New iMac vs. Mac Pro

Hello to all,

I'm about to purchase a new system and 2 resellers have suggested going with the new iMac instead of a Mac Pro. I've also read Walter Biscardi's blog about his iMac set-up (www.biscardicreative.com/blog/2012/08/anatomy-of-an-imac-suite/). Please chime in re; pros/cons going with an iMac set-up as opposed to the Mac Pro and on the below system being recommended.

Initially I'll continue using FCP 7 however eventually making the switch to either Premiere or Avid, probably Avid, since that's where I started from. In addition to the editing software I also use Motion, Color, After Effects and Photoshop. I edit 3 shows for television broadcast and this year will start delivering the shows in HD format.

The iMac being recommended is:

27-inch: 3.2GHz
3.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i5
Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
32 GB Ram
1TB hard drive1
3TB Fusion Drive
2 GB NVIDIA Graphics card

w/a Intensity Extreme Thunderbolt and a Blue Yeti USB mic for voiceovers

Broadcast Monitor:
HP Dreamcolor (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/382087-382087-64283-72270-3884471-3648397.html?dnr=1)

As always, thanks so much,
Lisha

The Mac Pros have not been updated for 3 years. The last "update" merely gave it a mild speed bump. Rumors are saying that a new Mac Pro will be released early next year, and we are expecting it to be different, partly because the design itself has stayed the same since the Power Mac G5 that was released some 7 years ago. It may also signal a shift in Apple's direction considering the shrinking desktop market. So most are waiting for that release, before deciding.

The iMacs are great machines and it is no slouch. Because the processors are pretty modern, they have pretty fast clock speed per core. The fusion drive will also mean that apps will load much faster. I have an SSD on my MBP, and the speed in loading apps is amazing.

What is recommended is a minimum of 2 gigs per core. Karl Soule from Adobe wrote that it also includes virtual cores (hyper threading). So a minimum of 16 gigs of RAM is good for your machine.

The MacPros are faster when parallel processing is involved, because it has more cores- up to 24 virtual cores vs 8 on the iMac. While the iMac should be sufficient speed boost for FCP7, Premiere Pro loves more processors and will use all of them. I had a session cutting 5K RED Raw in a 1080 timeline the other day and the speed off the MacPro was outstanding. Walter Biscardi also mentioned that he has one MacPro in his suite that he mainly uses for rendering.

The HP dreamcolor is a nice monitor, but doesn't work with interlaced formats. The FSI monitors are less fussy.

As far as the NLEs are concerned, all the modern NLEs have their strengths. PPro's strength lies in the wide native format support and AE integration, Avid's strength lies in long form editorial and with a good Avid SAN like the Unity/Isis, collaborative editorial.



www.strypesinpost.com

My biggest concern about purchasing an iMac, or any integrated system, is that computer technology changes so much faster than display technology. When an iMac's processors and video hardware are old and useless, the display section will be perfectly usable. You will need to ditch the whole box, beautiful display and all, to move on to new technologies.

That's the direction Apple seems to be taking with their new products.



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Last August, I deliberated whether to replace my 2006 Mac Pro with a new 2012 model or an iMac. I opted for another Mac Pro, despite its lack of Thunderbolt and USB-3. The tipping point for me was that I have existing AJA Kona and FirmTek eSATA cards. Had I switched to an iMac, I'd need to obtain new video capture/output and eSATA devices that connect via Thunderbolt.

The iMacs have enough horsepower to handle most editing requirements, but I am not a fan of their closed architecture. Replacing an iMac's internal drive is complicated. The Mac Pro is the only truly customizable Macintosh. It is simple to replace drives, RAM and the video card. Even the processors can be replaced with some skill. Plus, I still rely on Firewire, which can be added to the new iMacs only through a Thunderbolt adapter.

Another possible factor to consider is whether you anticipate a need to boot into OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. The current Mac Pro can run 10.6, which supports older (Power-PC) applications. I believe OS 10.8 Mountain Lion is the minimum OS for the new iMacs.

I believe Apple CEO Tim Cook was quoted as saying that a new Mac Pro is planned for "later next year." That could be late 2013.

As for a television monitor, I don't care for the look of video on LCDs, even the pricey models. I am glad to have acquired a couple broadcast CRTs while they remained available.

>I am not a fan of their closed architecture

Neither am I. When I was looking at the Resolve set ups recently, I realized how quickly you'll need a PCIe expansion chassis. And no, you still can't hook up GPUs to a chassis powered by Thunderbolt. Not sure if we can ever do that.


> I still rely on Firewire, which can be added to the new iMacs only through a
>Thunderbolt adapter

Some users have mentioned that FireWire is slower with the adapter, it is also dicey with bus powered FW devices. But I think in a couple of years, this argument will be moot. Surprisingly, USB 2.0 seems to be the more enduring format, and I am glad that most of my older drives have USB 2.0 on them. I guess there is a price you pay for being different.

If you can wait for up to 10 months, then waiting for the new Mac Pro may be a worthwhile. Meanwhile, if you need a Mac now, and you need the parallel processing or pcie expandability that the MacPro has to offer, then get the Mac Pro.



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[ I am glad to have acquired a couple broadcast CRTs while they remained available.]

At my desk I still use a 14" Trinitron broadcast bottle for standard def-- but it won't be accurate for REC 709, the HD colorspace. Is there a switchable flat monitor out there for a grand? I'm keen on dumping all the bottles here, and that's really the only one left.

And how would I pump out HD signal to it from a 27" iMac? Thunderbolt?

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Advance to next/previous keyframes in a clip with Shift/Option-K !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide™ Power Pack
with FCP7 KeyGuide --
now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Yep. Aja and BMD sell a few thunderbolt IOs.



www.strypesinpost.com

And recommendations on 709 flat monitors? I don't need big, just accurate color.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Advance to next/previous keyframes in a clip with Shift/Option-K !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide™ Power Pack
with FCP7 KeyGuide --
now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

You want a decent size if you're using it for color correcting. A small one tends to hide noise.

Dolby has a nice one, although the price is a little steep.

[www.dolby.com]

FSI would probably be more economical. 10 bit panels should be pretty good for general color correction work. I say go for a 24", as 17" is pretty small. I am working on a 17" TVLogic and I hate the size. Can't see noise unless i'm 3 inches away from the screen.

[www.flandersscientific.com]



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Quote
Loren Miller
And recommendations on 709 flat monitors? I don't need big, just accurate color.

Getting BT.709 color involves getting at least 4 things right.
1. The Y'CbCr must be converted to R'G'B' in accordance with the BT.709 equations.
2. The R'G'B' must be converted to RGB with correct gamma (not really specified in BT.709).
3. Pure R,G,B must have the BT.709 specified primary colors on the monitor.
4. The balance must make white D65.

Some monitors accept Y'CbCr and handle #1. Most monitors don't. They accept only R'G'B' (or even RGB), so the application that plays your video, perhaps in conjunction with your video card, handles #1.

Many monitors accept R'G'B' and handle #2. Some monitors don't. Then the application (or video card) handles #2.

In my opinion, #3 is what separates the BT.709 qualified monitors from others. A September post shows the result of using a monitor which can't itself produce the BT.709 primaries. In theory, an .icc profile loaded into the graphics card could transform the monitor's incorrect native primaries to nearly correct primaries, but my software couldn't generate such a profile. I just today replaced that Samsung 305T with an NEC PA301W. This monitor has an extra-generous color gamut to start with, and its OSD adjustments let you shift the primaries to the BT.709 primaries. The transformation is done in the monitor's hardware with high precision. #4 is trivial.

Look for a smaller monitor that covers the full BT.709 (same as sRGB) gamut and which allows gamut selection. It's hard to get accurate gamut information from manufacturers. I eventually determined that the NEC PA301W was using a certain LG panel whose specs assured full BT.709 coverage. A monitor whose native gamut does not cover the full BT.709 gamut can still "emulate" the BT.709 gamut, but this is not quite a BT.709 monitor.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Very helpful, Gerard and Dennis!

It makes using a next-gen iMac a little more realistic if Apple doesn't release a new Mac pro with PCIe, internal drive bays, Thunderbolt, etc.

God, I love my Mac Pro for its ease of upgrades. I hope they don't try to fix that the way they tried to fix FCP. It's like they've switched places with Adobe.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Advance to next/previous keyframes in a clip with Shift/Option-K !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide™ Power Pack
with FCP7 KeyGuide --
now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

I'm tickled pink with the first calibration of my new NEC PA301W. It used no NEC software, just the Spyder3 software in conjunction with the monitor's OSD adjustments. A 1920x1080 monitor with very fine BT.709 color should be obtainable for $1000.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Interesting info, Dennis. But for Loren's question, does your NEC monitor handle 50/60i? Sounds like a computer monitor, so I'm not hopeful for it.



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strypes: in a sense, any 60Hz monitor can display 60i if the graphics card cooperates by sending it 60p in which each frame has the appropriate half of its lines black. Do any graphics cards do that? Does anyone make a little 60i-to-60p-non-deinterlacing box that does it?

Here are the specifications for the 30" NEC. It doesn't accept interlaced signals. Even for progressive, it doesn't accept video Y'CbCr signals, only R'G'B'. It's not a "broadcast monitor" except in its color space abilities (which depend on its getting the Y'CbCr as the correct R'G'B').

My goal is to see accurate BT.709 colors right on the FCP canvas. The calibration result shown in my previous post was for a test video playing on the FCP canvas. The temporal characteristics of this display are unfortunately poor. This may have a tiny effect on color perception.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

> Do any graphics cards do that? Does anyone make a little 60i-to-60p-non-deinterlacing box that
>does it?

Not that I know of. If there is, it will probably be a hardware conversion from 60i SDI to 60p HDMI that or 3G SDI. I'm not familiar with 60p formats in 3G SDI.

>The temporal characteristics of this display are unfortunately poor. This may have a tiny effect on
>color perception.

For color correction, judging noise level is important. For that, temporal accuracy is required.



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With juddery playback the noise is judged a bit higher than true. If the 50i/50p video is conformed to 60i/60p it will play judderfree but the noise is judged a bit lower than true. These judgements depend on ones eyes. Will an experienced colorist reach wrong conclusions in either case? Are color judgements significantly impaired by the judder?

Loren Miller who asked for "just accurate color" is in NTSC-land, so the 50Hz judder problem doesn't affect him. With skillful calibration, the NEC gives accurate BT.709 colors right on the FCP canvas. I feed the NEC SpectraView II software a gamma=2.9 curve in order for it to produce gamma=2.35 on the FCP canvas. The ratio 2.9/2.35 is the ratio 2.22/1.8. I'm running Leopard.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

I don't know about judging colors via the FCP canvas. That's supposed to be non-managed color space, but occasionally I see gamma shifts on playback/pause, which leads me to believe the canvas is wonky. Furthermore, the RT extreme preview engine does strange chroma shifts to the image, so the image will look different before and after rendering. Also, the viewer/canvas does not display both fields unless scaled to 100%, even then, it's not displaying interlacing, but field combing.

Monitoring during color correction requires perception of noise. Eg. When color correcting under exposed footage, being able to gauge noise levels allows the colorist to know when to stop cranking up gain/gamma on the footage.



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Some editors do their own color corrections and do it within FCP. Probably most editors prefer to see the honest (if uncorrected) colors in the canvas. Canvas viewing would be worthless if the color (for an unnoisy image) were different when paused and when running. I made measurements that found paused and running colors identical.

My calibration test video is 8-bit uncompressed. I use this because I can read the Y'CbCr directly within the file, to have no doubts about its contents. (QT Edit verifies that the header/trailer says "HD" for the color space.) OK, with the calibrated monitor, the canvas shows nearly perfect BT.709 colors from 8-bit uncompressed video. But does it shows other video so perfectly? To check this I made a ProRes HQ render in FCP from the test video. Where the codec settings ask for gamma correction I selected "none". The two test videos showed nearly, but not always exactly, the same colors. The grey scale agreement was perfect. One of the 12 test colors appeared DeltaE=1.75 different in the two. It is a pale red with Y'=149, Cb=115, Cr=184. Per BT.709, I expected this test color to output as (255,128,127) in R'G'B'. The RGB Parade scope, which I distrust, says the 8-bit uncompressed is (255,128,126 or 127) while the ProRes HQ is (255,128,128). Such tiny differences must be tolerated in multi-codec video.

Using Compressor to make a ProRes HQ from the 8-bit uncompressed test video gave a gruesome result in the FCP canvas, very different from both videos discussed above. QT Edit, a great tool, showed that Compressor had assigned it the "unknown/unknown/unknown" color space. Apparently, the FCP canvas reads the color space information clip-by-clip in a sequence. With the color space made "HD" by means of QT Edit, this ProRes HQ agreed perfectly with ... (guess which) ... the 8-bit uncompressed video.

While FCS keeps you on your toes, accurate BT.709 color in the canvas is possible.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

[Note added 5 Jan: I continued the paused vs. running experiment using the pale red test color. It did display slightly differently (DeltaE=1.57) in the two ways. But I traced this to the freeze being slightly different from the single frame from which it was made (in FCP). RGB Parade scoped the difference, and when I displayed a single frame from within the freeze vs. the running freeze they displayed alike. Once again the wonkiness wasn't in the canvas or the display but in FCP/FCS itself.]

>I made measurements that found paused and running colors identical.

Gamma shifting on playback is a occasional issue. This is probably due to the file being flagged with the wrong gamma. I have some clips rendered from Apple Color that exhibits this issue.

Do this other thing. Take an XDCAM EX clip, drop it in a ProRes timeline. Start color correcting. You will realize there is a chroma shift before and after rendering. With this chroma shift, how do you know what you are color correcting?



www.strypesinpost.com

>Take an XDCAM EX clip, drop it in a ProRes timeline. Start color correcting. You will realize there is a chroma shift before and after rendering. With this chroma shift, how do you know what you are color correcting?

This is a problem about FCP rendering. How "off color" is the preview? Must you re-render after each twist of the color dial? That might add a few seconds to your work or might lead you on forever.

The accuracy of the preview surely differs from codec to codec, so we should find which codecs allow happy color correction in FCP. I use only ProRes and uncompressed, and will do some experiments with these.

Rendering does make a new clip. I'm expecting the viewer to show accurate BT.709 color from a fully rendered clip. Then we only need the QT export of the clip not to change it. QT Edit is most helpful for identifying and undoing incorrect color flags in QT files.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

>This is a problem about FCP rendering. How "off color" is the preview?

There was a green/magenta shift before and after rendering.

And then depending on the codecs, the type of RT, the render precision, you may get different results. If you are using a 3rd party plugin that sets FCP to unlimited RT (orange render bar), superwhites are clipped before rendering. Back when I did a show on DvcproHD in the FCP6 days, rendering lifted my blacks much higher than I would have liked it to. I've had too many strange irratic issues doing CC work in FCP over the years, so i don't do it anymore aside from the occasional slight color adjustments.


>Must you re-render after each twist of the color dial? That might add a few seconds to your work or might lead you on forever.

If you are color correcting, how do you know how much color to nudge if it's not a WYSIWYG monitoring system before rendering?



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>If you are color correcting, how do you know how much color to nudge if it's not a WYSIWYG monitoring system before rendering?

As I understand things, a monitoring system can only display what it's offered, in one or another state of render. It's the job of the editing or colorizing system to render-well-enough to have the nudged color. When adjusting color on a single frame, that single frame should be instantly fully rendered so the monitoring system can give WYSIWYG. If FCP fails to do this, you might be able to help it manually.

What I described is a sequence: nudge the color; render; nudge the color; render; etc.
With any luck the sequence quickly converges to the intended correction. If it doesn't, you're right that FCP color correction is a flop.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

90% of the time it is fine if you avoid 3rd party plugins. I haven't been able to duplicate the green/magenta chroma shifting with ProRes, so that's a sign it may have been fixed or it's just an issue of XDCAM EX in a ProRes timeline. 3rd party plugins aren't blessed by the green RT render bars, so it's unlimited RT, and unlimited RT does not show superwhite values until after rendering.

I never considered FCP to be a capable finishing machine, at least not in terms of color correction. I've always seen FCP7 as primarily an offline tool, with color correction tools to show proof of concept and to do some quick fixes during the offline edit.

>If FCP fails to do this, you might be able to help it manually.

Doing a manual render every time you nudge the color wheels a bit is very slow and clunky. In theory you can say it works, but in practice, when you have paying clients in the room, or if you need to rush out a full grade for a half hour show in a couple of days, it's as clunky as doing compositing in Microsoft Paint or doing a webpage in Text Edit. Heck. I won't even bother doing a full grade with keyers, hold out mattes and manual tracking in FCP7. The environment and tools is totally not designed for online/finishing work.



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Late to the party here, but I was browsing for a new mac and found out the 21 inch imac can only be configured to 16gb of RAM, very dissapointing.

Urghs. Yea. I hope Apple grows out of this "non-upgradable/non-repairable" phase of manufacturing soon. Only the 27" iMac lets you upgrade the RAM.



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Also, can you even enable mercury playback engine in CS6 with the NVIDIA GeFOrce GT 650M 512MB card that comes with it? I read you need at least 895MB.

Unless you spring for the top of the line 27" model with all the upgrades, it seems you can't take advantage of the benifits of a lot of software used in post.

I'd love to hear from anyone with the 21 inch model and how it handles various post programs (CS6 and Davinci resolve specifically).

Yea. I won't recommend it. You want a good time with Mercury Playback Hardware, not a crashy, panicky bad time.



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Now apple offers a 256gb SSD drive on the 27inch model...just what I wanted, only problem is I bought mine a month ago....ahhhhhh APPLE

You can swap out the optical drive and put a SSD in its place
Buy from Macsales.com they got instructions on how to do it.
Not for the faint of heart though.

Michael Horton
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