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Video editors better off with 2012 or earlier machines?

M

macguy93

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 30, 2012
149
1
Hello everyone,

After reviewing the new release of the new Mac Pro, I'd say its safe to say that I made a better decision by purchasing the 2012 12-core Mac Pro. To anyone who this may concern, my primary line of work is video editing withinthe adobe suite. Adobe after effects and premiere pro, also some cinema 4D work. For a machine to run fluidity while using the adobe suite or color correcting in davinci resolve, those programs heavily rely on cuda cores, which the new AMD GPU's don't support. Yes, there dual GPU's, but that surely doesn't matter for any gpu acceleration in such video editing applications.

From what it looks, you can't swap out GPU's. pretty much what u buy the machine with is what u have. (However, we don't know for sure yet) but as it looks, for those doing heavy video editing with; adobe, cinema 4D, davinci resolve, may do better with the older model Mac pros for there heavier expandability.

Let me know your guys thoughts!
 
Black magic have stated in their forums that they have tested this new mac pro with davinci resolve 10 and it runs very fast with the firepro gpu's and a new opencl. Premiere mercury engine will have wider support for opencl in the CC release so should also work well with the new mac pro, but cuda is still needed for after effects raytracing, not sure how that relates to the new C4D plugin for AE though.

http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8898
 
Open CL is also going to be a big part of Premiere CC.

http://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2013/05/improved-gpu-support-in-adobe-premiere-pro-cc.html
http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-and-adobe-2013apr5.aspx

Right now the FirePro's aren't on the list of officially certified GPU's ...though I would imagine this will change when the Mac Pro's are actually released later this fall. Though according to Adobe it doesn't even matter if the card is officially certified or not... you can still turn it on if the card(s) meet the min requirements (which the FirePro's clearly do).

Open GL with Adobe CC and Davinici seem like they are going to get along just fine according to the links provided by myself and thedarkhorse ... let's see what C4D R15 brings in a few weeks too. Though my understanding of C4D is that if you want to leverage ANY GPU type from Maxon you have to go through something like Vray.

But I'll admit that I am an editor first, and all the C4D renders I've pulled off have been very small scenes with the built in render engine ... and I have no idea what it's using in terms of GPU.

Also, with 12GB of video ram and Adobe's adoption of open CL, these GPU's may (just me speculating) render the RedRocket Card unnecessary for pushing native RED files through Mercury PBE.

As a pro editor running the same software you mentioned above... I can't WAIT to get my hands on the new Mac Pro.
 
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I'd say it's too soon to call. I bought a 2012 model and I'm perfectly happy. I can see merit in the new model too, but I'd need more detailed information before considering one.
 
At the moment, I'm glad I have 5,1 machines that I can rely on, and I know the upgrades that are "left" that can be made to them for further tweaks in performance. I'll see pricing on the new Mac Pro (at some point) and make a clearer decision moving forward at that point. Specs look work-able and does get my creativity in customizing workstations going a bit, but a lot will depend on the price points... and what the 3rd party vendors have available as "adapters" or price points for their upgrades.
 
Cinema 4D doesn't utilize Cuda cores. You are better off with a card that has more vram and better openGL support.

The new Mac Pro should be a very good fit for Cinema. Maybe not the best for AE, but I'm thinking with an Ivy bridge 12 core Xeon it should more then make up for the lack of cuda.
 
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EDITMAN2411 said:
Very exciting times...

http://www.fireprographics.com/adobe/
Click to expand...

If Apple will add support in 10.9 for the PCIe AMD FirePro graphics cards in the 5,1 and earlier machines, then it could be very exciting. Would give a lot of people a stepping stone, maybe waiting until the cylinder's 2nd generation update to get all component upgrades in line, or find expansion boxes that will work well.

As it stands currently, until these new Mac Pro's ship, and until Adobe adds additional GPU support on the Mac side, then we're still (generally) looking at Nvidia options for best performance for Adobe on Mac. Times are promising, but until all the software manufacturers get on board and offer solutions that work, it's a waiting game.
 
Only guessing but I think if you set the new MP6,1 next to the MP5,1 with the same GPU cards and drives attached the 6,1 will beat the 5,1 by a noticeable amount. Probably very noticeable - between 1.5x and 1.9x somewhere.

Now if you decide to put two Titans in your MP5,1 which can not be done at all in the 6,1 then we have a different story to tell. Indeed.
 
Supported cards in new Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Adobe recently updated its list of supported cards for GPU acceleration:

ATI Radeon HD 6750M (OpenCL)
ATI Radeon HD 6770M (OpenCL)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 (CUDA)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX (CUDA)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 (CUDA)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX (CUDA)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650M (CUDA)
NVIDIA GeForce Quadro CX (CUDA)
NVIDIA GeForce Quadro FX 4800 (CUDA)
NVIDIA GeForce Quadro 4000 (CUDA)
NVIDIA GeForce Quadro K5000 (CUDA)

I'm looking to upgrade the existing ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB that's in my 2010 (5,1) hexacore. Which of the cards above would give me the best bang for the buck for accelerating Premiere Pro CC?

Addendum: I also use After Effects, but it seems the list of supported GPUs for After Effects GPU acceleration is much shorter ... though (I'm not clear on this) this might only apply to 3D raytracing, which I don't generally need:

GeForce GTX 285
GeForce GT 650M*
Quadro FX 4800
Quadro 4000

Since I mainly use Premiere Pro and my use of After Effects is mainly for 2D graphics and stabilization, would I be OK considering the much broader list of options available for Premiere Pro acceleration? Anybody know if After Effects will also begin supporting Open CL in future versions, or is CUDA really the way to go? Thanks!
 
macguy93 said:
Yes, there dual GPU's, but that surely doesn't matter for any gpu acceleration in such video editing applications.
Click to expand...

I don't see how this holds any water. For instance let's say trying to transcode footage and edit with what have already transcoded at the same time. One GPU tasked with your editing application's GUI and reference output duties. Second GPU tasked with transcoding workload at the same time with minimal additional overhead.

As long as the set of programs being used in editing were dividing up workload between the CPU's x86 cores and the GPU's cores adding a second GPU isn't that big of a leaps. There is a small amount of work to chop things up into three pieces than just two but typically it is not that much more.

If driving 1-2 very large monitors ( in terms of pixels and graphics elements complexity ) then one GPU is get largely loaded down with that workload. Having a second allows work to still be allocated to resources not so heavily loaded down.


From what it looks, you can't swap out GPU's. pretty much what u buy the machine with is what u have. (However, we don't know for sure yet)
Click to expand...

They certainly are removable/serviceable. What is questionable is whether there will be a 3rd party market for replacements ( probably not) or Apple is get into the "upgrade GPU daughtercard" service business ( slightly less probably not ).
 
macguy93 said:
Yes, there dual GPU's, but that surely doesn't matter for any gpu acceleration in such video editing applications.
Click to expand...

Two thoughts.

1- future applications and future iterations of current applications will likely make far more use of GPU acceleration than they do now. the new Mac Pro will help push this direction, and will eventually benefit massively from it outta the box.

2- if you get a 5,1, it's all good until a year and a half from now, when someone gives you a Thunderbolt2/USB3 drive with 4 terabytes of RED Dragon 6k files and says "deal with this." Maybe you're not in that exact line of work, but for me, higher data transfer speeds are and will be critical. If you're stuck with USB2, you'll be tearing your hair out.

My take is that unless you're tethered to a lot of PCI-dependent infrastructure right now (and your future needs include more of same), the new Mac Pro will be a very good machine for video editors.
 
clamnectar said:
Two thoughts.

1- future applications and future iterations of current applications will likely make far more use of GPU acceleration than they do now. the new Mac Pro will help push this direction, and will eventually benefit massively from it outta the box.

2- if you get a 5,1, it's all good until a year and a half from now, when someone gives you a Thunderbolt2/USB3 drive with 4 terabytes of RED Dragon 6k files and says "deal with this." Maybe you're not in that exact line of work, but for me, higher data transfer speeds are and will be critical. If you're stuck with USB2, you'll be tearing your hair out.

My take is that unless you're tethered to a lot of PCI-dependent infrastructure right now (and your future needs include more of same), the new Mac Pro will be a very good machine for video editors.
Click to expand...

If they are in "that" line of work they should be familiar with the R3D Rocket and R3D Rocket-X. But priced @ $6750.00 for the X, the MP 6.1 route may be the better one. If the 5.1 was purchased at a good price, PCIe raid could be explored. If you add 2 Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro's (4SSD's) getting 1710 read 1320 write, will the 6k be "doable"? This of course depends on the editing program. With 32GB of ram and a CUDA card, Premiere Pro 6 or 7 (this summer) should be able to handle the task. With my setup (in the sig) I was able to handle 5k (no 6k last summer), h.264 and uncompressed 10bit with the PP6 demo. The Mercury engine makes all the difference in the world.
To see the $ difference between the two you have to know what "speed" you can get from the TB2 boxes. Draw a line and add up items on each side. Some may say, "but what about the future"? If the "souped up" 5.1 can play/edit 6K now, the MP 6.1 should worry about the present! It better be able to play/edit 5 multicam streams of 6k!:)
 
Just snagged a 2012. Can't wait any longer and don't want to be a guinea pig on the new model. Perfectly happy. Looking forward to see how this game plays out.
 
editing machine

I'm no "pro editor" by any means. Everything I use comes off your typical consumer level HD camcorder. The new mac pro is clearly not meant for people on my level. However after reading the specs, If I could afford one, I would buy it anyway in a heartbeat. As expensive is the new 6.1 is going to be, I bet any competing product will at a minimum cost just as much and depending on what you put in it, maybe more. I think this new pro machine is going to be a pretty beastly machine.
 
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