TwoScoops Posted June 6, 2017 Share Posted June 6, 2017 Any interest in this? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/05/imac-pro-apple-launches-powerful-new-desktop-macbook-starting-at-4999 Personally I would've liked to see them go back to the Mac Pro/Power Mac tower. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Andrew Reid Posted June 6, 2017 Administrators Share Posted June 6, 2017 They are going back to the Mac Pro with modular, upgradable components, plus a Pro cinema display. Good blog to follow on RSS if you want the first updates about this https://daringfireball.net Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwoScoops Posted June 6, 2017 Author Share Posted June 6, 2017 Ah, so a Mac Pro in addition to this? Good to have the choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
majoraxis Posted June 6, 2017 Share Posted June 6, 2017 I know what I want for Christmas - iMac-Pro. The Apple product page mention 10bit color monitor and a brighter screen. I love my 2014 iMac with the GPU graphic card - it runs Resolve 14 well enough, but the magic for me (besides the screen) is I can carry it around from work to home and back in the original box and treat it like a laptop so to speak. Anyways, having that much power in semi-portable system is fantastic... am I the only one who carts their iMac around (daily)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Axel Posted June 6, 2017 Share Posted June 6, 2017 Just keep in mind that - for many reasons - the $5000 "entry" model is already a complete overkill for editing and normal post, even if you want to edit H.265 4k natively (HEVC-Quicksync, HighSierra). None of the specs (8-core, 32GB RAM, 8GB VRAM) can be pushed to their limits. The "over a billion colors" of the display mean true 10-bit. With 500 nits, it probably is a pleasure to view video on and worth half of the price at least. Currently available iMacs are no workstations. They are insanely fast if you don't render many clips or if you only export short features. In many instances they are ahead of the trashcan MPs in benchmark comparisons then. But they turn hot when given bigger or more render tasks. This may or may not change with the new fan technology, but all in all, we'll see: no workstations. Who needs the maxed-out iMac Pro ($10.000 or even more?)? Maybe for this (quote): "Particle simulation? Elementary. Billowing smoke. Torrential rain. A wheat field in the wind. With up to 18 cores and Hyper-Threading, iMac Pro lets you build and render particle systems of all kinds — static or animated, 2D or 3D — with ease." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trek of Joy Posted June 6, 2017 Share Posted June 6, 2017 41 minutes ago, majoraxis said: I know what I want for Christmas - iMac-Pro. The Apple product page mention 10bit color monitor and a brighter screen. I love my 2014 iMac with the GPU graphic card - it runs Resolve 14 well enough, but the magic for me (besides the screen) is I can carry it around from work to home and back in the original box and treat it like a laptop so to speak. Anyways, having that much power in semi-portable system is fantastic... am I the only one who carts their iMac around (daily)? I've heard about people carting their iMac around, but never seen it. FYI, the late 2015 27" was updated to 10-bit, in case you didn't already know. That was when I dumped my trashcan Pro and got a loaded iMac. Would like the new Pro model, but my current machine eats 4k and stitches 15x42mp raw panos pretty easy. If I did heavy effects or grading, I'd be lusting after an iMac Pro. I'll wait a year for the new modular machine to be released and get an iMac Pro on the cheap from someone upgrading. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzynormal Posted June 6, 2017 Share Posted June 6, 2017 2 hours ago, Axel said: The "over a billion colors" of the display mean true 10-bit. With 500 nits, it probably is a pleasure to view In this digital age can we start calling pixel-peepers nitpickers? Nice to carry along a little archaic etymology into our brave new world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Members BTM_Pix Posted June 6, 2017 Super Members Share Posted June 6, 2017 The iLugger with wheels is pretty good for transporting iMacs The Lavolta is about a third of the price but is a bit less discrete.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hijodeibn Posted June 6, 2017 Share Posted June 6, 2017 13 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said: The iLugger with wheels is pretty good for transporting iMacs The Lavolta is about a third of the price but is a bit less discrete.... My Gosh, this guy is telling every raider out there he is a good prey to save the day….. graphicnatured 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Members BTM_Pix Posted June 6, 2017 Super Members Share Posted June 6, 2017 Just now, hijodeibn said: My Gosh, this guy is telling every raider out there he is a good prey to save the day….. I think its a good bit of reverse psychology myself. Anyone who is deranged enough to walk round like that is probably too much of a risk for your average mugger to bother with Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronChicago Posted June 6, 2017 Share Posted June 6, 2017 I use this for my PC when I need to edit at Starbucks. Inazuma, TwoScoops, jonpais and 3 others 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonpais Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 If I brought that along to a coffee shop here, they'd charge me for electricity. ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hijodeibn Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 2 hours ago, AaronChicago said: I use this for my PC when I need to edit at Starbucks. How can you even walk with that?…..but I love the idea, so cool…. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Axel Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 14 hours ago, Trek of Joy said: FYI, the late 2015 27" was updated to 10-bit, in case you didn't already know. Can you link to your source? I know that 10-bit was supported since El Capitan (or Yosemite? - I can't remember), but my own iMac (= yours) was advertised as showing "over 16,7 million colors", I think it was 20 something millions, thereby exceeding 8-bit and allowing Colorsync to represent 8-bit colors with accuracy and (through OSX 10-bit computing) dither gradients. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trek of Joy Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 22 minutes ago, Axel said: Can you link to your source? I know that 10-bit was supported since El Capitan (or Yosemite? - I can't remember), but my own iMac (= yours) was advertised as showing "over 16,7 million colors", I think it was 20 something millions, thereby exceeding 8-bit and allowing Colorsync to represent 8-bit colors with accuracy and (through OSX 10-bit computing) dither gradients. Oops, apologies, I got the update to a wide gamut display mixed up with 10-bit support. Its been awhile since I've looked at specs. It will do 10-bit with an external monitor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Axel Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 32 minutes ago, Trek of Joy said: It will do 10-bit with an external monitor. The beauty of working with a compact system (also applies to laptops like MBP) is that you are forced to reconsider your workflows. I used to have a "triptychon", one monitor for browser, one for timeline and viewer, one for AV-out. > You need a big desk for that. > The monitors for the GUI don't have to be state-of-the-art and top notch, but the reference monitor has. > The latter needs to top the color accuracy the system (OS with Colorsync and embedded NLE) can provide. Was justified in the past with iMac displays. You had to bypass the system's color profiles. Isn't anymore. > You need a video card (unless you use a TV set over HDMI, which even some renowned colorists see as a viable option). > Additional costs, more chances that drivers don't work after an update. > You need to see full resolution at two stages in the process: qualifying your footage and certain tricky post effects. > 50-70% of the GUI isn't needed then. For instance, you don't need a timeline to organize footage. Actually, you don't need any GUI at all. Toggle fullscreen, with continuous playback enabled. Navigate with up, down and JKL, set i + o, hit f to subclip your selections. That's eight keys to get rid of the GUI. At least with a laptop, I'd do it this way. Fortunately, with 10.3's workspaces on a 5k display, I can see the event browser AND the inspector AND a 100% UHD viewer nonetheless. Why should there be a middle monitor with a timeline and a, er, canvas idle? All in all, the more I know what I'm doing at any given time and where I am in my project, the less I need a graphic representation. I admit, though, that this was asking too much if I had to manage tracks. But I don't, so I can as well reduce he UI to the maximum (for instance the height of the timeline, if I "zoom" on video, the audio clips may just be colored lines). When I see a traditional editing suite now, I realize that I don't miss it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joema Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 18 hours ago, Axel said: ....for many reasons - the $5000 "entry" model is already a complete overkill for editing and normal post, even if you want to edit H.265 4k natively (HEVC-Quicksync, HighSierra). None of the specs (8-core, 32GB RAM, 8GB VRAM) can be pushed to their limits.... That is not my experience. I have a top-spec 2015 iMac 27 with multiple Thunderbolt 2 RAIDs (inc'l SSD), and I am constantly struggling with performance issues when editing H264 4k on FCPX. As fast and efficient as FCPX is, it's not sufficient to smoothly edit H264 4k multicam on a 4Ghz iMac. It takes one *week* to transcode to proxy the content from the documentary I'm working on. If applying compute-intensive effects like Neat Video, de-flicker or stabilization this takes forever on 4k. My iMac is *frequently* at the limit and this is obvious from looking at the pegged CPU cores in iStat Menus. For playing around with some short single-cam H264 4k videos, a $5000 iMac Pro might be overkill. But 4k is no longer an esoteric niche -- it is the new standard. If your cameras capture in ProRes it's less a problem, but this is typically only an option for scripted narratives, commercials and short-form material. For larger documentaries and news programs it is very common to capture in H264. So handling larger amounts of H264 4k and soon H265 is a big issue. For me an 8-core iMac Pro is not overkill, it's likely inadequate. That's why I'm glad they will offer an 18-core version. It's currently unclear whether the iMac Pro will support Quick Sync or some other hardware accelerated encoding, so the only way to compensate for this is lots of cores. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonpais Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 1 hour ago, joema said: That is not my experience. I have a top-spec 2015 iMac 27 with multiple Thunderbolt 2 RAIDs (inc'l SSD), and I am constantly struggling with performance issues when editing H264 4k on FCPX. As fast and efficient as FCPX is, it's not sufficient to smoothly edit H264 4k multicam on a 4Ghz iMac. It takes one *week* to transcode to proxy the content from the documentary I'm working on. If applying compute-intensive effects like Neat Video, de-flicker or stabilization this takes forever on 4k. My iMac is *frequently* at the limit and this is obvious from looking at the pegged CPU cores in iStat Menus. For playing around with some short single-cam H264 4k videos, a $5000 iMac Pro might be overkill. But 4k is no longer an esoteric niche -- it is the new standard. If your cameras capture in ProRes it's less a problem, but this is typically only an option for scripted narratives, commercials and short-form material. For larger documentaries and news programs it is very common to capture in H264. So handling larger amounts of H264 4k and soon H265 is a big issue. For me an 8-core iMac Pro is not overkill, it's likely inadequate. That's why I'm glad they will offer an 18-core version. It's currently unclear whether the iMac Pro will support Quick Sync or some other hardware accelerated encoding, so the only way to compensate for this is lots of cores. My experience too, on a 2013 iMac 27" built-to-order. I'm seriously looking at an upgrade. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
majoraxis Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 The key to getting the good video editing performance out of the iMac is having Late 2014/2015 iMac with the GPU video card with 4 mb of video ram and good amount of memory. The Late 2015 iMac with the AMD Radeon R9 M395X (the X version has the 4 gb of video memory) and 32 mb of memory with an internal SSD is great. The Late 2014 iMac with the AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB and 24 megs of memory is very good a well with Resolve 14. That's what I'm running and it of course it could be faster when you add plugins and multiple nodes of color correction, but for editing without effects if is a very good performer. Just remember "X" is best when it comes to 2014/2015 iMac video cards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silvertonesx24 Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 17 hours ago, BTM_Pix said: That is one of the most hipster things I have ever seen in my life. Amro Othman 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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