TOPIC:

Two more days from this posting...

www.apple.com/imac-pro/

Newsshooter published a hands on using FCPX 10.4
www.newsshooter.com/2017/12/12/hands-imac-pro/

… when you set yourself on s mail list, you got the news at 6:45am Cupertino time … wow, that's what I call office hours!

now, the prefabricated news drop in, macrumours et al. Little new news, … newsshooter mentioned some render times …

As mentioned where else: with what app will  demo the full potential of The Beast…?

FCPX10_4 on Thursday? Would be nice… (no plans for the weekend)

oh, and yesterday, this leaked:
appleinsider.com/articles/17/12/11/apple...-for-imac-pro-orders

… and some more first hand-ons:







twitter.com/thomasgcarter

Seems Apple is getting more and more open. Reviews of the iMac Pro with FCPX 10.4 before official releases. That's the fourth one I've seen today. Third party benchmark test results are what I'm really wanting to see. And what about heat issues in the long run?

Vincent Laforet said FCPX on the 10-core iMac Pro was about 2x faster at transcoding from H264 to ProRes optimized media than his 2017 top-spec iMac 27. He also posted numbers from various editing software.

This was a key number because it indicates the iMac Pro has some kind of hardware encode/decode acceleration, despite using a Xeon CPU.

blog.vincentlaforet.com/2017/12/12/apple...-200-300-speed-bump/

fun fact:
the website tells "available", the mail I got says "ready to order"… which, as we all know, could make a slightly difference.

… for me, the hobbyist, it means, prices for used 27"/5k iMacs should drop soon …

Anybody else noticed that the price of the new iMacPro seems to have gone from the website... just saying!

I think the video said US$5,100 for the shown config.

It is so funny to me, as yesterday I ordered a specced out iMac 27" from Apple! But the joke is on them, as I can return/cancel within 14 days. So now I am awaiting the official price tomorrow, before deciding if I want to switch to the Pro.

Web site only stated;"Starting at $4,999"

So figure out how many hundreds the extra cores and ram and GPU will cost, each. Suddenly my brain hurts....

Orders being taken as of the 14th, no word on a shipping date.

So if it's only "up to 45% faster than the 2013 Mac Pro", is that 45% boost worth $5K?
What about heat issues when pressed to export a hour TV shows as MXF?

And more information...

www.macrumors.com/2017/12/12/10-core-ima...cent-faster-mac-pro/

www.macrumors.com/2017/12/12/imac-pro-8-...-core-release-dates/

www.macrumors.com/2017/12/12/imac-pro-hands-on-videos/

www.macrumors.com/2017/12/12/imac-pro-available-december-14/

FCPX.guru wrote:

...if it's only "up to 45% faster than the 2013 Mac Pro", is that 45% boost worth $5K?
What about heat issues when pressed to export a hour TV shows as MXF?....

I know from my own testing of a 12-core D700 Mac Pro vs my top-spec 2017 iMac, the iMac is 2x faster than the nMP on certain tasks -- import and transcode to ProRes, export to H264, and smoother on scrubbing a 4k H264 timeline. So for these tasks the 10-core iMac Pro might be 4x faster than a nMP.

However for other things the nMP is pretty fast, such as stabilizing a Pro Res clip -- about 2x faster than my iMac. Likewise on certain effects such as Aged Film, Add Noise, or Sharpen, the nMP is about 2x faster (if using ProRes) than my iMac.

So even today the "ancient" nMP is pretty fast on a ProRes workflow. It's also very quiet and can handle being pushed to the limit for days at a time. I've had my 2017 iMac transcoding for several days straight and so far it's held up OK, but this is a valid concern. How will the iMac Pro handle this for sustained periods such as weeks/months on end?

The "45%" figure is merely comparing the GeekBench multi-core results of a 12-core nMP vs a 10-core iMac Pro. As shown above on real-world FCPX tests, the difference is all over the map depending on your codec, plugins, workloads, etc. The 45% figure is also not comparing the top nMP to the top 18-core iMac Pro.

When Apple shortly releases the price for each config we can better decide whether it's worth it.

www.fxguide.com/featured/exclusive-hands...ew-apple-pro-lineup/

While comparisons are to the current MacBook Pro in the above linked article both the current MBP and iMac Quad i7 handle H.264 encode decode much faster than the late 2013 MP (number of cores dependent).

My poor laptop has 16 GB not 128GB of RAM. It has 4 cores not 10, and it has the Pro 460 graphics with 8GB of graphics memory. It is designed around compact size, light weight and low power consumption/battery life, factors that just don't apply to the iMac Pro. As a result transcoding half an hour of video on the MacBook Pro takes a quarter of the time on the iMac Pro. Four times speed difference is really noticeable on practical jobs, (A little over 3 mins on the iMAC Pro vs around 12 mins on the MacBook Pro, Handbrake File HD conversion - latest release). daVinci Resolve is also showing similar 4x to 6x speed ups. This machine is fast.

1- iMac's have that CPU with H.264 encoding acceleration, the 2013 MP lacks it, so it encodes that class of codec slower, yes.

2- There was nothing "real world" about any testing/comparisons I've read anywhere. No one edited a full production start to finish, only small segments of existing timelines.

3- No one ran a test of a 1 hour TV show exporting to MXF or something similar (not H.264) to see if the fans rev up too loudly or if there are heat issues.

Yes, we'll have to wait for folks to get them and work with them and hear what "real world" FCPX and Motion work on them is really like. But for a generalized 45% bump, I think $5K plus is a steep price to pay...

So just for yucks I looked at the price of a current iMac with what I believe to be the closest equivalent features to the base iMac Pro

27" iMac Quad i7, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Magic Keyboard w/numeric keys,
$3729

Given the CPU, GPU, SSD speed improvements, 4 TB3 ports, 10GigE port for an additional $1271, I don't think it's steep unless, of course, one finds the iMac price steep.

I'd love to see speed comparisons between the above two systems because, if someone is compelled to buy a new system today (tomorrow actually) that would be what one might be looking at.

BTW if you buy a new Late 2013 8 Core MP with 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Dual A700, it's $4999 (B&H Price) and there's no monitor at all.

Still is the most expensive Mac that Apple has ever sold...

5 configuration now chosen when "building" and then you can customize
Base is $4999
8 core, Vega 64, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD - $6399
10 core, Vega 64, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD - $7199
10 core, Vega 64, 64GB RAM, 2TB SSD - $7999
10 core, Vega 64, 128GB RAM, 2TB SSD - $9599

Upgrades state that LPX now supports up to 36 cores. No mention of such for any of the pro video apps. I wonder...

Ben
Believe that all 64 bit "Pro" software supports full usage of all multi cores/processors/GPUs.
Apple rewrote Grand Central Dispatch earlier this year and I think Apple stated at WWDC 2017 that code takes advantage of the new 18 core Xeons. 36 cores is the virtual core count.
AFAIK FCPX has always supported using all available cores, I think??
Doesn't mean that all cores are used all the time.

Hope this helps, Greg

I've never seen it use more than 4... but we will see... iMac Pro and 360 8K video, someone's gonna push it.