th we'll be having an all day Open House (10 am through 2pm) which we organize in The Gym - so called because the movie Lot where we're based used to be owned by Howard Hughes and this large 60 ft x 40 ft room was indeed Howard Hughes's personal gym - I kid you not ... in The Gym we'll have a complete 4K end-to-end workflow demo showing the new Mac Pros in action with fast storage and 4K infrastructure gear from Blackmagic, AJA, CineRAID, Promise, MAGMA and Apple ... will be a fun day.

At the Open House we'll also be showing our hybrid DAS/NAS approach to leveraging TCP/IP over Thunderbolt2 networks ... this is quite an exciting area for collaborative file sharing made possible by Apple's new features in OSX Mavericks ... more details on our website:

http://www.lumaforge.com/index.html"

Just saying

 

[azentropy]

That requirement isnt likely have anything to do with internal/extrrnal storage. It will have everything to do with bringing in your own storage and hooking it up. The idea being 1. You will steal information. Or 2. People are stupid and will infect the internal network by bringing in a virus or other malware. If a workstation was purchased and relied on some das storage like a promise raid its no different then today. If they need it "secure" bolt or lock it to the desk.

That is just one case.

You've guessed wrong.

These institutions use custom-built workstations from major "enterprise" vendors. Not macpros.

EDIT: Not mentioning that having copies of classified data on workstations throughout the building is several times less secure than keeping it in secured server room with controlled access. It's just too probable that someone might walk out of the building with hard drive full of credit card numbers. Or even with workstation itself (yey, very small case and no Kensington!).

EDIT2: I can imagine a use case for local data crunching - guys doing science need to test their code before shipping it out to clusters. They might want dual CPUs for that, but even then, they don't need "secure local storage".

See below...

I have spent many years working in banking and a little bit in government. This use case makes no sense and it has about 0 validity when it comes criticism of the new Mac Pro. This is getting silly, frankly.

Seems like you all have worked in much less restrictive environments. We were not allowed to have any external devices hooked up to our workstations, which would include any USB drives or thunderbolt drives (we didn't have thunderbolt drives then but at the time that would have included external SCSI or FC devices) as they were not physically secure devices. In many cases ports were glued over. It didn't matter if the data itself was "classified" information or not. Because the possibility existed that it could be.

 

[Spinland]

Seems like you all have worked in much less restrictive environments. We were not allowed to have any external devices hooked up to our workstations, which would include any USB drives or thunderbolt drives (we didn't have thunderbolt drives then but at the time that would have included external SCSI or FC devices) as they were not physically secure devices. In many cases ports were glued over. It didn't matter if the data itself was "classified" information or not. Because the possibility existed that it could be.

So you worked in a bizarre environment that is demonstrably (based on the number of differing responses you've received) not the norm. The point was you were criticizing the nMP's reliance on external storage as though your individual circumstances should somehow have been a design decision. Why on Earth would Apple take outlier use cases into account like that? Your original post made no sense.

ETA: this comment probably came out less focused and more negative than I intended. It gets better downstream.

 

[2128506]

Seems like you all have worked in much less restrictive environments. We were not allowed to have any external devices hooked up to our workstations, which would include any USB drives or thunderbolt drives (we didn't have thunderbolt drives then but at the time that would have included external SCSI or FC devices) as they were not physically secure devices. In many cases ports were glued over. It didn't matter if the data itself was "classified" information or not. Because the possibility existed that it could be.

So Mac Pro now cannot be used by 0.001% of its possible buyers. I don't think that Apple (or anyone else for that matter) cares much.

I'm pretty sure Mac Pro will not be certified for use aboard ISS - should we worry about that too?

 

[CH12671]

Seems like you all have worked in much less restrictive environments. We were not allowed to have any external devices hooked up to our workstations, which would include any USB drives or thunderbolt drives (we didn't have thunderbolt drives then but at the time that would have included external SCSI or FC devices) as they were not physically secure devices. In many cases ports were glued over. It didn't matter if the data itself was "classified" information or not. Because the possibility existed that it could be.

So your employer would opt NOT to purchase nMP's for it's use, and I'm sure Apple couldn't care less. Does your single case mean it's not a professional machine? There are a ton of professional race car drivers out there that have absolutely no use for an Indy car. Does that mean they are not professionals, or that Indy cars are not built for professional race car drivers? It's not for you or your intended use....so what, get over it!

 

[wildmac]

So you worked in a bizarre environment that is demonstrably (based on the number of differing responses you've received) not the norm. The point was you were criticizing the nMP's reliance on external storage as though your individual circumstances should somehow have been a design decision. Why on Earth would Apple take outlier use cases into account like that? Your original post made no sense.

Actually, the varied responses and his reaction to them show that there are many many flavors to secure environments. You can:

1) Lock the room
2) Lock up the devices
3) Lock up the data

or more.. where I work, there is some version of each of those going on, depending on the data and the task. A good portion of the folk are on thin clients, where nothing is local, and external devices are forbidden.

So yeah, for Apple to try to fit into those small nuanced markets is a bit silly. But I do know that we would likely use nMPs in one of our classified areas, it's just that nothing ever comes out.