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Here is an answer from a pro colorist / editor. It will give you a perspective and a cool tip how to edit any footage on a not very powerful computer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olvTKnLJCJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTes9KkwmME According to another of his videos, 12K BRAW is so well optimized that it can play without a problem on a Macbook Pro 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ShXVTiGD80

Further to this, I watched a few past videos from Blaine yesterday and this video (while quite chaotic) gives a bunch of pretty interesting examples of how using a Film Emulation of some kind combined with some of the basic Resolve tools can give quick but very effective results: Perhaps the most interesting thing about it is the way he treats Resolve.. he shows that if you know a few techniques then you can get in, make some good adjustments, get a great result, and get out, and move on with your day. It's sort of a rare counter-example of the impression that Resolve is finicky and takes hours and hours, which almost all other colour grading videos give, but isn't true. At it's most basic, you can just apply a LUT to every clip and then make basic adjustments in a node prior to the LUT on each clip and can get great results in a really quick way. This is the way that film-makers grade when they want a result, rather than the way that colour grading YouTubers grade when they're making a YT video about some nuance or other. The section from 5:00 on with the test shots shows that even if the shots weren't filmed well at all, you can get great results quickly with just a few quick techniques.

What a waste of space, I mean I have a Z9, I always use 4k mode and zero sharpening because it is already too detailed. Once I had the misfortune of using the 4k from 8k output on older people, that thing was so hard to blur the skin as it was so detailed. What is the use of using such resolution then to put all types softening filters.

Yes, it is a bargain for what it is. I mean it seems RED was not doing that well, but for a bigger player, it is a small sum for a big return. I mean Nikon goes from a nobody in the video world, to one of the cameras used in the Cinema industry. They also get some quite unique tech, like the global sensor tech, a codec/color science widely use in high-end cinema industry. And a way to enter the Cinema lens market. The likes of Canon must be biting their lips, it is so cheap that only securing the mount would have been worth it.

I wouldn't buy a Mac right now. I'd wait until after June if possible. I think there will be new M4 macs, most likely a new Mac Studio, Mini, MacBook Pro, and maybe a new iMac. Or, if you do get the "older" model, get it at a reduced price.

The price is revealed. $85 million.

The only way to upgrade the GPU on a MBP is to buy a new MBP for another $4k. Not the best plan unless you're independently wealthy - and if so, then you might as well just spend the extra $300 for the better chip now. 😃

BM has sample files for download. They're on these pages under the "Generation 5 Color Science" heading (different files are available for download on each page): https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicursacine https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicursaminipro

The above is exactly why I say there are asterisks and "it depends" in the answer. Will either computer be able to play back 12K braw in Resolve without dropping frames? As long as the storage is fast enough, absolutely. Will it be able to play back in Premiere without dropping frames? 🤷‍♂️ FCP? 🤷‍♂️ As I said before, my M2 Max (the weaker version) w/ 64GB is just able to play back 8K raw from my R5 in Resolve. If I put on a grade where I tweak a few raw options, add FilmConvert Nitrate, and tweak some curves/color warper stuff afterward, I still get 23.98 on it as long as I'm not doing anything else in the background. Canon raw is a nightmare codec in terms of performance. Braw is easier. One other thing to consider is that I'm sure that the local Apple store (if there is one) has some M3 Max models on the showroom floor. If you're nice about it, they might be willing to at least put FCP on one (or let you download Resolve) to load a sample project file and some footage. Since the UM12K has been out for a long time, I'm sure some nice reviewer/youtuber has put some raw files online for you to download. You could just give it a try with one of your sample grades to understand if it performs as needed.

there is a cost effect ratio here too. other than magic lantern cameras, uncompressed raw cameras are extremely expensive, like the Alexa family. on the other hand, a 60p camera with a low end codec can be very cheap. doing action packed shots, the latter one will be more suitable. try a 24p thin codec camera, you can hardly see clearly anything once the camera is panning, tilting, or doing other complexing movements.

It would be great to be able to give a straight answer, but there are too many variables. Even something like the SSD option of the Mac model chosen might mean that it can or cannot do something. Going to Resolve, there are literally dozens of variables involved. Even if it's just 12K footage on a 4K timeline with a LUT - will Resolve be using Linear or Tetrahedral interpolation for the LUT? This matters as it's extra processing power required, etc.

Further to what @eatstoomuchjam said, I think there are only three types of performance: it can't play ungraded footage realtime (ie, you can't edit with it) it can play footage realtime but can't do it with a heavy grade (ie, you can do some colour grading realtime) it can play footage realtime with a heavy grade (ie, it's reliable and you can colour grade live in front of a client) The spec required for level 2 should be researchable and BM would have made this pretty efficient I would imagine. The spec for level 3 is a "how long is a piece of string" question, depending on a ton of variables including timeline resolution and only you can answer it, but if you're going to be doing lots of heavy things like NR and spatial treatments on a 4K timeline then you're probably well into Ultra / Studio territory.

There are a lot of asterisks and "it depends" in any answer to that, but overall, I'd say that if you're spending $4k on a MBP (which updating from the base RAM and SSD would do), if you plan to edit 12k, it might be worth the extra $300 to jump to the bigger chip. It partly depends on how many effects/how much noise reduction, etc. I'd also say that if you're like most people, if you're gonna spend $4k on a laptop, you're going to want it to last for a while. You might factor that in too. Speaking for myself, I bought the lower of the M2 Max chips in my MBP and it's just barely enough to handle 8k Canon raw in Resolve and once I add noise reduction to the clips that need it, export times get pretty slow (like 40 minutes for a 15 minute short). Would having the system be 30% faster help a lot? Not really. 30 minutes to export the clips wouldn't be life changing. You might also consider whether M4 is coming soon - M2 was released in June 2022 and M3 in October 2023. If the M4 is coming, it'll probably have about a 10-15% speed boost over M3 - that or you might be able to get a nice deal on an M3 at that time. Depends on when you're planning to start shooting 12k, I suppose. 😁

I love the way Blaine constructs his videos. Zero fluff. Just tips and tricks the whole time.

Cullen Kelly says that the grain and the halation are nicer than the previous separate OFX plugins, so that's promising if you're a connoisseur / picky 🙂

From the videos I've seen on Film Look Creator, I think subtractive saturation and split toning are the things that stuck at to me as most interesting - that and I'm going to need to spend a bit of time with their grain generator to see if I like the output.

I recommend FilmConvert or Dehancer if people like the overall film look but don't want to learn to colour grade - it's a quick and effective solution. Resolve 19 has a new plugin called Film Look Creator included in the paid version that is like FilmConvert / Dehancer except it doesn't model specific film stocks but is designed to give a flexible overall film look. For most people it would be better than FilmConvert or Dehancer just for creating a nice look and not having to learn colour management etc.

Uhhh I know! Maybe this summer when I have more time! The advent of internal LUTs I think will help me on that journey. Seeing what folks have done with Dehancer has been motivating as well.

Yep! Hey - you should look into colour grading! 🙂

Blaine Westropp is also killing it recently.

Well, I dislike HFR as much as the next guy, but the reason he's abandoning it is because of the ecosystemic/economic context within the movie industry which doesn't want to take visual risks with their production investment, not because Ang personally doesn't like HFR. Aside from that, never been sure why he's enamored with the look. I've read his rationale, but it still doesn't jibe. HFR pulls movies way too close to visual "reality" and narrative film are stories. Make 'em ups. Pretend. The nature of 24p's look is a huge asset.

Slight digression from the topic, but unless you really need the flippy screen, you might consider the RX100 V over the ZV-1. The V is even smaller, but weighs just a hair more (probably due to having more metal and less plastic in the body) (and I think the V is cheaper on the used market). The flippy screen was just about the only difference between the two cameras.

Happy May Earthlings! I had another very busy month, but here's a brand new track for you on my Fantasy 13 page: "TROUBLE IN DREAMLAND" https://soundimage.org/fantasy-13/ As always, it's 100% free to use with attribution, like my thousands of other tracks. Enjoy! 🙂

One of the things I find hilarious about YouTube is that a lot of the big camera influencers talk about leveling up channels and increasing production value, etc. A lot of the bigger names have between 50-200k subscribers and a lot of them had the advantage of being early to starting camera channels. Newer, theoretically popular people like Cam Mackey have like 65k. Meanwhile, a friend of mine decided to do something with his YouTube channel a couple of years ago after the news did a story about his having purchased the monorail for $1/car from our local zoo when they stopped running it and turning it into a private campsite on some land in Wisconsin. He mostly repurposes junk that he finds at garage sales and thrift stores into things like push-pull carts on railroad tracks and satellite dishes coated in aluminum foil. The cameras he uses are mostly potatoes - like 25-year old camcorders and Hero 3-type stuff. He has a pretty decent natural grasp of editing and story, though, and he's a funny guy. He also would freely admit that he neither knows a lot about cameras nor cares to know any more. Last I checked, he was at about 187k subscribers (including me - I like watching his stuff). So if the goal is just to grow a YouTube channel, the quality of the camera is probably the least important bit. Making half of your video be slow motion slideshow garbage so that you can put "cinematic" in the title doesn't really get views if the rest of the content is garbage. I buy too much gear for my own mediocre talent, but that's partly just because I want it and after a lot of years, I can almost always find something to trade in to make stuff more affordable. I have no illusions that buying a Komodo-X will substantially improve anything I do, but I might do it anyway. If I get it, I'll probably like it a lot for a while and then after a couple of years, I'll probably trade it in toward something else. Anyway, another thing to remember with these YouTubers that are in the business of making day 1 review commercials for various channels - when they're showing "what this camera can do," go watch their older stuff with a camera from last year. Most of the time, it looks almost exactly like whatever they're doing with the new camera because they're really not that different. One of the most laughable things that people say on various camera forums or YT comments is "I can't wait for (creator name here) to get it so we can see what that camera can really do." Wanna know what that camera will look at when your favorite creator gets it? Go watch the review they did of the camera before it. It'll look pretty much like that.

And not only RAW, Quick Sync (hardware decoding of H.264/HEVC media) supplied by Intel takes a lead AFAIK :- )

My guess is that the difference in actual user experience of a system receiving a 923 and one receiving 893 will be negligible. Between the two, I'd choose the one where I get a better deal.

Well, not exactly the fastest... https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-14900KS-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-7950X3D/m2295306vsm2052977 https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/intel-core-i9-14900ks-content-creation-review/ Except for RAW though:

Speaking of devil... «The primary area where we found a notable difference between the 3D V-Cache processors was in thermals and power draw, where the X3D CPUs used around 30% less power and remained around 5-10 degrees Celsius cooler on our test benches.» source «(...) 7950x can actually support 192GB of RAM at the moment, with the possibility of supporting 256GB RAM soon (BIOS updates are already out)» source So, any doubts on the best processor out there? ;- )

If you're in the PC world, you're definitely better off editing on desktop vs laptop if you're working with high-res footage or doing effects, etc. Most laptops throttle down a lot when not plugged in and (in my experience) make a jet engine noise when dealing with a prolonged load on CPU/GPU. And as ac6000cw says, the mobile GPU's are almost always lesser versions of their desktop counterparts. Also when on battery, life tends to be very short because CPU/GPU pull a lot of power. My M2 Max, on the other hand, can handle 8k Canon raw acceptably - and I got the weaker variant of it. Performance is almost the same whether plugged in or on battery. Fans do ramp up when working it hard (now that I've added denoising to most of the scenes that need it, the 14-minute short I'm currently working on/grading definitely has the fans running full blast when I run an export). Basically, in absolute performance numbers a high-end PC desktop will beat any Mac currently on the market and at a fraction of the cost of a Mac Studio ($3k for a decent Ryzen + RTX 4090!). A top-of-the-line PC laptop plugged into the wall will also outperform the MBP in absolute numbers (except whoooooosh fan noise)... but if you want to actually be mobile, the Mac is the hands-down winner.

I agree (as someone who has done all my editing for years on either gaming or workstation-class laptops). Generally, decent laptops in both of those categories should have cooling good enough for long-term high CPU and GPU loads, but you do need to choose carefully - and expect them to be noisy when they are working hard! Also be careful when comparing desktop and laptop GPUs - they can have the same or very similar model numbers, but the laptop version might have different performance specs (and more aggressive thermal management) e.g. : (info from Wikipedia) The desktop version of the nVidia Quadro RTX 4000 (100-125 watts Thermal Design Power): ...versus the mobile version (60-80 watts TDP):

It's worth pointing out that the thermals might be the dominant factor here, considering that laptops will throttle down on their performance in order to manage overheating, so a few extra fans in the laptop can make more difference than which model of CPU / GPU you buy!

It costs about a grand extra... (from the current discounted price today of $2900 for DELL desktop route) https://www.pugetsystems.com/press/press-release-puget-systems-launches-new-laptops/ https://www.pugetsystems.com/workstations/laptops/c17-g/ source

For the most part, if somebody is looking at an Alienware prebuilt, they're probably not the target audience for BYOPC. At that point, it's better to go with somebody like Maingear, NZXT, or Starforge - they all use off-the-shelf parts, but you'll also pay more for the same specs as you'll get in a prebuilt from one of the big players. I'd be willing to bet that for a similar price to what you'd pay them for the above system, you'd be able to get a 14" MBP with M3 Max - and then you'd be able to edit on the go too. 😉

I would definitely not buy an Alienware prebuilt. They tend to have poor upgradability, might use weird custom parts (I think in the past there were custom sized mainboards and/or PSU used in some models) and tend to have no too great thermals. Building a PC is quite easy and there are part lists available to ensure compatibility between components.

I've heard that the 12K files are very usable in terms of performance, but it will likely depend on what mode you're shooting in. Most people aren't using the 12K at 12K - they're using it at 4K or 8K. Regardless, Resolve has an incredible array of functionality to improve performance and enable real-time editing and even colour correction on lesser hardware. This is a good overview:

Without having shot 12K, I'll say that system looks like more than enough (and if it's not, there won't be many systems that are). The RTX 4090 is the most powerful consumer GPU on the market and that's a really decent CPU. It might even be overkill (though overkill also means you probably won't be shopping for a better system in 1-2 years). If you aren't already familiar with PugetBench, Puget Systems have a nice database of results that people have achieved with various systems. https://benchmarks.pugetsystems.com/benchmarks/ What's not clear on that is how expandable the system is - which was a problem with the Alienware that I had for a while. There seems to be only one more slot for NVMe beyond the boot drive and the USB ports are only 3.2 and not 4. The Alienware that I had only had a single free PCIe slot as well. In my case, it was enough to add a 10g network card and that was about it. If you want to put 12K footage locally on the machine, 2TB is going to get cramped fast. Fast USB 3.2 storage will be able to keep up, though as of a year or so ago, flash-based USB 3.x storage arrays were not so common - at least at a reasonable price. If it were me, I'd look for something with 2-3 additional NVMe slots beyond the boot drive to be able to add more local storage and I'd look for something with USB 4 since it will be compatible with most/all Thunderbolt devices which gives a lot of better/more interesting options for external storage/devices.