C100: Time for an upgrade? Editing Machine

chappelldigital

chappelldigital

Well-known member
Greetings!

Curious if I'm missing something, figured I'd get some more opinions before deciding its time for a new machine.

Current workflow:
C100 -> AMA into Avid, Transcode to DNxHD 115, Edit, Send to Squeeze, Export to format (mp4 for web).

Transcoding doesn't take TOO long, but for large projects, I transcode overnight.
The last 1.5 hour wedding edit I exported took 1 day 10 hours!!!
A 4-5 minute edit is normally around 2-4 hours to export ish.

I've asked a few people I know and have suggested Avid might be the pain in my butt that's making it difficult. As I test, I used the trial of Premiere CC to edit the last 30 second promo I had to put together. It was shot at 24fps on a GH4.
Imported everything into Premiere, edited, wouldn't playback smooth. I had a few titles on it (4 total I believe), no colour correction, no layered videos. It would playback maybe 10 seconds and start getting choppy. Export time was 5-10 minutes I think from Premiere.

Didn't think my computer was too awful, as I know some guys on a core 2 duo still, but maybe its just the computer thats way too far behind.

Specs
Macbook Pro 13" Early 2011
10.7.5 (Lion)
2.7 Ghz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1333 Mhz DDR3
500 GB HD (all footage, including Avid files, are on a G-Drive, 4TB Firewire).
Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB

My guess is its time for a new machine, but I've had some people suggest it should be good enough.
Any thoughts/advice?

Thanks guys!

Kyle
 
chappelldigital said:
Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB
Click to expand...
AFAIK Premiere requires a 1Gb+ graphics card (preferably Nvidia CUDA) to use hardware rendering.

Unfortunately, except for the Mac Pro, Apple has no machines with good graphics cards and you can't change them.
Even the new iMac 5K Retina is not really any good for full-on video production crunching as it has a 2012 mobile graphics card in it. But it sure looks awesome.
 
Yeah knew about the graphics card being pretty weak, although didn't know even the newer iMacs were as well.... Boourns!

Ninja Blade is on my radar for the future specifically for that reason! heh.
May end up 'make the switch' and build a custom PC as an editing machine only.
 
You've got a couple of bottlenecks in that MBP that are slowing down your workflow. In order of importance: The Intel HD Graphics is extremely underpowered for video and it's memory is shared, not dedicated so you're not even getting an effective 512MB. In fact Apple's specs page lists the Intel HD Graphics on that machine as having only 384MB of memory. External drives: is your G Drive a RAID? If not, the Firewire connection is probably maxing out at 70 - 80Mbs with a single drive I would guess. The last thing is the processor is only dual core and a dated architecture. Yeah, dual core technically should be good enough, but it's not going to be anywhere near what you'll get with a current chip.

With all due respect to Matt above, I think his statement about no good graphics cards is a bit too broad. The upgraded AMD Radeon R9 M295X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory in the new Retina iMac is benchmarking with performance equivalent too a single AMD Firepro D700 used in the top of the line Mac Pro (which of course has 2 if you can afford it.) And it's CPU benchmarks are beating the 4 and 6-core mac Pro in a lot of areas except for multi-core performance of course. Might be worth doing a little research and checking it out.

Also your MBP has Thunderbolt doesn't it? A good first step might be getting a TB RAID or something similar. It would immediately eliminate any bottleneck with external drives, give you a small performance boost, and could migrate to the new machine when you're ready to upgrade to a newer Mac.
 
The Drive is not a raid, a regular G-Drive (4TB) - I'm using firewire because I only have 2 USB ports, which I tend to use for other smaller drives, or other items.
Not much I can do to get more out of my current setup.

I do have a thunderbolt port. My next drive may be a G-Raid w/Thunderbolt, which of course will be good with future Macs (although unnecessary if I end up going with a PC from what I understand). I googled for Thunderbold external graphics card setups, seems a bit ridiculous though haha and much more cost-effective to just do it properly with a proper desktop vs trying to mickey-mouse more out of a MBP
 
chappelldigital said:
The Drive is not a raid, a regular G-Drive (4TB) - I'm using firewire because I only have 2 USB ports, which I tend to use for other smaller drives, or other items.
Not much I can do to get more out of my current setup.

I do have a thunderbolt port. My next drive may be a G-Raid w/Thunderbolt, which of course will be good with future Macs (although unnecessary if I end up going with a PC from what I understand). I googled for Thunderbold external graphics card setups, seems a bit ridiculous though haha and much more cost-effective to just do it properly with a proper desktop vs trying to mickey-mouse more out of a MBP
Click to expand...

Yeah, a RAID with Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 would be the best future proofing to go either Mac or PC, but I don't think I've seen any yet that have both ports. Has to be out there somewhere though!

Good luck with the upgrade!
 
SBell said:
The upgraded AMD Radeon R9 M295X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory in the new Retina iMac is benchmarking with performance equivalent too a single AMD Firepro D700 used in the top of the line Mac Pro (which of course has 2 if you can afford it.) And it's CPU benchmarks are beating the 4 and 6-core mac Pro in a lot of areas except for multi-core performance of course.
Click to expand...
That sounds great, the screen is certainly fantastic. I just wish they would have a bit of graphics card variety. I'm looking to upgrade next year and wanting to maximise it for video editing and that doesn't leave much to choose from.
 
Matt Turner said:
That sounds great, the screen is certainly fantastic. I just wish they would have a bit of graphics card variety. I'm looking to upgrade next year and wanting to maximise it for video editing and that doesn't leave much to choose from.
Click to expand...

I completely agree. More choice would be great. Maybe we'll see a 2015 retina iMac with a 6-Core i7 and dual 4GB R9 295's or better!
 
I imagine you know the first rule to follow on Avid (and all NLEs, but especially Avid) is never have project files and media on the same drive.
That's asking a lot of any drive, but even more so a FW drive.

Yes, your GPU is underpowered, but try separating your project files and media first, see if it helps.

Elaborating on SBell, as far as new machines, the brand new iMac is beating the new Mac Pro in many benchmarks.
 
I think I currently have the Projects and Media on the same firewire drive - I'll try separating them and see how it behaves for sure. Kind of accepting the fact its time for an upgrade in a big way, heh

Thanks for all the feedback!
 
I agree about separating projects and media.

FCPX is much faster than other NLEs at the moment. Transcoding is done in the background. You may like to check it.
 
I personally never separate project files from media. I always have both in the same location for ease of archive and localization of projects, plus ensuring both are protected with redundancy of RAID-5/6/50--all reside on external RAIDs, either TB2, Fibre Channel or mini-SAS. I'm currently at work on a 2013 MP w/ 8 core, 64GB RAM, dual d700s and a 1TB PCIe boot. Although not ideal, I'm currently using my boot for my Ae Cache. The new MP has been very painful through Mavericks, but has finally the past couple of months started to spread it's wings, especially now that I've integrated C4D Studio in my workflow.
 
What version of Avid MC are you using? Anything MC 6.5 and newer, I've been linking to AMA and editing off the AMA clips, sort of a virtual off-line editing process. And when I have a finished sequences, I basically export and transcode only my finished timeline. It takes a little time because I'm using a two and half year old Macbook Air but has been working out great for me thus far. Just make sure that at the bottom the little box of your timeline, you need it at full res which would be a full green box when you go to export and transcode. Then essentially you're on-lining just the footage that you're using in your final cut.
 
I'm on MC6 - I can AMA link them in, but anything more than a few clips (or anything longer than 20 seconds) starts playing back extremely choppy and becomes extremely difficult and annoying to edit with. :thumbdown
 
Since your on a mac, why not use prores?
IF i shoot internally i use clipwrap to transcode, its quite fast actually.

Matt Turner said:
AFAIK Premiere requires a 1Gb+ graphics card (preferably Nvidia CUDA) to use hardware rendering.

Unfortunately, except for the Mac Pro, Apple has no machines with good graphics cards and you can't change them.
Click to expand...

With some DIY you can get a nvidia card in a macpro (the older model)
I have done so, i have added a pc spec cheap GTX 570 next to my existing card for cuda rendering in premiere, it makes a BIG difference..
Using this setup for 2 years now, the macpro i have since 2008, not planning on upgrading anytime soon. That said i always edit with prores files, it just renders so much faster.
For youtube and vimeo i export in prores proxy, that renders incredibly fast, because there is almost no transcoding, and in you use filmgrain it holds up way better online. (Got this tip from Philip Bloom) Since youtube and vimeo now accept this codec.

Macpro 8-core 2.8
16GB Ram ddr2
ATI 5870
Nvidia GTX570
5 HD's 1 SSD's internal
 
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