Editing raw video on a $900 Hackintosh as well as on a $5000 Mac Pro

[ipcmlr]

[quote name="karoliina" post="24029" time="1356342323"]There is this easier option for Resolve: it also runs on Linux. Run Ubuntu on the fast machine with fast Geforce 680. Very easy to setup and very similar operating system to OSX. I have several Macs and then the biggest number crunchers run Linux. Blender is therefore ran on Linux natively (3d animation/compositing). Also I do not need to use 5dtorgb converter with my DSLR footage since 5dtorgb uses ffmpeg to do the conversion. I use ffmpeg directly from command line, it is fully scriptable, and my footage converts by itself after I run my script convert. Even better: add huge raid to this Linux machine and share the drive to network and mount it from your Macs to access it with FCPX. If gigabit ethernet is in between, the speed is reasonable. Macs and Ubuntus live very nicely together. They are almost cousins from technical perspective unlike OSX vs. Windows which have about nothing in common. I have been tempted to try Hackintosh though to run FCPX and Motion fast. [/quote] Nice idea karoliina. Have you installed resolve in Ubuntu? Saw from one of the forums that Linux install is a disk image or Linux installer is a disk from blackmagic ( http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=49&start=20#p7852) Have you also found a Linux nle that is any good? Thanks!

[tokyojerry]

Nice idea karoliina. Have you installed resolve in Ubuntu? Saw from one of the forums that Linux install is a disk image or Linux installer is a disk from blackmagic ( http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=49&start=20#p7852) Have you also found a Linux nle that is any good? Thanks!

 

I would love to being using Ubuntu Linux (or, Mint Linux) as an alternative to Windows and should OS-X not be suitable any longer.  Only problem is, and as they point out at BMD is,  the lack of centralized support for hardware as you have in the Windows and OS-X camps.

[nigelbb]

Please don't confuse the i7 processors with the Xeon processors found in MacPros

 

i7 which are "desktop"

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processor-comparison/compare-intel-processors.html?select=desktop

Xeon which are "server" class processors

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processor-comparison/compare-intel-processors.html?select=server

 

You really haven't built a MacPro. You're closer to a 2011 iMac (Sandy Bridge i7) with some modifications.

Granted the MacPros haven't had a processor upgrade since 2010 (except for a minor speed bump). I'd expect the 2013 MacPro replacement will be using at lease Sandy Bridge Xeons. Xeons tend to be 1 generation behind. Current i7 is Ivy Bridge. Current Xeon is Sandy Bridge.

 

You might find this article interesting

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/review/2157358/intel-xeon-e5-2670-vs-core-i7-3960x-review

 

If you look at PCs with Xeon comparable Xeon processors, they are comparable to MacPro (when they were comparable in 2010) and my hunch will be in 2013 when MacPros get replaced.

Crucially a proper Mac Pro can have dual Xeon processors with a total of 12 cores which is going to grind through rendering etc a whole lot faster than any quad-core i7. Once you start pricing up dual Xeon motherboards with Xeon processors you start to see where most of the cost of a Mac Pro goes.

[barnesytv]

Hi Andrew

Another way forwards for the cost conscious user is an old Mac Pro. There seems to be a recognition that a new Mac Pro is imminent this year and the price of old 8 core 3.2gig 3.1 on ebay has dropped to around £1000 or less. The new i7 machines are fast but the imacs only have 4 cores so for instance in after effects I ran my old 3.1 3 gig against my friends 3.4 gig iMac and the render time was about the same. The new generation stuff due to ram speed and architecture etc. is about twice as fast. Now you can get a GTX570 for around £350. I have the hacked one with 2.5 gig ram. Premiere and Resolve see the cuda cores after tweaking the text files. There is also the K5000 out for £1400!

Upsides to buying an old mac 3.1 or later is that they are 64 bit, intels and so you can run mountain lion and with rosetta on have FCP7 or X and Avid MC, Symphony and Premiere and Resolve. They just work and of course have plenty of slots to put in cards and raid 0 hard drives. I have no doubt that the faster bus of the 4.1 and 5.1 MacPro would make more of the Cuda cards but you pay your money and take your choice.

I will be investing heavily this year in a crazy system to do higher end work at www.sublimepictures.tv but my old 3.1 is a great workhorse that has had a boost in life with the GTX570. I am looking forward to getting my Black Magic Camera and grading the footage on Resolve.

[Promit Roy]

Crucially a proper Mac Pro can have dual Xeon processors with a total of 12 cores which is going to grind through rendering etc a whole lot faster than any quad-core i7. Once you start pricing up dual Xeon motherboards with Xeon processors you start to see where most of the cost of a Mac Pro goes.

This is important; if you run the numbers on a serious Windows based workstation with Xeons, a Quadro, ECC memory, etc like the Mac Pro has, you find out the pricing is really not THAT far out of the ballpark.

 

That said, the Mac Pro is horribly out of date hardware for probably another year, and for many of us all we want is a decent 4-core/8-thread i7 with a high end GeForce, SSD, and a bucket load of memory. I just built a Windows machine like that, with the works, for around $2,000 out the door. Effectively a "gaming" type computer. Unfortunately it's not a configuration Apple offers. I also happen to think Xeons and Quadros and ECC memory are all a rip off, but I guess somebody's getting use out of them. At the very least, SSDs mean some of these dual socket configurations are not totally pointless since the IO system is finally able to get out of its own way.

[HurtinMinorKey]

 also happen to think Xeons and Quadros and ECC memory are all a rip off, but I guess somebody's getting use out of them. At the very least, SSDs mean some of these dual socket configurations are not totally pointless since the IO system is finally able to get out of its own way.

 

I don't think they're a rip off, but they are designed for the professional market. If i want to run STATA with more than 64GB of RAM, my only choice is a Xeon based system.  It's basically just companies using price discrimination: the demand curve for people who need more than 64GB of ram looks pretty different than the demand curve for everyone else.  Apple is not special in this regard. Pretty much all the big boys: Dell, HP, and Apple offer comparably priced workstations. In fact, i'd argue that the "Apple premium" paid for Apple workstations is less than for their laptop/desktops. 

[jcs]

12-core MacPro's are a great deal if one is looking for a fast, stable quiet Mac or PC (or both). I use my 12-core MacPro mostly as a Win7 workstation (+Quadro 5000 and GT120 (3 displays)). The Q5000 now works in OSX too, but only after booting (not in the ROM screen).

 

It's not possible to find a lower-priced 12-core for a PC (might be possible building from scratch, however the CPUs and dual-socket MBs are very expensive). If you factor in your time to get everything working properly, it's probably not worth it (I used to build all my own workstations from the best parts). HP and Dell make decent 12-core workstations, but they are not any cheaper.

 

If one is looking for the absolute fastest workstation, Boxx appears to make them: 16-cores, water-cooled and overclocked, with multiple GPU cards: http://www.boxxtech.com/Products/3dboxx-8920

If you have to ask how much, you probably can't afford them.

 

I can edit everything I need in real-time in PPro CS6 (except noise reduction with Neat Video)- so no need to render out to see what the final look will be (I only use real-time GPU effects) in most cases. After Effects is slow no matter what, so I don't use it (except for occasional experiments). I can also edit most everything in real-time on my MacBook Pro Retina in OSX Lion. Unfortunately (and amazingly), it's not possible to share PPro CS6 projects between OSX and Windows without issues (at least for medium complex projects), even when doing a clean archive/export. As others have noted, Win7 is a bit faster than OSX on the same hardware.

[nigelbb]

Hi Andrew

Another way forwards for the cost conscious user is an old Mac Pro. There seems to be a recognition that a new Mac Pro is imminent this year and the price of old 8 core 3.2gig 3.1 on ebay has dropped to around £1000 or less. The new i7 machines are fast but the imacs only have 4 cores so for instance in after effects I ran my old 3.1 3 gig against my friends 3.4 gig iMac and the render time was about the same. The new generation stuff due to ram speed and architecture etc. is about twice as fast. Now you can get a GTX570 for around £350. I have the hacked one with 2.5 gig ram. Premiere and Resolve see the cuda cores after tweaking the text files. There is also the K5000 out for £1400!

Upsides to buying an old mac 3.1 or later is that they are 64 bit, intels and so you can run mountain lion and with rosetta on have FCP7 or X and Avid MC, Symphony and Premiere and Resolve. They just work and of course have plenty of slots to put in cards and raid 0 hard drives. I have no doubt that the faster bus of the 4.1 and 5.1 MacPro would make more of the Cuda cards but you pay your money and take your choice.

I will be investing heavily this year in a crazy system to do higher end work at www.sublimepictures.tv but my old 3.1 is a great workhorse that has had a boost in life with the GTX570. I am looking forward to getting my Black Magic Camera and grading the footage on Resolve.

I 100% agree with. I have a dual CPU 2.8GHz Mac Pro 3,1 & have seen similar for as little as £600 on eBay which is a fantastic bargain. I have just down a few upgrades. The used GTX570 just £125 off eBay was probably the most cost effective as it has made Premiere Pro so much smoother & faster. It is 2X faster for CUDA & 3X faster for OpenCL than the GTX285 it replaced. I also added an SSD first in one of the drive sleds but because these systems are SATA-II the bus is the bottleneck so you don't see full SSD speed so just yesterday I put the SSD in one of these PCIe cards that gives SATA-II speeds & the read speed doubled to a tad under 500MB/s http://www.expansys.com/apricorn-velocity-solo-x2-ssd-sata-iii-6gb-2-5-235130/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=shopping&utm_campaign=base&ito=1701&mkwid=svHjLhmZB&kword=adwords_productfeed&gclid=CMKe6Pb_0LQCFaTMtAodNFkAJQ My final upgrade is 16GB (4x4GB) of RAM for the bargain price (for ECC FBDIMMs anyway:-) of £230.

 

With all the performance boosts from improved graphics, SSD & RAM upgrade this system will be good for at least another couple of years.

[Dr. John R. Brinkley]

Working with an  older Mac Pro got me thinking. 

 

I found one for sale with these specs:

 

Mac Pro 3.1

8 core Harpertown processor

16gb RAM (667 mhz)

Nvidia GeForce 8800GT

500 gb hard drive

Possibly with Adobe CS 5.5

An average 19" monitor

 

He wants $1050 USD

 

Does this seem like a good deal? Any issues/concerns for upgrading this computer?

[tokyojerry]

It real boils down to 2 issues:

1. Objectives: What do you want to accomplish with the machine

2. Budget:  Do you have the budget to buy it?

 

Again, I prefer to stay with current technology.  I also prefer to stay away from that era of large beige boxes (grey in the case of Apple's MacPro).  I came from a PC environment of days gone by.   If I want to get the most power nowadays,  it will be a max'd out 2012 iMac Pro 27"..... which, ironically is not quite yet even available yet on the market. :-)

[pietz]

Working with an  older Mac Pro got me thinking. 

 

I found one for sale with these specs:

 

Mac Pro 3.1

8 core Harpertown processor

16gb RAM (667 mhz)

Nvidia GeForce 8800GT

500 gb hard drive

Possibly with Adobe CS 5.5

An average 19" monitor

 

He wants $1050 USD

 

Does this seem like a good deal? Any issues/concerns for upgrading this computer?

 

youre talking about an original Mac Pro right? well what are the benefits of an original Mac Pro? that you have support from apple, but with a machine that seems to be at least 5 years old, you dont even get that. so why not build a brand new, faster Hackintosh for less money.

 

i paid around 700euros for mine with ivy bridge overclocked i7, geforce 650 ti (incredbly efficient that card), 16GB ram, brilliant case and a cpu cooler that i cannont hear if i put my ear against the case. im so so happy with it. its fast as shit and updates work. setting it up isnt all to bad if you follow one of the golden build on tony mac x86.

[Alexco]

i paid around 700euros for mine with ivy bridge overclocked i7, geforce 650 ti (incredbly efficient that card), 16GB ram, brilliant case and a cpu cooler that i cannont hear if i put my ear against the case. im so so happy with it. its fast as shit and updates work. setting it up isnt all to bad if you follow one of the golden build on tony mac x86.

 

Pietz

Any chance that you might give us a full build spec list for your PC.

Would maybe help get us in the right direction as €700 sounds a good price.

 

Many Thanks

Alex.

[nigelbb]

The big advantage a Mac Pro has is that it's a dual CPU 8-core machine (12-core for the latest models).  Using all the cores this will grind through renders faster than even the fastest Hackintosh. The Nvidia GTX570 runs without any hacks on Mountain Lion with the Nvidia drivers & is the fastest CUDA card available. Add an SSD in a PCI slot carrier for preference as it will give you full SATA-III speed.

 

Mac Pros are built like tanks & an absolute steal on the used market. I have had my dual 2.8GHz 8-core Mac Pro 3,1 from new over four years ago & with the upgrades above it flies. I have seen similar configurations on eBay for as little as £600 (under $1000)

[Dr. John R. Brinkley]

The big advantage a Mac Pro has is that it's a dual CPU 8-core machine (12-core for the latest models).  Using all the cores this will grind through renders faster than even the fastest Hackintosh. The Nvidia GTX570 runs without any hacks on Mountain Lion with the Nvidia drivers & is the fastest CUDA card available. Add an SSD in a PCI slot carrier for preference as it will give you full SATA-III speed.

 

Mac Pros are built like tanks & an absolute steal on the used market. I have had my dual 2.8GHz 8-core Mac Pro 3,1 from new over four years ago & with the upgrades above it flies. I have seen similar configurations on eBay for as little as £600 (under $1000)

 

The issue for me is that I'll be buying everything from scratch to get started: so in addition to the $1000 for the used Mac Pro I would need to spend around $600 for a really good monitor, add in a SSD drive, keyboard, mouse, maybe update the RAM and video card and I'm getting somewhere near $2000 I would guess.

 

A new Imac with self installed RAM upgrade, 1TB fusion drive, their best video card upgrade would be around $2600. I can get a 15-20% discount through a friend and I start to wonder what is my better deal. With USB 3 and Thunderbolt on the Imac it looks more future proof.

 

But will it run as good?

[nigelbb]

I thought that the choice was between a Hackintosh & a used Mac Pro & I would plump for the latter. However if the budget is higher then a new top of the range iMac will give you outstanding performance & with Applecare worry free computing for years. 

[tokyojerry]

I also would plump down for the iMac.  For one, I don't like buying into aging and/or obsoleting technology.  If it were $500 to buy some thing from years ago and  really wanted or needed it that bad for some specific purpose,  maybe.  But, to invest 2 grand for resurrecting dying technology? No way!    As nigelbb points out though, the new iMac with AppleCare for 3 years protection (want it for that big screen) and worry free computing, a quad core i7,  32GB of RAM,  1TB Fusion (a quasi-SSD)   USB3 and thunderbolt for I/O to expand on that 1TB through externals,  having both integrated and discrete graphics....  for.... $2600? And, a 10% discount on that making it $2,340?  That should be a slam done deal!  Personally I am planning to go that route but I am just waiting until the iMac 27" 2012 becomes more readily available and there are some reviews on the product.

 

Technology has advanced enough that what use to require big beige towers (grey in Apple's case) with noisy and high wattage power supplies is no longer the case.  Similar production tasks can be done with the compact, portable and  AIO computers these days.  Similarly thick, heavy notebooks are giving  way to ultrabooks (PC camp), Macbook Airs, Pros.  My rMBP alone in and of itself connected to an external 27"  can be a workstation in and of itself.  I've easily done FCP, Adobe Premiere Elements work with it.  Simpler tasks are a given.  Talking about the 'heavy weights'.  I don't do 3D gaming, or gaming at all for that matter, but,  I am quite sure it is capable for that stuff too.   I don't like the lockdown on memory and SSD, etc., but, that seems to be the industry trend, PC or Macs, spearheaded by Apple.  That is why you pay the AppleCare protection 'tax' on the device. Then, it's Apple's problem for the next 3 years.  For myself, prior to that expiration, the machine most likely will be sold on auction.  I usually rotate my equipment every 1-2 years to: (1) keep technology current, and (2), to recover a good chunk of my money via auctions.  The amount I don't recover is the 'rental fee' over the time of usage with right of ownership should I so desire.

Back to the original point of this article....  building a cheap $900 Hackintosh versus purchasing a MacPro......  along with the price savings (if one can be built that cheaply even)  one inherits the headaches, trials,  tribulations, and the need for technological know how to make a non-Mac machine work like a Mac computer.  Great if you don't mind and are a tinker type.  In the final outcome, you hope every thing 'orchestrates' well together. (like plug 'n pray times gone by for Windows).  But... if you are into heavy 'RAW'  video editting,  and really doing it semi-professionally or professionally for a living, making money at video post in RAW  (going to create Avatar 2?  :-) )  then perhaps you want to go the route of not just one Hackintosh, but perhaps a couple.  But, if doing ordinary video editting work, I already do that on my max'd out 2012 macmini for that matter.

 

One other issue plays on my mind, perhaps maybe not relative to Hackintoshes..... what is the future of MacPro?  It takes Apple literally years to come out with a new iteration in that lineup.  Why?  Well, maybe  only one new  model once every 4-5 years might be sufficient in spite of technological advancements.  BUT.......  my contention and gut feeling is,  Apple eventually will let that line drop.   There's no money in the MacPro lineup, nor volume of sales.  They screwed around with Final Cut Pro to the dismay of professionals in the industry when going from FCP7 to FCP-X.  The decided to discontinue X-serve.   Also, Apple OS-X Server, for the what-its-worth department, used to cost several $100s as a professional server package has come down to being an add on to OS-X that some one can purchase for.... $49 or so? via the Apple Store.  Apple's nose follows the money.  And, these days,  iPhone and iPad is where the money is... not X-serve,  not server OS,  etc.   To a lesser degree,  their income is also derived from Mac sales.  From a business perspective this is well and good for Apple (iphones and ipad sales).  From the consumer perspective though, expecting Apple will continue to feeling empathy for those desiring a new MacPro every year, I don't think it's going to happen.  Comparatively, there is no money in it.  Similar to the 17" Macbook Pro which is already gone,  I believe/feel Apple is going to axe the MacPro line, as they've already done with X-serve.  Oh,  they may still come out with a new MacPro this year so that Tim Cook remains good on his word from last year.  And, I reckon it will satisfy the MacPro campers for the next couple of years.  But then, that buys Apple  the 'breathing room' to just let that die off if they choose to do so. And, I think they will choose to do so.     So, for myself, it is just one more thought / reason I personally will not go with the Mac Pro, not to mention Apple will charge a premium again for a new MacPro model.  They are a high priced, high margined product company.   For myself, the high end Macbooks,  Ultrabooks, AIOs are becoming sufficiently powerful enough.  The only thing really keeping me tied to all this 'lock in',  'lock down' so to speak, is the operating system,  OS-X.  If Apple mucks around with that excessively.... well.... I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

I reckon I got carried away here a bit.  Anyway, I hope there is some comment of value to derive as 'food for thought' in the decision process.  :-)

[HurtinMinorKey]

So i finally caved and bought a BMCC (it arrived today), now i need to get a desktop to tame the beast. I've gone back and forth between Mac OS and Windows(I own both already), and I've finally decided on going with Windows for my workstation. It was a close call, but at the end of the day the the price/power of a WIN desktop won over the ease of use Mac.

 

Here are the specs:

• ASUS P9X79 WS
• Sealed Liquid Cooling Systems
• Overclocked Intel Core i7 3930K 4.0GHz - 4.2GHz LGA 2011 Hex-Core Processor (12MB L3 Cache)
• 850 Watt Corsair TX850M
• Single 4GB EVGA GTX 680
• Genuine MS Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit Edition
• 240GB Intel 520 Series
• 2X 3TB SATA 6.0Gb/s, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache
• 12X Blu-ray (BD) Disc Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD) (No DVD/Blu-ray Playback Software Included)

 

Anyone with last minute suggestions, please chime in.

[Julian]

I'd go with a Seasonic X-850 80+ Gold PSU. It is 80 Plus Gold certified, more efficient than the Corsair (80 Plus Bronze). Seasonic is a very well reviewed high end brand for PSU's. They are also quiet. The Corsair will do fine I suppose, but I don't think the price difference will be that big.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Seasonic-X-Series-850-W-Power-Supply-Review/1169

 

You didn't specify the RAM. But I suppose it's a sh*tload :)

 

Everything else looks good to me. Not sure if a liquid cooling system is worth investing in though. Depends on the price.. With a high end air cooler you can get pretty far I think. I wouldn't spend a lot to go that extra 10%. But I'm not so much into overclocking anymore.

[Alex McElroy]

The author mentioned the necessity of investing in an external sound card, quoting the Sound Blaster HD, by that do you mean the X-FI model? I need to know as I need to order one pretty quick.

 

Perhaps this sounds familiar, I had a hackintosh built for me for editing with FCP. I have with it a Tascam MKII ext sound card. However when editing footage, the sound will cut out without warning. To remedy this I would go into the FCP settings, and have to flick between output devices (e.g. from MKII to default, and later back again). This is very weird, and the fact that I can get the sound to work for a while before it cuts out is even more weird. Anyway as of late it's become a real problem, as I edit for my job and can't spare the time flicking between settings, closing and re-opening fcp, and even restarting the machine. I hope a new sound card will remedy this problem, and seeing the soundblaster recommended, I aim to pick one up in the next 24 hours, but need to know it's the right one.

[tokyojerry]

The author mentioned the necessity of investing in an external sound card, quoting the Sound Blaster HD, by that do you mean the X-FI model? I need to know as I need to order one pretty quick.

 

Perhaps this sounds familiar, I had a hackintosh built for me for editing with FCP. I have with it a Tascam MKII ext sound card. However when editing footage, the sound will cut out without warning. To remedy this I would go into the FCP settings, and have to flick between output devices (e.g. from MKII to default, and later back again). This is very weird, and the fact that I can get the sound to work for a while before it cuts out is even more weird. Anyway as of late it's become a real problem, as I edit for my job and can't spare the time flicking between settings, closing and re-opening fcp, and even restarting the machine. I hope a new sound card will remedy this problem, and seeing the soundblaster recommended, I aim to pick one up in the next 24 hours, but need to know it's the right one.

 

Perhaps too late already since you already invested into a Hackintosh.  But I reckon this is one (of many) trials and tribulations one encounters when cutting corners by going the Hackintosh route rather then using equipment that the OS is designed to be used on.  Sooner or later one will run into little irritations and tweaks maintenance.  Brings back memories of the Windows era of plug and pray.   :blink: