@kai-the-film-geek Nice! The performance of that Mac mini is not so mini anymore. We're looking forward to seeing your experience on real world editing tests.

@itsage

Well...I cannae afford a Mac Pro...like 90% of the world's population lol.... 🙂 

Posted by: @tsakal

@mini-i5

Very interesting video with some benchmarks 

4k ultra at 60fps for horizon 4 sounds good to me . 

Is this the big navi people are waiting for, maybe its already here. 

Hmm, that's really interesting. Makes me want to upgrade my graphics card when I have the funds. 

Posted by: @kai-the-film-geek

Well...they are here...recognised instantly...fan noise not excessive...no sleep fan noise issue either...will report back with some real world editing tests...

And system profiler...

Which Radeon VII did you get?

@ssn5512

XFX AMD Radeon VII 16GB HBM2, 1750 MHz Boost, 1801 MHz Peak, 3xDP 1xHDMI Pci-E 3.0 

there you go...lol...

@kai-the-film-geek, 

Hi,

I know this is not entirely on topic but I was not able to send you a private messsage. Could you tell me how convenient is ipad for editing with Sidecar feature? Do you cut on it or what is your main usage and why? I'm really interested in this and after seeing your picture I had to ask.

@lukas_sinkevicius, naw that’s cool..happy to help. I don’t use it for editing much at the moment...I have a Contour Shuttle Pro which I use. It’s mostly masking in Photoshop and drawing in Illustrator using the Apple Pencil although I’m learning Fusion in DaVinci Resolve so I would imagine once I get more into keyframimg and using splines...I’ll use the iPad Pro more then. 

I have also used it a bit in zBrush which it’s great as I could never get used to a graphics tablets...as an artist looking at where I’m drawing was a difficult habit to break...too difficult in fact 😁. Although I do more so now with the iPad...so maybe it’s a comfort thing.

As for the performance Of my set-up...my apologies to all...I’ve been doing some real world projects and haven’t had time to benchmark etc. What I would say...as far as editing in Resolve goes...Codecs are king. I’ve edited with some ProRes...H.264 and H.265 footage and by far the best to work with is the latter. I think the Mini’s T2 chip certainly comes into play but as I’d said...no benchmarking done so far but 60fps whilst outputting 4K footage has been reached. 

I come from a graphic design background in Photoshop so I’m always piling on timelines and effects which always slows the system down and the need to render timelines...which varies according to the FX or even the OFX plug-in used. I use RedGiant and Boris. Hence I’m trying to work in Fusion...see if that helps.

I shot some test footage this morning to see which codec offers the best quality for the footage and performance in editing...not mutually exclusive as you'd think.

The following screens show the setting I used...in order...from the render screenshot in DaVinci Resolve Studio 16.2.

Each clip was 10 secs long with no effects or colour correction added.

There's not much difference in render time between the H.265 HEVC and H.264 MOV clips. The H.264 MP4 was quite a bit slower....more that double in the case of H.265 and with a lower quality...8bit image.

In addition it also uses 4:2:0 sampling...like the H.265 although it's got a higher rate of 100Mbps compared to 72Mbps.

The H.264 MOV codec uses 4:2:2 sampling...10bit and 105Mbps data rate too. So it seems...to me anyway...like this is the best codec to shoot in at 4K for the G9 as the trade off in quality against rendering performance due is negligible and worth it by far.

Of course...it would be nice to shoot RAW on a higher spec camera and edit on a Mac Pro but there you go...the quality of the footage of the G9 compared to say the Canon XL1S Mini DV that I used when I started out is night and day. A note to say that I am using Samyang Cine Prime lenses as well. Not high end either but still far better than when I started shooting stuff... 😉 

Single eGPU result...

Integrated graphics only...which help the H.264 MP4 rendering...has a bigger negative effect on H.264 MOV and very little on the H.265.

Just a FYI...I'll still be shooting H.264 MOV 4:2:2 150Mbps 10bit...

I use a Sapphire Vega 64 Nitro+ on my mini and crunches 4K just fine with rare events of fans spinning up

Not sure how resolves works but as Blackmagic uses Vega 56 inside their box I would think is safer to stick to Vega product line for resolve in fact if I was using resolve I would put a vega 56 overclocked in my enclosure instead of going of unknown turf

Gaming is different but pro applications are better addressed with tried and tested as if the card does not work you have zero outcome 

My Nitro+ does 6100 vs 6154 of the 5700 and 5994 of the 56 under metal

So I would seriously consider if you want to run into any risks especially with the Radeon VII that is not even formally supported on Mac OS though the drivers exist