Penn-Ohio

Q: Choosing iMac or MacPro

Looking for input and help in this decision process.  Considering an iMac over a MacPro that I currently have for space and portability convenience and want to ask folks here in the Mac Edit community for their "opinions" and/or "experience" with similar applications, work, or use.  I have retired and want to reduce the amount of work that I do plus clean up my work space from excessive cables and the like.

 

Either system I edit with FCPX, Lightroom, and Photoshop CS5 and use (will use) thunderbolt external RAID 0 Array having two internal drives, external thunderbolt mini hard drives, and an external BluRay/DVD/CD burner.  I will not edit 3D.  I will edit 1 camera 4K video eventually, but not much.  Most of my work will be no rush BUT having said that when I'm working I DON'T LIKE COLOR WHEEL WAITS or mini lock ups.  I'll eventually have thunderbolt single SSD's and hopefully sometime in 2016 thunderbolt RAID 0 with dual SSD's.

 

Below are my current and proposed specifications with the CURRENT MacPro being a Late 2013 "just above entry level" and the proposed iMac that is a Late 2015 and the very top of the iMacs.


CURRENT MacPro - PROPOSED SPEC'D iMac

 

MODEL:  6,1 Late 2013  -  Late 2015 (newest)

PROCESSOR:  3.7GHz Quad Core Xeon E5 -  4.0GHz i7 Skylake (burst to 4.3GHZ

VIDEO:  Firepro D300 2GB x 2  -  Radeon R9 M395X 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM

MEMORY: 16GB  1867 MHz DDR3 ECC-  32GB 1867MHz DDR3 ECC

SSD:  256GB  -  256GB

 

FORMER ANNUAL VIDEO WORK: 50-100 TV programs @ 3 camera HD; ~ 15 Weddings @ 3 camera HD; ~ 20 events; 20-30 commercials @ 1 camera HD; 20-30 other productions mostly @ 1 camera HD.

FORMER ANNUAL PHOTO WORK:  ~ 10 commercials; ~ 8-10 weddings; ~ 3-5 events, ~ 3-5 birthdays/anniversies

 

PROPOSED CURRENT VIDEO:  < 12 TV programs @ 1-3 camera HD; 2-5 Weddings @ 2 or 3 camera; 2-5 events @ 1-2 cameras HD; ~ 30 commercials @ 1 camera HD; 10-12 other @ 1 camera

 

Thanks to all who respond and if electing to make the iMac purchase, I will sell the MacPro and one year old Thunderbolt display.

Mac Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.2), 3.7 GHz, 16 Gb, Duo FirePro D300, FCPX

Posted on Dec 23, 2015 4:06 PM

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Q: Choosing iMac or MacPro

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  • by Luis Sequeira1,

    Luis Sequeira1 Luis Sequeira1 Dec 28, 2015 4:12 AM in response to Penn-Ohio
    Level 6 (12,409 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 28, 2015 4:12 AM in response to Penn-Ohio

    Penn-Ohio wrote:

     

    Luis you have an iMac?  What's your own personal experience?  Especially, do you do multi streams of AVCHD cameras?

    I don't have an iMac. I use a 15" rMBP. I occasionally do a few multicams, and yes I use AVCHD cameras. I am only a hobbyist when it comes to video.

    I don't have a RAID. I use an external USB3 SSD, an external USB3 hard drive or, for most small projects, I just use the internal SSD in my rMBP (which is the fastest of the three, by far), and move things out when finished.

     

    That said, if I were to buy a mac today, and editing were my main use of the machine, I would seriously consider a retina iMac.

  • by Luis Sequeira1,

    Luis Sequeira1 Luis Sequeira1 Dec 28, 2015 4:16 AM in response to Penn-Ohio
    Level 6 (12,409 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 28, 2015 4:16 AM in response to Penn-Ohio

    Penn-Ohio wrote:

     

    BTW folks, I just ran a drive read/write test and discovered that for some reason my Thunderbolt External Dual Drive RAID0 (rotating drives) is not giving me the speeds that it advertised, instead it is kicking at just over 200MBs which is half of what I had hoped for.  I found a newly offered external USB3 500GB SSD up to 540MBs for just over $200 and gonna try that to see if I can eliminate the beachballs.  What a bummer.  I've run for a year and half with that kind of speed and wondered why things aren't screaming fast with zero issues.

     

     

    The drives themselves are the bottleneck. If you look at Karsten's post above, he also got around 200MB/s with his RAID.

    A little over 100MB/s is quite common for most hard drives.

  • by Ian R. Brown,

    Ian R. Brown Ian R. Brown Dec 28, 2015 6:21 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter
    Level 6 (18,659 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 28, 2015 6:21 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

    Thanks for the info Karsten.

     

    Under £78 new and delivered on eBay.

     

    However, still  overpriced  in my opinion  .  .  .  like Apple.

     

    Remember how the cost of SD cards  tumbled dramatically  .  .  .  I'm sure that 1TB models will be going for that price within 12 months and after that we'll probably be getting them free with packets of cornflakes.

     

    Performance looks impressive.

  • by Karsten Schlüter,Helpful

    Karsten Schlüter Karsten Schlüter Dec 30, 2015 2:03 PM in response to Ian R. Brown
    Level 7 (32,713 points)
    Video
    Dec 30, 2015 2:03 PM in response to Ian R. Brown

    Ian R. Brown wrote:

    However, still  overpriced  in my opinion  .  .  . …

    c'mon, Uncle Scrooge

     

    compared to RAM? SSD is much cheaper.

    compared to HDD? ok, x4 the price, but x4 faster.

    and compared to SDCards? I pay for a class10(U3) 64GBs ~40€ = SSD is cheaper AND faster! ...

     

    prices willl drop, for sure, afaik, Ram is only built by 3-4 companies on this planet, but for a SSD they can use last years generation of chips .... or the year before.

     

    What's more interesting is:

    usb3.1 allows 10gbps transfer speed .... giga, not mega.

    Even with tons of overhead, that would mean 'instant' transfer of files. If needed. And if on your Macs motherboard …-

  • by Karsten Schlüter,

    Karsten Schlüter Karsten Schlüter Dec 28, 2015 9:20 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1
    Level 7 (32,713 points)
    Video
    Dec 28, 2015 9:20 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

    Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

    In order to get extra speed by putting two or three in a box as RAID0, you need to have that box connect to your mac over Thunderbolt.

    just to feed my curiosity, I had a look at amazon:

    4x bay, TB connected Raid = 550€ ... for an EMPTY box! Drives add extra..... umph.

     

    And although hobbyist/daredevil: a Raid0 with four drives is really, I mean really risky, should be Raid5

     

    Just to mention: Raid is no backup... comes extra again.....

  • by Penn-Ohio,

    Penn-Ohio Penn-Ohio Dec 28, 2015 9:02 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 28, 2015 9:02 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

    Luis Sequeira1 wrote:


    I don't have an iMac. I use a 15" rMBP. I occasionally do a few multicams, and yes I use AVCHD cameras. I am only a hobbyist when it comes to video.

    And your MBP can keep up?  I mean that's a lot of data to work with.  Multicam?

     

    Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

     

    .....That said, if I were to buy a mac today, and editing were my main use of the machine, I would seriously consider a retina iMac.

    I've made the step to try it out for 14 days and will have 32GB memory (see specs above) and for sure with a USB3 SSD that supposedly delivers 520 MBs.

  • by Penn-Ohio,

    Penn-Ohio Penn-Ohio Dec 28, 2015 9:04 PM in response to Karsten Schlüter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 28, 2015 9:04 PM in response to Karsten Schlüter

    Karsten Schlüter wrote:


    ....just to feed my curiosity, I had a look at amazon:

    4x bay, TB connected Raid = 550€ ... for an EMPTY box! Drives add extra..... umph.

     

    And although hobbyist/daredevil: a Raid0 with four drives is really, I mean really risky, should be Raid5.....

    I just found over at B&H a new USB3 SSD drive that has a read/write that is upwards of 500-540 MBs which is double what I'm experiencing with my TB RAID0 for only $204.  Not bad hey?

  • by Penn-Ohio,

    Penn-Ohio Penn-Ohio Dec 28, 2015 9:08 PM in response to Karsten Schlüter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 28, 2015 9:08 PM in response to Karsten Schlüter

    Karsten Schlüter wrote:


    Same with your choice of 32Gigs of Ram - wow.

    But of little use with FCPX (diff. story with Adobe products....); FCPX utilizes massively the GPU. … and your choice is max anyhow.....

    What do you mean "but of little use with FDPX" with regard to the 32GB of memory?

  • by Karsten Schlüter,

    Karsten Schlüter Karsten Schlüter Dec 28, 2015 9:20 PM in response to Penn-Ohio
    Level 7 (32,713 points)
    Video
    Dec 28, 2015 9:20 PM in response to Penn-Ohio

    Penn-Ohio wrote:

    … What do you mean "but of little use with FDPX" with regard to the 32GB of memory?

    beyond 16GBs has no noticeable effect conc. speed ....

    most computation is done by the GPU, … which has its own 'Ram'.

  • by Penn-Ohio,

    Penn-Ohio Penn-Ohio Dec 28, 2015 9:45 PM in response to Karsten Schlüter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 28, 2015 9:45 PM in response to Karsten Schlüter

    Karsten Schlüter wrote:

     

    Penn-Ohio wrote:

    … What do you mean "but of little use with FDPX" with regard to the 32GB of memory?

    beyond 16GBs has no noticeable effect conc. speed ....

    most computation is done by the GPU, … which has its own 'Ram'.

    SO, I really don't need the 32GB? I mean I could save a lot of money by going with less memory.

  • by Ian R. Brown,

    Ian R. Brown Ian R. Brown Dec 29, 2015 1:21 AM in response to Penn-Ohio
    Level 6 (18,659 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 29, 2015 1:21 AM in response to Penn-Ohio

    Be extremely cautious when reading about the speeds of drives etc.

     

    Frequently the figures quoted are theoretical maximums (maxima?) under ideal conditions which can never be replicated by the  user and I'm not talking about slight exaggerations in the advertising department  .  .  .  I have never found a hard drive that delivered its claimed speed and often (depending on the circumstances), it has been as much as 50%  or lower.

     

    Extra RAM, like most other things in life, suffers from the law of diminishing returns. Beyond a certain point you can double it at great expense to achieve little or no noticeable benefit.

     

    There is no need to buy an iMac with 32GB RAM as the Apple installed stuff will cost an exorbitant amount and you can easily add cheap, top quality sticks later  .  .  .  if it is needed.

  • by Luis Sequeira1,

    Luis Sequeira1 Luis Sequeira1 Dec 29, 2015 3:05 AM in response to Penn-Ohio
    Level 6 (12,409 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 29, 2015 3:05 AM in response to Penn-Ohio

    Penn-Ohio wrote:

     

    Luis Sequeira1 wrote:


    I don't have an iMac. I use a 15" rMBP. I occasionally do a few multicams, and yes I use AVCHD cameras. I am only a hobbyist when it comes to video.

    And your MBP can keep up?  I mean that's a lot of data to work with.  Multicam?

     

     

    It does keep up nicely for what I do. I do some multicam. Mostly only rather short ones, but

    last week I did an hour long multicam of a conference, recorded in 1080p.

    Mind you, this is a 2014 15" rMBP with discrete GPU, so not a low level machine.

    But until last year I used a 17" 2010 MBP and even that, with a fast-ish drive (I had an e-Sata drive via the ExpressCard slot), let me edit decently. It was slower, but usable - for what I needed.

    Any current mac and many not so current macs can be used to edit video in FCP X, with varying degrees of performance. A professional needs a fast new machine, a hobbyist can get by with a little less.

  • by Penn-Ohio,

    Penn-Ohio Penn-Ohio Dec 29, 2015 8:22 AM in response to Ian R. Brown
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 29, 2015 8:22 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

    Ian R. Brown wrote:

     

    Be extremely cautious when reading about the speeds of drives etc. . . . .

    For sure.  I'm finding that out quickly.  In fact, one of my least expensive external USB mini drives read 25MB/s.  No wonder it takes forever to transfer anything off the thing.  WHEW!

     

    Ian R. Brown wrote:

     

    . . . . . There is no need to buy an iMac with 32GB RAM as the Apple installed stuff will cost an exorbitant amount and you can easily add cheap, top quality sticks later  .  .  .  if it is needed.

    Actually, I went with 8GB ram from the factory order and purchased 32GB from another vendor which was actually recommended by the Apple specialist at Apple.  He put it just as you did, "you can get aftermarket ram a lot less expensive than we offer in the machine from the factor and it doesn't void the warranty so long as the specs are right on."  I got the ram from MacSales (OWC) although B&H had Crucial for just a few bucks more.

  • by Penn-Ohio,

    Penn-Ohio Penn-Ohio Dec 29, 2015 8:26 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 29, 2015 8:26 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

    Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

     

    It does keep up nicely for what I do. I do some multicam. Mostly only rather short ones, but, Mind you, this is a 2014 15" rMBP with discrete GPU, so not a low level machine.  Any current mac and many not so current macs can be used to edit video in FCP X, with varying degrees of performance. A professional needs a fast new machine, a hobbyist can get by with a little less.

    Perhaps you'd be interested in my MacPro that with it's memory upgrade is being offered right now for well over $3,000 which I'd sacrifice for 15-20% less.  It's hardly been used and never once got hot.

  • by Karsten Schlüter,

    Karsten Schlüter Karsten Schlüter Dec 29, 2015 9:40 AM in response to Penn-Ohio
    Level 7 (32,713 points)
    Video
    Dec 29, 2015 9:40 AM in response to Penn-Ohio

    Penn-Ohio wrote

    SO, I really don't need the 32GB? I mean I could save a lot of money by going with less memory.

    for FCPX, with consumer cams? I dare to say 16 is enough. (in combo with your GPU monster)

    But I vaguely remember, you mentioned Adobe Photoshop.... ? That eats Ram.

     

    aside: to install Ram in the 27" iMac you don't have to be an engineer. you don't even need tools....  (open compartment, swap in, swap out); so, there's no need to pay the astronomic Ram prices of Apple… premium Ram from reliable manufacturers cost a fraction.....

     

    advice from the mothership:

    Install memory in an iMac - Apple Support

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