10 ms·

So, about the cost. This Mac Pro is for editing 8k raw video. Which is Hollywood stuff, shot on cameras that cost 10s of thousands of dollars, on top of 100s o

by mseidl 7y ago

So, about the cost. This Mac Pro is for editing 8k raw video. Which is Hollywood stuff, shot on cameras that cost 10s of thousands of dollars, on top of 100s of thousands of dollars of lenses and budgets 10s to 100s of millions.

shard972 7y ago
That huge market of hollywood film editors as opposed to programmers.
la_barba 7y ago
You will not be editing raw 8K video using the tiny 8 core CPU and 256GB storage space of the base model which the parent was referring to ($6000). Its true that for Hollywood projects, the price of this might not be a huge deal, even with the baller fully speced out model. Heck in my own industry (pharma) we're paying thousands and thousands of dollars for software that doesn't do much except have the magical 21CFR compliant sticker that regulators look for.
- dijit 7y ago
  I wouldn’t put much emphasis on the storage. Most places that are doing video editing at this level are using all flash based SAN networking over 10/100GB Ethernet/fibre. As for the CPU, I agree. However I’m not 100% sure on how much can be offloaded to the GPU these days, 5-ish years ago when I was working with video editors a lot, it wasn’t much that could be offloaded. Maybe it’s improved a lot.
  - CondensedBrain 7y ago
    I got Vegas Pro Edit from a Humble Bundle recently. Almost everything seems to be GPU accelerated.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
I’m hearing this excuse way too much. People that aren’t doing that deserve a version of a Mac Pro they can buy.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  What's wrong with Mac Mini or iMac Pro?
  - holy_city 7y ago
    The cooling.
  - linguae 7y ago
    Here are my issues as a user of a 2013 Mac Pro: - Neither the Mac Mini nor 2019 Mac Pro are user-serviceable; you have to take your Mac to an Apple-approved repair center if you want to upgrade your RAM (see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205041#one https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205041#one and https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208377 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208377). I guess it's nice to have DIMMs when the computer is out of warranty, but I'd like to preserve my warranty and not have to pay Apple's prices for RAM upgrades plus labor costs. - The storage is soldered onto the motherboard in the Mac Mini, which precludes upgrading or replacing storage. - The storage for the iMac Pro is a special proprietary design, precluding the use of industry-standard M.2 NVMe flash drives. (Granted, the 2013 Mac Pro doesn't use industry standard M.2 NVMe drives, either, although I've read that it's possible to use some standard NVMe drives in the 2013 Mac Pro with the help of an adapter.) - The iMac Pro at $4999 is still much more expensive than the previous generation base Mac Pro, which was $2999. - The iMac Pro is an all-in-one design. I prefer desktop computers that are not housed inside a monitor; what happens if the monitor fails?
    - nathana 7y ago
      For most consumer PCs, I have no problem with most things being soldered on like RAM, CPU, etc...but soldering on the storage is unforgiveable. And it has nothing to do with being able to upgrade it, but rather it's about the problems this introduces (and the options it limits) when it comes to data recovery when your machine inevitably @#$@#s up.
imagetic 7y ago
I don't work in Hollywood, but I work heavily in production engineering for television productions that work on A LOT of 8K RAW video and multicam where time is critical, we have days to edit where hollywood has months and multicam is pretty damn taxing vs how a lot of movies operate. Our budgets are a fraction of a hollywood production though. The base model Mac Pro isn't going to be doing much at all. The higher end model with a lot of upgrades is going to be the sweet spot. You really need to push up to a 12-16 core, with 64-128gb RAM, 11+gb GPUs and then add the afterburner card (cause Apple won't play nice with Nvidia) if you want to be doing anything with 8K RAW on a high resolution display. Yes, the Mac Pro is essentially an infinitely upgradable machine. That's awesome. But third party support is questionable and without Nvidia that leaves a lot of speculation as to what the afterburner card will truly be able to do. I'd kill for that motherboard in a smaller CPU buildout. In a high budget post-facility environment, it may be an ideal candidate. Currently there isn't a Mac in our reach that doesn't overheat or choke on big media projects (we refuse to look at the iMac Pro seriously). We've been holding off buying new gear for several years. Most of the editors I work with would prefer to stay on macOS, but the base model should have been $3500 8-Core with a lot more GPU horses. Apple delivered a $6000 box without anything to back it up. At a minimum we'd have to upgrade to a bigger GPU and add the afterburner cards and a little RAM, probably pushing us close to $10k mark. AMD Ryzen 3000 and Threadripper builds are going to be increasingly more common for normal budget media work. The Intel i9 is our current sweet spot for budget to power ratio. If I was in an unlimited budget post-facility, yeah, I'd get one cause it looks pretty damn cool and I love macOS. But I don't expect it to solve a lot of real world problems if upgrades are bottlenecked to proprietary offerings from Apple. We're going to have to wait and see if they can keep up with the rest of the industry.
- vinay_ys 7y ago
  Do you have your production software for Windows/Linux or is it only for MacOS? If you do, then you can very likely get the same specs for much lower cost from Taiwan based ODM builders like AIC, Gigabyte etc. They have these server-class motherboards in datacenter class mechanical/thermal chassis. After that, you can ask them to slap on whatever Intel CPU with how much ever RAM and how much ever PCI-E cards (GPUs, NVMe SSDs, custom ASIC accelerators, 50Gbps NIC etc) you want.
_ph_ 7y ago
Which is fine. But when are they going to announce a product for the rest of us?

by mseidl 7y ago

shard972 7y ago

That huge market of hollywood film editors as opposed to programmers.

la_barba 7y ago

You will not be editing raw 8K video using the tiny 8 core CPU and 256GB storage space of the base model which the parent was referring to ($6000). Its true that for Hollywood projects, the price of this might not be a huge deal, even with the baller fully speced out model. Heck in my own industry (pharma) we're paying thousands and thousands of dollars for software that doesn't do much except have the magical 21CFR compliant sticker that regulators look for.

dijit 7y ago
I wouldn’t put much emphasis on the storage. Most places that are doing video editing at this level are using all flash based SAN networking over 10/100GB Ethernet/fibre. As for the CPU, I agree. However I’m not 100% sure on how much can be offloaded to the GPU these days, 5-ish years ago when I was working with video editors a lot, it wasn’t much that could be offloaded. Maybe it’s improved a lot.
- CondensedBrain 7y ago
  I got Vegas Pro Edit from a Humble Bundle recently. Almost everything seems to be GPU accelerated.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago

I’m hearing this excuse way too much. People that aren’t doing that deserve a version of a Mac Pro they can buy.

saagarjha 7y ago
What's wrong with Mac Mini or iMac Pro?
- holy_city 7y ago
  The cooling.
- linguae 7y ago
  Here are my issues as a user of a 2013 Mac Pro: - Neither the Mac Mini nor 2019 Mac Pro are user-serviceable; you have to take your Mac to an Apple-approved repair center if you want to upgrade your RAM (see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205041#one https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205041#one and https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208377 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208377). I guess it's nice to have DIMMs when the computer is out of warranty, but I'd like to preserve my warranty and not have to pay Apple's prices for RAM upgrades plus labor costs. - The storage is soldered onto the motherboard in the Mac Mini, which precludes upgrading or replacing storage. - The storage for the iMac Pro is a special proprietary design, precluding the use of industry-standard M.2 NVMe flash drives. (Granted, the 2013 Mac Pro doesn't use industry standard M.2 NVMe drives, either, although I've read that it's possible to use some standard NVMe drives in the 2013 Mac Pro with the help of an adapter.) - The iMac Pro at $4999 is still much more expensive than the previous generation base Mac Pro, which was $2999. - The iMac Pro is an all-in-one design. I prefer desktop computers that are not housed inside a monitor; what happens if the monitor fails?
  - nathana 7y ago
    For most consumer PCs, I have no problem with most things being soldered on like RAM, CPU, etc...but soldering on the storage is unforgiveable. And it has nothing to do with being able to upgrade it, but rather it's about the problems this introduces (and the options it limits) when it comes to data recovery when your machine inevitably @#$@#s up.

imagetic 7y ago

I don't work in Hollywood, but I work heavily in production engineering for television productions that work on A LOT of 8K RAW video and multicam where time is critical, we have days to edit where hollywood has months and multicam is pretty damn taxing vs how a lot of movies operate. Our budgets are a fraction of a hollywood production though. The base model Mac Pro isn't going to be doing much at all. The higher end model with a lot of upgrades is going to be the sweet spot. You really need to push up to a 12-16 core, with 64-128gb RAM, 11+gb GPUs and then add the afterburner card (cause Apple won't play nice with Nvidia) if you want to be doing anything with 8K RAW on a high resolution display. Yes, the Mac Pro is essentially an infinitely upgradable machine. That's awesome. But third party support is questionable and without Nvidia that leaves a lot of speculation as to what the afterburner card will truly be able to do. I'd kill for that motherboard in a smaller CPU buildout. In a high budget post-facility environment, it may be an ideal candidate. Currently there isn't a Mac in our reach that doesn't overheat or choke on big media projects (we refuse to look at the iMac Pro seriously). We've been holding off buying new gear for several years. Most of the editors I work with would prefer to stay on macOS, but the base model should have been $3500 8-Core with a lot more GPU horses. Apple delivered a $6000 box without anything to back it up. At a minimum we'd have to upgrade to a bigger GPU and add the afterburner cards and a little RAM, probably pushing us close to $10k mark. AMD Ryzen 3000 and Threadripper builds are going to be increasingly more common for normal budget media work. The Intel i9 is our current sweet spot for budget to power ratio. If I was in an unlimited budget post-facility, yeah, I'd get one cause it looks pretty damn cool and I love macOS. But I don't expect it to solve a lot of real world problems if upgrades are bottlenecked to proprietary offerings from Apple. We're going to have to wait and see if they can keep up with the rest of the industry.

vinay_ys 7y ago
Do you have your production software for Windows/Linux or is it only for MacOS? If you do, then you can very likely get the same specs for much lower cost from Taiwan based ODM builders like AIC, Gigabyte etc. They have these server-class motherboards in datacenter class mechanical/thermal chassis. After that, you can ask them to slap on whatever Intel CPU with how much ever RAM and how much ever PCI-E cards (GPUs, NVMe SSDs, custom ASIC accelerators, 50Gbps NIC etc) you want.

_ph_ 7y ago

Which is fine. But when are they going to announce a product for the rest of us?