Blog no longer updated

Hi there, as you probably released this blog is no longer being updated, but thanks for visiting.

I do write occasional articles for Redsharknews, News, Views and Know-How for the Moving Image Professional. Well worth a visit.

I am now working as a product specialist for Forscene, Professional Video Editing in the Cloud.
One day, all editing will be this way.

Supercharge your Mac Pro!!

There's life in the old girl yet

If you were a little disappointed with the announcement of the new Mac Pro at the WWDC in June and you would still like to carry on working with your Mac Pro I have some great news for you.

My friends at Jigsaw24 in the UK have put together some amazing upgrade packages for existing Mac Pro towers which will ensure that you are getting the best possible performance from your system.

These packages can be installed in any recent Mac Pro and will dramatically improve the performance of 3D packages, Adobe Creative Suite, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro and Smoke 2013.

The packages are priced as follows:

Mac Pro Booster packages

Adobe and Maya Base option

240gb SSD with 2.5" to 3.5" sled

Nvidia Quadro 4000

£659 ex VAT 

RAM is optional dependent on system 

Smoke Booster

240GB SSD with 2.5" to 3.5" sled

Nvidia GTX680 for Mac

FusionIO IOFX 420GB Memory tier for GPU http://www.fusionio.com/products/iofx/

£1399 ex VAT

RAM is optional dependant on system.

DaVinci Resolve V10 Ultimate

240GB SSD with 2.5" to 3.5" sled

Cubix Elite 4 1200w with Quiet Fan http://www.cubix.com/catalog/xpander-desktop-elite-1200w

FusionIO IOFX 420GB Memory tier for GPU http://www.fusionio.com/products/iofx/

2 x Nvidia Geforce Titan

£4799 ex VAT or £5099 ex VAT with a Blackmagic Decklink 4k card

RAM is optional dependant on system.

They can also offer 32GB of Mac compatible RAM for £250 ex VAT (4 x 8GB Modules)

If you have a Mac Pro with a GT120 card they can offer configurations with the Nvidia Titan as the main GPU.

If you compare these prices with other suppliers you will see that these are incredibly good deals. The Smoke booster package is the same price as the IOFX on it's own!

If you want more information or would like a specific quote for your system just send a mail to:

smoke@jigsaw24.com

Have you ever wondered what Smoke can do?

Smokes new Trimview

I have been a user and trainer on Autodesk Smoke for over 10 years now and it's amazing to see all the developments that have happened since it was ported to the Mac.

Smoke is an "all-in-one" system that can Edit, Conform, Grade and add complex Effects to media at resolutions up to 8K and in almost any format.

The latest version, Smoke 2013 Extension 1, has a number of useful enhancements to improve your workflow, such as the new trimview which is shown above, and it also has support for Blackmagic Video I/O hardware such as the Decklink and Ultrastudio.

Trial version

You can download a trial version from the Autodesk website but it can be a bit daunting at first so I'm very pleased to announce that I will be presenting a webinar at 12:30 BST (thats 11:30 GMT) on Tuesday July 16th.

I will be running through the basics of Smoke and also showing some of the new features in Extension 1. 

You can sign up for the webinar here

Hope to see you there!

Nvidia have released new drivers for OSX 10.8.4

Nvidia have released new graphics drivers for OSX 10.8.4 which includes a new driver preferences panel, performance improvements and bug fixes.

The update includes support for the following cards:

GeForce 600 series:
GTX 680 for Mac

GeForce 200 series:
GTX 285 for Mac

GeForce 100 series:
GT 120

GeForce 8 series:
8800 GT

Quadro series:
K5000 for Mac, 4000 for Mac

Quadro FX series:
FX 5600, FX 4800 for Mac

You can download the drivers here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-313.01.02f01-driver.html

and the latest version of CUDA for the Mac is here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-cuda-5.0.61-driver.html

It should also work with PC Nvidia cards, let me know your experiences in the comments.

Thanks,

Neil

No room for upgradable graphics in the new Mac Pro :-(

Apples New Mac Pro

At the WWDC in California Apple have shown a sneak peek of their new Mac Pro desktop computer.

To say it is a radical design is an understatement, it moves away from all of the typical properties of a workstation, particularly in terms of upgradability.

Apples decision is to fix the CPU and GPU options whilst providing six Thunderbolt 2 ports for expansion.

Thunderbolt 2 will allow for storage, monitors, Video I/O and coprocessors to be easily attached but unless there is a change from Thunderbolt 1 there will not be the option to add external GPUs.

Apple have chosen two of AMDs Firepro GPUs to power the graphics. Although these are very high performance chips I'm surprised that Apple didn't go with Nvidia, I'd have loved to see a pair of Titans in there. This means there is no support for CUDA, only OpenGL and OpenCL.

Some software has been rewritten to use the AMD chips instead of CUDA, Blackmagic Resolve 10 apparently screams on the new Mac Pro, but I'm curious to see what will happen with Adobes software which relies heavily on CUDA.

I'm also sad to see the end of the old Mac Pro tower, still one of the most beautiful workstations ever made in my opinion. At least this should bring down the second hand prices :-)

I would love to get my hands on a new Mac Pro and try it out, even if it does look like it escaped from the Death Star. :-)

Let me know if you've managed to get your hands on one,

All the best,

Neil

Apple have released Mountain Lion 10.8.4

Apple have released Mountain Lion 10.8.4 including the following updates:

The OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.4 Update is recommended for all OS X Mountain Lion users and includes features and fixes that improve the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including the following:

• Compatibility improvements when connecting to certain enterprise Wi-Fi networks
• Microsoft Exchange compatibility improvements in Calendar
• A fix for an issue that prevented FaceTime calls to non-U.S. phone numbers
• A fix for an issue that may prevent scheduled sleep after using Boot Camp
• Improves VoiceOver compatibility with text in PDF documents
• Includes Safari 6.0.5, which improves stability for some websites with chat features and games
• A fix for an issue that may cause iMessages to display out of order in Messages
• Resolves an issue in which Calendars Birthdays may appear incorrectly in certain time zones
• A fix for an issue that may prevent the desktop background picture from being preserved after restart
• A fix for an issue that may prevent documents from being saved to a server using SMB
• Addresses an issue that may prevent certain files from opening after copied to a volume named “Home"
• A fix for an issue that may prevent changes to files made over NFS from displaying
• Resolves an issue saving files to an Xsan volume from certain applications
• Improves Active Directory log-in performance, especially for cached accounts or when using a .local domain
• Improves OpenDirectory data replication
• Improves 802.1X compatibility with ActiveDirectory networks
• Improves compatibility when using mobile accounts

New mention of new graphics drivers but apparently there are new AMD drivers and people running the beta reported support for the Nvidia Titan, the GTX780 and the GTX770 

Let me know if you install it on a system with a PC graphics card.

Cheers

Neil

Nvidia release new graphics drivers for OSX 10.8.3

Nvidia have released new drivers for Mac Pros running OSX 10.8.3

These drivers support the following cards as standard:

GeForce 600 series:
GTX 680 for Mac

GeForce 200 series:
GTX 285 for Mac

GeForce 100 series:
GT 120

GeForce 8 series:
8800 GT

Quadro series:
K5000 for Mac, 4000 for Mac

Quadro FX series:
FX 5600, FX 4800 for Mac

They should also support GTX 600 series PC cards but I have not had a chance to install them yet.

Apparently support for the Titan and the GTX 700 series cards should be coming in 10.8.4 which is currently in beta.

More information and download from Nvidias site here