Can of Worms Now Open: Mac vs. PC

[zerocrossing]

I'm on the edge of a major home and studio hardware/system upgrade, (I know, insane to do both at once!) and my work set-up will definitely stay in the mac world, as our whole company is.

But as I look to replace my old Mac G5 at home, the price/performance difference between Windows based and Mac OSX machines is pretty startling, and I wanted to get some input from users here. Ideally, I'd like to transfer Pro Tools sessions between the two worlds, and keep my VIs and plugs identical on both machines, as they are now.

I'm not trolling or trying to start some flame wars about the obvious superiority of your beloved, and the pure, unmitigated s***iness of your deloved. I'd just like your experiences if you've migrated from one to the other, or shared sessions and plugs between two operating systems.

I've been a Mac guy for thirty years, and have always liked the experience. But I'm willing to be flexible when money is involved!

KVR/eSoundz: Xenobt

If you have money and not much time to screw around getting things running, stay with Macintosh. If you're short on cash and have a lot of time to screw around, get a PC.

I've got an aging G5 8 core machine. It's still quite nimble and I run all sorts of graphics and audio programs on it. Maybe not the lastest versions, but it's a very useful box.

I've also got an i7 Dell running Windows 8 and it took me months to realize that the blue screens I was getting were because of the way it hated when I connected two MOTU 828s to it at the same time. I had to get a new audio interface because of that, which increased the cost of the Dell by about double. So, I probably could have gotten a similarly spec'd Macintosh for what I ended up spending in the end and I would have many hours of my life back. (Windows 8 kept informing me that there was a software problem and the OS needed to be "refreshed.")

[spirit]

I had a Macbook Pro for about a year as part of a very nice work contract for video. I don;t doubt for a second that Apple machines are full of goodness (I also have ipad & iphone), but I could never get the hang of the Macbook. In the end I characterized the machine as a "friendly fascist": Everything was great so long as you did things exactly like they wanted you to.

[EvilDragon]

OSX does not require HD defragging, its automatically managed by the OS.

"Does not require" is not true. Every hard drive, regardless of the OS running, WILL NEED A DEFRAG, sooner or later. Running them periodically (once a month for example is a good thing and will boost performance/keep it the same.


One thing that does NOT need defragging, because of the way they're conceived, are SSDs.


Also, I don't want my OS to manage all the drives without my knowledge, period. This relates to sample library drives first and foremost. I want them structured one way only - the way I want it. I don't want the OS to interfere. I want to have my libraries in a certain order (in case of HDD), to maximize performance, which means keeping the files on the outer rim of the HD platter. I am using UltimateDefrag for this - the best defragger ever. It really helps!

[Dewdman42]

OSX doesn't manage the drives so to speak. If you read the rest of the thread you will see more comments on this already.

OSX does ensure that any file being written that is under 20MB will be contiguous. That is a good thing, but it doesn't account for everything.

1 if you have larger files, they will become fragmented, but in larger chunks which MIGHT make it kind of a non-issue.

2 it does not do anything to make sure you have large areas of continuous free areas, which will later contribute to more of the large files being fragmented.

3 it does not do anything to position commonly used files on the faster part of the drive.

generally the wisdom around the net is that OSX does not need to be defragmented, and should not be. You can do a search and find endless articles that emphasize this. Its hard to know for sure whether it will make much difference frankly speaking. I come from the school of "it doesn't hurt to defrag once in a while just to be sure". I think factor #3 may actually be the most significant factor to consider and a utility like iDefrag which knows how to move the most frequent files to to the inner sectors might be beneficial. In the old days we used to partition drives just for the explicit reason to put certain audio files we want on the inner sectors. HD's are a lot faster now and its generally not worth the hassle. But it doesn't hurt to have iDefrag move things like swap to a location that might be more efficient.

Well anyway supposedly iDefrag knows about that for system files. At least that is worth a try for $30, I am about to try it. But I don't expect to see any huge changes of performance.

But it is true that OSX may not require defragging at all, compared to windows and it is at least doing something about it, which MSWin does not.

[Ashe37]

Actually, most of the articles say that 'most users don't need to defragment OSX'. Not that no one does. People who regularly write, delete, and move around multi-gigabyte files, like video files, may find it necessary.

[Dewdman42]

I didn't say no one does. I said that they say repeatedly that its probably not necessary.

Its not necessary for generally handling large files either. The only thought is that if you have to deal with large files that NEED TO BE READ CONTINUOUSLY and quickly, like for video editing, or perhaps audio.....then perhaps you want to make sure large files are not fragmented.

Audio uses a lot of buffering, etc.. most people are barely taxing their HD when they do audio production these days.

If you just want to copy large zip files around or whatever....it doesn't matter whatsoever if its fragmented.

Small files are more critical because if a small file is fragmented, then the HD has to move the heads several times just to read a few bytes.

Hey I'm defragging my macbook right now as we speak hehehe. I'm not against it. Just saying, it may not be as necessary as on windows.

[Ashe37]

generally the wisdom around the net is that OSX does not need to be defragmented, and should not be. You can do a search and find endless articles that emphasize this.

Your words, presented.

I did some searching before I even posted my response to see if OSX has changed since I was in the IT office at my alma mater. It hasn't. They said 'most users' in several of the articles I checked, but to them, 'most users' don't write multi-gigabyte files.

As a note- uncompressed 8-bit 1080p is around 100 MB per second. A very average shot- say, a conversation between two people- say, two minutes long- would usually mean six minutes of footage (2m of fifty fifty two shot, 2m over one person's shoulder, 2m over the other) which would need to be intercut. Each of those 2m captures would be 1.2 GB apiece, and this is in slightly antiquated format-wise 4:2:2 sampled 8 bit uncompressed 1080p. 10-bit, 2k, RAW etc gets much larger very quickly. As I said, 'most users'. By the way, that video is without audio- which, comparatively, doesn't add much. These data rates are pretty much constant whether the video comes from tape or files, unless the video is compressed (most consumer and prosumer video is)

[VitaminD]

I had a Macbook Pro for about a year as part of a very nice work contract for video. I don;t doubt for a second that Apple machines are full of goodness (I also have ipad & iphone), but I could never get the hang of the Macbook. In the end I characterized the machine as a "friendly fascist": Everything was great so long as you did things exactly like they wanted you to.

Exactly my experience with the MbP too!! It was infuriating if you wanted to step out of the 'box.'


Then again that could still be down to me not really understanding how the system worked vs how I wanted it to work.. but I see the same negative experiences with former mac users trying to function in Windows. Dallas doesn't operate like Paris and vice versa.

[Dewdman42]

generally the wisdom around the net is that OSX does not need to be defragmented, and should not be. You can do a search and find endless articles that emphasize this.

Your words, presented.

I did some searching before I even posted my response to see if OSX has changed since I was in the IT office at my alma mater. It hasn't. They said 'most users' in several of the articles I checked, but to them, 'most users' don't write multi-gigabyte files.

As a note- uncompressed 8-bit 1080p is around 100 MB per second. A very average shot- say, a conversation between two people- say, two minutes long- would usually mean six minutes of footage (2m of fifty fifty two shot, 2m over one person's shoulder, 2m over the other) which would need to be intercut. Each of those 2m captures would be 1.2 GB apiece, and this is in slightly antiquated format-wise 4:2:2 sampled 8 bit uncompressed 1080p. 10-bit, 2k, RAW etc gets much larger very quickly. As I said, 'most users'. By the way, that video is without audio- which, comparatively, doesn't add much. These data rates are pretty much constant whether the video comes from tape or files, unless the video is compressed (most consumer and prosumer video is)

And I certainly didn't say nobody is doing it did I?

I still stand by what I said. most users probably don't need it and many articles have in fact said they SHOULD not for various reasons. Even independent articles promoting iDefrag usually say by the end of the article that most users should probably not bother with this.

Anyway, large files do not really need to be defragmented for general use, UNLESS they have to be accessed in real time, like perhaps for video editing. The fact that the file is large doesn't matter. Large files are perfectly readable and usable even if fragmented. Even very huge ones.

For video editing what may matter is that video has to access data quickly, contiguously, in large amounts, in real time. I actually even question whether that is so necessary anymore in all but the most extreme situations. There is a lot of buffering going on and drives have become more dense as well since the old days. But nonetheless, if the argument is going to be made that you ahve to defrag your large files it must be pointed out that video folks have special needs for reading randomly accessing those very large files and playing back data dense video streams in real time... ok fine. But just to make it clear, most of us will have no problem whatsoever reading extremely large and fragmented files......as long as the fragment sizes are not too small.

[Ashe37]

Most video editing software does barely any buffering, and as stated, uncompressed HD video eats 100MB or more PER SECOND. 2GB+ files of a single clip are not uncommon. Even if you are editing compressed video, your editing software stores its buffered portion in memory as uncompressed. Scrubbing the timeline would kill the buffers anyway. Doing a simple transition from one video stream to another, like a crossfade, means you are having to play back two uncompressed (or even compressed) HD streams, plus the seek time to go between the streams and pick up a piece to generate the transition. Same with something like a picture-in-picture effect. When you render effects in video editing software, it renders them to your hard drive, NOT to memory. If you want the transitions to render faster than real time, then you need to be able to access the data faster than real time, which creates an even higher workload on the drives. Most people these days want real-time or faster than real time rendering and transitions for their video editing projects.

Defragmentation is a fact of life for people working for video and other projects that generate large files (3d animation can generate some rather large files as well, and I'm not referring to rendered animation, I'm talking scene files.) Fragmented large files can happen, and if OSX is only managing fragmentation for 20MB and smaller files, then *most* 3d animation project files for things like Maya are going to get fragmented. Most *audio files* can end up fragmented unless you never ever ever delete anything off the drive. ( record vocals take one take two take three delete take two off the drive record take 4 oops take 4 is now fragmented) Fragmented files increases load and save times, and increases the system load when trying to do work using the files if the files are accessed directly from disk instead of being loaded into memory.

[metamorphosis]

Can of snoredom more likely. Lock please.

[Xenobt]

There's no real reason to lock this thread, many of us in the post production community deal with these concerns on a daily basis, and they're not trivial or boring to me. You can opt out of following a thread at any time, it's at the bottom of your email notification of a reply.

KVR/eSoundz: Xenobt

[whyterabbyt]

In fact, from some of the anecdotal stories I've read here, that seems to be a fairly common procedure when you get tech support involved. "Just re-build your whole system, and let's see what happens." Yikes!

In a situation where that tech support has a fully automatic deployment solution, then that's indeed the easy, somewhat lazy way out. Enough so that that's what Im pursuing at work. When it has to be done by hand, especially on systems with a large application installation footprint, trust me, it doesnt get mooted as a 'solution' quite as readily. Even a half-way solution based on ghosted images can take a certain amount of time and effort, if one doesnt have a 'current' image.

[whyterabbyt]

Yes there are ghosting options on either platform and that is exactly what I used to do with XP, I would restore an old ghost image every year. But the question, why did I have to? Because Windows would start to slow down over time and the registry would be out of control. ....
However, that problem simply does not exist on OSX. My macs never need to be rebooted or restored or anything they just tick along very reliably... They are unix and that is a huge part of the reason why.

Its funny then that that problem doesnt exist on Windows for me at all, and Ive got servers which have been running for over 5 years, and about a hundred desktops and render nodes which have been running for at least 3.

[whyterabbyt]

OSX does not require HD defragging, its automatically managed by the OS.

So is it automatic, or does it not require it? Either way, Windows 7 has built-in automatic defragging.

OSX has unix shell scripting and so many commands available to create automated tasks. Python and everything else comes built in.

Windows has always had DOS scripting, has had VBS and JSCript scripting for years, and now has Powershell. And Python etc are easy to install and use if you need them. I use Perl for a lot of Windows system administration scripting, since I went to Windows (and occasional OSX) sysadmin from being a UNIX sysadmin.
Windows has script-oriented APIs for system administration tasks, its not like Unix where you have to guddle about inside .rc and config files (or, on OSX, plists), hoping you dont drop a comma or tab in the wring place.

OSX has Spaces! This feature alone I can hardly imagine to live without. I don't know maybe Windows8 has that now?

There have been 3rd part virtual display managers for Windows for longer than there's been an OSX in the first place. Windows has functionality to support them, it just doesn supply one. I prefer DexPot, which, with its SevenDex plugin, works very nicely with AeroPeek.

Related to audio and midi, its important to take notice of the fact that CoreAudio and CoreMIdi are both built into the operating system. CoreMidi includes interapplication midi, even over a network, midi timestamping, etc. Basically, Apple reallly took the music and video crowd seriously when they developed their api's.

Its a pity they dont take them as seriously every time they change the AU spec.

My impression is that Microsoft has perhaps taken the gaming industry seriously and media playback, but not necessarily audio production as mostly you have to rely on Steinberg's AISO to do pro audio.

Well, actually Microsoft invested in developing a driver model for pro audio, but only a few pro audio companies took it up. Not because of any inferiority, because it has some advantages over ASIO, but because ASIO was already so prevalent.

Thankfully, that is a pretty solid system and most all hardware companies are following it, so we're good enough for now, but midi is not covered by anyone at all like it is built into OSX and really MS has offloaded responsibility to a third party vendor...which sooner or later will come back to bite.

What are you talking about when you say 'MIDI is not covered by anyone at all' and 'MS has offloaded responsibility to a third party vendor...'

You seem to be implying MIDI needs some additional support on Windows before it works, which is nonsense.