New 15" MacBook Pro Performance

[Mark Toia]

2k... Until Jim sells me a 4k projector
but till then this one is good... Pin sharp and bright.. as good a being in the movies.

[Carey Lee Coffey]

Mark, can you give us the model number for your projector/screen or a link to it? Thanks!

[Michael Cioni]

Michael,


Are your transcode figures from 5k footage? What app are you using to do the transcodes? Would love to hear what speeds these machines are capable of transcoding 5K Epic material to 1920x1080 pro res?

Are the graphic cards in these machines supporting CUDA if so is anyone running Resolve and getting good results. Apologies for all the questions.

Footage is being processed via the new Express Dailies system from ColorFont. Express Dailies is an all-in-one solution for transcoding any footage from any file-based camera and uses NVIDIA CUDA cores in order to enhance processing. The application is in beta now, but will be available soon for purchase. In the mean time, development with the talented ColorFront has enabled us to do things we didn't know were possible until now. -Coupling that with Apple's latest computers and it's a combination worth serious consideration.

Running on the new MacBook Pro 15" we used a Sonnet expansion chassis to connect the computer to a 48TB SAS raid which gave us 380 megabytes per second read and 624 megabytes per second write. This all through a single Thunderbolt port. Using the built-in NVIDIA graphics card, Express Dailies was able to render an AVID 1080p DNxHD36 file as well as a simultaneous 720p H.264 file at 23 frames per second. These two files were being decoded and written on this single MacBook Pro which (in our opinion) makes for a bona fide "PRO" computer system in the field.
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[Mike Halper]

Michael, assuming since you're posting here, you were transcoding R3D's? What was the resolution and quality of the R3D and what debayer settings were you using for the transcode? Also, which SAS card were you using in the Sonnet expansion chassis? And there was no Rocket in the chassis right? Thanks! This is all exciting. I may not need to get a Rocket after all.

[Sidney L. Plaut]

Michael or any other ssd savy,

Do you think the 750gb flash option for the 15" retina, will be slower than a 512gb version?

[Chris McKechnie]

2k... Until Jim sells me a 4k projector
but till then this one is good... Pin sharp and bright.. as good a being in the movies.

Yea...projector info would be appreciated...as well as your screen size and choice. :-)

[Terry VerHaar]

Thanks for posting, Michael. I think people can get to hung up on the form factor, i.e. "laptop," and not focus on what the machine can actually do. Pretty impressive. Keep us posted on what your are doing with it.

[Rob Ruffo]

This is not complete info though. 720p at what resolution of Red decoding? Full premium? 1/8 Good? 1/16?

I'd love to see benchmarks comparing it the the Mac Pro 12 core towers.

Life is too short to spend looking at progress bars any more than necessary. Any loss in speed means more hours not being creative, and as such faster gear pays for itself pretty quickly. Also, honestly, what do I care abouta cluttered desk with a big box on it if it means I get to spend more hours enjoying life with my wife.

So... Not sure how excited I am.

[Nick Pasquariello]

Footage is being processed via the new Express Dailies system from ColorFont. Express Dailies is an all-in-one solution for transcoding any footage from any file-based camera and uses NVIDIA CUDA cores in order to enhance processing. The application is in beta now, but will be available soon for purchase. In the mean time, development with the talented ColorFront has enabled us to do things we didn't know were possible until now. -Coupling that with Apple's latest computers and it's a combination worth serious consideration.

This is the first I've heard of transcoding going through the graphics card (though it's something I've wanted software to direct to for a while now). Anyone know of any other software solutions that drive any part of the transcoding through the GPU? I don't think AME does, even though Adobe uses the CUDA cores for (Mercury) playback.

Driving this computation through the GPU basically turns your GPU into a "Red Rocket" card that is camera-agnostic. This . . . is pretty exciting stuff, especially if it's as new as I think it is >_>

'Course, my knowledge of software/hardware is a bit stunted compared to many on these forums. Hence the question above: Anyone know of any other software solutions that drive any part of the transcoding through the GPU?

[Jaakko Rinne]

This is the first I've heard of transcoding going through the graphics card (though it's something I've wanted software to direct to for a while now). Anyone know of any other software solutions that drive any part of the transcoding through the GPU? I don't think AME does, even though Adobe uses the CUDA cores for (Mercury) playback.

Driving this computation through the GPU basically turns your GPU into a "Red Rocket" card that is camera-agnostic. This . . . is pretty exciting stuff, especially if it's as new as I think it is >_>

'Course, my knowledge of software/hardware is a bit stunted compared to many on these forums. Hence the question above: Anyone know of any other software solutions that drive any part of the transcoding through the GPU?

But is it actually using CUDA for decompression and debayer of the R3Ds or just for image manipulation and encoding into other codecs? "To enhance processing" doesn't really say much.