New System Or GPU Upgrade & GPU For RED Debayer?

Bouncing on what Pat says à 13:00 in Part 1, I’d like to ask Robbie: ‘What’s the Windows machine I need to get, from a colorist point of view?’. Because I’ve dropped Windows OS a long time ago, and wasn’t planning to come back to it ever. But like Pat is saying, I can’t jump on the Mac Pro tube until we have at least 2 points of data in time to see where Apple goes with it.

And really, I’m fed up with mobile GPU solutions Apple is putting in its MBP/iMac lines that are clearly lacking power for what we’re doing. It has become inadmissible that new iMacs ship with graphical power that can compare, at best, with mid-class PCs from 2 or 3 years ago, because these were shipping with desktop – not mobile – GPUs.

ProRes is the issue though. Some more questions for Robbie about what he says at 8:10 (ProRes ‘dongle’) : is the hero machine you are grading with the client a windows base system, and once you export the .drp file to open on your Mac Pro, has Resolve ever brought problems when dealing with cross-platform (win & mac) projects? Also, how are you dealing with your plugins: some companies like Red Giant are cross-platform, but some aren’t, which can really prove to become expensive to keep both systems up-to-date. Finally, some guys like recent MixingLight’s guest Rich Harrington seem to trust Cineform on Windows (see for example here http://bit.ly/1FxCMre), so have any of you had experience with Cineform codec?

Sorry for that many questions, but again the main one is ‘which Windows machine should I get if I were to switch’. Thanks.

Hey Christophe!

Great questions. First not to pass the buck but tomorrow or saturday I’ve an insight coming out on my switch to a windows machine – actually this is the first article in a two part series so I’ll hopefully answer more of your questions there.

But for now let me give you the gist.

I got a HP Z840 with 2 12 Core 2690 v3 Processors running at 2.6 ghz. 128GB of RAM. While slightly more expensive then a top end Mac Pro this machine runs circles around that computer. The best part I have windows running AND Linux on a separate drive. so I can easily switch between. Of course to get the linux license of resolve you have to have the control panel – but this is one way to get around the ProRes problem.

As for my comment about ProRes Dongle. Exporting the DRP and relinking media is one way in my shop though we have a shared Resolve database and shared storage so everything is shared and I don’t have to move anything around. So when I need individual ProRes renders I just open up on the Mac and Render. If I need just a single clip of the entire project I do a real time playback to my HyperDeck Pro (which also lets me use a hardware leaglizer) or ScopeBox.

Cineform is really good. I find it be quality wise equivalent to DNxHD or ProRes. Just not as common – but now that Adobe is pushing it – it’ll probably grown in popularity.

Regarding Plugins – I hear ya. I’m not that big of a plugin guy but the ones I have common are Neat Video, Film Convert.

Here is the configuration link for a z840. For many people the z640 is probably good too just not as expandable.

http://h71016.www7.hp.com/dstore/MiddleFrame.asp?page=config&ProductLineId=433&FamilyId=3861&BaseId=45622&oi=E9CED&BEID=19701&SBLID=

Note that I’m not in a hurry to go back on a Windows platform. But if I’m forced to, I prefer to have some ready-to-rock solutions in my pocket. That’s why your experience is very valuable. So thank you for your answers Robbie, and I can’t wait to learn more in the forthcoming two-parts series you mentioned. 🙂