iMac upgrades worth it? If so, what? - video editing/production

[mlaidman]

Well, here I am using Macs for the first time!

I work for a smallish TV production company. The team with which I'm working now produces 3 15-minute mini-shows each week.

We all use Final Cut Pro X, and so are on iMacs. We have four older units that we'd like to upgrade, but I'm just not familiar enough with the systems ad software to know really what upgrades are worth it.

We've got a few recent iMacs (mid-2015 Retina 5K, 3.3Ghz i5, 16GB RAM, Radeon R9 290 2GB, 1TB HDD), and then some models which are getting pretty long in the tooth. The 2015 models are nice to look at, but the regular hard drive still makes them feel a little sluggish.

The four older models are all 27-inches, and the specs are as follows:

- Late 2009, 2.66GHz Core i5 (I5-750), 4GB RAM, Radeon 4850 512MB, 1TB HDD
- Late 2009, 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo (E7600), 4GB RAM, Radeon 4850 512MB, 1TB HDD
- Mid 2010, 2.8 GHz Core i5 (I5-760), 4GB RAM, Radeon 5750 1GB, 1TB HDD
- Mid 2011, 2.7GHz Core i5 (I5-2500S), 4GB RAM, Radeon 6770M 512MB, 1TB HDD

I'm pretty sure they're all just 1TB drives. No Fusion or anything.

I've poked around a bit and I know the memory is easily upgradeable. Also, since they all have optical drives, it looks likes you can keep a big storage drive in there and pop in an SSD. Is this relatively easy? I'm comfortable taking electronics part.

But is any of this worth doing? I know a memory upgrade and SSD would definitely make things a lot snappier, but we're still dealing with first/second generation Core CPUs. Even a Core 2 Duo!

We film, edit, and output in 1080p. Some projects are 4K, but they're edited on either a Mac Pro (trash can) or the newer iMacs. The older models are still usable when editing proxy files, but editing on them can hardly be described as 'fast' or 'fun.'

Any and all input would be appreciated! Do we just use them for teaching machines and save the money for future new systems? Or would upgrades to 8GB RAM and SSDs help?

 

[Commodus]

Well, here I am using Macs for the first time!

I work for a smallish TV production company. The team with which I'm working now produces 3 15-minute mini-shows each week.

We all use Final Cut Pro X, and so are on iMacs. We have four older units that we'd like to upgrade, but I'm just not familiar enough with the systems ad software to know really what upgrades are worth it.

We've got a few recent iMacs (mid-2015 Retina 5K, 3.3Ghz i5, 16GB RAM, Radeon R9 290 2GB, 1TB HDD), and then some models which are getting pretty long in the tooth. The 2015 models are nice to look at, but the regular hard drive still makes them feel a little sluggish.

The four older models are all 27-inches, and the specs are as follows:

- Late 2009, 2.66GHz Core i5 (I5-750), 4GB RAM, Radeon 4850 512MB, 1TB HDD
- Late 2009, 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo (E7600), 4GB RAM, Radeon 4850 512MB, 1TB HDD
- Mid 2010, 2.8 GHz Core i5 (I5-760), 4GB RAM, Radeon 5750 1GB, 1TB HDD
- Mid 2011, 2.7GHz Core i5 (I5-2500S), 4GB RAM, Radeon 6770M 512MB, 1TB HDD

I'm pretty sure they're all just 1TB drives. No Fusion or anything.

I've poked around a bit and I know the memory is easily upgradeable. Also, since they all have optical drives, it looks likes you can keep a big storage drive in there and pop in an SSD. Is this relatively easy? I'm comfortable taking electronics part.

But is any of this worth doing? I know a memory upgrade and SSD would definitely make things a lot snappier, but we're still dealing with first/second generation Core CPUs. Even a Core 2 Duo!

We film, edit, and output in 1080p. Some projects are 4K, but they're edited on either a Mac Pro (trash can) or the newer iMacs. The older models are still usable when editing proxy files, but editing on them can hardly be described as 'fast' or 'fun.'

Any and all input would be appreciated! Do we just use them for teaching machines and save the money for future new systems? Or would upgrades to 8GB RAM and SSDs help?

The RAM is easy, and it'd be worth going to 8GB or more if you can get the extra RAM without spending too much; you'd need to head to a place like iFixit for instructions on the storage. As I understand it, though, it's probably not worth a storage update -- the aluminum unibody means you have to suction cup the display off the front.

Personally, I'd go the teaching machine route and start replacing the oldest models first. Fusion Drives are standard on all 27-inch models now, and they help. With that said: if you want a pure SSD, be sure to order the system that way.

 

[mlaidman]

Great! Thanks, Commodus. The RAM prices here aren't too bad, so I think we'll definitely do that. Also, I might try my hand at a few SSD upgrades.

 

[dclive]

...for all but the 2011. For the 2011, you can easily buy a Thunderbolt to SATA adapter ($99) that will let you keep using that machine for another few years. The speed hits 300MB/s, which is a night and day difference compared to the HDDs in the machines, and not that much slower than the modern iMacs.

I'd also call the CPU fully viable compared to the modern Macs. Once the next-gen gets released (where there were 2 cores before you'll now get 4, and where you got four cores before, 6) things will change, but for now, the last iMac is fully viable. Thunderbolt makes an incredible difference. You can add a dock, a SATA HDD, and more - and they're *fast*. You won't feel like you're making do - they're really viable.

 

[mlaidman]

...for all but the 2011. For the 2011, you can easily buy a Thunderbolt to SATA adapter ($99) that will let you keep using that machine for another few years. The speed hits 300MB/s, which is a night and day difference compared to the HDDs in the machines, and not that much slower than the modern iMacs.

I'd also call the CPU fully viable compared to the modern Macs. Once the next-gen gets released (where there were 2 cores before you'll now get 4, and where you got four cores before, 6) things will change, but for now, the last iMac is fully viable. Thunderbolt makes an incredible difference. You can add a dock, a SATA HDD, and more - and they're *fast*. You won't feel like you're making do - they're really viable.

Thanks, dclive

i'm just curious as to your reasoning. Is that because the 2009/10 models would benefit more from an internal SSD? Or is it a CPU power choice? The 2011 is still the 'wide-body' model, so I'd imagine the internals are fairly similar.

- Late 2009, 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo (E7600) - Final Core 2 Duo architecture (I think)
- Late 2009, 2.66GHz Core i5 (I5-750) - First-gen Core (quad) generation
- Mid 2010, 2.8 GHz Core i5 (I5-760)
- Mid 2011, 2.7GHz Core i5 (I5-2500S) 2nd-gen Core (quad) generation

Whoops. After browsing everymac.com I see that the 2011 model was the first to support Thunderbolt. That's it, right?!
Any specific adaptor or drive you'd recommend?

I'm still a little in the dark as to using a 7200rpm drive or an SSD for video editing. I know video editing isn't the ideal use case to get the most out of an SSD.

Thanks!

 

[dclive]

The second-gen i5 is significantly faster than all the others. The major change, though, is Thunderbolt - it makes adding the SSD trivial. Just plug in the cable and go. That's the key difference. Few people have the time or skills required to open the iMac to add the SSD internally (and for the non-i5 models, it's pretty silly to mess with it in this day and age since they're so slow).

Search the CPU's passmark scores for a good idea of relative speed. The second-gen i5 is pretty good; the rest are junk, TBH, for most people.

That said, I do have a few Core 2 Duo 2.0 and 2.4 Macbooks that are still usable with 128GB SSDs and 4-9GB of RAM in them, so I suppose I shouldn't comment too much. Both can browse the web. That's about all I would try to do. I'd never imagine anyone would edit *video* on such an old machine these days.

Ideally you want ALL of those things to be fast - lots of RAM, SSD, plus high-end CPU. On these you're limited to a terribly slow CPU for some of them, but RAM is easy to do (if expensive now) and the SSD is painful to upgrade on any but the Thunderbolt-equipped model. So I would sell or give away all but the Thunderbolt model. On that one, I'd upgrade to 16GB and to an SSD on the TB port and call it a day.

For some use, that machine will then feel faster than the hard-drive equipped brand new iMac.

 

[mlaidman]

We ended up deciding to ditch the oldest Core 2 Duo machine, and got memory upgrades for the rest. Also SSDs, which we'll put into the older, thicker iMacs with the optical drive bays. SSD in the HHD bay, HDD in the optical drive bay seems to be the way to go. And we've got a kid working here who's done it before, and is willing to give me a hand. Still, it'll be an adventure, I'm sure.

Decided to go with some RAID 0 external drive enclosures over USB 3.0, as well, for editing. We have a couple WD Book Duos, and I tested them at about 250Mb/s read/write. Our main bottleneck is still definitely the ancient CPUs, though, but transcoding to proxies or else to optimized media (Prores 422) on the newer iMacs makes for a pretty smooth experience.

So that should keep things humming for a while, and the SSDs can be recycled whenever the old iMacs finally give in.

Thanks for your help!

 

[dclive]

None of those machines have USB3, so you'll be limited to USB2 speeds of perhaps 25MB/s - 30MB/s. With an SSD in there, it will be better than a SATA HDD for some things (random access) and very slow compared to the HDD for non-random access.

I'd go to Thunderbolt on the newest iMac. Far easier to do.

Please let us know how your major surgery works out. Taking apart the iMac is not fun.

 

[mlaidman]

Yikes! What a mis-step on my part! I got so focused on which cameras had Thunderbolt that I didn't even think about USB! Luckily we still haven't ordered anything.
I'm looking at the Akitio Thunder2 Duo drives now. Thinking about getting a few of those and using them in RAID 0 as editing drives, and then only upgrading the internal HDDs to SSDs on three of the older, thick iMacs (in addition to the memory upgrade).
Thanks for pointing this out, dclive.

 

[dclive]

Assuming the older, thick iMacs are the Thunderbolt-equipped models, that sounds like a reasonable plan. That gives you fast USB3 on them, plus HDMI out, as well. That could work pretty well. Not cheap (I saw $300/ea) but it would make a simple, clean upgrade and would allow 2 SSDs, if you really need two (do you? One should be plenty for most things I'd think? Particularly if you're doing proxy editing and most work takes place on faster machines?)

RAID0-ing SSDs is a bit silly, IMHO, particularly over Thunderbolt2-equipped devices attached to Thunderbolt1-hardware. Are you sure you see a clear reason for doing that?

Don't RAID HDDs. Get SSDs. HDDs are crap.

 

[mlaidman]

I was going to RAID 0 a couple HDDs for editing...haha

But now, as I keep talking with the bosses, there's more and more talk of future plans. We're a small company that was even smaller for the first couple years. We've grown a lot since the spring, but are still making due with half old/ half upgraded equipment. Now it sounds like we'll likely be getting three new iMacs by the end of the year, so I'm thinking it's not worth pouring any more money into the old computers.
We'll be looking at a proper backup solution early next year (200+ terabytes), and I'm now considering (potentially) the QNAP TVS-1282T3 as we could have 4 computers connected and working at once.
Anyway, that's where we are now...We'll see what happens! Thanks to all for their help!

 

[dclive]

It sounds like you are all over the place as far as what you are looking for and your IT group, which may be just one person, has little clear direction given to him and little planning given to him. I sympathize.

I suggest you come up with a direction and architectural layout for what the future holds, and then put a plan together, with specific actions, to show how to get there. Right now I think you're throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, TBH.

The QNAP is a nice device. Until (7 HDDs, if just RAID5, else 6 HDDs for RAID6) can hold 200+ TB, though, it won't meet your requirements. We're back to spaghetti being thrown on the walls.... Note that the 12 bays it has include 8 3.5" and 4 2.5", 2.5" generally for faster (and much lower capacity) SSDs. To hit 200TB you'll need 32TB HDDs, which don't exist yet commercially; if you want just one enclosure and 200TB, you'll need a device with about 22 bays, assuming RAID6 (anything less would be crazy with so many drives).

 

[mlaidman]

Haha yes! It is a complete mess!
And for someone like me, with a little computer/technical know-how, it's quite frustrating. We're in South Korea, and I'm the only foreigner in the office...
I was just thinking of the QNAP as a redundant editing device, and not for proper backup. For that I imagine we'd need a proper rack mount or something. My knowledge of server stuff is pretty basic (very, very basic).
Every here is super busy all the time, so I haven't really sat down with all the right people yet to really set out a budget and ask where we need to be in the long(er) term.
But yes, we need to get out of this 'spaghetti on the wall' situation as soon as possible!