The video standard is changing yet again, and this time the focus is on 4K and above.
To avoid paying someone else to edit your footage, you’re going to need an updated editing system to view, edit, finish and export your project. The new Apple Mac Pro is a great option, as it’s small, portable, powerful and gets the job done surprisingly well. And to get good 4K performance without going bankrupt, you’ll need eight things: the Mac Pro, more memory, the D700 GFX card upgrade, a Blackmagic Design UltraStudio 4K TB interface, a pair of HighPoint RocketStor 6328 RAID controllers, four G-Speed RAID boxes, an external TB storage drive and a broadcast monitor.
I recently switched my system to a new Mac Pro “trash can” 6-core for under $5K. I chose the 6-core over the 4-, 8- and 12-core models because the 4-core isn’t enough, and the 8- and 12-cores are a pricy overkill when not running software that can only use your computer’s processors. Since the 6-core is multi-threaded, you’ll end up with a 12-core running at 3.8GHz, which is fast. Some software can’t even use 6-cores, but they’re still needed for the software that uses them.
Since most new software uses the GPU processors on graphics cards in addition to the six computer cores, you’ll want to upgrade your Apple order to include two D700 GFX cards. Each card has 6GB of really fast memory and extra processing power that takes your 6-core Mac Pro to a whole new level. Adding more RAM memory makes the computer faster, and the 64GB Apple update is $1,500. Other World Computing (www.macsales.com) offers the same memory for about half the price, so you can still get what you need while saving money. Since not all products come with TB cables, you may also want to get three or four extra TB cables from www.macsales.com as well.
To see output on an external monitor in HD or 4K, I used a Blackmagic Design UltraStudio 4K interface for several reasons. Firstly, it’s a TB-compatible interface that plugs right in and, secondly, it only costs $1,000, which makes it a good value. As an added bonus, you can run DaVinci Resolve on your system to see color grading on a calibrated external broadcast monitor. Other interface solutions generally don’t support this feature. I currently use a 32-inch Boland monitor for its reliability factor, as these monitors are suited for TV trucks that bounce over rough roads from coast to coast — and they still work at each destination.
To play back 4K footage, you’ll need drives that are fast enough to avoid getting “dropped frame” error messages and stuttering playback. I used four G-Speed eS Pro RAID boxes to get as much speed and storage space as possible for the money. I also like that they’re small, portable and reliable. I’ve been using an older G-Speed Q RAID box (pictured left)for over five years now without failure, and isn’t that what you pay for? Reliability is everything, as timely delivery and your reputation will depend on it.
A hardware RAID requires a controller card, which will need a TB connection for the new Mac Pro. I was lucky enough to get my hands on a wonderful pair of HighPoint RocketStor 6328 RAID controllers. These little boxes are great, as they plug right into the Mac Pro’s TB ports and come with eSATA or mini SAS connections at the other end. Each RocketStor 6328 RAID controller can handle eight drives, so for this setup I needed to use two of them. A lot of RAID arrays on the market only allow for RAID 0. The problem with these boxes is that if one of the drives fails, you’ll lose everything because the data is corrupted. The first time you find yourself with 100+ hours of a project on a RAID 0 array and a drive fails, you’ll never again trust RAID 0. With a RAID 5, simply change out the bad drive and have the software rebuild the RAID to get your project back. In addition to the RAID, I also like to have a TB external storage drive for media that I don’t want on my internal memory. This allows me to store audio SFX, SmartSound music and GFX libraries without having to pay for the Apple C-drive upgrade.
Now let’s take look at how to configure the whole system. First, the installation of the 64GB memory from www.macsales.com is simple, and takes about five minutes. (There are YouTube videos that can walk you through the process.) Keep your old memory so that you can pop it back in the machine if you need to take your computer to Apple for repair. That way, your Mac Pro will match their record of your computer, and all will be well with your warranty.
The Mac Pro has six TB ports on three TB channels and six USB ports. You would assume that the three TB channels would go from top to bottom, but the channels are as follows: the top two are left side, the top two are right side, and the bottom two are side by side. (The bottom two also share the bus with with the HDMI output.) To see a color correct output, I plugged the UltraStudio 4K TB interface into channel 1 and connected the output via SDI to the Boland 32-inch broadcast monitor. The pair of HighPoint RocketStor 6328 RAID controllers went into channels 2 and 3 of the TB ports so that they’d both have full bandwidth. The TB external drive ( I used a 12TB G-RAID Studio to match the Macpro) shared one of the TB ports. The USB ports were used for the keyboard, mouse and any software dongles I had.
The next step was to connect each of the HighPoint RocketStor 6328 RAID controllers to two G-Speed RAID boxes, which in my case were two mini-SAS connectors on 3-foot cables. Once you have the two controllers and four drive boxes plugged in, load the HighPoint software and create two 8-drive RAID 5s. Then, go into disk utility and stripe the two RAID 5s together in Mac OS X in a RAID 0. This leaves you with a very quiet, 28TB RAID 50 that will write at 1600+ MB/sec and read at 1900+ MB/sec.
As you can see, the read and write numbers at the top look good, and the green numbers at the bottom indicate the number of video frames for that particular format. So, at the bottom right you’ll see that for 12-bit RGB 4:4:4 2K, you can write 88 frames. Shooting at 24FPS, you should be able to get two or three streams of 2K or at least one stream of 4K. I need something that can handle RAW footage since I also use Resolve 11, so I plugged in my Avid Artist Color Panel for Color Grading. My first test was with 5K RED camera footage.
I imported the .R3D files into DaVinci Resolve for Color Grading, added a LUT and started grading — and I was amazed how well the system handled 5K .R3D footage. I exported the graded footage as HD ProRes HQ, and imported it into Final Cut Pro X (which also works very well on the new Mac Pro). The system handled at least eight layers of 4K or 5K ProRes HQ playback in real time, which is more than enough for most projects. I did test several 4K and 5K workflows on the system, and was really pleased that a very green, low-wattage 6-core Mac Pro system could keep up real-time playback. And since this system is small and portable, you can easily take it with you for DIT work on set before editing later at the office.