Mac or PC ? video workstation dilema

[fredjeang]

Hi,

I desperatly need your advices guys.

My PC workstation is now to relegate to stone age. Yesterday I was doing a practise in Scratch, using some scaffolds with red footage in 4k and tracking them on the scene and it was unworkable. Go out of the primary grading and the all machinery just falls appart.

I'm on PC for some years now, although I have old Mac Pros that also have to go to the recycle, and I'm totally disconnected on the new Mac products.

The problem is that I must admit that Mac is getting bigger and bigger in motion industry, despite the final cut pro expected new realsed that never happens.  Scratch is also on Mac now, and Smoke is exclusively on Mac, no more Unix. There is a clear tendency from software companies in the Mac recognition within the industry.
I'm very interested to learn Smoke, in part because I already have a training in Autodesk interface wich will be helpfull, also because Smoke is a bloody peice of software and an open door to more editing power if needed.

But there is just a little issue: cost! Red workflow, the current generation of software etc... are really demanding in terms of power. We need Ram, a lot of Ram. I'm doing numbers and having a lot of power in Mac is way more expensive than in PC.

There is a dilema I can't solve. Is the (re)moved on Mac for motion worth the overcost?

What would you do? Mac or Pc ?

My fear is investing money on PC if the industry standard is becoming Mac and realise it was a wrong choice. (because then there is a consequence with the softwares evolution and being on the right platform in motion is not a luxury)

And if Mac, wich ones? Is it possible to connect multiple Macs together in racks or cumulate units power in a way or another? Life was simple and easy with stills.

Thanks.

[Jim Pascoe]

Hi Fred

I am really into stills and only just starting to dabble in motion, so most of the stuff you are talking about is a little over my head.  However I have just bought a new Mac Pro to go with the 30" Apple monitor I have had for a few years.  Previously I was using a three year old Macbook Pro connected to the monitor.  I went for the base model with the quad-core processor and 3 gig of RAM with the 1TB drive.  Immediately I bought 16gb of RAM from Crucial for about £200 and three 3TB Samsung 7200 drives for around £400 to go in the spare drive bays.

Well the machine flies through Lightroom stuff - which is what I do mostly.  You may have slightly different needs regarding processor or graphics card etc, but RAM is not that expensive unless you really need the maximum.  I bought it in 4gb sticks.

Jim

[Christopher Sanderson]

A hard question to answer since you can still build a very powerful PC for less $$ than a Mac.

If Smoke is your beast, perhaps you should bet the way that AutoDesk has - they have put big development $$ on the Mac and a tight integration with FCP.

But if you dislike FCP and bet on Premiere, my guess is that you will be happier with the PC version.

Yes, with the Mac I use multiple machines to simply farm out rendering tasks in Episode & Compressor - this is a very easy setup.

Should you decide Mac, stick with the Desktop Mac Pros - get the best videocard available and and consider an AJA or Matrox card & breakout box. (My MX O2 has saved me hours & hours)

Check out the LA Mac supplier ProMAX for ideas on Pro Editing setups on either PC or Mac...

Good luck!

[fredjeang]

Thanks guys.

I'm on Avid MC 5, also very well integrated with Smoke (according to Autodesk claims). I don't discart an hybrid solution to keep Avid for editing and all the rest in Mac but numbers are passing through my head like tempting devils. About the FCP wich I don't know and the very little I new didn't attract me, the good thing about Smoke is that I've been following RedUsers forum and according to many Smoke users on this 4K segments, the smoke editor is already so much better than FCP (wired IMO) that most of those guys simply use Smoke from A to Z without passing by the FCP square.
So in the end they just have one software in the all chain. Not a bad calculation.

As I haven't bought yet Scratch but evaluating it, no problem. I'm not stucked.

Good links Chris and good news that Macs units are acumulative.

If only each member of this forum would give me 50cents for my birthday...

[Alex MacPherson]

There is the option of running a PC workstation as a "hackintosh" to run apple software.
As long as you put the system together with this in mind ...selecting components that
will work with apple software, you can build a much more powerful system per dollar
than you can with apple.
Seeing what it costs to make a powerful Mac Pro makes me dizzy.

lol

For the record, I love Apple products... I just wish I could afford the best of them. I ended up with a Lenovo W510
laptop because it was going to cost me double to get the same specs I wanted in a Macbook Pro. (16gb ram for a Macbook pro
is $1400... I paid less than 1/4 of that for my 16gb)
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/1333DDR3S16P/

[Alex MacPherson]

http://nofilmschool.com/build-a-hackintosh/

[fredjeang]

Yes, yes!!...great link Alex.

[Pete_G]

Fred,

I doubt that the Mac will become the industry standard, since the higher end Autodesk stuff (Flame, Inferno) runs on Linux on high end PC's and the users of this stuff don't tend to swap platforms unless they REALLY need to. The HP Z800 seems to be the machine of choice for these apps and is the PC platform Avid recommends.
But if you need Smoke then you may have to go the Mac route. Be aware that Autodesk have a habit of just dropping products, as they did with Combustion, and Toxik is now merged with Maya.

[fredjeang]

Fred,

I doubt that the Mac will become the industry standard, since the higher end Autodesk stuff (Flame, Inferno) runs on Linux on high end PC's and the users of this stuff don't tend to swap platforms unless they REALLY need to. The HP Z800 seems to be the machine of choice for these apps and is the PC platform Avid recommends.
But if you need Smoke then you may have to go the Mac route. Be aware that Autodesk have a habit of just dropping products, as they did with Combustion, and Toxik is now merged with Maya.

Yeah, I'm quite angry that they dropped Combustion. It was (and still is to some extend) a fantastic product. I'm still using it but since Red it's not usable.

The reason I'm so interested in Smoke, is its versatility-price. I don't have the possibility to run the big artillery like Flame, budget question. I almost think that Smoke is a sort of contemporary Combustion in many ways. Their move to Mac only with that product is because I think they studdied their target - middle end prods - was vastly on Mac and Smoke is in fact a software capable of doing everything in most of the cases. Also, there is a Flame suite for Smoke advanced where they took care a lot about the interface-workflow so an invertion today on Smoke can be increased if needed without having to restart from zero.
The software is so good that it's been used on productions bigger than it's target.

But also look at Scratch. They are also on Mac now and it was a pure pc stuff, but they where so clever to keep their PC clients. I'm not saying that the very high-end industry is going to swich Mac, no, but there is now a vast market with a lot of photographers that yes are on Mac and middle-end prods who also run Macs and this is where their targets are IMO. They know that there is a lot of money there because 80% of the productions will be done in this segment.

The thing is I don't see today in the PC world a software equivalent to Smoke that covers so many aspects of the PP. Or it is directly the big expensive artillery Flame suite or the layer based (wich I don't want because too slow and rather complicated) AE.
Nuke is an option, vastly used in Europe, but it is not IMO as versatile as Smoke and more focussed in the chain.(some would disagree on that, though)

But I agree that Autodesk should stabilized their products.
 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

A hard question to answer since you can still build a very powerful PC for less $$ than a Mac.

If Smoke is your beast, perhaps you should bet the way that AutoDesk has - they have put big development $$ on the Mac and a tight integration with FCP.

But if you dislike FCP and bet on Premiere, my guess is that you will be happier with the PC version.

I agree with this in general. One thing to add to the options to consider. An increasing amount of processing power is going to be done by the GPU(s) of your video card(s). I would give serious additional weight to the platform that is most up to speed (pun intended) with that development, and is likely to stay ahead. I don't know the Mac platform well enough to decide which it is. However, it seems to me that drivers (essential for speed) and new graphic boards tend to be available pretty fast on the Win platform. A graphics card can be easily upgraded over time to keep up with the latest developments, although for the very latest you pay premium and the drivers are not fast yet (speed/stability trade-off which takes time to figure out).

Lots of memory, and good GPU support may trump processor speed/throughput. Don't go by advertized numbers only, it's the real throughput that counts. And on that note, overclocking is something to be considered. It's quite safe if done well and with a huge cooler and a number of case fans installed (!).

Of course the software that's (going to be) available can be a productivity deal breaker/maker in the end.

Cheers,
Bart

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Is the (re)moved on Mac for motion worth the overcost?

Motion is not worth it. Use After Effects or Nuke, based on what you want to do.

What would you do? Mac or Pc ?
My fear is investing money on PC if the industry standard is becoming Mac and realise it was a wrong choice. (because then there is a consequence with the softwares evolution and being on the right platform in motion is not a luxury)

Neither is the standard. Your platform is of no consequence since the industry has already learned to integrate between various computers and software. It's not that big a deal. However, I would stick to PC since quality-wise there's no difference between a PC and a Mac, and a PC is much cheaper. A Mac in today's age has no performance advantage over a similarly built PC, but it looks prettier.

And if Mac, wich ones? Is it possible to connect multiple Macs together in racks or cumulate units power in a way or another?

Good point. It is cheaper to network using PCs. Also, if you need to build render farms, it is cheaper and easier if you're on a PC-/inux platform than on a mac. Hands down.

The bottom line is: You won't be making a mistake with either one, so it boils down to personal preference and budget.

[fredjeang]

I finally decided to keep the PC solution and forget about Smoke. Macs are too expensive without giving significant advantage if none.

I also decided what will be my workflow: Avid MC, Scratch for grading and Nuke.

Thanks for all your imputs.

[Pete_G]

Take a look at Digital Fusion, it's very powerful and many people use it. I tried it some years  ago. Unfortunately
you'd have to learn a new way of doing things, it's not really like Smoke. There is a trial version available.

[fredjeang]

Take a look at Digital Fusion, it's very powerful and many people use it. I tried it some years  ago. Unfortunately
you'd have to learn a new way of doing things, it's not really like Smoke. There is a trial version available.

Yes, but the "problem" with Fusion is that it didn't have the same success in Europe than in the US, don't really know why because it is excellent to what I've heard. In the same spirit of Nuke. Maybe distribution politics. Don't know you in England but in Spain almost nobody uses it, I exagerate a little but it is not as common as in the US. The consequence of that is that there is almost no possibility for serious training here, there is not enough demand. In Madrid the training on Smoke is good, Nuke's is very good but Fusion is a desert land that I know and having a good training available "next door" was an important factor for me. But yes, no doubt that a nodal based software is the way to go if budget allows. My choice for Nuke is motivated by 2 factors. One is the software structure, and the other is the very good training available here. No problem to find a Nuke guru and boosting my learning curve. Fusion is much more difficult in that aspect, at least here.