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Apple Silicon Macs (Page 2)
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Laminar
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Nov 24, 2020, 09:36 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
IMHO getting a used Mac Mini at those prices would be a giant waste of money. For that money you could get a new Mac mini that’d be faster in all circumstances, I reckon. And if you are not 100 % convinced that a Mac mini can replace your Mac Pro (e. g. because you need more RAM), just wait a little longer.
I'm not worried about capability. Even the last i7 Mini would crush my Pro in single core performance and I think the Mini still eeked out better multi-core, too. My Pro is 70% games, 25% web browsing, 5% video editing/photo storage. It was a hack to get it to run Catalina and I don't think I'll even try for Big Sur.

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
Do you have to dump the Pro if you get the Mini?
The Pro sits in the living room and is kind of a mess of wires and cables and stuff. Wife hasn't said anything but I'm sure she'd appreciate a cleaner install. Pro would probably go to the basement and replace the Windows box down there for movies/games.

Or maybe I put the RX580 in the Windows box for gaming and use the Pro as a file/backup server. That's actually not a bad idea and would get all of the external hard drives and junk out of the living room. Now I'm thinking...
     
Waragainstsleep  (op)
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Nov 24, 2020, 06:50 PM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
For someone who doesn’t do audio, can you put that in perspective for us? I’ve seen the video and I had the impression they were gobsmacked. But I am lacking a point of reference.
I'm not an audio guy either but I think in the video they mentioned a Trashcan Mac Pro would struggle with that workload. And I'm going to assume it would struggle with a lot more than 8GB of RAM.
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OreoCookie
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Nov 24, 2020, 08:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
I'm not an audio guy either but I think in the video they mentioned a Trashcan Mac Pro would struggle with that workload. And I'm going to assume it would struggle with a lot more than 8GB of RAM.
I remember that bit. My question was more about how realistic these limitations are. Just think of Gaußian blurs, which used to be an important benchmark of computing performance. I remember there were Mac multiprocessor cards that came with Photoshop plugins, which specifically accelerated filters like Gaußian blurs. Nowadays, even entry-level computers would yawn and you can do much more complicated effects than Gaußian blurs at 60 fps.

So my question was more how common a project with ~1,000 effects really is? Are people in the audio industry limited by CPU performance these days? Or would literally the lowest-end machine suffice for their purposes? The studio seemed to work off of a Mac mini, so it doesn’t seem too challenging … 
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Waragainstsleep  (op)
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Nov 24, 2020, 09:35 PM
 
I believe that would be a very unusual project. By a factor of three or four.
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Dex13
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Nov 24, 2020, 10:48 PM
 
chrome can die in a fire. I'll have 10 - 25 tabs open ... various sheets, docs, etc and it will hang like it's 1995 ... im mildly older now and it reminds me of when we had to wait for the hard drive to catch up lol. I can't really explain it because zoom, pages, etc won't hang even when chrome is having a conniption ... i have the latest m1 friendly chrome too. anyone having the same issue? i have to use chrome b/c of work, before you go recommending spartan/edge : /

slack, zoom, office, pages all doing fine w/ large datasets and constant meetings.

I have the mba base w/ 16GB connected to a 4k display ... I can't get 4096 x 2160, only 3840 x 2160 atm ... dongle works on the intel mbp, shrug

best thing imo .. the fanless design ... my thighs/crotch are mighty thankful ; )

im most excited for education, if the software bros continue to develop and tweak for the M1, those $799 macbook air's are going to live forever ... just like the 2012 mbpR
     
Waragainstsleep  (op)
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Nov 25, 2020, 05:51 AM
 
Doesn't the new safari support browser extensions now? If you enable the developer settings you can make it pose as Chrome too. Worth a try.
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Spheric Harlot
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Nov 25, 2020, 10:02 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
For someone who doesn’t do audio, can you put that in perspective for us? I’ve seen the video and I had the impression they were gobsmacked. But I am lacking a point of reference.
The reference (around the 9-minute mark) is a 2014 high-end mini.

Conclusion at 18:20 is that it is “well over three times more powerful than the old Mac mini”.

I do have to wonder how realistic it is to simply triple all processes. If the engineering is up to snuff, running three completely identical channel strips with identical content should not result in three times the work load. But then OTOH, such optimisation is probably completely irrelevant in actual use, since simply duplicating identical sources doesn’t happen in an audio context. There simply isn’t any point in ever doing so. So maybe this does in fact constitute a full tripling of workload.
     
Dex13
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Nov 25, 2020, 06:14 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
Doesn't the new safari support browser extensions now? If you enable the developer settings you can make it pose as Chrome too. Worth a try.
yes but not all of my extensions are supported in safari ... i kinda stopped using safari when pith helmet stopped supporting it

reporting back that chrome is near unusable sometimes ... gmail will peg the cpu at 60% upon loading ... if im opening up admin.google.com ... which requires a new mail.google.com session to provide a token ... it will peg my cpu @ 90%
general unresponsiveness when trying to select a drop down menu or textbox when first loading the page ...

everything else appears to fine ... but fcck me is chrome a huge pos atm (some would argue that it's always a pos)

don't mind me, just hating on chrome, join the bandwagon
     
OreoCookie
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Nov 25, 2020, 07:10 PM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
The reference (around the 9-minute mark) is a 2014 high-end mini.
Sorry, I should have been more precise, I meant a point of reference in terms of workloads. I did catch that they ran an older Intel-based Mac mini — and presumably that handled their workloads just fine. If I interpret the premise of the video correctly, even the workload that maxed out the Mac mini was supposed to be a bit over the top.

On the other hand, I remember the videos of one audio engineer on his journey with the new Mac Pro that replaced, I think, three daisy chained trashcan Mac Pros.
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
I do have to wonder how realistic it is to simply triple all processes.
I remember one comment about this one plugin being loaded only a few times rather than 200+ times with some virtual wiring. As far as I understood, the workload was designed to be inefficient on purpose.
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Spheric Harlot
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Nov 25, 2020, 08:14 PM
 
Actual workload in audio production varies wildly production to production, and even within a production, song-to-song.

I completed work on an EP where some songs are just several tracks of virtual instruments and three layered virtual drummers, which are pretty heavy (the synths are Alchemy, which is rather taxing), and other songs are just dozens of audio tracks with lots and lots of real synth, plus some virtual drums. The load varies from about thirty tracks to well over a hundred — with virtually all of them processed in some way - many just EQ and reverb on a bus, but then groups running into fairly heavy Waves plug-ins.

The only way I could complete that project on this late '16 quad 15" laptop was by freezing (i.e. pre-rendering) all tracks — and unfreezing whenever I needed to make a minor adjustment.
     
mindwaves
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Nov 25, 2020, 09:46 PM
 
I really hate synthetic benchmarks. I wish more people would post real-world tests like duplicating files (huge files and thousands of small files), etc. I also wish that more people post non-video editing or photoshop related tasks (e.g., compiling files, web browsing battery test, file processing). Not everyone who buys a Mac runs their own video studio.

Sure there are some people who do this, but they are in the minority.
     
ghporter
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Nov 26, 2020, 12:53 PM
 
What “real world” tasks would be useful for the most people to get a handle on performance speeds?

Most of what I do has minimal horsepower requirements; word processing, simple spreadsheets, and similar stuff. But now and then I do have tasks that take more work, like when I changed a simple “keep track of professional education hours” sheet to use that data to track how much more was needed per license period (every two years), per certification period (every three years), and to model sources of these hours (online, conferences, local meetings, and so on).

The time Numbers spent playing with multiple sheets’ interactions was excessive. (I also learned that Numbers won’t directly convert Excell files more complex than simple rows and columns, so I had to start from scratch...)

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mindwaves
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Nov 26, 2020, 05:40 PM
 
As mentioned above, duplicating a folder with many files inside. Also, opening a large Excel or Numbers file. Converting between formats. Scrolling a large PDF.

I wonder what is the holdup for an LTE M1 Mac. I would really want one of those.
     
OreoCookie
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Nov 26, 2020, 07:55 PM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
As mentioned above, duplicating a folder with many files inside. Also, opening a large Excel or Numbers file. Converting between formats. Scrolling a large PDF.
These are not really good benchmarks, though. I reckon the most challenging thing average people do is browse the web and keep many tabs open. Despite the large speed-ups, I think what average people will feel the most is the difference in battery life. Honestly, these are to me the most amazing benchmarks. Some people compiled large software projects, and compared e. g. an Intel-based MacBook (Pro) to its younger M1 sibling. The result was usually that either the Intel-based Mac couldn’t do it on a charge or used up something like 70 % of its battery while the M1 sipped only 10-20 % of the power. Put another way, your battery really, really does last longer. Instant on is another win.
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
I wonder what is the holdup for an LTE M1 Mac. I would really want one of those.
I think Apple would have had to include an antenna, which would require Apple to tweak the case design. Since they did not want to do this, we have to wait at least a little longer. Once they redesign the case, they have no more excuses.
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subego
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Nov 26, 2020, 08:46 PM
 
I generally only do 4K right now, but I’m worried about it slinging uncompressed 16-bit 8K with so little RAM.

At 2GB per core, that’s only 10 frames.
     
OreoCookie
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Nov 26, 2020, 09:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
I generally only do 4K right now, but I’m worried about it slinging uncompressed 16-bit 8K with so little RAM.

At 2GB per core, that’s only 10 frames.
It seems that with video it really depends on the codec. The M1 sings on ProRes, even if you only have 8 GB, but seems to suffer with other codecs that have not yet been optimized for the M1. None of this should be surprising, Apple has been demoing video on the iPad Pro for years. Even my iPad Pro from 2018 is supposed to handle three 4K streams with ease.

If you are more serious about video, I'd wait until Apple brings machines to market sport more RAM and have even more cores.
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subego
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Nov 27, 2020, 12:26 AM
 
Unfortunately, the codec can’t help with effects work. Everything inside the effects software is uncompressed, so each frame takes up the same amount of memory.
     
OreoCookie
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Nov 27, 2020, 04:45 AM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
Unfortunately, the codec can’t help with effects work. Everything inside the effects software is uncompressed, so each frame takes up the same amount of memory.
That's not correct: have a look at this video. The reviewer first used Da Vinci resolve and thought the M1 was a turd performance-wise, because he wanted to use his workflow that relies on another video format. He retested with ProRes and the M1 went from “can't even play back without dropping tons of frames” to “I can color grade live while playing 4K without breaking a sweat”. The codec can either run on the specialized hardware (ISP or GPU) rather than the much slower CPU. There are tons of other reviews such as this one that try different, very demanding formats.

If for whatever reason you can't/don't want to use ProRes, then this is an issue, but this isn't a system performance issue, it is a software optimization issue.
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subego
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Nov 27, 2020, 11:41 AM
 
Da Vinci Resolve is editing and color grading software. The other video is named “good for video editing”.

Effects work is not the same as editing or color grading.


Edit: to expand, codec performance matters if playback is from the file, which is what happens during editing and grading. For effects, with After Effects at least, playback is from uncompressed frames stored in RAM.
( Last edited by subego; Nov 27, 2020 at 04:24 PM. )
     
ghporter
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Nov 27, 2020, 07:15 PM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
As mentioned above, duplicating a folder with many files inside. Also, opening a large Excel or Numbers file. Converting between formats. Scrolling a large PDF.

I wonder what is the holdup for an LTE M1 Mac. I would really want one of those.
I don’t disagree at all. But I think, to be “accessible” as a benchmark, we’d need to quantify a few things. Like converting between what formats? How large a spreadsheet? If the benchmark is only relevant to people who “do X”, then anyone else won’t care.

I definitely feel that video editing and compression tasks really tax any machine, but it wouldn’t be particularly helpful if the testing was on a new-ish format compared to an older (and widely used, like MP4) format. Likewise with audio edit/compression/manipulation.

Also, I think it would be very instructive to look at “copying a folder with 1,000 empty sub folders” and then “copying a folder with 1,000 sub folders with 1,000 small files in each.” While less “realistic” for may people, it would be useful numbers to work with. And I’d add copying a text file of 1,000 characters, a text file of 100,000 characters, and a text file of 1,000,000 characters. Being text, this would be format-agnostic, but might give users more concrete ideas about how quickly bytes get moved and stored.

It’s apparent that Big Sur will use special tricks and such built into the M1, but if we can compare prior generations of Macs’ performance on tasks that don’t really benefit from those tricks, maybe we’ll get a real feel for just how fast the M1 and all the integrations and optimizations built into the hardware make these new Macs.

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Spheric Harlot
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Nov 27, 2020, 09:18 PM
 
Duplicating a folder with a huge number of files inside should be pretty much instantaneous, given that APFS is built for this kind of thing.

I just duplicated a 26 GB folder containing almost 2500 items in various folders, and it took about two seconds on my 2016 15" MBP.
     
Waragainstsleep  (op)
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Nov 28, 2020, 09:09 AM
 
I read a Forbes article which seemed weirdly biased. They were using rather inappropriate language to claim that Intel and AMD processes "Destroy" the M1 using Cinebench benchmarks. One of the tests using that phrase, the Intel was only ahead by 20 points out of 1000 or so and the AMDs were all behind. Shameful excuse for "Journalism" really. Lots of banging on about x86 being behind on production nodes as well without much reference to cooling, heat, power, etc.
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andi*pandi
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Dec 1, 2020, 08:02 PM
 
zippy new mac mini looks like a nobrainer, until you add in more ram, and up the HD to 1TB... then it's over a grand and edging into laptop prices. Maybe you don't need the ram anymore for photoshop and illustrator?

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/m...ore-gpu-512gb#

help me figure it out:

I have old apple cinema monitor, new 4k monitor, a large 2013 imac that could be a monitor, and a work macbookpro they only want me to use as the brain. the macbookpro has a tiny hard drive and won't hold my music and things. I might have to break down and buy my own machine again. Is there a way to set up a toggle between the mini and the macbook and have them both hooked up to imac (monitor only) and 4k monitor? Can the mini access the camera in the imac when it's being used as a dumb monitor?
     
Thorzdad
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Dec 1, 2020, 08:09 PM
 
Judging by what I’ve seen on YT by people running FinalCut and other such apps, there isn’t a problem with the seemingly paltry amount of RAM in the Mini. The M1 seems to be insanely efficient in the RAM area.
     
subego
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Dec 1, 2020, 08:09 PM
 
Originally Posted by andi*pandi View Post
Is there a way to set up a toggle between the mini and the macbook and have them both hooked up to imac (monitor only) and 4k monitor? Can the mini access the camera in the imac when it's being used as a dumb monitor?
I’m not 100% sure, but I think Apple really hates the idea of iMacs as dumb monitors.
     
Brien
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Dec 1, 2020, 08:48 PM
 
After reading some more and listening to Gruber’s recent podcast, I think that they intentionally released new minis and MB’s earlier this year, and then released these new ones in the exact same cases so you could have a 1:1 comparison of current-gen Intel vs. M1 chips.

I am hopeful we will see a ground up redesign next year with 12/14/16 inch OLED or mLED screens with rounded corners and bezels as thin as we are seeing on the iPhones.
     
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Dec 1, 2020, 09:22 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
Da Vinci Resolve is editing and color grading software. The other video is named “good for video editing”.

Effects work is not the same as editing or color grading.
I'm not a video editor, but I had presumed that effects work was considered part of video editing. But if that's not the case, then I stand corrected. Nevertheless, I would assume that the fixed function hardware and high degree of optimization would also be an advantage for effects work. But honestly, I don't think I have seen a review focussing on what you call effects work.
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Waragainstsleep  (op)
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Dec 2, 2020, 06:11 PM
 
You can't use the iMac camera when its in Target Display Mode as far as I know. I doubt you can toggle but you might be able to get some sort of hub so its a single cable.
Alternatively you use the Mini to remote control the MBP when you need to use it? Though you only get one display for the MBP doing that.
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Dec 2, 2020, 06:29 PM
 
The IT dept just suggested using an external drive for itunes/iphoto files instead. Interesting idea though to remote into the macbook when I need to! Even if it's right on the desk! but I bet their security won't let that happen.
     
subego
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Dec 5, 2020, 11:45 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
I'm not a video editor, but I had presumed that effects work was considered part of video editing. But if that's not the case, then I stand corrected.
You’ve never heard of effects as being distinct from editing?

Think of Star Wars. The “PEW PEW” dude isn’t an editor, they’re an effects person. Different skill set, and different tools.
( Last edited by subego; Dec 5, 2020 at 12:00 PM. )
     
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Dec 5, 2020, 12:39 PM
 
for many smaller operations, they are the same guy though.
     
subego
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Dec 5, 2020, 04:18 PM
 
Originally Posted by andi*pandi View Post
for many smaller operations, they are the same guy though.
Oh, no question.

My point is splitting effects from editing is an idea everybody’s familiar with, and when split it’s evident they’d need Apple silicon to do radically different things.
( Last edited by subego; Dec 5, 2020 at 04:42 PM. )
     
ghporter
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Dec 5, 2020, 06:31 PM
 
Typically, effects are created, then edited into a scene. Often the effects are at least partly an overlay on the main image, so adding an extra layer of effects to the image - which feels like editing to me - would be a completely separate thing from creating the content of that layer to begin with.

ILM did a whole lot of work on Saving Private Ryan. One example would be bullet hits; these are typically done with pyro charges wired into actors’ costumes. This takes a lot of time to rig, and has some very nasty safety issues. It also restricts what the director and cinematographer can do in such shots.

ILM took this on, and carefully tracked the hand-held camera work, creating the effects to match the action in the already completed footage. It’s quite possible that they did these effects for all of the original footage, even before the sequence was edited. That would be an example of effects as a completely separate task from editing.

To do that sort of ILM stuff, the effects people would have to be able to create the “effect” image, then manipulate it to match the footage. That’s a couple of steps (create then move/adjust) that by themselves aren’t enormous resource hogs. But doing zillions of them... (I’m sure ILM crafted a “library” of the effects, instead of creating each hit individually, but that drives editing and adjusting the library resource...). I have no idea how these effects were layered in, but that step, however it was done, is the real resource hog, since it would probably be done when rendering the finished frame.

The complexity of each effect (giant spaceship or tiny alien spider on the wall) drives how much computing is required for the effect. But editing impacts entire frames, and ALL of the frames, so it is inherently at least as computationally challenging as “creating” effects.

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Dec 5, 2020, 09:08 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
You’ve never heard of effects as being distinct from editing?
I’m not an expert in the field, so I might not be using proper terminology here. To me video editing is the process of turning raw footage into a final product, and effects work is just part of video editing.

Sure, I know what special effects are, and I know that people who insert transformers into a movie scene aren’t referred to as video editors and won’t do any “cutting”. On a large movie production, you are dealing with lots of experts who only do a small share of the work. I have met people who worked on box office mega hits doing just that, finishing about a second of film a day if they were lucky. My cousin was a director for commercials and such, and also he did some special effects stuff in his work.

For some (a lot?) of effects work you need to use pieces of software like Motion separate from Final Cut Pro X or Premiere, even though both have effects built into them (such as green screen). Just like sometimes you use specialized software for color grading even though some color grading functionality is built into every video editing software. In most productions, though, all of this is done by one or two people, and I was under the impression that this was all under the umbrella of video editing.
Originally Posted by subego View Post
My point is splitting effects from editing is an idea everybody’s familiar with, and when split it’s evident they’d need Apple silicon to do radically different things.
What kind of features in Apple Silicon does effects work need according to you? Just more RAM and more cores? I don’t know many video editors who would want to work on a MacBook Air. (In the field my cousin always had a decked out 15” or 16” MacBook Pro.) Also, going back to my original comments, at least for effects that you can do in e. g. Final Cut Pro X, codec choice and hardware acceleration still seem to matter.
( Last edited by OreoCookie; Dec 5, 2020 at 10:23 PM. )
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Brien
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Dec 5, 2020, 11:40 PM
 
Hoping to see an 18” Pro.
     
subego
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Dec 6, 2020, 02:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
The complexity of each effect (giant spaceship or tiny alien spider on the wall) drives how much computing is required for the effect. But editing impacts entire frames, and ALL of the frames, so it is inherently at least as computationally challenging as “creating” effects.
There’s an effect I did recently where even if I had 100 cores, it still would have taken an hour to render.

In other words, I could have used more than 100 cores. I would have welcomed 400.

Editing is not this computationally challenging.
     
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Dec 6, 2020, 04:39 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
There’s an effect I did recently where even if I had 100 cores, it still would have taken an hour to render.
OT, but does this mean you resumed production on the time movie?
     
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Dec 6, 2020, 05:00 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
There’s an effect I did recently where even if I had 100 cores, it still would have taken an hour to render.

In other words, I could have used more than 100 cores. I would have welcomed 400.

Editing is not this computationally challenging.
Benchmarks have shown the M1 mini did it in eight minutes.
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subego
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Dec 6, 2020, 05:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
I’m not an expert in the field, so I might not be using proper terminology here. To me video editing is the process of turning raw footage into a final product, and effects work is just part of video editing.
The term I’m most used to for this process is “post-production” or “post”, and then editing refers primarily to the task of cutting and assembling shots.
     
subego
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Dec 6, 2020, 05:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by reader50 View Post
OT, but does this mean you resumed production on the time movie?
Unfortunately, no. That’s still stuck in COVID limbo.

We have a bunch of footage from live shows though, so we’ve been knocking something together with that.
     
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Dec 6, 2020, 05:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton View Post
Benchmarks have shown the M1 mini did it in eight minutes.
Well, yeah... because they used 40 of them.
     
ghporter
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Dec 6, 2020, 07:07 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
There’s an effect I did recently where even if I had 100 cores, it still would have taken an hour to render.

In other words, I could have used more than 100 cores. I would have welcomed 400.

Editing is not this computationally challenging.
That's interesting; were you rendering entire frames synthetically? My post assumed something outside of total CGI.

I also avoided the whole Video Toaster concept. They did great stuff for Babylon 5 with that hardware, but in that situation they were producing completely synthetic (and quite complex) frames.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
subego
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Dec 6, 2020, 07:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
Also, going back to my original comments, at least for effects that you can do in e. g. Final Cut Pro X, codec choice and hardware acceleration still seem to matter.
Regardless of whether it’s editing software or dedicated effects software, the only time codec choice matters for an effect is if the effect can be rendered very quickly.

Let’s say an effect requires 100 calls to the codec. Our good codec can do that in a half-second, our trash fire codec takes 3 minutes.

If the effect takes a minute to render, it matters very much whether the overhead from the codec is a half-second or three minutes. If the effect takes an hour to render, it’s kinda stopped mattering.
     
OreoCookie
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Dec 6, 2020, 08:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
The term I’m most used to for this process is “post-production” or “post”, and then editing refers primarily to the task of cutting and assembling shots.
Ok, good to know. I have heard that term before, but I didn’t have a precise idea what it all encompassed.
Originally Posted by subego View Post
Regardless of whether it’s editing software or dedicated effects software, the only time codec choice matters for an effect is if the effect can be rendered very quickly.
Just from a practical perspective, it seems that in quite a few settings the M1 does speed up things a lot. I watched a video by Tony & Chelsea Northrup last night who switched to an M1-based MacBook Pro from a decked out 2019 16” MacBook Pro. The M1 apparently shaves off half a day or more off of their workflow, because they no longer have to create auxiliary video files that are gentler on the machine (4K60 files from a Sony mirrorless camera, I believe, which takes about 8 hours on his Intel-based Mac according to him). He mentions also render times that were cut by a factor of 3 or 4. He made a point that his project included some effects.

Surely I can imagine that the projects you are working on sound much more involved and will probably require something like a Mac Pro or equivalent, so the SoC that goes in Apple’s slowest Mac is probably not up to snuff. But even then I’d say that this is a good portend of things to come.
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
I also avoided the whole Video Toaster concept. They did great stuff for Babylon 5 with that hardware, but in that situation they were producing completely synthetic (and quite complex) frames.
That’s the blind spot of Mac heads: back in the day, the Amiga ran circles around it when it came to video and (to a lesser degree) audio. (Most audio people ended up with Ataris, but both were popular with people making e. g. electronic music.) When I first learnt that even in the 1990s some studios were still using Amigas with Video Toasters, I was amazed.
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subego
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Dec 6, 2020, 08:15 PM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
That's interesting; were you rendering entire frames synthetically? My post assumed something outside of total CGI.

I also avoided the whole Video Toaster concept. They did great stuff for Babylon 5 with that hardware, but in that situation they were producing completely synthetic (and quite complex) frames.
There’s technically some synthetic stuff, but what took so much time is the original clip was so long in the first place. Anything it had to do it had to do 4,000 times over.

We had Video Toasters at Cable Access back in the day, but I never jumped through the official hoops to use it.
     
Waragainstsleep  (op)
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Dec 6, 2020, 08:29 PM
 
Video effect are much more reliant on the GPU are they not? Its going tbnic, popular effec be interesting to see if Apple builds systems with a big GPU that can do most effects fast, or includes more modular silicon that does a few specific, popular effects blindingly fast. A dedicated module for particle effects or ray tracing etc etc?
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
subego
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Dec 6, 2020, 09:25 PM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
Surely I can imagine that the projects you are working on sound much more involved and will probably require something like a Mac Pro or equivalent, so the SoC that goes in Apple’s slowest Mac is probably not up to snuff. But even then I’d say that this is a good portend of things to come.
The attractive option from the current lineup is the Mini, but as a node on a distributed network. Effects scale almost perfectly with multiprocessing. The more Minis I add, the faster it goes. Not to mention whatever speed gains come from optimizing the software.

The bugaboo is RAM. The software I use, After Effects, is an unrepentant RAM hog. With an Intel core, it uses up about 6GB. Even if that can somehow chopped in half, it’s still more than the maximum.
     
subego
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Dec 6, 2020, 09:29 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
Video effect are much more reliant on the GPU are they not?
For whatever reason, most of what I need is CPU only. I blame Adobe.
     
OreoCookie
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Dec 6, 2020, 09:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
For whatever reason, most of what I need is CPU only. I blame Adobe.
Yeah, that's the problem with cross-platform software: they can never take advantage of platform-specific technologies too much. Final Cut Pro X uses also the Neural Engine for video stabilization and the like, so IMHO Adobe is getting further and further behind by sticking to the lowest common denominator.

Although I thought Adobe's video software utilizes the GPU for video encoding, though. But again, I'm not talking from first-hand experience.
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subego
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Dec 7, 2020, 09:39 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
Yeah, that's the problem with cross-platform software: they can never take advantage of platform-specific technologies too much. Final Cut Pro X uses also the Neural Engine for video stabilization and the like, so IMHO Adobe is getting further and further behind by sticking to the lowest common denominator.

Although I thought Adobe's video software utilizes the GPU for video encoding, though. But again, I'm not talking from first-hand experience.
Version 9 was great, but Lord almighty I can't stand Final Cut Pro X. We tried, but at some point it was too much and jumped back to Premiere.

With both Premiere and After Effects, some of it has GPU acceleration, but a lot of the more obscure bits don’t.
     
 
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