4K Video Editing Rig (Adobe Premiere Pro)

[apalio]

Hey everyone,

I know this is long, but I want to make sure I have all this right, as it's an expensive build.

I'm doing a high end 4K video editing rig for someone, and was looking for some input, as I had a few questions. He originally received an invoice from a company, however I felt I could do better for the same or less cost. They had him with a 4K camcorder that shoots 8-bit, but had 10-bit displays and a Quadro M4000 for 10-bit display, which doesn't make sense to me. So I am opting for three 4K 8-bit sRGB LG monitors which are a few hundred less per monitor, and the new Titan Xp (or 1080Ti if I wanted to save a little) instead of the Quadro. To my knowledge, the Titan Xp, or even a GTX 1080 would outperform the Quadro M4000, which also only has 8GB VRAM. Only benefit of the Quadro is the 10-bit capability, as well as increased "driver support" - but I don't know if that's really worth it if you're just doing 8-bit.

Another question I had was to go with a 6950X or Dual Xeon E5-2620 v4, which is what the original invoice called for. From the articles I read on PugetSystems, they said the 6950X far outperforms the Dual Xeon in Premiere Pro, and that's why they don't even offer it in their builds. I understand a 6900K comes pretty close to the 6950X, for about $500-600 less, but again, this comes back to him preferring to spend more for more performance, even if it's not significant.

For Memory, how important is ECC RAM? I know what it does, and that it's usually used for servers. I suppose it could be beneficial if you are rendering a long and complex timeline that could take a full day to render, but I don't think any video he edits will exceed 2hrs. I am planning on going with 128GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400 Non-ECC RAM. I understand 64GB is minimum for 4K, so I am going to go beyond that, as I want to exceed all minimum requirements.

For storage, I am planning on using an 850 Pro for the boot drive, and two 512GB 960 Pro SSDs - one for Project & Source Media, and the other as a cache and scratch disk. For mass, long term storage, I plan on doing a RAID 6 Array with write-back caching. Also, will I need any extra small cache drive for the write-back cache? And will the onboard RAID controller be acceptable? I'm not sure if I need a dedicated controller to use write-back caching - I can't seem to get an answer online.

He has a high budget, and is willing to pay more for better hardware, even if the performance gain isn't much. I believe he will be using a Panasonic AG-UX180 4K Premium Professional Camcorder, unless he ends up ordering something different.

What are your thoughts on the build? Link below. Thank you in advance for your time.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/33KsgL

 

[iamacow]

Lets see If I can answer all those questions.

1: It's true and only major benefits of Quadro (or any workstation card) is stability and 10-bit support. Geforce cards do not support OpenGL 10Bit, only DirectX. So pretty much any pro app like Adobe or Autodesk uses OpenGL. On top of that you would need a monitor. For video editing it honestly does not matter since "HDR" is very new and not many TV even support the color space. 99% of content viewed is still in 8Bit color space (aka 16.7million colors). Give it a few years and Prosumer cameras still start having 10Bit support along with TV in Chroma 4:2:2. I will say Quadro cards have rarely crashed on me in program where as the Geforce (or AMD cards) will do it once a day. So I'm always hitting save because you never know when you will piss off the card with some FX. You pay the extra money for a workstation card because the drivers are always stable and tested with Adobe products. I couldn't afford another Quadro for $1200 so I went with a Geforce. Works most of the time but I do get crashes all the time for no reason. It's the will of the gods with consumer cards. I would personally get a Quadro P4000 (NOT M). its the newest and has 8GB of VRAM.

2: 10Core @ 3ghz vs 2x 8Core @ 2.1ghz. I would say more cores will be faster for big projects. But really when it comes down to it, if you are rending something that takes 5 hours. whats 20 or 30minutes less? it already wasted your whole day. On top of that Adobe supports CUDA rendering so your CPU isn't being used anyways if you output as H.264 or H.265.. Also getting a motherboard with dual socket is costly. They start at $500 and most don't fit in a case but rather a rackmount setup.

3: ECC ram is not important at all in the consumer market. You are not rendering out 3D movies that takes days for a single frame. There is no "minimum" for 4k editing. it depends on how many layers you have going. A 3min RED clip is only 1.3GB. So the video card VRAM is more important to allow it to playback in realtime. Now Ram preview is nice, but I rarely use it anymore since my GTX 1070 has 8GB of VRAM. Everything plays back in realtime, even with FX on most of the time. I would go with 32GB at least. I barely use 30GB on the 64GB I have.

4: For best practices I suggest OS on one drive. Your current project on another (SSD preferably), SSD for TEMP folder (all the prerender stuff if you do any) and your storage on a Raid-1 or better. Onboard raid will be just fine. Personally I throw all my files on a SSD for that project, have another SSD for TEMP and than a Raid-1 for backup. Than I offload it every few months so I can lose the raid and not be screwed.

The build looks good. I would swap out the Titan Xp with a Quadro P4000 just for stability reasons. You will take a hit on render times using CUDA, but I considering it a big deal. whats 400FPS vs 900FPS? NOTHING.

Edit: Come to think of it the new AMD Ryzen 1800X is just slightly slower than a 6950X and only costs $400. I would personally go with a AMD build with 64GB of ram. Save yourself an extra $1k.

 

[apalio]

Thanks for your input.

1. So are you saying that GeForce cards like the Titan Xp don't officially support Premiere Pro, which leads to frequent crashes? I already picked out monitors. They are in the parts list. LG 27" 4K 8-bit sRGB for $496 each. While the P4000 may be more stable as the Titan as you say, wouldn't it also perform noticeably worse? I know VRAM is important for higher resolutions, and an extra 4GB should be pretty beneficial.

2. Yeah, from what I have read, the 6950X performs better than a dual Xeon for Premiere Pro. This rig will mostly be used for promo footage, and probably won't render anything longer than 20min or so.

3. You edit 4K video with 64GB RAM, and barely use 30GB? Everywhere else points to 64GB minimum for 4K, and even more if you want to multitask.

4. I plan on one SSD for OS, one for project files, one for scratch disk/cache, and then a 4x8TB RAID 6 array for long term storage.

 

[iamacow]

I'll take a screenshot of my usage with a 20min timeline when I'm home later. It won't be higher than 15-20GB. 30GB is with After Effects timeline loaded into it and a few 4k streams. I think it will depend on how much footage you have laid out and what type. RED 4k is way smaller than P2 1080P footage.

As for Geforce vs Quadro. It is not so much it is not officially supported. Because Adobe does support a select few cards and are lazy on giving an up to date list. If you are on the Creative Cloud any card that supports CUDA is now supported. CS6 and below had Major problems with none validated cards. I was forced to upgrade to CC because CS6 gave me tons of error using a GTX 1070. That being said, any consumer card is much more likely to crash the program because of drivers. Those are optimized for games and not professional software. Doesn't mean its unstable, just means it is not tested. One driver may be stable and the next it's broken. Thats the life of Consumer video cards.

 

[iamacow]

Here is a photo of a editor at my work. This is from a laptop using 25minutes of RED 4k clips. Premiere is only using 2.3GB. It will go up the more FX is layered or if you have After Effects embedded. However I rarely go over 32GB on my personally workstation.

https://s7.postimg.org/qvxs9yzsb/Untitled.png

Playback only works in realtime if its Half Resolution. That because this laptop has a weak Geforce M970 card in it. Its really like a GTX 660.

A beefy card with more VRAM will make a huge difference for full resolution playback.

 

[apalio]

Wow, that's crazy. Why am I seeing that 64GB is minimum for best performance for 4K editing? Would I really be okay with 4K editing? I wanted to be able to have best performance no matter how many layers I throw at it, and be able to run AE at the same time, and maybe even other programs and browsers at the same time. I was also looking into RAM Disk, which I can probably find a use for.

 

[iamacow]

64GB minimum might be from a few years ago when RED clips where not natively supported and usually had to converted into these massive MPEG2 video files. That and people who are use to editing HD RAW (1080) saw an increase from SD. Because 4k is 4x of 1080P people assumed 16GBX4 is the minimum.

I'm not saying don't get 64GB, I'm saying 128GB might be a waste and never even used besides a RamDisk. I'm a wimp when it comes to RamDisk, I don't want to lose a whole project due to project corruption or power loss. That and my projects are multiple TB. I think this one 30min project I have with 4k and 6K footage is just over 3TB. A lot of B-Roll mind you, but I can't possible fit it on a ram drive so the speed difference between SSD and RAMdisk is practically zero in real-world usage besides initial loading times of opening the project.

If I'm working on a short project that takes only an afternoon I might throw it on a RAMdisk for kicks. It really doesn't speed anything up or save time if you are already working off an SSD. RAMDisk are a dead idea and was only a thing because traditional hard drives read speeds was like 50MB max a the time. Now your 10TB drives will read at 200+. SSD with AHCI is 500 and M.2 or PCIE using NVME is 2,000MB.

 

[apalio]

Hmm, that's good to know, I guess. The budget is there for 128GB, but I guess I'm just trying to find a reason to justify it. Maybe get bigger 960 Pro drives with the money saved. So far I have 1TB for Project/Source Media, and 512GB for scratch disk/media cache. And 512GB 850 EVO for OS. But now you're saying you had 3TB of raw footage. How many hours of footage was that? Or do you mean 30min of footage was 3TB?

 

[iamacow]

My end 30min project was 3TB because of all the unused B-Roll and extra shots. Really the final project after consolidating is less than 300GB (I would have to consolidate again to find out). I like to keep all my raw footage (Even unused) which is why It's 3TB. A lot of people delete all footage that isn't on the timeline which is crazy to me!

I couldn't tell you how many hours it is. But a lot that never used or 5 seconds from a 10min 6k clip.