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Review: HP ZBook Fury 16 G10 Mobile Workstation

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By Brady Betzel

HP has been at the forefront of computer workstations that target M&E for multiple decades. To keep up with the high-pressure workloads, HP offers enterprise-level workstations with components that will run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And if they don’t, HP will replace the parts and/or system fast — the 24/7/265 uptime is what makes “workstations” unique when compared to off-the-shelf, consumer-grade computer systems.

To ensure the smoothest experience while using apps, HP tests many of today’s pro applications from ISVs (independent software vendors) — from Autodesk to Avid — with its workstations. The HP ZBook Fury 16 G10 is a mobile workstation that combines power and portability without sacrificing either.

The HP ZBook Fury 16 G10 that I was sent to review includes the following specs:

  • CPU: Intel Core i9-13950HX (up to 5.5 GHz with Intel Turbo Boost technology, 36MB L3 cache, 24 cores, 32 threads)
  • Nvidia pro-grade graphics: RTX 5000 Ada GPU
  • Display: 16-inch DreamColor QHD (3840×2400), WUXGA (1920 x 1200), IPS, anti-glare, 400 nits, 100% sRGB
  • RAM: 64 GB RAM – two DIMMs at 5600MHz DDR5 (four total DIMM slots)
  • Storage: 1TB SSD

In the latest HP ZBook Fury 16 G10, there are quite a few updates. Besides speed/hardware improvements, the most interesting updates include the full-size RGB keyboard with 10 keys. I am a sucker for a 10-key. When I was trying to pay for my own car as a teenager, I worked at Best Buy fixing computers and eventually installing car stereos. One of the things I learned from that job was getting fast at using a 10-key number pad. You know how that helped me in editing? Timecode input. So I love that HP includes the 10-key pad even on a mobile workstation.

The next impressive feature is the RGB backlit keyboard. Sure, you can use it just to show off some fancy rainbow effects, but you can also tie the RGB lights to specific applications, like Adobe’s Premiere Pro and After Effects. To adjust the RGB colors, you need to open an inconveniently titled app called Z Light Space. I would have preferred for HP to have called the app “HP RGB Keyboard” or something easily searchable, but what can you do? The keyboard is fully customizable and comes preloaded with apps like Premiere and After Effects. The default Premiere layout has keys such as “j, k and l” labeled in a nice teal color.

Physically, the HP ZBook Fury 16 G10 is thick. The keyboard feels like it sits an inch above the desk. Even so, it isn’t uncomfortable. The dimensions are 14.29 inches by 9.87 inches by 1.13 inches, and it weighs just over 5lbs. The power supply is large and kind of cumbersome, although it delivers a hefty 230W. I really wish workstation laptops would come with streamlined power supplies… maybe one day. HP includes a one-year parts/labor warranty (not on-site unless you pay extra).

Around the outside of the workstation, there are a lot of useful ports:

  • Right side:
    • one RJ-45
    • one headphone/microphone combo
    • one SuperSpeed USB Type-A 5Gbps signaling rate (charging)
    • one SuperSpeed USB Type-A 5Gbps signaling rate

  • Left side:
    • one power connector
    • two Thunderbolt 4 with USB4 Type-C 40Gbps signaling rate (USB Power Delivery, DisplayPort 1.4, HP Sleep and Charge)
    • one HDMI 2.1
    • one Mini DisplayPort 1.4a

Now on to really what matters… Does the HP ZBook Fury 16 G10 really chew through media in Blackmagic Resolve and Premiere Pro? Yes, it does, and when it is running hard, the fans turn on. The Nvidia RTX A5000 laptop GPU is really impressive considering that it’s stuffed inside such a small form factor. Resolve continually embraces GPU acceleration more than Adobe, in my opinion, and the results of my testing bear that out.

Blackmagic Resolve
Up first is Resolve 18.6.4. Keep in mind that when comparing workstations or GPUs, increased speeds are not always tied to new hardware. Advancements in underlying software efficiency, drivers, firmware updates, etc. will also improve speeds. That said, based on a UHD, 3840×2160 timeline, I edited the following clips together and put a basic color grade on them:

  • ARRI RAW: 3840×2160 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • ARRI RAW: 4448×1856 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • BMD RAW: 6144×3456 24fps – 15 seconds
  • Red RAW: 6144×3072 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • Red RAW: 6144×3160 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • Sony a7siii: 3840×2160 23.976fps – 15 seconds

I then duplicated that timeline but added Blackmagic’s noise reduction. Then I duplicated the timeline again and added sharpening and grain. Finally, I replaced the built-in Resolve noise reduction with a third-party noise reduction plugin from Neat Video. From there, I exported multiple versions: DNxHR 444 10-bit OP1a MXF, DNxHR 444 10-bit MOV, H.264 MP4, H.265 MP4, AV1 MP4 (Nvidia GPUs only) and then an IMF package using the default settings.

Here are my results:

HP ZBook Fury 16 G10

 

 DNxHR 444 10-bit MXF DNxHR 444 10-bit MOV H.264 MP4 H.265 MP4 AV1

MP4

 IMF
Color Correction Only 00:53 00:48 00:31 00:30 00:33 01:19
CC + Resolve Noise Reduction 02:13 02:13 02:02 02:02 02:02 02:19
CC, Resolve NR, Sharpening, Grain 02:57 02:56 02:48 02:48 02:48 02:58
CC + Neat Video Noise Reduction 03:59 03:59 03:47 03:48 03:51 04:03

Adobe Premiere Pro
I ran similar tests inside Premiere Pro 2024 (24.1), exporting using Adobe Media Encoder. The video assets are the same as the ones I used in Resolve, but I used Adobe’s noise reduction, sharpening and grain filters instead of Resolve’s and Neat Video.

Here are the Premiere Pro Results:

HP ZBook Fury 16 G10

Adobe Premiere Pro 2024 (Individual Exports in Media Encoder)

 DNxHR 444 10-bit MXF DNxHR 444 10-bit MOV H.264 MP4 H.265 MP4
Color Correction Only 01:27 01:26 00:45 00:48
CC + NR, Sharpening, Grain 25:47 57:17 46:46 59:21
HP ZBook Fury 16 G10

Premiere Pro 2024 (Simultaneous Exports in Media Encoder)
Color Correction Only 02:15 03:47 03:22 03:22
CC + NR, Sharpening, Grain 30:52 01:08:16 01:03:30 01:03:30

These results are definitely competitive with desktop-size workstations. What makes laptop-size components difficult to design? Heat dissipation and size. HP labels its heat dissipation technology as Vaporforce Thermals. That’s a fancy way of saying that HP takes pride in how it designs its fans and heat spreaders to keep the system as cool as possible, even when rendering hours of content in multimedia apps like Resolve.

HP does a great job at keeping the HP ZBook Fury 16 G10 cool to the touch, which isn’t always the case for workstations. Also, the tool-less design of the HP ZBook Fury 16 G10 is amazing. With one switch, you can remove the bottom panel and begin diagnosing, replacing or upgrading components with little technical know-how. The ease of disassembly is what keeps me loving HP’s workstations. The quickest way to put a bad taste in my mouth is not to allow, or make it extremely difficult to, self-repair or upgrade. It just feels wrong. But luckily HP makes it easy.

With such an impressively powerful mobile workstation comes a large price tag: the HP ZBook Fury 16 G10 I tested retails for just over $9,000 before taxes and shipping. Yikes. But for the power under the hood of the HP ZBook Fury 16 G10, you are essentially getting desktop power in a small form factor. The battery that comes with the Fury is great, I turned off any power saving settings to ensure I was running at full speed, and I was able to get about 2.5 hours of run time while running the PugetBench for Creators benchmark utility on a loop. That is essentially constant video editing and rendering.

While that runtime might seem short, it is actually pretty long when running at full speed. But obviously, staying plugged in is your best option when doing multimedia work. If security is important to you, and we know it is, then HP’s Wolf Security is loaded with protections. You can find out more here.

Summing Up
In the end, the HP ZBook Fury 16 G10 is a pricey but powerful mobile workstation that won’t leave you wishing for a desktop. Add a little docking setup with a couple monitors, and you’ll be flying through your color correction in Resolve, noise reduction with Neat Video or video editing in Premiere Pro.

Honestly, the backlit RGB keyboard seemed like a novelty at first, but I found that I really enjoyed it. Definitely check out the MIL-STD 810H-tested HP ZBook Fury 16 G10 if you are in the market for the highest of high-end mobile workstations, which can play RAW 4K media with little interruption:

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop. He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.

Precision

Review: Dell Precision 5480 Mobile Workstation

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By Mike McCarthy

It has been a few years since I’ve tested and reviewed a laptop. Technology has progressed a lot since then, and systems are dramatically more powerful than they were just four years ago — and GPUs have improved more than CPUs by most measures.

Precision

I recently had the opportunity to test out the Dell Precision 5480. This is Dell’s highest end small-form-factor laptop. It is a 14-inch system packed with a 14-core, 13900H CPU; 64GB of DDR5 memory; and an Nvidia RTX 3000 Ada generation GPU. There are lots of laptop options out there with a 13900H CPU, six hyperthreaded performance cores and eight efficiency cores (for a total of 20 processing threads), but not very many of those are in a small, 14-inch frame. And the RTX 3000 Ada is even harder to come by. With 4,608 CUDA cores, 8GB of GDDR6 memory and nearly 20 teraflops of processing power, the RTX 3000 GPU is the physical equivalent of the GeForce 4070 Mobile, but with professional-level drivers. This little laptop system packs a punch.

The Display
Now there is no getting around the fact that 14 inches is a very small screen. Personally, I like huge screens, so even an 18-inch laptop screen would seem small to me, but much of my time using any laptop is likely to be spent with it connected to a larger display, whether in the office or at home. For times when I am using it on the move, or at the kitchen table from time to time, this 2560×1600 WLED screen is a good resolution for its 14-inch size. It can be set to 100% scale by eagle-eyed users who covet screen real estate, but most people will have a good experience at 150%.

The Dell Precision 5480 is advertised as supporting 500 nits, which can be helpful when using it outdoors, but it is a glossy screen. Windows reports that the display supports HDR video streaming, but there is no “Use HDR” option for the UI. I am still trying to figure out the logic behind Microsoft’s support for HDR monitoring. The screen also supports blue light filtering at a hardware level to reduce eye strain, which should be better than Windows’ night light software solution. It is also a touch screen, which can be a useful feature on occasion.

The Internals
I am always interested in fitting the maximum amount of useful computing power into the smallest possible package. Back in the day, I remember testing the PNY Prevail Pro, which, at 15 inches, was the smallest VR-capable system. Beyond that, I still have my 13-inch Sony Z1 with a quad-core, 3GHz CPU and GeForce 330M and dual SSDs. Back in 2010, it could run Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 with full CUDA acceleration in a 3-pound package. (The Dell Precision 5480 is actually very similar to that one in terms of size and weight, but, of course, the Dell is far more powerful.)

Any system smaller than 15 inches with a discrete GPU is usually hard to come by, which is why my HP ZBook X2 with Quadro GPU and a 14-inch, 10-bit display was so unique. But that system is five years old, with no direct replacement available, so I was very excited to see that Dell was stepping up to the plate with a powerful 14-inch pro workstation in a 3.3-pound package and under ¾ of an inch thick. And with a 13th Gen Intel CPU supporting 20 threads, paired with a new Ada based RTX GPU with 20 teraflops, the Dell Precision 5480 is not lacking in power.

The machine has four Thunderbolt 4 ports, which are all power-delivery-capable, plus an analog audio jack and a MicroSD reader. It comes with a small USB-C device that offers a USB-A port and an HDMI 2.0 output. The keyboard seems solid, with half-size up and down arrows and a fingerprint-enabled power button in the upper right corner, which will be natural for Mac users.

In my initial demo unit, the touchpad had a sticking issue with the click mechanism, but it turned out to have just been a defect. Once replaced, the touchpad worked great. This process did highlight to me just how important a touchpad is on a small laptop, even as a mouse user. Anytime I am using the laptop on the go (which is the point of a small laptop), the touchpad is the main pointing device, so I use it far more than I originally recognized.

The system comes with a USB-C-based power supply, rated for 130 watts, as well as the previously mentioned adapter for HDMI and USB-A ports. It comes packaged in a molded cardboard container inside a folded cardboard packing box for good product protection — and more ecofriendly than the older Styrofoam-based packaging.

A small laptop offers flexibility. In the office, you can use it with a full set of peripherals. When at home, you can plug in your monitor and accessories, and pick up exactly where you left off.

With virtual desktops, you can get a similar experience by working in the cloud on various systems at different locations, but that doesn’t allow you full access when you are in transit or when you are in places with limited internet access. The Dell Precision 5480 seems like an ideal system for anyone who needs editing power on the go and has monitors to plug in to in their primary work environments. (And they don’t need a larger laptop display on the unit itself.)

Battery Life
Admittedly, the configuration of this particular model should be expected to have the worst possible battery life (most powerful CPU and GPU available with a high-resolution-screen), but it’s not as bad as you’d think. I used this system when I attended the Adobe Max conference, and I did not bring the charger with me during the day. The only time I regretted that is when I accidentally left Adobe Photoshop running in the background for a few hours. Otherwise, I was able to do basic tasks all day long with no issue.

For non-work-related activities such as gaming, I typically got about two hours of usage when playing a 3D game before needing to plug it in. Dell has done a great job of saving power when it is not needed. Power-hungry, performance-based tasks will drain the battery… which is to be expected. But when just doing simple browser-based tasks, I was able to use it all day without issue.

Software
The unit comes with Windows 11 Pro installed. Even after 18 months, I still have not “adapted” to Microsoft’s newest OS, and I prefer Windows 10. But, based on my performance tests, the thread director in Windows 11, which is aware of the difference between the performance cores and the efficiency cores on Intel’s newest chips, does make a difference. (Windows 10 assigns hard tasks to the efficiency cores, and it takes longer to finish them, decreasing overall performance.)

One way around this is to disable the E-Cores in the BIOS and stick with Windows 10, but especially on a laptop, that negates much of the power efficiency of the newer designs. So you are pretty stuck with Windows 11 on these newer systems. But besides that, the Dell Precision 5480 comes with very little bloatware — just drivers and utilities for the various hardware devices and some Dell performance and configuration optimization tools.

The Graphics Processor
The RTX 3000 GPU is the physical equivalent of the GeForce 4070 Mobile, with 4608 CUDA cores, 8GB of GDDR6 memory and nearly 20 teraflops of processing power. It benchmarks with about 25% of the performance of my giant GeForce 4090 desktop card, which is to be expected based on the paper specs. This is actually fine in most cases since I rarely need to harness the full power of that GPU when doing regular editing tasks. And 20 teraflops is twice the performance of the top-end GeForce 2080/RTX 5000 from two generations ago, and it’s now available in a 14-inch laptop.

PrecisionKey for professional use of a model this size, I also tested the Dell Precision 5480 with a number of external displays, up to and including the Dell UltraSharp UP3218K monitor, which was supported in its full 8K at 60fps resolution by using two USB-C-to-DisplayPort cables. The last HP mobile workstation I tested required a docking station for full support of that display, and my Razer is limited to 30fps unless I use an external GPU. It’s good to see that Dell fully supports its own display range on its own system, but I do recognize that’s really a function of the GPU and supported output ports. Nonetheless, you can use this system with an 8K monitor if you so desire.

Storage
The hard drive reports 4.5GB/s write and 4.8GB/s read in AJA System Test, which isn’t the fastest PCIe 4.0 speed but more than enough for 99% of power users. Dell offers SSDs in sizes from 256GB to 4TB with self-encrypting models at 512GB and 1TB for users with those requirements.

Performance
CPUs are much harder to compare on paper, which is why tools like Maxon’s Cinebench are so valuable. Blender also has a benchmarking tool for comparing system performance. And performance is always a relative measure since we are comparing a specific system (this one) to other potential options.

Usually, reviewers compare systems to others that are very similar, but in this case, I took a different approach for two reasons. First, I don’t have similar current options to compare to. Second, there is value in comparing what you are sacrificing when you scale down to a small laptop. Which tasks can you do effectively on a mobile system, and which can wait until you are in front of (or remoting into) a powerful desktop workstation?

The 13900H, with six performance cores and eight efficiency cores, has 20 threads available to the OS. My desktop with a 12700K CPU also has 20 threads, coming from eight performance cores and four efficiency cores. In most synthetic render tests, this little laptop has about 70% of the CPU processing power of my consumer desktop tower.

PrecisionIn real-world tests, exporting cinema-quality files out of Premiere, my tests were frustratingly inconsistent. This appears to result from a combination of both Intel’s new power-saving technology and Adobe’s software optimizations. I ran my entire suite of standard test exports multiple times and got widely varying results. I then reran them repeatedly on my 12700K-based desktop and also got less consistent results than I recall in the past. Most of the time, I test repeatedly with slightly different settings so that I don’t repeat the exact same test a number of times. This has really shifted my view on quantifying performance in Premiere.

The best tests would be a live-playback test and potentially a latency test to see how long it takes playback to begin after you press the space bar. But due to the playback optimizations within the program, this is no longer a good way to compare different systems. Puget Systems, which does work in benchmarking, detail the challenges of quantifying performance in Premiere in this great article that dives even deeper into the topic than I have. Regardless of those limitations, here are the raw numbers from my Media Encoder benchmarks for you to evaluate compared to my other systems.

Summing Up
Suffice it to say, this machine can edit and play back nearly any sequence due to Premiere’s optimizations, and it can export high-quality output files with decent performance. But for longer renders and Red source footage, it might be best to render on your desktop workstation. This is totally reasonable for a portable laptop — no one should expect a 14-inch notebook to replace server level hardware. But the Dell Precision 5480 can accomplish most editing tasks with ease.

Mike McCarthy is an online editor/workflow consultant with over 15 years of experience on feature films and commercials. He has been involved in pioneering new solutions for tapeless workflows, DSLR filmmaking and multi-screen and surround video experiences. Check out his site.

 

Review: TourBox Elite External Control Surface

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By Troy A Smith

I am an online editor and a colorist. For about 20 years, I had been using a Wacom Tablet when editing in Avid Media Composer. When I began editing in Blackmagic Resolve, I gave up my beloved tablet and started using the mouse because I found myself needing to use the center roller on the mouse too often. I am not a fan of moving a mouse, it just lacks the precision of a pen. When I use Resolve on my MacBook Pro, I struggle even more. Although multi-touch gestures are useful in many applications, I still find moving through a timeline on my laptop cumbersome.

Enter the new TourBox Elite, a small external control surface with 14 buttons to push and three wheels to turn. Everything is customizable or programable with micros. If you are the type of person who loves keyboard shortcuts, you are going to love the TourBox Elite.

While TourBox is compatible with many applications (like Adobe’s Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, Apple Final Cut Pro and more), for this review, I am going to focus on using it with DaVinci Resolve on a MacBook Pro laptop. And while I cut and color, for this review, I’ll be wearing my editor’s hat.

First Impressions
As soon as I touched the TourBox Elite , I could feel the quality build of the controller. It does have some weight to it, but not too heavy and does not feel like cheap plastic. The buttons are springy and the wheel spin fluidly.

After unboxing it, I went to the TourBox’s website and downloaded the TourBox Console (for Mac or PC), which allowed me to customize the controller. There are also many templates and saved settings that other users have created. I uploaded my user settings, so click on DaVinci Resolve or check it out with the other uploaded presets.

Once I had my unit online, it was time to press buttons. I really liked the feel of the springy and reactive buttons. I am fond of is the “Haptic Feel” feature. You can feel the “clicks” when you rotate any of the three dials. There is a setting that allows you to hear audible “clicks” on the rotation and scroll wheels. If you prefer a smooth turn of the dials, it’s easy to turn the Haptic Feel off in the settings. You can even change the Haptic Feel and the speed of the wheel for individual commands. I prefer to hear the clicks because the sounds help me know how much of an adjustment I have made when spinning a wheel.

The TourBox is powered by two AA batteries which can last up to two months. There are two Bluetooth modes so you can use the TourBox Elite on two different computers. You can also attach your unit to your computer with a USB-C cable (which is an add-on item).

Settings and Customization
The customization may feel overwhelming because there are so many options and combinations to choose. Taking a step back and looking at the TourBox Counsole again, I found it intuitive. There are some presets already installed, and it is very easy to download a shared preset on TourBox’s website. I found the online user’s manual very helpful and there are short videos to explain many of the functions.

I admit, I probably spent too much time customizing my buttons. It feels like there are endless options for customization. I spent multiple days changing my presets and trying to find a good fit. My indecisiveness is a “me” problem and has nothing to do with TourBox. I’m grateful for all the available customizations, even if it did cause me decision fatigue.

Within the TourBox Console app you will find your application preset list, a diagram of the controller and icons of all the buttons and wheels. Press any button (or combination of buttons) on the controller and they will be highlighted on the diagram and in the button preset section. It is extremely easy to see what a button does in the console just by pressing it in the controller. Once you press any button (or combination of buttons), you have the option of changing what the button does just by clicking on the text in the button preset portion of the console. This is where all the decisions are made. I suggest having fun and playing around with all the options.

Think about what buttons or keystrokes you use the most and then try to find a way to map those commands. I focused on navigating through my timeline and basic editing functions like in and out, cut, insert cut and lift. One thing that can be annoying using DaVinci Resolve on a Mac is that Resolve likes to use the function keys (F9 and F10) to cut clips into the timeline. However, Macs like to use the functions keys to adjust brightness and volume (I know that can be turned off, but who wants to dig into the settings for that?). I really like being able to quickly mark an in and out and overcut or insert cut with a click of a button (or two). It made my editing life so much easier.

It is possible to have multiple presets for the same application. There is even a function called “Switch Preset” that can be mapped. This will allow you to switch your preset within the same application. For example, you could have a DaVinci Resolve editing preset and a DaVinci Resolve color preset. If you really want to go deep into programing the controller for all the pages in Resolve, you can. This feature also works in other applications.

There is one combination move that the TourBox Elite is unable to do in Resolve, which is adjusting the sliders in the Inspector tab. For example, you cannot click in the Zoom effect and use the wheel to zoom in and out of a clip. With a mouse, this move would be done by using a left mouse click and holding and dragging right or left. Using the Micro function in TourBox Console, you can program a left mouse click and hold. However, the mouse drag left or right is problematic. You can program a mouse move, but the X and Y axis must be predetermined. For me, this is the biggest downside to the TourBox Elite. It would be great to be able to just mouse click into any effect parameter and then use the left and right wheel to adjust the settings.

Now would be a good time to point out the TourBox Elite is not a replacement for a control panel. It is unable to adjust any of the sliders or color controls in the color page. It would be great if you could click into any of the color controls and be able to use the dial, knob or scroll functions. That does not mean that the TourBox Elite is not helpful in the Color Page of Resolve. I found it helpful for navigation and managing nodes. There are still numerous presets that can be programmed to help speed up your color such as adding nodes, bypassing color and resetting grades to name a few.

Sometimes I suffer from “CRS,” which stands for “Can’t Remember Stuff,” and I forget some of the presets I setup. TourBox was thinking about people like me when they added the HUD, which stands for Heads Up Display. Especially when I was getting started, I liked having the HUD turned on, which will put an overlay of the left, up, down and right buttons, (which look like the classic Nintendo controller) inside of the application you are using. It will even change when you press one of the modifier keys. You can change the location of the overlay by just clicking and dragging it to a new spot on your monitor. Once you become a pro, you can turn off the HUD so it will not be on your screen.

Another cool feature within the Console is the ability to label your presets. This can be handy, especially if you want to rename shortcuts. For example, the shortcut in Resolve to mark in and out on clip is the “X” key. You can program this into one of the buttons and change the name to “Mark Clip.”

Pros

  • Lots of options for customization
  • Solid tactile feel
  • Audible clicking
  • HUD (Heads Up Display) for presets

Cons

  • Cannot setup the slider to move an effect parameter
  • Cannot adjust color parameters in the color page

Summing Up
Overall, I am fond of the TourBox Elite, and I am happy to have it in my arsenal. It makes navigating through my timeline and making edits much easier. It brings a new feeling to editing and everything flows much easier especially when using my laptop. It is small and compact and easy to take on the road. If I had to choose between using a tablet or the TourBox with my laptop, I would easily choose the TourBox.

I was a little disappointed with the controls in the Color Page, so it is not a replacement for any color panel. However, it is extremely useful for navigating around the Color Page and your node structure.

If you are a short-cut nerd, then you will love the TourBox Elite. If there is a keyboard shortcut, then it can be programmed into the TourBox Elite.

Troy Smith has over 20 years of experience as a colorist and online editor. He is also a founding board member of the Colorist Society Hollywood, a local chapter of the Colorist Society International.

Review: AMD Radeon Pro W7800 and W7900 GPUs

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By Brady Betzel

The main players in the discrete GPU game, AMD and Nvidia, have released a barrage of new GPUs this past year. From the Nvidia 4090 Founder’s Edition I reviewed last October to the latest AMD W7800 and W7900, technology and energy efficiency have improved dramatically.

With AI on the forefront of everyone’s mind — whether it is because of the questionable deep fake videos or the amazing ability to take hours of work down to minutes when using Magic Mask in Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve — one of the most important pieces of hardware you can have is a powerful GPU.

AMD has always been in the race with Nvidia, but once Apple decided to work internally and create its own GPU, AMD struggled to find its footing… until now. The AMD Radeon Pro W7800 and W7900 GPUs are the latest in professional GPUs from the company, and they are powerful. The AMD Radeon Pro W7800 is a 32GB GPU that retails for $2,499 (from online retailer B&H Photo), while the AMD Radeon Pro W7900 48GB GPU retails for $3,999 (also from B&H). Yes, the prices give you a bit of a sticker shock if you are pricing consumer-level cards like the Nvidia 4090, but for those in need of an enterprise-level, professional workstation-compatible GPU, the $3,999 is actually pretty reasonable for the best. For comparison, the Nvidia RTX 6000 ADA retails for just under $7,000. But AMD isn’t trying to beat Nvidia at the moment. They are providing a much more reasonably priced alternative that may quench your GPU thirst without breaking the bank.

A Closer Look
First up is a basic comparison between the AMD Radeon Pro W7800 and W7900 in advertised specs:

AMD Radeon Pro W7800 AMD Radeon Pro W7900
GPU architecture AMD RDNA 3
Hardware Raytracing Yes
Lithography TSMC 5nm GCD 6nm MCD
Stream Processors 4480 6144
Compute Units 70 96
Peak Half Precision (FP16) Performance 90.5 TFLOPS 122.64 TFLOPS
Peak Single Precision Matrix (FP32) Performance 40.5 TFLOPS 61.3 TFLOPS
Transistor Count 57.7B 57.7B
OS Support Windows 11 – 64-Bit Edition

Windows 10 – 64-Bit Edition

Linux x86_64
External Power Connectors 2×8-Pin Power Connectors
Total Board Power (TBP) 260W Peak
PSU Recommendation 650W
Dedicated Memory 32GB GDDR6 48GB GDDR6
AMD Infinity Cache Technology 64MB 96MB
Memory Interface 256-bit 384-bit
Peak Memory Bandwidth Up to 576GB/s Up to 864GB/s
Form Factor PCIe 4.0×16 (3.0 Backwards Compatible) – Active Cooling
DisplayPort 3x DisplayPort 2.1 and 1x Enhanced Mini DisplayPort™ 2.1
Display Configurations 4x 4096 x 2160 (4K DCI) @ 120Hz with DSC

2x 6144 x 3456 (6K) 12-bit HDR @ 60Hz Uncompressed

1x 7680 x 4320 (8K) 12-bit HDR @ 60Hz Uncompressed

1x 12288 x 6912 (12K) @ 120Hz with DSC
DIsplay Support HDR Support

8K Support

10K Support

12K Support
Dimensions Full Height

11-inch (280mm) Length

Double Slot

 Full Height

11-inch (280mm) Length

Triple Slot
Additional Features Supported Rendering Formats

1x Encode & Decode (AV1)

2x Decode (H265/HEVC, 4K H264)

2x Encode (H265/HEVC, 4K H264)

Supported Technologies

AMD Viewport Boost

AMD Remote Workstation

AMD Radeon Media Engine

AMD Software: Pro Edition

AMD Radeon VR Ready Creator

AMD Radeon ProRender

10-bit Display Color Output

12-bit Display Color Output

3D Stereo Support

 

 Supported Rendering Formats

1x Encode & Decode (AV1)

2x Decode (H265/HEVC, 4K H264)

2x Encode (+AVI Encode and Decode)

Supported Technologies

AMD Viewport Boost

AMD Remote Workstation

AMD Radeon Media Engine

AMD Software: Pro Edition

AMD Radeon VR Ready Creator

AMD Radeon ProRender

10-bit Display Color Output

12-bit Display Color Output

3D Stereo Support

What sets the W7900 apart from the W7800 are the increased dedicated memory of 48GB, increased AMD Infinity Cache technology to 96MB, memory interface boosted to 384-bit, increased peak memory bandwidth up to 864GB/s, triple-slot size and addition of AVI encode and decode.

AMD Radeon Pro W7800
Up first in benchmarking tests is the AMD Radeon Pro W7800 inside of DaVinci Resolve 18.1.2 and Adobe Premiere 2023 as well as a few other apps and plugins. For testing inside of Resolve and Premiere, I used the same UHD (3840×2160) sequences and effects that I have used in previous reviews. The clips include:

  • ARRI RAW: 3840×2160 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • ARRI RAW: 4448×1856 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • BMD RAW: 6144×3456 24fps – 15 seconds
  • Red RAW: 6144×3072 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • Red RAW: 6144×3160 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • Sony a7siii: 3840×2160 23.976fps – 15 seconds

I then duplicated the sequence and added Blackmagic’s noise reduction, sharpening and grain. Finally, I replaced the noise reduction with Neat Video’s noise reduction

From there, I exported multiple versions: DNxHR 444 10-bit OP1a MXF file, DNxHR 444 10-bit MOV, H.264 MP4, H.265 MP4, AV1 MP4 and then an IMF package using the default settings.

AMD Radeon Pro W7800

Resolve 18 Exports

 DNxHR 444 10-bit MXF DNxHR 444 10-bit MOV H.264 MP4 H.265 MP4 AV1

MP4

 IMF
Color Correction Only  00:24 0:22 00:20 00:18 00:27 00:38
CC + Resolve Noise Reduction 02:21 02:21 02:21 02:22 02:22 02:23
CC, Resolve NR, Sharpening, Grain 03:04 03:04 03:03 03:03 03:03 03:05
CC + Neat Video Noise Reduction 02:59 03:00 03:03 03:01 03:02 03:00

For comparison’s sake, here are the results from the Nvidia RTX 4090:

Nvidia RTX 4090

Resolve 18 Exports

 DNxHR 444 10-bit MXF DNxHR 444 10-bit MOV H.264 .mp4 H.265 .mp4 AV1

MP4

 IMF
Color Correction Only 00:27 00:27 00:22 00:22 00:23 00:49
CC + Resolve Noise Reduction 00:57 00:56 00:55 00:55 00:55 01:04
CC, Resolve NR, Sharpening, Grain 01:14 01:14 01:12 01:12 01:12 01:19
CC + Neat Video Noise Reduction 02:38 02:38 02:34 02:34 02:34 02:41

 

AMD Radeon Pro W7800

Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 (Individual Exports in Media Encoder)

 DNxHR 444 10-bit MXF DNxHR 444 10-bit MOC H.264 MP4 H.265 MP4
Color Correction Only 02:17 01:51 01:18 01:19
CC +  NR, Sharpening, Grain 13:38 34:21 33:54 33:07
AMD Radeon Pro W7800

Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 (Simultaneous Exports in Media Encoder)
Color Correction Only 03:27 03:32 03:32 03:51
CC +  NR, Sharpening, Grain 15:15 37:12 15:14 15:14

Again, here are the results from the Nvidia RTX 4090:

Nvidia RTX 4090

Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 (Individual Exports in Media Encoder)

 DNxHR 444 10-bit MXF DNxHR 444 10-bit MOV H.264 MP4 H.265 MP4
Color Correction Only 01:28 01:46 01:08 01:07
CC +  NR, Sharpening, Grain 13:07 34:52 34:12 33:54
Nvidia RTX 4090

Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 (Simultaneous Exports in Media Encoder)
Color Correction Only 02:17 01:44 01:08 01:11
CC +  NR, Sharpening, Grain 13:47 34:13 15:54 15:54

Benchmarks
Blender Benchmark CPU samples per minute:

  1. Monster: 179.475890
  2. Junkshop: 124.988030
  3. Classroom: 86.279909

Blender Benchmark GPU samples per minute:

  1. Monster: 1306.493713
  2. Junkshop: 688.435718
  3. Classroom: 630.02515

 

Blackmagic Proxy Generator (H.265 10-bit, 4:2:0, 1080p):

  • RedR3D: 2 files – 50fps
  • Sony a7iii .mp4: 46 files – 267fps

 

Neat Video HD: GPU-only 69.5 frames/sec

Neat Video UHD: GPU-only 16.4 frames/sec

PugetBench for After Effects 0.95.7, After Effects 23.4×53:

  • Overall Score: 1018
  • Multi-Core Score: 202.6
  • GPU Score: 76.8
  • RAM Preview Score: 101.4
  • Render Score: 106.4
  • Tracking Score: 93.6

PugetBench for Premiere Pro 0.98.0, Premiere Pro 23.4.0:

  • Extended Overall Score: 532
  • Standard Overall Score: 828
  • LongGOP Score (Extended): 79.8
  • Intraframe Score (Extended): 80.9
  • RAW Score (Extended): 26
  • GPU Effects Score (Extended): 47.7
  • LongGOP Score (Standard): 112.9
  • Intraframe Score (Standard): 95.5
  • RAW Score (Standard): 75.6
  • GPU Effects Score (Standard): 57.8

PugetBench for Resolve 0.93.1, DaVinci Resolve Studio 18.5

  • Standard Overall Score: 2537
  • 4K Media Score: 175
  • GPU Effects Score: 123
  • Fusion Score: 463

Those are a ton of numbers and comparisons. The important thing to note is this: The W7800 is a little pricier than the 4090 but requires almost 200W less power and includes DisplayPort 2.1 technology if your display is compatible. Finally, keep in mind that the AMD Radeon Pro W7800 is an enterprise-level card that is made to run flawlessly 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. For similar guarantees, you would need to jump to something like the Nvidia RTX A5000, which currently retails from B&H for $1,899.99 but has less memory and some other differences.

AMD Radeon Pro W7900
Up next, we’ve performed similar benchmarks for the AMD Radeon Pro W7900:

AMD Radeon Pro W7900

Resolve 18 Exports

 DNxHR 444 10-bit .mxf DNxHR 444 10-bit .mov H.264 MP4 H.265 MP4 AV1

MP4

 IMF
Color Correction Only  00:30 00:28 00:23 00:21 00:31 00:50
CC + Resolve Noise Reduction 01:45 01:41 01:44 01:44 01:45 01:47
CC, Resolve NR, Sharpening, Grain 02:17 02:09 02:18 02:18 02:18 02:19
CC + Neat Video Noise Reduction 03:03 03:00 03:04 03:04 03:05 03:04

 

AMD Radeon Pro W7900

Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 (Individual Exports in Media Encoder)

 DNxHR 444 10-bit MXF DNxHR 444 10-bit MOV H.264 MP4 H.265 MP4
Color Correction Only 02:11 01:42 01:05 01:06
CC + NR, Sharpening, Grain 14:12 34:27 33:48 33:54
AMD Radeon Pro W7900

Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 (Simultaneous Exports in Media Encoder)
Color Correction Only 03:20 03:24 02:41 02:42
CC +  NR, Sharpening, Grain 15:21 37:32 15:21 15:22

Benchmarks

Blender Benchmark CPU samples per minute:

  1. Monster: 181.802109
  2. Junkshop: 125.356688
  3. Classroom: 86.608965

Blender Benchmark GPU samples per minute:

  1. Monster: 1095.478227
  2. Junkshop: 969.553103
  3. Classroom: 865.631865

Blackmagic Proxy Generator (H.265 10-bit, 4:2:0, 1080p):

  • Red R3D: 2 files – 27fps
  • Sony a7iii .mp4: 46 files – 266fps

Neat Video HD: GPU Only 89 frames/sec

Neat Video UHD: GPU Only 24.4 frames/sec

PugetBench for After Effects 0.95.7, After Effects 23.4×53:

  • Overall Score: 1038
  • Multi-Core Score: 203.9
  • GPU Score: 82.3
  • RAM Preview Score: 103.4
  • Render Score: 109.4
  • Tracking Score: 93.4

PugetBench for Premiere Pro 0.98.0, Premiere Pro 23.4.0:

  • Extended Overall Score: 567
  • Standard Overall Score: 891
  • LongGOP Score (Extended): 80.3
  • Intraframe Score (Extended): 82.5
  • RAW Score (Extended): 26.6
  • GPU Effects Score (Extended): 58.7
  • LongGOP Score (Standard): 114.9
  • Intraframe Score (Standard): 97.7
  • RAW Score (Standard): 78.3
  • GPU Effects Score (Standard): 71.6

PugetBench for Resolve 0.93.1, DaVinci Resolve Studio 18.5

  • Standard Overall Score: 2847
  • 4K Media Score: 179
  • GPU Effects Score: 173
  • Fusion Score: 502

These benchmarks are heavily favored toward video editors, content creators and even colorists, so some of the benefits — like the 48GB of memory on the W7900 — may not be useful and could be a reason to stick with the W7800. Between the AMD Radeon Pro W7800 and the W7900, a lot of the performance increases will be seen in large designs and renders — heavy Blender scenes or even Unreal creations.

Summing Up
After using the AMD Radeon Pro W7800 and W7900 for a couple of months in and out of DaVinci Resolve (versions 18-18.5) and Premiere 2023, I felt very comfortable in keeping the W7800 as the daily driver. I didn’t experience any GPU-related crashes or errors. I was actually a little surprised at how comfortable I was with the W7800 and W7900 after using the Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti and 4090 for so long.

Keep in mind that the AMD Radeon Pro series of GPUs is certified with certain software application versions to run without error. You can search for specific applications here.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop . He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.

 

Summer

Review: Five Cool Tools for the Summer

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By Brady Betzel

With the slower pace of summer upon us, it’s time to take an inventory of what gear you can upgrade to take your setup to the next level. From cleaner audio separation to precise video signal measurements, I am always looking at the latest and greatest production and post gear. While new plugins and software updates are great, peripherals, like a great stand-up desk or a high-quality/low-cost microphone, can make your workday a bit better.

If you’re hoping to travel this summer while continuing to work, we have a few suggestions that will support your mobile workstation:

Dark Matter Sentry Streaming Microphone by Monoprice
Whether you are on Zoom meetings for five hours a day or just want a quick and easy way to record a voiceover directly inside of Adobe Premiere Pro without complicated software installations, a high-quality microphone is the easiest way to impress.

Over the last few years, like you, I’ve found myself on Zoom meetings more than I would like. One constant is poor video and audio quality. Occasionally, you get someone crazy who has a spare Red camera around and has an incredible video essence to their Zoom, but more often than not, people use their laptop’s built-in hardware, which, to be fair, isn’t always terrible.

Apple includes very compelling cameras and microphones in their products, but for all the editors who don’t have a Yeti mic lying around, the Dark Matter Sentry Streaming Microphone by Monoprice rides the line between quality and cost. The Dark Matter Sentry retails for $99.99 but is currently selling for $74.98.

The Dark Matter Sentry is a hefty, well-designed, low-maintenance microphone that’s perfect for temp voiceover recordings or live Twitch streams. It offers four pickup/polar patterns: cardioid (directly in front of the mic), stereo (left/right side of the mic), bidirectional (front/back of the mic) and omnidirectional (360 recording). It even has a headphone jack below the mic gain and headphone volume knobs.

Installing the Dark Matter Sentry is as easy as plugging the USB-C to USB-A cable into your computer and choosing one of the five LED colors by pushing the button on the bottom of the mic. The spider-style mic stand included with the Dark Matter Sentry is surprisingly sturdy. You can also attach the mic to a mic boom via the ⅝-inch threaded mount point.

When comparing the Dark Matter Sentry against other popular streaming-style mics, the current $74.98 price tag is over half of similar but competing models, like the Shure MV7, which retails for $249.99. Check out the Dark Matter Sentry site because the price seems to change every day.

AJA Io|X3
With live streaming and small, home-studio-based multicam workflows gaining popularity, having reliable I/O hardware is a must. AJA has been around and producing top-quality I/O gear for a long time. The AJA Io X3 is a Thunderbolt 3-based, multi-channel 2K/HD/SD input/output hardware solution. Whether you are looking to switch/record four HD streams at once in OBS or simply stream your timeline to clients viewing remotely using the AJA Helo Plus, the Io X3 is a solid workhorse retailing for $1,759.

In addition to analog connections like four 3G bidirectional SDI ports with 16-channel embedded audio, the AJA Io X3 has HDMI I/O with eight-channel embedded audio, including HDR transfer characteristic recognition. The device supports and automatically detects PQ, HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision.

The AJA Io X3 is a great solution for most editing or color-grading software, except Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve. For Resolve you will want to grab something from the UltraStudio hardware line. But for apps like Adobe Premiere or Avid Media Composer, AJA hardware works well. With machine control for tape-based laybacks, Apple M1 chip support and even the ability to power the battery via the XLR 12V.

The Io X3 is very flexible unless you use Resolve.

Nobe OmniScope
One of the most under-used tools I see in the streamer and content-creator world is scopes. The ability to read and view luminance, saturation and color spaces in a technically accurate way is vital. Scope information is one of those skills that separates the hobbyists from the professionals.

Regardless of whether you work on streaming videos, wedding videos or the Super Bowl, you are a professional in my eyes. Nobe OmniScope has brought us professional-level scopes at consumer-level prices. The Video version of Nobe OmniScope retails for $235, while the Pro version retails for $399. Both give you one year of updates unless you renew at $70 per year for the Video version and $99 per year for the Pro version.

The Pro version has features like multiple input sources, 4:4:4 RGB 12-bit support through DeckLink and UltraStudio, Syphon and Spout (direct GPU memory-sharing), 3D Color Cube, min-max readings, error logger, multiple quality control features, OpenColorIO 2, native Stream Deck support, NDI source/scope output, HDR support, ACES color science, PQ ST 2084/HLG scales and two simultaneous licenses for one price.

You can run Nobe OmniScope with whatever software you are using or on a separate system with signal inputs. In the past, I’ve always been a fan of separate systems for running apps like this. However, these days it is not necessary. Newer systems with high-end GPUs can run Nobe OmniScope and Resolve concurrently with few slowdowns. But if you do have a spare Mac Mini or older Windows-based PC lying around, you might want to think about using it just for input/output of the Nobe OmniScope.

Summer

There is a great series of six instructional videos by Kevin P. McAuliffe that covers most of the Nobe OmniScope features. My favorite is blanking detection in the quality control features, which are part of the Pro version of Nobe OmniScope. In online editing, blanking is one of the trickiest errors to find.

Even using a professional output monitor, some blanking will get missed. But with Nobe OmniScope Pro, when QC tools are enabled, Nobe OmniScope will highlight any specified blanking areas in bright red if it thinks it’s an error. In the future, I hope Nobe OmniScope will add automated QC tools that will essentially export a preliminary QC report, including basic errors like blanking, illegal color values, black frames, etc. It would be an amazing feature to add to this extensive toolset that every colorist and online editor should own. Find out more at the Time in Pixels website.

KRK’s GoAux 4 Portable Monitors
I’m a sucker for great speakers and headphones. As a teenager, I worked at Best Buy (pre-Geek Squad) as a computer repair technician and eventually a car stereo installer. That is when I realized I love great-quality speakers and components. Once I began working at a mix house as an online editor, it reaffirmed my love for ultrahigh-quality sound setups, even if that wasn’t my primary job responsibility.

So besides having amazing headphones like the Audeze MM-500, which I recently reviewed, how do you get studio-quality sound setups from portable speaker systems? KRK Systems has you covered with the GoAux 4 monitor kit, which offers some of the smallest, most portable, tunable, powered-nearfield monitors. The GoAux 4 monitors retail for $419 with free two-day shipping.

Summer

The GoAux 4 monitors ship in an awesome and protective nylon carrying bag that holds both monitors, stands, auto ARC microphone and room for cables. The carrying bag is one of my favorite parts — it’s compact and efficient.

The KRK Systems GoAux 4s are the upgrade from the GoAux 3s. The GoAux 4s carry 100W of RMS power (total system power) with a 4-inch woofer and a 1-inch tweeter. Realistically, each woofer will max out at 33W RMS and each tweeter at 17W RMS. The SPL (sound pressure level, aka how powerful the bass notes are) peak at 102dB and can sustain 98.5dBs. The subwoofer frequency response is between 55Hz and 22kHz. Compare that to the GoAux 3s, which have 60W RMS power and a 3-inch woofer and stop at 60Hz on the low end. The larger the woofer, the lower the notes the woofer can play.

The speakers themselves only need to be connected to one power source because they share power. They feature built-in low and high frequency EQ adjustments, USB, ⅛-inch aux, RCA and ¼-inch TRS balanced stereo inputs and a Bluetooth connection. You can even connect headphones to the ⅛-inch stereo headphone output on the front of the GoAux 4s, which will automatically mute the monitors.

Physically, the monitors are small for the power they produce. They measure 8.07 inches by 5.35 inched by 5.51 inches and weigh just under 10lbs, including both speakers, stands, carrying bag and included accessories. But what really got my attention was the Auto ARC microphone that is included with the GoAux 4s. The Auto ARC is an automatic room correction feature. Simply, it allows you to move the GoAux 4s to different physical mixing environments while keeping similar audio qualities. Think of traveling between a studio and a hotel room to mix audio. Of course, the rooms will have much different acoustic setups. The GoAux 4s Auto ARC mic will help to correct for these differences, leading to similar mixing environments. It won’t be perfect or a replacement for a true studio setup, but equalizing the environment is one step closer to being able to mix anywhere.

To run the Auto ARC, you need to attach the included Auto ARC mic to the front left speaker Auto ARC mic input, hold/place the mic at ear level where the user will be sitting, and hold the Auto ARC button on the rear left speaker. It will produce 25 tones and then repeat. This will go on for a couple of minutes, during which time the mic must remain still. Once it’s complete, a low-frequency tone sounds. I tested this between multiple locations, including a bedroom, a bathroom and a studio. While it isn’t perfect, the Auto ARC setup brought the many different sound environments closer together.

Grab a set for $419, including free two-day shipping.

FlexiSpot E5 Standing Desk
By Guest Reviewer Randi Altman, Editor-in-Chief postPerspective

Summer Having worked at a computer my entire adult life, developing achy wrists, a stiff neck and hunchback (not Notre Dame-level, but my posture is not great), I have always wanted to try a stand-up desk. And thanks to FlexiSpot Dual Motor Standing Desk, I finally got my chance.

The desk arrived in different boxes over the course of a few days, so it was exciting to see what was coming next. Each box was clearly labeled, letting me know exactly what was in each before opening. I wonder if they break up the shipping on purpose so no one has all the parts of the desk at one time. (Yes, my New York Spidey senses are always on high alert.)

For the record, I don’t build stuff. I’ll spackle and paint whatever you need me to, but reading directions and putting stuff together is not my strength. Therefore, I recruited my husband, who started his furniture-building career on something called Skorük Mörk, our first bedroom set from IKEA. As I watched him from the couch while scrolling through my phone, he seemed to move along nicely… he describes it as “slow but steady,” and “easier than I thought it would be.” All told, his very casual build was probably just under an hour. Not too bad!

When complete, we were both sort of giddy. He with pride for a job well done, and me with the excitement of testing it out. I was immediately impressed with the quality hardware on the desk — from the moveable stand to the bamboo work surface that the company says can hold up to 287 pounds, the two-level workspace, and the ability to raise and lower it with a push of a button, depending on if I am feeling stand-y or sit-y.

The keypad panel has three height presets, and they are very easy to use. I stand at a towering 5 feet 3 inches tall, while my nephew who has been visiting is 6 feet 4 inches — genetics are weird. Both of us were able to find a comfortable height for working, whether sitting or standing. Oh, there is also a sit-stand reminder, that allows you to set a timer reminding you to switch working postures from time to time.

While working, most of my day is spent in Word and Photoshop with a little Resolve thrown in, and it has all been a breeze, standing or sitting. I also use an external keyboard and a pen/tablet, and there is plenty of room for all.

I have also come to really enjoy doing video calls while standing. I just feel healthier being able to move around a little bit from side to side, shifting my weight while chatting, especially after lunch. It’s my new normal.

The only negative I have relates to all the plugs/wires that hang under the desk while sitting – but I have to look deeper at this, because it could very well be user error.

For a more detailed review of the company’s similar but next-level E7 desk, give Cory Choy’s review a read.

Pricing can be found here.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop . He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.

Review: Lenovo’s P360 Ultra Workstation

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By Brady Betzel

In a world where pros are embracing ultrasmall and ultraportable workstations, Lenovo has met that need with the P360 Ultra — at under 10 pounds, it’s a RAID-0/1-capable, Nvidia-backed workstation with high-level performance.

Much like the Apple with the Mac Studio or HP with the Z2 Mini G9, Lenovo has seen the need for a small form-factor workstation with the power of a full-size tower. The Lenovo P360 Ultra has modern exterior styling and is small enough to travel with you between home and the office, but it’s packed with power close to that of a full-size desktop workstation.

Here are the specs and costs of the Lenovo P360 Ultra I received for review:

  • Base system: $1,969
  • Processor: 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900 vPro (E-cores up to 3.8GHz, P-cores up to 5GHz) (+$859)
  • Memory: 32GB DDR5-4000MHz (+$230)
  • GPU: Nvidia RTX A5000 mobile 16GB GDDR6 (+$4,349)
  • 2 SSD: 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 (+$70)
  • Ethernet: Intel i350-T2 Dual Port (+$89)
  • Wi-Fi Adapter: Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 2×2 AC vPro (+$25)
  • Power Adapter: 300W (+$59)
  • Warranty: 3-year parts and labor. Repairs are done at your location.
  • Total price: $7,650 with about 90-day lead time for delivery.

Putting It to Use
So how is the P360 Ultra in a modern editing or color correction environment? It holds its own. On the surface, I was able to edit and color-correct 4K, 6K and 8K footage coming from multiple codecs in Adobe Premiere Pro 23.2 and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve 18.1.4.

Was the P360 Ultra always able to play in real time? No, but it did hold its own and was in the realm of acceptable. However, if you use proxies in either app, you will be working fluidly. The Lenovo P360 Ultra is a great assistant editor or assistant colorist workstation that takes up minimal real estate, is somewhat portable, can connect to up to eight monitors and would line up well with the Lenovo P620 Gen 2.

Lenovo (and other companies, for that matter) are able to fit so much power and performance in such a small form factor by using laptop-style components, such as the Nvidia RTX A5000 mobile GPU and SODIMM memory. This doesn’t mean they are “bad,” per se, but they are thermally throttled, so when it gets too hot in the chassis, the speed and power decrease. Heat is the enemy of power and speed, and with such a compact form factor, Lenovo is leveraging the best of both worlds.

Intel’s E- and P-cores are another advancement that helps fit so much power into a small form factor. E-cores, aka efficiency cores, focus on background tasks that run constantly but with low energy usage. P-cores, aka performance cores, focus on heavier tasks, like multimedia rendering in apps like Resolve.

Testing
Up first are the tests I run in typical Windows-based nonlinear editing applications: Premiere Pro 23.2 and DaVinci Resolve 18.1.4. Using the same clips I always use for my reviews, I apply a basic color correction in a 3840×2160 timeline. The clips include:

  • ARRI RAW: 3840×2160 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • ARRI RAW: 4448×1856 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • BMD RAW: 6144×3456 24fps – 15 seconds
  • Red RAW: 6144×3072 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • Red RAW: 6144×3160 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • Sony a7siii: 3840×2160 23.976fps – 15 seconds

\I then add Blackmagic’s noise reduction, sharpening and grain. Finally, I replace the built-in noise reduction with Neat Video’s noise reduction to really ride the system hard. From there I export multiple versions: DNxHR 444 10-bit OP1a MXF, a DNxHR 444 10-bit Mov, H.264 MP4, H.265 MP4, and an IMF package using the default settings.

Resolve 18 Exports DNxHR 444 10-bit .mxf DNxHR 444 10-bit .mov H.264 .mp4 H.265 .mp4 IMF
Color Correction Only 00:54 01:04 00:42 00:41 01:41
CC + Resolve Noise Reduction 01:47 01:48 01:44 01:43 02:00
CC, Resolve NR, Sharpening, Grain 02:01 02:02 01:57 01:57 02:14
CC + Neat Video Noise Reduction 04:32 04:36 04:25 04:23 04:43

In comparison to the Lenovo P620 Gen 2, straight exports with only color-correcting take about double the amount of export time with the P360 Ultra. Adding in Resolve-based noise reduction and then sharpening and grain is surprisingly faster, for the most part. Finally, adding Neat Video noise reduction is about one minute slower.

I ran a similar test inside of Premiere 23.2, except for Neat Video noise reduction. In this version of Premiere Pro and Media Encoder, I was able to get much more accurate export times than I have in the past, so these numbers are reliable:

Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 (Simultaneous Exports) DNxHR 444 10-bit .mxf DNxHR 444 10-bit .mov H.264 .mp4 H.265 .mp4
Color Correction Only 1:58 03:42 01:37 01:37
CC +  NR, Sharpening, Grain 17:48 36:04 14:03 14:03

Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 (Individual Exports) DNxHR 444 10-bit .mxf DNxHR 444 10-bit .mov H.264 .mp4 H.265 .mp4
Color Correction Only 00:54 02:26 00:50 00:52
CC +  NR, Sharpening, Grain 10:07 28:15 08:04 07:56

Benchmarks

  • Blackmagic RAW Speed Test:
    • 8K CPU – 52fps
    • 8K CUDA – 75fps
  • Blender – Gooseberry: 08:24.46
  • Cinebench R23:
    • CPU (multi-core) – 20840pts
    • CPU (single-core) – 1975pts
    • MP Ratio – 10.55x
  • Corona 1.3 Benchmark:
    • Render Time: 00:01:17
    • Rays/sec: 6,258,630
  • Neat Video – Neat Bench:
    • Best combination: GPU-only 11.2fps
  • OctaneBench 2020.1.5:
    • Score: 386.52
  • PugetBench:
    • PugetBench for After Effects (0.95.7 – After Effects: 23.2.1×3)
      • Overall score: 864
      • Multi-score: 144.5
      • GPU score: 62
      • RAM preview score: 87.3
      • Render score: 79
      • Tracking score: 99.4
    • PugetBench for Premiere Pro (0.95.7 – Premiere Pro 23.2.0)
      • Extended overall score: 732
      • Standard overall score: 840
      • Extended export score: 73.5
      • Extended live playback score: 81
      • Standard export score: 77.1
      • Standard live playback score: 109.9
      • Effects score: 65
      • GPU score: 70.5
    • PugetBench for DaVinci Resolve (0.93.1 – Resolve Studio 18.1.4)
      • Extended overall score: 1598
      • Standard overall score: 1803
      • 4K media score: 118
      • 8K media score: 98
      • GPU effects score: 93
      • Fusion score: 330
    • RealBench 2.56:
      • Image editing: 119,995
        • Time: 44.4018
      • Encoding: 278,760
        • Time: 19.1132
      • OpenCL: 276,627
        • KSamples/sec: 50916
      • Heavy multitasking: 154,708
        • Time: 49.3316
      • System score: 207,522
    • V-Ray:
      • V-Ray vsamples: 13539
      • V-Ray GPU CUDA vpaths: 1257
      • V-Ray GPU RTX vrays: 1657

These benchmarks all have different purposes and mean much more if you head over to their result postings. Puget Systems has a great benchmark and results page where you can compare systems like the Lenovo P360 Ultra.

For the last test, I ran media through the Blackmagic Proxy Generator:

Sony a7iii UHD (3840×2160) MP4 master files

  • Proxies: H.265/10-bit 1080p – 46 files
    • 125fps

Red RAW – various resolutions

  • Proxies: H.265/10-bit 1080p – 2 files
    • 17fps

These speeds are pretty good considering how compact the Lenovo P360 Ultra workstation is. For comparison, a desktop system using an Nvidia RTX 4070ti was processing the Sony files at 166fps and the Red RAW files at 28fps

Improvements?
What would I like to see improved? Once I get going in Resolve with transcoding, rendering or even just playing back effects, the fans start to hum. If you like to keep your workstation close by, you will definitely notice the fans kick into high gear. Not a deal-breaker, but it is something to be aware of.

One way to get around a bulky internal power supply is to use a laptop-style power brick. The P360 Ultra has a rather large power brick — it measures 9.3 inches by 5.6 inches by 2.1 inches and weighs about 1.3lbs. I would love to see that shrink down to a more manageable size somehow.

Summing Up
In the end, the Lenovo P360 Ultra is a compact-size powerhouse. With the Nvidia RTX A5000 mobile GPU, which supports up to eight independent displays to the 12th Gen Intel i9-12900 vPro processor, the Lenovo P360 Ultra has the power to handle most midlevel requests from a video editor or colorist. It makes a great assistant editor station that can double as a backup in case your main system goes down.

And I mention this in all my workstation reviews: The term “workstation” is not just an adjective to describe a highly powered system. Lenovo-powered workstations are military-grade-tested (MIL-STD-810H) computer systems, with each component tested against industry-leading software like Adobe’s Premiere Pro and After Effects and Avid’s Media Composer to ensure rock-solid driver compatibility.

In addition, Lenovo’s included Commercial Vantage software helps keep your workstation’s drivers and hardware up to date with the latest versions that ensure little downtime.

And you can check out my other recent Lenovo review here: Previously, I have reviewed their monster workstations, the Lenovo P620 Gen 2.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop . He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.

Review: Apple’s Mac Mini With M2 Pro

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By Brady Betzel

The Mac Mini with M2 Pro continues Apple’s tradition of ultrasharp design, top-end components and nearly silent cooling for a cost of $2,299. If you’re looking for a powerful computer for multimedia content creation, then the Mac Mini with M2 Pro is worthy of consideration.

The Mac Mini with M2 Pro computer I received for review contains the highest level components available for the Mac Mini line of systems, except for the internal 1TB SSD drive. You can upgrade the internal SSD up to 8TB for an extra $2,200.

Here are the rest of the Mac Mini components for this system:

CPU Apple M2 Pro with 12‑core CPU, 19-core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine
Memory 32GB unified memory
GPU Apple M2 Pro – 12 Cores
Neural Engine 16-core
Network Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax)

10 Gigabit Ethernet
Storage 1TB SSD
I/O Four Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, two USB‑A ports, headphone jack
OS macOS Ventura 13.3.1

The Mac Mini measures just 7.75 inches by 7.75 inches by 1.41 inches and weighs just 2.8lbs. The Mac Mini truly lives up to its name with its compact form factor, making it a truly mobile desktop solution. The Mac Mini will not be replacing any Mac Pros or Mac Studios at the moment, but it is a great compromise of cost versus utility.

The Mac Mini with M2 Pro works great in Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects thanks to the added Media Engine processing. Whether you want to work with interframe video codecs like H.264 or intraframe codecs like ProRes or DNxHR, the Mac Mini seems to be able to work fluidly between either type. In the past, I would always tell video editors to transcode to an intraframe codec like DNxHR because of how much less power these codec types require when compared to interframe codecs. The new M2-based Mac systems are starting to lessen the need for intraframe files, which saves time in transcoding, which translates to money savings.

Similar to the MacBook Pro testing, I used DaVinci Resolve 18.1.4 and Premiere Pro 23.2 to measure the Mac Mini’s real-world performance. I used a one-minute-long UHD (3840×2160) sequence in multiple versions — one with just color correction, one with color correction and any built-in noise reduction plugins, and one using the third-party Neat Video noise reduction plugin to really push the GPU’s power. For comparison to a Window-based PC, I have done the same tests on workstations, new GPUs and more, like the Lenovo P360 Ultra.

The clips include:

  • ARRI RAW: 3840×2160 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • ARRI RAW: 4448×1856 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • BMD RAW: 6144×3456 24fps – 15 seconds
  • Red RAW: 6144×3072 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • Red RAW: 6144×3160 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • Sony a7siii: 3840×2160 23.976fps – 15 seconds
Resolve 18 Exports DNxHR 444 10-bit .mxf DNxHR 444 10-bit .mov H.264 .mp4 H.265 .mp4 IMF
Color Correction Only 01:03 01:03 00:52 00:47 01:50
CC + Resolve Noise Reduction 05:14 05:15 05:23 05:23 05:15
CC, Resolve NR, Sharpening, Grain 07:18 07:17 07:24 07:24 07:17
CC + Neat Video Noise Reduction 05:01 05:00 04:59 04:58 05:20

In comparison to the MacBook Pro with M2 Max, the Mac Mini with M2 Pro churns out the same exports at almost double the time. The price of the MacBook Pro is about double the Mac Mini, so double the time to export makes sense. The times in the Resolve tests reflect exports from camera-native media, like R3D and ARRI RAW. I then did a similar test in Premiere Pro:

Premiere Pro 2023 (Simultaneous Exports) DNxHR 444 10-bit .mxf DNxHR 444 10-bit .mov H.264 .mp4 H.265 .mp4
Color Correction Only 02:49 03:39 03:42 03:46
CC +  NR, Sharpening, Grain 01:07:57 01:51:17 01:51:20 02:08:38

Premiere Pro 2023 (Individual Exports) DNxHR 444 10-bit .mxf DNxHR 444 10-bit .mov H.264 .mp4 H.265 .mp4
Color Correction Only 01:30 01:15 1:01 01:26
CC +  NR, Sharpening, Grain 47:10 1:12:16 1:12:13 1:13:00

Premiere Pro runs decently on the Mac Mini with M2 Pro. It’s not a powerhouse, but it also didn’t take a dive when I loaded it with noise reduction and sharpening. This is also why you will want at least 32GB of unified memory if you can afford it. Oddly enough, some of the Adobe Premiere Pro exports that ran one export at a time (as opposed to four exports simultaneously) exported at similar speeds as the MacBook Pro with M2 Ultra, while some did not. I also ran the Mac Mini with M2 Pro through various benchmarks:

Benchmarks
PugetBench Premiere Pro 0.95.7, Premiere Pro 23.2.0

  • Extended Overall Score: 768
  • Standard Overall Score: 876
  • Extended Export Score: 74.6
  • Extended Live Playback Score: 79.2
  • Standard Export Score: 93
  • Standard Live Playback Score: 93,3
  • Effects Score: 76.5
  • GPU Score: 39.7

PugetBench After Effects 0.95.7, After Effects 23.3×53

  • Overall Score: 1147
  • Multi-Core Score: 115.3
  • GPU Score: 65.2
  • RAM Preview Score: 108.6
  • Render Score: 107.3
  • Tracking Score: 141.8

Blackmagic Design Disk Speed Test: Write – 4350.7MB/s, Read – 5039.5MB/s

Blackmagic Design RAW Speed Test: 8K CPU 43fps, 8K METAL 167fps

Blender:

  • Gooseberry Benchmark: 13:01.44
  • Blender Benchmark CPU:
    • Monster: 125.169231
    • Junkshop: 75.574606
    • Classroom: 54.487366
  • Blender Benchmark GPU:
    • Monster: 488.154435
    • Junkshop: 257.997748
    • Classroom: 236.379018

Cinebench R23: CPU (Multicore) – 14591 pts, CPU (Single-Core) – 1649 pts, MP Ratio 8.85x

Corona 1.3: Render Time – 0:01:56, Rays/sec – 4,176,920

Neat Video Neat Bench:

  • HD (1920×1080) Best Combination: GPU only – 35.6 frames/sec
  • UHD (3840×2160) Best Combination: CPU (12 cores) and GPU – 8.86 frames/sec

V-Ray 5.0.2 Benchmark:

  • V-RAY: 9632 vsamples
  • V-RAY GPU CUDA: 286 vpaths

For the last test, I ran media through the Blackmagic Proxy Generator:

Sony a7iii UHD (3840×2160) .mp4 Master Files

  • Proxies: H.265/10-bit 1080p – 46 files
    • 182fps

Red RAW – various resolutions

  • Proxies: H.265/10-bit 1080p – two files
    • 12fps

Summing Up
At $2,299, the Mac Mini with M2 Pro is a great middle of-the-road multimedia creation station. You can still work smoothly with camera-native video codecs in major nonlinear editing apps like Resolve and Premiere. And if you are concerned about good product design and sharp, modern aesthetics, the Mac Mini is a great piece to leave on your desk.

Additionally, Apple continues to deliver the most silent computer systems on the market without losing power and without sacrificing connections. Check out the new Mac Mini at www.apple.com.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop . He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.

Review: Apple’s MacBook Pro M2 Max

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By Brady Betzel

The 2023 Apple MacBook Pro M2 Max is another step up in Apple’s goal to dominate the content creation market. At this point most multimedia applications are compatible with the new M2 processing chips, and if they aren’t, they probably aren’t being used on Macs anyway.

The latest 16.2-inch MacBook Pro is a beautifully constructed, albeit non-upgradable, mobile powerhouse of a computer. Does upgradability matter to most users? Probably not. I harp on it a lot in my reviews, but to be honest, the MacBook Pros of the last couple years are undeniably in the top three of mobile computers for professional power users. Whether you color correct in Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve, edit in Apple’s own FCPX, or roundtrip between Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro, the MacBook Pro M2 Max is one of the fastest mobile multimedia systems you can purchase.

Now that I’ve bloviated to the max, here are the specs of the MacBook Pro M2 Max I was sent for testing:

CPU Apple M2 Max – 12 Cores (8 performance, 4 efficiency)
Memory 64 GB – LPDDR5
GPU Apple M2 Max – 38 cores
Neural Engine 16-core
Network Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax)
Display 16.2” Liquid Retina XDR 3456×2234

●    1,000,000 x1 contrast ratio

●    XDR brightness: 1000 nits sustained full-screen, 1600-nits peak (HDR content only)

●    SDR brightness: 500 nits
Storage 2TB SSD
I/O 3-Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, SDXC card slot, headphone jack, MagSafe 3 port
OS macOS Ventura 13.2
Battery 100-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery
Charging 140W USB-C power adapter – fast charging

At the time of this review, this configuration retails for $4,299 and ships within 10 days. While the specs of the MacBook Pro are workstation-level, technically it is not a workstation, which can be a problem for enterprise purchasers. To be labeled an actual capital-W “Workstation,” manufacturers must test their hardware configurations against professional software apps like Avid Media Composer, Resolve, After Effects and more. Companies like Lenovo and HP certify their hardware and software to work with minimal interruptions when working 24/7/365 through a system called “ISV,” aka independent software vendors.

If you are a die-hard Windows-based PC user, the MacBook Pro is an easy transition, except for the “command” button being in a different position than the “control” key. Once you get past that, you probably will never look back. But let us get to the testing results.

Up first is some real-world export testing inside Resolve 18.1.4 and Premiere Pro 23.2. In both Adobe Premiere Pro and Resolve, I use multiple timelines to test the systems. In Premiere Pro I use two timelines. One is for basic color correction, and the other is for the same basic color correction as the first sequence plus Premiere Pro’s noise reduction, sharpening and grain.

In Resolve I use four timelines: 1) basic color correction; 2) the same basic color correction as the first sequence as well as Resolve’s built-in noise reduction; 3) basic color correction plus Resolve’s built-in noise reduction, sharpening and grain; 4) basic color correction and Neat Video noise reduction. All timelines are one minute long and UHD (3840×2160) resolution.

For comparison, I have done the same tests on workstations, and new GPUs. Here is an example: my Lenovo P620 Ultra review.

The clips include:

  • ARRIRAW: 3840×2160 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • ARRIRAW: 4448×1856 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • BMD RAW: 6144×3456 24fps – 15 seconds
  • Red RAW: 6144×3072 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • Red RAW: 6144×3160 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • Sony a7siii: 3840×2160 23.976fps – 15 seconds
Resolve 18 Exports DNxHR 444 10-bit .mxf DNxHR 444 10-bit .mov H.264 .mp4 H.265 .mp4 IMF
Color correction only 01:02 01:02 00:44 00:41 01:49
CC + Resolve noise reduction 02:46 02:47 02:46 02:45 02:52
CC, Resolve noise reduction, sharpening, grain 03:40 03:39 03:41 03:41 03:43
CC + Neat Video noise reduction 03:50 03:47 03:48 03:49 04:05

In comparison to the Lenovo P620 Gen 2 Desktop Workstation with Nvidia RTX A6000, the export times are not that far off — which is pretty crazy considering the Lenovo workstation retails for over $16,000. Obviously, improved efficiency in software updates is something to keep in mind when comparing numbers, but still — very similar times.

Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 (Simultaneous Exports) DNxHR 444 10-bit .mxf DNxHR 444 10-bit .mov H.264 .mp4 H.265 .mp4
Color Correction Only 03:51 04:23 05:30 05;15
CC + noise reduction, sharpening, grain 31:19 01:20:34 31:32 31:32

 

Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 (individual exports) DNxHR 444 10-bit .mxf DNxHR 444 10-bit .mov H.264 .mp4 H.265 .mp4
Color correction only 01:42 01:38 1:35 02:14
CC + noise reduction, sharpening, grain 26:00 1:12:31 1:12:32 1:18:47

Premiere Pro seems to have a much harder time rendering out files with anything but standard color correction. Funnily enough, the Lenovo P620 Gen 2 wouldn’t even finish the exports, so I think Adobe is slowly improving its export process. I wouldn’t really judge the speed of the MacBook Pro by the Premiere Pro testing unless you use Premiere Pro exclusively for exports with lots of plugins. But for some more accurate benchmarks, I ran the MacBook Pro through its paces:

Benchmarks:

PugetBench Premiere Pro 0.95.7, Premiere Pro 23.2.0

  • Extended overall score: 1064
  • Standard overall score: 1236
  • Extended export score: 102.1
  • Extended live playback score: 123.3
  • Standard export score: 118.2
  • Standard live playback score: 158.7
  • Effects score: 93.9
  • GPU score: 66.8

PugetBench After Effects 0.95.7, After Effects 23.3×53

  • Overall score: 1324
  • Multi-core score: 125
  • GPU score: 117.5
  • RAM preview score: 132.4
  • Render score: 125.9
  • Tracking score: 145.2

Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test: Write: 6550MB/s – Read: 5301.1 MB/s

Blackmagic RAW Speed Test: 8K CPU 44fps, 8K Metal 223fps

Blender:

  • Gooseberry Benchmark: 12:52.03
  • Blender Benchmark CPU:
    • Monster: 126.285481
    • Junkshop: 73.637424
    • Classroom: 54.662429
  • Blender Benchmark GPU:
    • Monster: 954.130445
    • Junkshop: 508.410669
    • Classroom: 461.035816

Cinebench R23: CPU (multi-core): 14809 pts, CPU (single core): 1646 pts, MP ratio 8.99x

Corona 1.3: Render Time: 0:01:57, Rays/sec: 4,142,990

Neat Video Neat Bench:

  • HD (1920×1080) best combination: GPU-only 41.1 frames/sec
  • UHD (3840×2160) Best combination: CPU (11 cores) and GPU – 12 frames/sec

V-Ray 5.0.2 Benchmark:

  • V-Ray: 9477 vsamples
  • V-Ray GPU CUDA: 287 vpaths

For the last test, I ran media through the Blackmagic Proxy Generator:

Sony a7s iiiUHD (3840×2160) .mp4 master files

  • Proxies: H.265/10-bit 1080p – 46 files
    • 165fps

Red RAW – various resolutions

  • Proxies: H.265/10-bit 1080p – two files
    • 11fps

Summing Up

In the end, the updated MacBook Pro with M2 Max is a sleek and powerful mobile content creation system. I ran about 80% of my tests on just the battery in High Power Mode with mixed results, but on average I was getting three to four hours of heavy work on a single charge. A full charge took about 1.5 hours, which is really fast.

If you’re looking for an upgrade to your current MacBook Pro or are thinking about switching from a Windows-based laptop, you will quickly realize what a great system this is. The only feature that bugs me every time I look at it — and I know I’m nitpicking here — is the black notch where the cameras are. Other than that, the keyboard is great, the trackpad is accurate and the MacBook itself is easy to carry. Having access to three Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI port, an SD card reader and a headphone/microphone jack without an adapter is a big relief if you are coming from previous MacBook Pro models that required dongles.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop . He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.

Review: Nugen’s Halo Vision Audio Plugin

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By Cory Choy

I’m a big Nugen fan. In fact, Halo UpMix is one of my favorite plugins and one that I use on almost every 5.1 project I work on. It is a simple, elegant plugin that allows me to move much of my stereo design to a surround environment quickly and flawlessly. I love it. It looks good, it sounds good, it’s well thought-out and it runs smoothly. So when I was given the chance to review another Nugen product, Halo Vision, I was very excited.

Halo Vision
While I know that RTFM (which stands for read the f-ing manual) is the real way to do things, I also know that these days, all the cool kids are just taking things out of the box and clicking everywhere. Let’s see where that takes us.

I fired up Halo Vision on the surround mix for my feature film Esme, My Love. The software defaults to “All Views.”

According to Nugen, Halo Vision performs comprehensive analysis of 3D and immersive audio. The Nugen site describes it as “a variety of modules that provide audio pros with a clearer understanding of every aspect of their audio, allowing for precise and confident decision-making and troubleshooting, and pinpointing problem areas which might be missed using ears alone.”

So basically, it’s advertised as extensive metering for the surround, Ambisonics and Dolby Atmos sound worlds. But now that I think about it, Atmos has more than the maximum 7.1.2 that Halo Vision supports, so Halo Vision would only be good for examining parts of the full Atmos mix at a time. I don’t work in Atmos (I use Ambisonics for VR and 5.1 for theater), so that’s not a problem for me.

Like UpMix, Halo Vision is immediately intuitive and simple to use. It looks and feels like a modern plugin. In this review, I’m going to run through all the modules one by one.

Basics
Basics provides a standard-looking setup — surround meters and a clock. It’s nice, but there’s nothing that my DAW Reaper doesn’t already provide for me.

Center Channel Vision

Center Channel Vision
Again, this is a beautiful rendering. The bottom is what I would see when I do a frequency analysis and metering of the center channel (I assume), but it’s nothing that I don’t already have. And I’m not sure I understand what this thing is on the top. There seem to be lines emitting from the selected channel to the others, and I guess it’s showing the relationships somehow? OK, enough of this just clicking away stuff. It’s time to RTFM. Aha! “The Correlation Web is another way of visualizing the phase relationships between each audio channel. The view consists of a network of channels with an interconnecting line between each pair. When the phase relationship between two channels becomes anti-correlated, the corresponding line lights up. The further out of phase the two signals are, the more intense the colour becomes.”

Besides my delight in the British spelling of “colour,” this clarifies things quite a bit. This module lets you know about phasing issues. This is especially important if you were planning on doing a fold-down or downmix to stereo. I personally like to do separate stereo and surround mixes when possible, so most often this won’t be an issue, but I like the idea of being able to see phasing since it’s not something folks catch 100% of the time off the bat.

Correlation

Correlation
This seems to be all about phasing, and it’s an interesting way of looking at things. I feel this is going to be a lot more important for music mixes than theater mixes, but that’s just my gut. It does make me wonder how much it matters if the LFE has phasing issues and what they end up doing. LFE is still the most confusing of the channels for me because, despite my room being calibrated to theater specs by Dolby, in most of the movies I mix that are played in theaters, the LFE feels different depending on venue, even though they are all technically calibrated the same.

Frequency Inspection
It seems like I’m looking at multiple channels at once in the frequency analyzer. I wish I had something that explained which color referred to what. It’s quite beautiful, and I would consider using it as a visualizer for a performance, but I’m not sure it brings anything new to the table for me.

Frequency Overview

Frequency Overview
Frequency Overview seems very similar, and other than just showing combined data I’m pretty sure that it’s basically the same as above.

I don’t find this super-useful since I use my ears for most things, and generally I use single-channel frequency monitors to scan for high-end and low-end issues in my premix. I guess it’s nice seeing the differences from the front and surround speakers. I guess “top” only comes into play if you’re doing 7.1.2, and I’m doing 5.1 at the moment.

Haze
Haze is my favorite visual representation so far because it allows you to intuitively see the sound intensity in the 5.1 space. I would use this to see how sounds are playing — particularly music and sound effects. It’s really nice, and it’s not something that I already have in my DAW. I could see this as a particularly useful tool when working with a director if they had questions about what the mix was doing.

In this picture, you can see a sharp spike of SFX for a jump scare in the center, left and right, with the music floating all around elsewhere. I like this one!

Final Thoughts
Halo Vision is elegant, and I like Haze (which I would definitely use for Ambisonics mixes) and the phasing/correlation tools, but it’s not something I would use often if mixing by myself.

It is a wonderful way to visually translate some of my mixing decisions to a director, and I’m excited to try it out in that capacity. And if there were phasing issues, I think it would be a really great way to spot them quickly. I don’t have a ton a of phasing issues in the environment I work in (a calibrated room), but I could see it being useful when taking a mix from a non-calibrated room and troubleshooting it. Maybe as a sound mixer, I just prefer to use my ears as much as possible as opposed to my eyes.

So while this plugin is nice, I don’t see it as essential to my workflow like I do Nugen’s Halo UpMix and Nugen’s spatial reverb Paragon, both of which are pretty much indispensable.

Cory Choy is an Emmy Award-winning sound mixer at Silver Sound in New York City.

 

 

 

Review: Audeze MM500 Studio Headphones

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By Brady Betzel

In the HBO limited series Sharp Objects, character Alan Crellin escapes daily life by retreating to his HiFi audio cave. Alan’s escapism is a fundamental theme that runs throughout the series. While I watched each episode, I noticed I held my breath when Alan placed his headphones over his ears and was transported to another dimension. I had a similar experience when putting on the Audeze MM-500 headphones for the first time — I was immediately transported to another musical dimension, much like Alan was.

The Audeze MM-500 professional-level studio headphones, designed in combination with 11-time Grammy Award-winning mixer Manny Marroquin, are some of the cleanest and truly most natural-sounding headphones I have ever used.

If you’ve been in a professional recording studio, you will never forget how good it can sound. As an editor, I’ve been lucky enough to edit in a few that had high-end audio monitoring. There is truly nothing like it — from the clarity to the power to the timbre and dynamics of engaging audio. In the past, I’ve really enjoyed Beyerdynamic headphones when editing, specifically for the unimpeded, natural sound. That is until I received the Audeze MM-500 headphones.

Digging In

The Audeze MM-500 headphones retail for $1,699: https://www.audeze.com/products/mm-500. They are shipped in a durable and lockable travel case with a braided, 95-inch-long cable with a mini-XLR to ¼-inch jack. You also get a carrying bag, a signed certificate of authenticity and a warranty card.

The MM-500 headphones themselves are open-backed and sleek. They are a modern, professional studio-style headphone with a brushed aluminum structure that feels secure yet is light enough to wear comfortably for hours of work. The gunmetal color combined with a not-too-cumbersome heft really classes up the place.

They stay in place thanks to a clamp with a single leather band on the top. They are easily adjustable and fit comfortably around my ears with the leather earpads. The first time I used them I was able to go an hour without taking them off, but with continued use the MM-500 headphones are very comfortable and can be worn for long stretches of time.

 

Specifications are:
Transducer type – Planar Magnetic
Magnetic structure – Fluxor magnet array
Phase management – Fazor
Magnet type – Neodymium N50
Diaphragm type – Ultra-Thin Uniforce
Transducer size – 90 mm
Maximum SPL – >130dB
Frequency response – 5Hz – 50kHz
THD – <0.1% @ 100 dB SPL, 1kHz
Sensitivity – 100 dB/1mW (at drum reference point)
Impedance – 18 ohms
Max power handling – 5W RMS
Min recommended power – >100mW
Recommended power level – >250mW
Weight – 495g

The specs punch way above their weight class. Audeze has a few high-level headphones that retail from under $2,000 all the way up to $4,500, and some of the MM-500 specs are the same as elite-level headphones. One of the more interesting specs is the low impedance measuring at 18 ohms while still maintaining a relatively high sensitivity of 100dB. This essentially means the MM-500s will work with relatively low power pushing the signal, like a cell phone.

As a matter of fact, I used a USB-C digital audio converter (aka DAC) to connect the Audeze MM-500 headphones, and what do you know? They work. Mathematically speaking, it makes sense, but in the real world you never know, so this was a welcome surprise. This hammers home the point that Audeze really wanted to make a versatile professional headphone solution with the MM-500s; they are compatible with low-power devices as well as powerful amplifiers. However, if you really want to push professional headphones to work as they should, running through a nice DAC/pre-amp stack is the way to go.

Audeze’s Planar Magnetic technology is the company’s not-so-secret sauce, and they have a great article for all us nerds wanting to learn more It goes into detail on how Audeze’s large planar drivers help with stereo imaging and sound localization. They go deep, but it’s a really interesting read.

Real-World Use
Using the Audeze MM-500 headphones in an edit suite is a luxury. Most editors would attest that unless you bring your own headphones, you get whatever the rental facility left. Sometimes you will get lucky and run into a set of Beyerdynamics or maybe some Seinnheisers, but nothing that feels as good as the MM-500s.

The Audeze MM-500 headphones have bested any other headphones I have used, and they sounded great immediately with little burn-in needed. What’s even more impressive is what I was hearing in production audio while editing — things I would have never heard using lower-quality headphones or monitor speakers. Little separations, like a shoe coming out of the mud while the character is talking, are much more present and up front.

In my opinion, the MM-500 headphones shine with vocals, dialogue and un-muddying midtones (if that even makes sense). That’s not to say the highs and lows are deficient; they are just as clear, but headphones often don’t have the ability to produce clear midtones while still harnessing the low range.

As mentioned earlier, being present in a professional studio with elite-level equipment can change your life. For me, it’s live-concert energy versus listening to a song from your phone’s speaker. There is no comparison. The Audeze MM-500 professional headphones give me that same excitement when editing audio, specifically music. One of the most amazing parts of being a video editor is the ability to use the highest quality sources available, and sometimes that means using audio stems that are from songs you hear every day on the radio.

Editing with the Audeze MM-500 allows you to hear a song in the highest quality available, so your “flow state” can be at its highest. That flow state is not an easy thing to achieve, but when using headphones like the MM-500, in addition to studio monitors and television speakers, you know you are starting at a high level, so the audience will experience the best listening experience they can.

I have to be honest; I am nowhere near a professional audio mixer. I just work in a facility with them. But just like editors, colorists, visual effects creators, producers and everyone else, true professionals are magicians. However, I am acutely aware of how great audio advances a story, and that is why all editors should have a pair of high-quality headphones to listen to their mixes.

Listening on a TV and/or studio monitors is fine in a general sense, but editors should always listen to their mix on headphones to catch the nuance. I like to close my eyes and “transport” to another dimension while listening to my mixes. This allows me to see how well they would tell the story if the video happened to drop out. The Audeze MM-500 headphones are the right headphones for this.

I know the $1,699 price tag is a little much to ask offline/online editors to pay but think of it this way: You could buy a new pair of pseudo-expensive headphones every few years or invest in a single pair of headphones that will accurately reproduce the mix you are editing and most likely last for many years. Plus, they look great.

So after playing around in my professional editing applications like Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve with Fairlight, I had to indulge myself. I signed up for the music streaming service Tidal, specifically to listen to the Master Quality Audio (MQA) tracks. After reading up on Tidal’s MQA tracks, I’m not sure whether it is truly as the artist intended or if it’s shaped by the compression, but regardless it sounds great in the Audeze MM-500 headphones.

Technically, MQA audio has a bit rate between 2304 and 9216Kbps — very high when compared to 128Kbps, which is kind of the standard bit rate for streaming audio. I first started listening to some more modern metal tracks from Lamb of God, Chimaira, Silent Planet, Meshuggah and Metallica. They all sounded very good and clear but not as impressive as I had hoped.

I then went to my softer side and played some Tool — their latest album sounded immaculate. I then started going down the A Perfect Circle and Puscifer rabbit hole. Unfortunately there isn’t a whole lot of MQA on those two, but it still sounded great.

Finally, I gave in and listened to some pop hits, and “Stay” by Justin Bieber played. That was the trick, as much as I don’t want to admit it. Justin Bieber sounded excellent. It really showed off the intimate nature of the Audeze MM-500 headphones. It felt like an intimate and personal concert in a perfectly tuned space as opposed to a more arena-style sound. Afterward, I cleansed my palate with Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s “Lucky Man” and “Soundtracking: Atlanta,” an incredible playlist based off the FX show Atlanta. This is where I got lost in the music and could have kept listening for hours; it gave me that buzz that I remember feeling at concerts or listening inside of a professional mix room.

I have some musical experience on both the installation side as well as the performance side, but nothing like a true audiophile. So when describing the use of the Audeze MM-500 headphones to a colorist or an editor, it would be akin to going from color correcting 8-bit HD to 16-bit 4K/UHD HDR.

For many “civilians,” the standard Spotify bit rate is just as good as the MQA tracks off of Tidal, but when you are huge nerd like me, there are many levels of differences in the details. The shadows have many more nuances and details, the highlights contain intricacies and aren’t blown-out, and even the blue gradations in the sky are smooth and have no banding. This is how I would describe using the Audeze MM-500 professional headphones.

Summing Up
Audeze partnering up with Manny Marroquin was a smart move. The clarity, separation and comforting in the up-front staging of the Audeze MM-500 clearly show how Manny focused on the ability to go from million-dollar studio to mixing on a laptop in an airplane without losing sound quality.

These days, being mobile and adaptable is a key to staying successful. For anyone looking for mix-level quality headphones that will also take you to another musical dimension, the Audeze MM-500s are a great pick.

Main Image: Brady Betzel

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop . He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.

iZotope

Review: iZotope RX 10 Advanced Audio Restoration Suite

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By Cory Choy

Full disclosure: I am a big iZotope RX fan. Why? Because out of all the tools that have been made accessible to the post world over the years, only a few have been complete game changers. iZotope RX is one of those tools.

Cory Choy

The elegance and ease with which one can view and edit the spectral representation of a waveform is pretty much unmatched by any other software, and the importance and power of that cannot be emphasized enough. Not only that, but iZotope’s suite is available at a very reasonable price point (with incredibly affordable sales offered throughout the year) and it does not require the dreaded iLok to use.

There is also something to be said about the many different ways iZotope allows one to go about restoring audio, from Spectral Repair to Dialogue Isolate to Voice Denoise to Spectral Denoise — and each one of these tools goes about things a different way and helps tackle different problems.

So when I was given an opportunity to put the new version of iZotope RX through its paces, I jumped at the opportunity — knowing that even though I was a fan of the company, that my review would be thorough and honest.

For this review, I will be focusing on the suite’s new features from the perspective of a sound designer/mixer. At the end, I will give my thoughts about whether it’s worth upgrading from an earlier version and whether it’s worth buying for the first time.

Repair Assistant
The new version of iZotope RX includes a new and improved Repair Assistant. This is an automated tool that analyzes a piece of audio and gives recommendations on how to make the audio sound its best — mainly by subtracting unsavory elements. As you can see in the image provided, it uses De-Ess, Voice Denoise, De-click, De-Click and De-Reverb. That’s a lot of De’s.

I am always skeptical of tools like this, as I think it ends up being faster for someone like me who knows after listening what kind of tools need to be used. However, if you don’t know what these various tools do, and you don’t have experience using them, I could see it being nice to see what certain settings do. The audio clip that I provided was a remotely recorded clip for a podcast. The high-end was very much lacking and the voice was thin and compressed sounding.

iZotopeI selected two minutes of audio and hit “learn” on Repair Assistant. It thought for a long time (almost 1 minute and 30 seconds) and after listening to the result, I wasn’t particularly impressed. All it really did was subtract the smallest amount of ambient noise. The voice still sounded… not good. I guess this brings me to what I think would make repair assistant better — I wish it used all of the modules rather than just a few of them. With my prior knowledge of RX, I know that the new and improved Spectral Recovery would be the thing that would make the most difference here, so I gave that a whirl… And that was also a pretty time-intensive process.

Spectral Recovery
What Spectral Recovery does is try to interpolate what’s there and add back the high-end that was subtracted from the VOIP. Pretty cool stuff.

iZotope

Here is the new waveform.

WOW. What a difference! It sounded so much fuller! When I A/B’d it with the Spectral Recovery from RX 9 Advanced, I would say it was noticeably improved. Unfortunately, however, it was unable to add back enough information from the 6KHz-8KHz range, so it gave the speaker a lisp. I decided to try Repair Assistant on that and still didn’t get that great results. Do you know what would work here? A Re-Ess function. I wonder if that exists…

With a lot of fussing around, I think I could probably improve the sound from here about 30%-50%. But it would be nice to have a preset just nail it for me. Still, the new Spectral Recovery was pretty impressive.

Text Navigation
What does Text Navigation purport to do? It allows you to “see what you hear with the new Text Navigation function. It analyzes dialogue and displays a text transcription above the spectrogram that’s in sync with the corresponding audio.” Whoa! IZotope has officially entered the automated audio to transcription realm [putting it in direct competition with the likes of Otter and Trint and Descript. That’s pretty cool… if it works. Let’s find out.

The first question I have is, where is the darn thing? I looked on the right-hand side toolbar and I can’t seem to find it. Let me check the menus…

Not there… how about Help? Nope. Nothing useful there either. Gonna have to Google it. There’s a video I think… Aha! It’s here only on the bottom left:

I had a hard time finding that. So now I clicked the icons and… lanes are there but empty

How do I populate this? I guess more YouTube for me… (I really think this should be in the manual.) Oh! Turns out that it is transcribing the entire file, and not just the selected audio. That will take forever, as this clip is three hours long. Let me make a subclip and get back to you.

Okay, lots of thoughts here. This feature was hard to find, and once I found it, it wasn’t super intuitive. There wasn’t enough in the manual. The transcription seems to take a while and right now it doesn’t seem super-accurate on a mediocre recording. There is only one speaker, but manual speaker detection seems to think there are two. I can’t get an easy way to look at the transcription… shouldn’t it populate on the left? Is there a way to export the entire transcription as a text file?

The sentence I hear with my ear is, “Great, thanks Yehuda, happy to be here.” The only words that transcription got right were “be here.” Let’s try with a better sounding sample file.

Hmm… it’s better, but with only about 60% accuracy. Not good enough. However, the search function is really cool! I search for the word “all” and it allows me to instantly navigate to those parts of the timeline. One problem? It only found 2 of 4 instances of the world “all” in a 60-second spot.

Conclusion? The intent of this module is really, really cool, but it needs to be refined. If the transcription isn’t more accurate, the search function won’t be as useful as it could be. The way the transcript is displayed is inelegant and clunky. iZotope absolutely needs create a simple and easy way to export the transcript as a text file. I’m excited to see where this goes, but with the experience I just had, it feels more like a time-suck than a time-saver at the moment.

This goes for the Multiple Speaker Detection as well. Not accurate enough to be super useful for me… at the moment.

Okay! What’s left…

Dynamic Adaptive Hum Removal
This was good. It was also fast, not super-slow like some of the other functions.

Before

iZotope

After

Result? Multiple bands of hums greatly reduced and when it switched frequency in the clip, the DeHummer kept up. Good and fast! Dialogue still intact. Impressive! To be fair, for this instance, I could use RX9 and press the button twice instead of once and I think it would sound just as good, but I could see for a narrow set of applications that this would be real time saver.

The Verdict
Is it worth upgrading? If you already have RX9 Advanced, in my opinion, no. RX9 can do 95% of what this can do well. If the auto-transcription function was better and more accurate and allowed you to export the transcription as a text file, I would say it would absolutely be worth upgrading. Maybe if there is a patch?

Is it worth buying RX for the first time? Yes. Absolutely! These tools are incredibly powerful and affordable.

I’m so excited to see what comes next from these folks.

Cory Choy is an Emmy Award-winning sound mixer, producer and director of Esme, My Love. He is the owner of NYC- and LA-based Silver Sound and proud father of Grace Lee and Jakob Fox.

 

Review: Nvidia’s Founder’s Edition RTX 4090 — An Editor’s Perspective

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By Brady Betzel

Nvidia has released its much-anticipated RTX 4090 GPU. It’s big and power-hungry, and I’ll provide more details on that later in this piece. When the product was released, I initially held off filing this review to see if Nvidia or Blackmagic (who showed a prerelease version of Resolve with AV1 encoding technology that only works with the new 4090 series) would release any Easter eggs, but so far it hasn’t happened.

Whether they do or not, I plan on doing a more-in-depth review once I’ve settled in and found the RTX 4090 sweet spots that will help editors and colorists. But for now, there are still some gems in the RTX 4090 that are worth checking out. (For a tech guru perspective, check out Mike McCarthy’s review.)

Founder’s Edition
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU comes in a few different flavors and iterations. I was sent the Founder’s Edition, which features the new Ada Lovelace architecture, two FP32 streaming processors, the DLSS 3 platform, 16,384 CUDA cores, 24GB GDDR6X memory, 2.23 base clock speed with up to 2.52 boost clock speeds, and much more. You can find more in-depth technical specs on the Nvidia site, where you can also compare previous versions of Nvidia GPUs.

In this review, I am focusing on features that directly relate to video editors and colorists. For the most part, the RTX 4090 performance is as expected, with a generational improvement over the RTX 3090. It’s faster and contains new updates, like DLSS 3 (an artificial intelligence-powered performance booster). Those features are typically gaming-focused and embrace technologies like optical flow to “create” higher resolutions and frames to increase frame rates. That doesn’t typically mean much for us post nerds, unless you also play games, but with artificial intelligence-adapted features becoming so prevalent, we are beginning to see speed increases in editing apps as well.

Resolve Prerelease
As editors, we need faster rendering, faster exporting and more efficient decoding of high-resolution media. We always hear about 8K or 4K, but you don’t always hear how much computing and GPU power you need to play these large resolutions back in real time, especially when you are editing with CPU/GPU-hogging codecs like Red R3D, H.264 and more.

Inside of DaVinci Resolve 18, I was able to playback all my standard testing files in real time without any effects on them. From UHD ProRes files to UHD Red R3D files, the RTX 4090 handled all of them. Even when I played back ProRes, 8K UHD (7680×4320) files I was pleasantly surprised at the smooth, real-time playback. All the files played back without using cache files, proxy files or pre-rendered media.

Magic Mask

Keep in mind I was using a prerelease version of Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve (mentioned earlier) to harness the power of AV1 encoding. And AV1 is the real gem in the updated Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU architecture. This is why I mentioned “prerelease” in the last sentence. I’ve heard through the grapevine that a newly updated Resolve will be released sometime this fall and will include some of the features I’m about to go into. But for now, I’m sorry. That’s all I’ve got in terms of a release date.

So what is AV1? Think of the old tried-and-true H.264 and H.265 codecs but with a 30% smaller file size for equivalent quality. Without getting too far into the weeds on AV1, the AV1 codec came about when a group of big companies like Intel, Nvidia, Google, etc. wanted to create a royalty-free video codec that had the same quality but was more efficient than HEVC-based codecs, such as H.264 and H.265. That is how the AV1 codec was born. AV1 is still on the ground floor, but with large companies like Nvidia adding new features such as AV1-compatible dual-encoders, and with nonlinear editing apps like Resolve including encoding abilities, it will soon hit the mainstream.

Face refinement

Nvidia really took the bull by the horns on AV1, and Blackmagic followed along. In the prerelease version of Resolve that I used, I encoded the included 4K (UHD) 30fps ProRes 422 HQ clip provided by Nvidia, which has a run time of about 2 minutes and 7 seconds, to the new AV1 codec in about 17 seconds. And since no other card can export AV1 files yet, there is really no benchmark for me to compare to. However, I did export the same sequence to an H.265 encoded file using an Nvidia Quadro A6000 GPU, and that took about 39 seconds. I was kind of surprised given that the A6000 contains double the memory and costs over double the price, but when I looked deeper into it, it made sense.

The RTX 4090 is a much newer card with much newer technology, including over 6,000 more CUDA cores. But for a pro who needs the extended memory range; a compact, two-slot design; and half the power consumption, the Quadro A6000 will fit better (literally). The RTX 4090 is physically large and takes up three slots.

Scene Detect

AI, Editing and Color
Remember a bit earlier when I mentioned AI technology and how it’s creeping its way into the tech that video editors and colorists use? And while RTX 4090 is more of a gamers card, there are a few very specific updates that video editors and colorists will like? One of them inside Resolve 18’s prerelease is Magic Mask. I’ve used it before, and it is very good, but it’s also time-consuming, especially if you don’t have a very fast CPU/GPU. Lucky for us, the RTX 4090 has dramatically improved Magic Mask processing speeds. Nvidia reports that the time difference in its testing was 29 seconds for the RTX 3090, 17 seconds using the RTX 4090 and 34 seconds using the Quadro A6000. Some other AI-improved features of Resolve 18 are Scene Detect, Super Scale and Optical Flow.

The Nvidia RTX 4090 has shown increased efficiency when compared to the Quadro A6000. Besides the increased memory size, Frame Lock and Genlock are the standout features of the A6000 that are going to matter to users looking to decide between the two GPUs. For media creators, the RTX 4090 is a phenomenal GPU that will dramatically decrease export times, media processing times, effects render times and much more, which directly correlates to the “time is money” adage.

Power Needs, Cost
The RTX 4090 is a power-hungry beast, straight up. It needs three PCI slots, three power inputs and a beefy power supply. The statistics say that the RTX 4090 requires 450W of power versus 320W for the RTX 3090. And in overall system power, the RTX 4090 requires at least 850W, while the 3090 requires 750W. If you aren’t familiar with the RTX 3090 style of PCIe cards, both the 3090 and the 4090 require either three PCIe eight-pin cables or one 450W or greater PCIe Gen 5 cable. So you should probably aim for a power supply capable of producing at least 1,000 watts, keeping in mind that any other IO cards you are supporting will also add to the power bill.

Retail pricing for the RTX 4090 starts at $1,599. It’s not cheap, so if you have an RTX 3090 and don’t care about the AV1 encoding feature (whether for Resolve or for streaming apps like OBS), then you might be able to hold off on purchasing one. But if you are like me and want the latest and greatest, the Nvidia RTX 4090 will be the GPU to get. And if you are thinking about getting into other avenues of media — say, Unreal Engine or 3D modeling in apps like Maxon Cinema 4D with Otoy’s OctaneRender — you’ll find the RTX 4090 embraces those apps and even adds special features, such as denoising optimizations.

Watch this space for an Nvidia RTX 4090 follow-up review.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop . He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.

 

A Quick Look at Wacom’s New Cintiq Pro 27

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By Brady Betzel

Wacom has released the latest update to its impressive line of digital pen displays: the Wacom Cintiq Pro 27. It’s a 27-inch version of the Cintiq line of pen-based drawing tablets used by animators, editors, colorists and more. The newest 27-inch Cintiq is the most utilitarian version of the pen-based tablet that I have seen. From the UHD (3840×2160) resolution to the 10-bit color and even the 120Hz refresh rate, Wacom has upped the performance of the Cintiq line — and I hope Wacom will add these updates to other versions at some point. The Cintiq Pro 27 retails for $3,499.95, with the stand sold separately for $499.95.

So here is the thing: According to Wacom, the Cintiq 27 will not work without a stand, so you have to buy theirs or someone else’s to make it work. For the price of $499.95, I assume the Wacom stand is of high quality, but I have not had a chance to use it. If you don’t want to purchase the Wacom stand, the Cintiq Pro 27 is compatible with a Vesa 100×100 mounting arm, so you can get a stand from a third party.

The Cintiq Pro 27 comes with the display, the newly updated Wacom Pro Pen 3 with extra grips and balance weights, a detachable pen holder, nibs and a bunch of cables. You must connect the Cintiq Pro 27 through either USB-C (DisplayPort Alternate Mode), USB-C, USB-A, HDMI or Mini DisplayPort. Graphics input must come through either USB-C (DisplayPort Alternate Mode), HDMI 2.1 or DisplayPort 1.4 and USB-A. In any scenario, you must have at least two connections.

The Wacom Cintiq line of pen displays has always been a staple for editors, colorists and motion-graphics designers.  However, in recent years Wacom had fallen behind because of the lack of resolution and color display options. With the Cintiq Pro 27, Wacom has not only increased the tablet’s refresh rate to 120Hz for video game and Unreal Engine users, but it has also upped the resolution to UHD (3840×2160) to align with the video crowd.

In terms of physical updates, the Cintiq Pro 27 includes multi-touch customization and three buttons on the new Wacom Pro Pen 3. There is no more eraser on the Wacom pen. Some people might boo that, but I personally enjoy having three buttons on the pen instead of having to flip the pen over to erase. But I do understand that some might like the physical turning of the pen like a true-to-life drawing instrument.

One of the biggest updates to the Wacom Pro Pen 3 is the ability to shift the weight in the pen from the bottom to the top by reversing the included pen weight. I am really excited to try this. I love Wacom pens generally, but I never could understand the skinny pens because they were so light to me. I personally love a hefty pen, but to each his/her own. The eight ExpressKeys are located on the rear of the display, with rear-grip accessibility and a physical on-off switch.

In the end, the Cintiq Pro 27 pen display appears to be a worthwhile upgrade to the Cintiq line if 120Hz, UHD resolution and/or DCI-P3 color accuracy are up your alley. If you buy Wacom’s stand along with the Cintiq Pro 27 you are looking at a hefty price of almost $4,000. Not for those of us on a budget.

I am also surprised that Wacom promotes HDR PQ/HLG gamma support in its specs when the brightness can only reach 400 nits. While 400 nits is great, the real HDR support is way higher, more like 1,000 nits. Having 400 nits is still workable, but I would really like to see higher nits in an HDR-compatible pen display.

Finally, forcing the buyer to use a stand (whether Wacom or not) is a little crazy. It borders on Apple’s $999 Pro Stand for its monitors. It comes with a one-year warranty in Japan and Asia Pacific (excluding Australia, mainland China and Hong Kong S.A.R.), a two- year warranty in the US, Canada, Latin America, Mainland China and Hong Kong SAR. There’s a three-year warranty in Europe, Africa and Middle East, with on-site exchange in select regions.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop . He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.

GoPro Hero 11

Review: GoPro Hero 11 Black Action Camera

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By Brady Betzel

If the leaves on the trees are starting to turn, that usually signals a GoPro Hero update. And while that is true, this year is a bit different. In addition to GoPro upgrading the Hero 10 Black to the Hero 11 Black, it is also adding a mini GoPro: the GoPro Hero 11 Black Mini.

The GoPro Hero 11 Black is priced at $399.98 for GoPro subscribers and $499.99 without the GoPro subscription. For more detailed info on pricing, see the end of this review.

I’ve been using the GoPro Hero 11 Black for about two weeks, and I have to say, the release of the Hero 11 Black along with the GoPro subscription begins to close the production-to-post workflow loop on the action camera-to-cloud ecosystem. I’m always asked what cameras I would recommend. Usually it’s “My kid wants a camera, but I also want to shoot some professional-looking content. What should I get?” Over the past few years, I would say GoPro, but with the caveat that getting the footage offloaded and edited is tricky. But with the updated release of Quik, GoPro’s iOS and Android editing and organization app, as well as the relative ease of downloading proxy and/or original-resolution footage from GoPro.com, I can confidently say GoPro now has a very simple workflow for everyone, from beginner to professional.

I have even been found myself downloading footage from the cloud instead of connecting the GoPro to a computer. It sounds a little ridiculous (because it is), but being able to charge my GoPro Hero 11 Black and have it automatically upload my media to the GoPro.com subscription account lets me get dinner ready while my camera charges and uploads footage. The GoPro subscription service is $49.99 per year and is worth every cent. Along with online capabilities, soon GoPro will be adding cloud-based editing and the ability to change digital lenses on your footage after it has been recorded to the Quik app.

The CameraGoPro Hero 11
The GoPro Hero 11 Black has major features that have been rumored for a while: larger sensor, 10-bit color and an easier on-screen menu system. And let’s not forget the new GoPro Hero 11 Black Mini. While I didn’t have a chance to test out the Hero 11 Black Mini, for the most part it has the same internal parts as the full-sized Hero 11 Black, so your image should be almost identical. What are the differences? The Hero 11 Black Mini doesn’t have a screen; its battery is slightly smaller; and it lacks the tools Hindsight, Scheduled Capture, Duration Capture, Webcam Mode. Oddly enough, it also lacks advanced metadata — including GPS info — so there is essentially no Photo Mode except for 24.7MP frame grabs from 5.3K, 8:7 video, mono audio (no stereo) and on-screen presets and adjustments. That’s because there is no screen. (You can access the specs from the app or get basic info from a rudimentary menu on the top of the mini.) One of the coolest features to me is the addition of a mounting point on the back of the camera in addition to the standard mount on the bottom. The GoPro Hero 11 Mini will be ready October 25 on GoPro.com.

GoPro has increased the GoPro Hero 11 Black’s filmable aspect ratios from 16×9 and 4×3 to 16×9, 4×3 and 8×7. That’s because the newest sensor measures 1/1.9 inches. Why is the new image sensor size so important? Because it can simultaneously record UHD horizontal (16×9), vertical (9×16) and 4×3 in one 10-bit 8×7, 5312×4648 resolution file, opening the door to easier formatting for different social media and television aspect ratios without losing a lot of detail from resolution loss.

There are a lot of numbers there, but simply, shooting with the 5.3K 8×7 settings allows you to keep a relatively high resolution no matter the social media format. For now, keep in mind that the 5.3K 8×7 aspect ratio can only shoot in a wide digital lens format, so there will be some fisheye effect. There is no linear option yet.

GoPro Hero 11When shooting photos, the Hero 11 Black, along with its new 8×7 sensor, can shoot up to 27MP. This is an amazing feature that a lot of professionals forget about. When shooting content for YouTube thumbnails or thumbnail images to go on a streaming provider’s home page, GoPro’s image capture is very good in well-lit outdoor settings — something to keep in mind if the streaming network or television network requires still images that are not frame grabs.

The GoPro Hero 11 Black also introduces full 360-degree horizon lock when filming linear in the digital lens settings. The horizon lock will work for most resolutions/frame rates except for 5.3K 60fps, 4K 120fps, 2.7K 240fps and 1080p 240fps, which will be able to use horizon leveling up to 27 degrees. The full 360-degree horizon lock is interesting, and I could see it being useful, but when I tested it, I noticed a touch of artifacting. It was almost like when you stabilize footage in a nonlinear editor, and it has some ghosting on the parts that were stabilized the most. Speaking of stabilization, GoPro has introduced HyperSmooth 5.0 with the Hero 11 Black. If you’ve never used the HyperSmooth stabilization built in to a GoPro camera, believe me when I say it’s incredible. It won’t solve everything, but I have never seen any camera (not on a gimbal) look as smooth as a GoPro using HyperSmooth. It really is a modern marvel.

Because the new 8×7 sensor allows for more information in an image capture, GoPro smartly (or maybe it was a happy accident?) decided to squeeze that image down into a 16×9 frame to allow for a gigantic field of view. GoPro prefaces this new HyperView with the idea that it looks best when the footage is shot from a person’s point of view — a very niche but intriguing concept.

GoPro has simplified the Hero 11 menu system even further than before by having two options: Easy and Pro controls, both of which can be toggled on or off in the settings. If you want to pick up your camera with minimal options to get your footage or photos looking great, leave it on Easy. But if you like or need to really dial in color settings, exposure, ISO, etc., then click on over to the Pro controls. This is a great addition, in my opinion.

GoPro has also included three Pro control-level presets: Light Painting, Star Trails and Vehicle Light Trails, all of which came out of GoPro’s internal event, GoPro Hackathon. All the presets are for nighttime time lapses. Light Painting lets you create bright-light visuals with slow shutter speeds, possibly to spell out words or paint with light. Star Trails uses the Earth’s rotation to create shots with long or short star trails. Vehicle Light Trails, as you might imagine, helps create shots with long light trails from moving vehicles. All of these presets are amazing and tons of fun to mess around with. And for those that think these are kitschy little presets, they aren’t. Previously, these types of shots took a lot of knowledge and multiple applications to create properly, but now you can hit it with one button and no post production.

Finally, for creators who use GoPros to record footage that will be played on large screens (at least larger than a phone), the GoPro Hero 11 Black has introduced 10-bit color and a 120mb/s data rate. I single out larger-than-phone-sized screens because, for the most part, anything above 1080p on a phone will look relatively good. The true test for footage is to play it on a large, color-calibrated screen to see where the noise floor lives and whether the sharpening causes moiré or other technical imperfections.

GoPro Hero 11I am an online editor by day and am constantly scanning footage for imperfections — so much so that my wife can often be heard saying, “No one can see that.” And while GoPros still have some room to improve their low-light capture, introducing 10-bit and 120mb/s recording is a gigantic leap forward for them. The higher data rate is used in the 5.3K and 4K resolution video settings. But the 10-bit color setting is the real prize in this entire Hero 11 release.

Previously, GoPro Hero cameras used 8-bit color, which allows for 16,777,216 colors. The Hero 11 Black can now record in 10-bit color, which allows for about 1.07 billion colors. The easiest way to understand the differences between 8-bit color and 10-bit color is to think of a sky that transitions from light blue to dark blue. With 8-bit color there are fewer shades of blue available to create a smooth transition from light blue to dark blue than when recorded with 10-bit color. Sometimes this will create artifacts that will look like bands across the sky. This is very problematic in television, streaming and theatrical releases. In my day job, we typically run all shows through a quality control process that looks for and flags imperfections, including banding. QC will often find these imperfections and reject entire shows or movies until we correct issues like excessive noise and banding. And no, a simple blur on the issues, such as banding or noise, does not work. But with 10-bit color, there will be less banding present — a win all around.

There is another side to color fidelity that I need to point out: chroma subsampling. This is getting ultra-nerdy and into the weeds, but GoPro uses a chroma subsampling of 4:2:0 for both 8-bit and 10-bit color. I think of chroma subsampling as pseudo-color resolution. The higher the resolution, the clearer the image should become. With a higher chroma subsampling, the overall color fidelity will be a much higher quality and, in my opinion, is half of the equation when someone describes something as looking more “cinematic.” Typically, in television, 4:2:2 is the low to middle ground for chroma subsampling.

In my opinion, if GoPro decides to add 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, its images will be much easier to combine with footage from much higher-end cameras without the viewer really noticing. If you want to learn more about nerdy stiff like chroma subsampling, subsurface scattering and other topics that will lose you some friends after more than five minutes on the subject, color science is a very interesting topic, especially when applied to color correction and visual perception. But that is for another time.

Testing Color
When testing the GoPro Hero 11 Black, I wanted to use the new 8×7 sensor with 10-bit color to draw out as much detail and color as possible, but I also wanted to see how these new technical features would hold up with color correction. I color-corrected some Hero 11 Black 10-bit clips and really pushed the boundaries, essentially breaking the image. I also used some 8-bit clips from my GoPro Hero 11 Black for comparison. When working on the GoPro clips in Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve 18.0.2, I pushed the image pretty far to really show off the 8-bit artifacting (blocks and banding). And I was actually a little surprised… The 10-bit footage from the GoPro Hero 11 Black looked less blocky and had less banding overall. However, it felt a little noisier, and not your typical grainy noise, but more like GoPro’s built-in noise reduction had attempted to process the noise, leaving it a little blobby and less defined. So from a QC standpoint, the banding and overall blockiness was significantly lower in the GoPro Hero 11 10-bit clip. I would consider that a win for anyone looking to broadcast GoPro clips and has had QC trouble with artifacting. I am curious to see if upping the subsampling to 4:2:2 would improve the image even further.

GoPro Hero 11Gumby!
One small addition that I absolutely love is the new Gumby mount that was included with my GoPro Hero 11 Black. It has long, rubber, twisty-tie-type things that can be used to secure your GoPro to objects that normal clamps and mounts might not work with. In fact, I used the Gumby mount to tie the Hero 11 Black to the bottom of a drone and fly it, and it worked! If you already own a GoPro, you probably have gone down the 3D-printed mount rabbit hole on Etsy.com, but if you haven’t run into something like the Gumby mount, I suggest you try it.

Summing Up
I know GoPro will continue to evolve its image science. At the moment, two major roadblocks for them in the broadcast space are poor low-light performance and low detail in shadows when shooting in high-contrast environments. (Think of the Alaskan tundra, with harsh shadows and super-bright white snow.) However, when I was playing with nighttime time lapses, I noticed the noise in the low lights was very minimal. It was actually very impressive. The GoPro Hero 11 Black is still a phenomenal camera in lots of different scenarios, including time lapses and well-lit outdoor activities. And it is continually improving.

In the end, GoPro has delivered again. The GoPro Hero 11 Black combined with the GoPro subscription is the actualization of what I really wanted GoPro to achieve from the first day I used one. GoPro has taken a lot of the troubleshooting and guesswork out of the GoPro post workflow and made it as simple as possible. Only $49.99 a year is an incredible price point for cloud-based editing and backup in the GoPro ecosystem. I’m even taking for granted the actual Hero 11 Black camera itself, which is a waterproof powerhouse of a camera that is constantly used in television shows and films. The introduction of 10-bit color combined with a 120mb/s data rate is improving the overall cinematic quality of GoPro images. If you’ve been holding out on a GoPro up to this point, you should go out and buy the GoPro Hero 11 black and the GoPro subscription service at GoPro.com.

In terms of pricing, here you go: GoPro Hero 11 Black is $399.98 for GoPro subscribers and $499.99 without the GoPro subscription. The Hero 11 Black Creator Edition, complete with Media Mods and Volta (Enduro battery-powered grip/tripod) is priced at $579.98 for GoPro subscribers and $699.99 without the subscription. The GoPro Hero 11 Black Mini costs $299.98 for GoPro subscribers and $399.99 without a subscription.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop . He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Review: Professional Ampere GPUs from Nvidia

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By Mike McCarthy

Nvidia has quite a big selection of professional GPUs available based on its Ampere generation of chips. While this offers users finer gradations in pricing and performance, it can be more confusing than previous generations, especially since they have dropped the Quadro branding.

My understanding is that one of the main reasons there are so many options is not just because of the binning of chips but because of supply chain issues with the rest of the parts on the board. Unlike gaming cards, where a source part can be swapped and a new revision of the card can be produced without much issue, the professional cards have been certified by software vendors with very precise conditions, and Nvidia must maintain those exact specifications. So different versions are created using easier-to-source parts and then certified again, allowing both cards to be produced as separate options.

The main additions to the series are the A4500 and the A5500, which fit as expected between the existing A4000, A5000 and A6000 cards. The A4500 which I have been testing, sits nearly dead center between the A4000 and A5000 on all paper specs (cores, memory, teraflops, etc.), while the A5500 nearly matches the A6000 in processing power, but with the same memory limits as the A5000. While these new cards were announced in the spring, I am finally getting the chance to test one out now.

The A4500 is a step above my previous favorite option, the single-slot A4000, which I got to try out in the Boxx S3 last spring. The A4500 is more powerful, requiring two slots and an eight-pin PCIe power connector. It has 16% more CUDA cores and 25% more memory at 7168 cores and 20GB of DDR6 RAM. This raises it to a total of 23.7 teraflops of single precision compute power, which is nearly 50% more than the last generation’s top Quadro RTX 6000/8000. So Nvidia has clearly been seeing some tremendous performance gains in the newest generation of cards. The fact that it requires two slots is less of an issue than it was in the past, as many motherboards are now designed for this, and the two-slot cooling solution should be quieter under load, which could benefit editors.

Besides the obligatory PCIe 4.0 x16 connector, the A4500 also adds an NVLink connector that the A4000 does not have, allowing two A4500 cards to be combined for 14,376 cores accessing 40GB of RAM — if your application can leverage the cards in parallel, which mine doesn’t do very well. But in that case, a pair of A4500s should be able to exceed the performance of a single A6000 for much lower cost. Speaking of cost, Google lists the MSRP at $2,500, but unlike most recent GPU price history, these cards are listed for sale at much lower prices than that. It is an interesting time to buy a GPU as markets adjust to shifts in cryptocurrency mining, but that means there should be some good deals available as that sorts itself out.

I am testing this card in my new 12700K-based test bed, which admittedly makes it harder to make direct comparisons to my earlier data. But for most video editors, any A-series GPU will be more than sufficient for their needs, and it really comes down to finding a good deal. Unless you are manipulating huge 3D models (in which case, GPU memory should dictate your selection), you are probably not going to see a huge performance difference in editing applications. My battery of benchmark tests in the Adobe applications returns very similar performance across all of Nvidia’s Ampere cards.

One other benefit over the GeForce cards is the option to use the RTX Desktop manager and the new RTX Experience software. This replaces Quadro Experience as the professional version of Nvidia’s popular GeForce Experience utility. While it can keep your drivers up to date, the feature that I think is most valuable is the option to do desktop screen captures at up to 8K resolution and — more significantly — with support for HDR. This is a big deal to me, as I make tutorials about HDR editing, and previous versions either didn’t support capturing from certain applications or tagged the output files incorrectly, making it harder to edit them in Premiere.

Summing Up
There are a lot of options available in the professional series of cards of the Ampere generation, which should be a benefit to end users both in terms of maximizing value and availability — after years of that being a key issue in the GPU space, courtesy of cryptocurrency mining demand. And any of these cards could be highly recommended to any video editor or VFX artist. One benefit of stepping up to the dual-slot solution in the A4500 is that it should run quieter than the single-slot A4000 at full load, which might be a factor for some editors who have their workstations near their listening environments. But any of the A-series (formerly Quadro) cards will work great in the Adobe apps and in most other NLEs.

Mike McCarthy is a technology consultant with extensive experience in the film post production. He started posting technology info and analysis at HD4PC in 2007. He broadened his focus with TechWithMikeFirst 10 years later.

 

single-socket

Review: Single-Socket Workstations from Boxx and Lenovo

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By Mike McCarthy

I have had the opportunity to test the two most powerful single-socket workstations available on the market today. Last year’s review of the Lenovo ThinkStation P620 looked at what is still the only new desktop workstation to be released by a major system vendor since 2017. It’s Threadripper Pro 3995WX 64-core processor is the pinnacle of AMD’s Threadripper CPU lineup and the only Threadripper-based system available from a major manufacturer. The Threadripper Pro lineup has since been refreshed to the 5000-series CPUs, and while they are slightly faster, they still use the same architecture, motherboards and chipsets.

I had a chance to test out Boxx’s Xeon W-3300-based Apexx Matterhorn workstation. With 38 cores, eight channels of memory and 64 PCIe lanes, the Xeon W-3375 processor is the single-socket version of Intel’s newest “Ice Lake” Xeon chips.

Each system design has its strengths, and each system has a few caveats I have discovered. Some of these features and issues are a result of Intel and AMD, and others are from the implementations by Lenovo and Boxx, which based its system on a Supermicro motherboard. I have had a year to find all of the peculiarities on the P620, while I have only had the Boxx system for about two months. Even so, I have compiled as much data as I can on each one to make as thorough of a comparison as possible.

I have both the GeForce 3090 and A6000 Nvidia GPUs to test with, as well as a few others, so I was able to swap between them to see whether the A6000 was any faster than the GeForce and how much the GPUs impacted the performance measurements. While there are surely cases where the A6000’s professional drivers would offer better performance in certain 3D applications, I did not see a major performance difference between them in any of my tests.

single-socketThis means that a) I recommend the cheaper GeForce option for most users, and b) I didn’t publish separate benchmarks for both GPUs since the results were within a couple percentage points of each other. The only notable difference I did find is that the boot problems I have with the AMD system when an 8K display is attached are solved when I use the A6000 instead of the GeForce card.

The Lenovo system was shipped to me with 32GB of RAM, only using two of the eight memory channels, which is likely capping performance in certain cases. It also has a PCIe 3.0 SSD since the 4.0 ones were harder to come by back then. The Boxx has 64GB of memory spread across all eight channels, which should help. It also has a PCIe 4.0 SSD, which has twice the peak transfer rate for high-resolution uncompressed playback tests. So those are some of the configuration-based limitations that could impact the results, which might not apply if you configure and buy a new system.

Benchmark Boxx Apexx Matterhorn Lenovo P620 Threadripper Pro
Cinebench R15 Multi-Core 6215 9649
Cinebench R23 Multi-Core 40040 60120
Puget AE Benchmark 1773 1151
Adobe Media Encoder (HEVC-Nvenc) 10:03 11:02
Adobe Media Encoder (HEVC-10-bit Software) 41:22 39:19

Both systems play back my 8K assets and various camera Raw files in Adobe Premiere Pro in real time without issue. The Xeon plays back 8K DPXs, but I am confident the Lenovo could do that too if it had a PCIe 4.0 SSD. Both have integrated 10GbE ports with support for NBase-T, although the Boxx system has an extra Gigabit Ethernet port. The Boxx system supports IPMI system management, but Lenovo has its own set of system management tools that I am less familiar with.

The AMD system has the option for Thunderbolt 3 support via an add-in card, but due to motherboard limitations, the Intel system does not. This is ironic considering Intel created Thunderbolt. There might be other motherboard choices that do support Thunderbolt, but I can’t find any online.

Here is a point-by-point comparison of some of the differences:

Boxx Apexx Matterhorn Xeon W-3375 Lenovo P620 Threadripper Pro 3995WX
38 Cores from 2.5-4.0Ghz (10nm) 64 Cores from 2.7-4.2Ghz (7nm)
8 Channels of DDR4-3200 ECC Memory 8 Channels of DDR4-3200 ECC Memory
64GB RAM (16 Slots, 4TB Max) 32GB RAM (8 Slots, 2TB Max)
64 PCIe 4.0 Lanes, 7 x16 slots, 4 M.2 Slots 128 PCIe 4.0 Lanes, 7 x16 Slots, 2 M.2 slots
Liquid Cooling, 5 Fans, 1600Watt Power Supply Air Cooling, 5 Fans, 1000Watt Power Supply
Requires High Power performance profiles Throttles up properly in Balanced profile
160-240Watts at idle, 250-420Watts at Load 240Watts at Idle, 400-500Watts at Load
No sleep or hibernate options (Supermicro) Sleeps and hibernates well
Runs either A6000 or GeForce 3090 well Has boot issues with 8K display on some GPUs
Opens apps much faster Takes over a minute to open Adobe apps
Runs smoothly in my experience Has issues creating folders, zipping files, saving AI files
No Thunderbolt option (Supermicro) Has Thunderbolt add-in card available
Faster AE Benchmarking Faster Cinema4D Benchmarking

Neither is a clear winner over the other, and different motherboard manufacturers might deliver different results for certain functionality. The AMD processor is better for animation rendering, but the Xeon performs better in Adobe After Effects. The difference is negligible in Premiere Pro, which is my primary application, so there is not much distinction there.

Lenovo

Although I don’t recommend updating to Windows 11 without a specific reason to make that change, I did investigate it for these systems. The Boxx system requires that you install a TPM 2.0 card to support Windows 11. This will, of course, be included once Boxx starts supporting Windows 11, but it didn’t come in my review system. The P620 does support upgrading to Windows 11, and the trick there was to avoid it until I was ready. I put off all of Microsoft’s promptings until I was finished with all my other tests in case anything went wrong. I usually don’t recommend upgrading an OS compared to a fresh install, but I figured I would give it a try. The operating system updated fine, but I did have some issues in Adobe Media Encoder and a few other apps that weren’t ready for the transition, so I recommend that most professional users stick with Windows 10 for now.

With the Threadripper system, I did have a lot of delays when making new folders, but that appears to have been helped by turning off “Show frequently used folders in Quick Access” in File Explorer Options. It still struggles with certain folders, and I haven’t found the cause. Other basic tasks have given me issues, like zip files and Illustrator save actions hanging for 60 seconds intermittently. But then it goes and plays back 8K HDR footage flawlessly from the AJA Kona 5 card.

I also had lots of problems with the Premiere interface for a month or two, but it turns out they were caused by a bug in Premiere 15 that only kicks in when a control surface is connected. So plugging in the Loupedeck+ console was the cause, not the change to an AMD-based system. It is so much quieter and more efficient than my rack-server-based beast of a home-grown workstation, and unlike the server or the Boxx workstation, it can be put to sleep or hibernated.

It you want a system from a larger system vendor, the P620 was the only game in town, being the first workstation from HP, Dell, or Lenovo, to support PCIe 4.0, among other features.  Dell has since then released the similar Precision 7865.  If you include smaller manufacturers in your search, that opens up options based on Intel’s Ice Lake Scalable Xeons and AMD Epyc CPUs, but the single-socket Xeon W chips are probably a better fit for most workstation users, like those featured in the Apexx Matterhorn.

Boxx

My Findings
If I had to buy a system for myself in that class today (presumably for PCIe lane reasons), I would buy the Lenovo P620 with the 16-core option and add a GeForce 3070 if I couldn’t use my existing parts. This is because it is cheaper and scales down farther than the Xeon option. (It sleeps and offers nearly instant boot so you can get back to work quickly.)

That said, many Adobe users would probably be better served by a system a few steps down from the ones covered here. The first step down would be the standard Threadripper processors, with half the channels of RAM and PCIe lanes of the Pro series. This actually isn’t a huge cost savings because Lenovo has put the Threadripper Pro into a well-designed and reasonably cost-effective package. Below Threadripper, there are Core X-based HEDT systems from Intel, which are placed firmly between these systems and consumer-level options. But the Core X299 platform was released in 2017 and lacks basic features like PCIe 4.0, among other things. I have set up HP Z4 systems that have worked well for clients who edit 4K projects, but that was years ago. Below that, we have consumer-level Core i9 and Ryzen systems that now feature up to 16 cores and 128GB RAM. These probably could meet the needs of more users than you would expect.

Looking upward, the Boxx solution supports four full, double-wide GPUs plus a sync card, which clearly exceeds the Lenovo if your application can use that much processing power effectively. So the Boxx clearly scales higher and can be much “faster” than the Lenovo if you add enough GPUs. That helps in maximizing potential performance before you need to jump to the next tier with a dual-socket system, which increases the price even more substantially, but the Lenovo design might appeal to a broader set of users. There is a much wider variety of workstation options available than there used to be, but you really need to understand your own processing needs, based on your target applications and workflows, to find the right solution for you. These systems are clearly the fastest single-socket systems available today, but they aren’t necessarily the best solution for every user.

Mike McCarthy is a technology consultant with extensive experience in the film post production. He started posting technology info and analysis at HD4PC in 2007. He broadened his focus with TechWithMikeFirst 10 years later.