Total NOOB question re: 2009 Mac Pro

Hi everyone, long time listener...okay that's not really true. This is going to seem like super basic stuff but bear with me.

I am a veteran DP, and have worked closely with colorists since I began shooting commercials in the 80s. I just did a three day workshop with Warren Eagles on Resolve, as I thought it was time I brought my own understanding of CC up to date and up to speed. GREAT WORKSHOP by the way. I don't intend to become a pro colorist, but on the jobs, more frequent every year, where my work is getting a minimal CC by an editor, or none at all (!) I'd like to be able to at least suggest and show an option. And for those times when we're doing a 'real' CC in a dedicated room I'd like to 'speak the language' and understand more of the process.

So...a few years ago I installed Resolve 10 on my 2009 Mac Pro 4.1, and did some very crude work with it, but today I tried to open it and the projects I was working on earlier this week, and it crashes. I got the 'CUDA acceleration missing' error, but the crash didn't happen until I tried to bring some files (Sony XAVC) into the media folder, and that has happened consistently. Aargh---I really wanted to get back into those projects!

The Mac Pro has its original graphics card, an NVIDIA GTX 120, 512mb, which I know is inadequate for newer versions of Resolve. It did work in the past though. I updated its driver, but that's only good for CUDA 5. Only change I can think of since Resolve was working is that I updated the OS from 10.6 (yes!) to Yosemite, then El Capitan.

I don't want to upgrade the whole computer. And I have no plans to deal with 4K footage, or quantities of it, etc. For the foreseeable future this would be HD stuff, relatively small amounts of it.

So...can I get this computer up to working with Resolve Lite, either the current or perhaps an earlier version? Will upgrading the graphics card do it? If so, which one? And so on...

Any advice or suggestions welcome! Thanks in advance.

I would not invest any money in it- sell it (if anyone wants to buy it) and forget

XAVC is very demanding -- you need a fast CPU and a fast GPU to handle that, in my opinion. If you could transcode that to (say) ProRes HD, then it might work adequately in Resolve.

Thank you Marc! I'm going to upgrade the GPU to a GTX980 and my RAM to 32GB. Hopefully the CPU can manage it, and I can always transcode XAVC to ProRes through Sony's Catalyst Browse if need be.

I have found a bunch of older threads on this subject here but they are all over the place in terms of the specific gear and the advice offered. I am interested to see that lots of people still use the 4.1 and (mostly) 5.1 Mac Pros as a base due to their upgradeability. So...I'll report back on how it works on mine.

The 4,1 model is easily upgradeable, not only the CPU, but the GPU too. Get a 980 Ti, I'd say, and use a SSD for system and caches. Such a machine flies.

I'd also suggest to stay with Yosemite, some people in another recent thread are discussing less stability with El Capitan and Resolve.

Alan,

I upgraded my 5.1 cMP and could not be happier.

I shoot 4K XAVC almost exclusively and my machine handles this easily. Resolve's ability to edit XAVC natively was a major factor in deciding to swap to DR.

Here are the specs of my 2010 cMP.

Mac Pro 5.1
OSX 10.10.5
2 x 3.3GHz 6 core Intel, up from dual 2.4GHz
48 GB ram, up from 16GB
GTX Titan X 12GB graphics card, up from GTX 780 3GB
USB3 card, up from USB2
OWC Pcie SSD 500Mb boot disk, up from normal hard drive
4 x 6TB in raid 5 yielding 18TB, up from single media drive. Sustained read speeds of over 400mb/s
The Softraid app handles the raid array.

I have even bought a second 2010 chassis as there is still no OSX machine on the market as upgradable as the pre 2012 machines.

All the slots in the machine are filled and the only extra item I added was a fan control app.

If you need more details, feel free to PM me.

PS eagerly awaiting results on the Mac flashed 1080 series of GPUs.

Hi Jack,

that sounds very much like our machine and I can see that you are also staying with Yosemite.

BTW, the 4,1 becomes a 5,1 so to say, since it needs to be hacked to look like it for the CPU upgrade. Our vendor of the CPU upgrade did that for us, but you can read about it in the internet.

I'm also thinking about getting another chassis as a backup, those cheese graters are so reliable…

Thanks very much Uli and Jack.

I'll post back in a few days once the new GPU is in. Hopefully that'll allow me to do what I want for the time being, but good to see there's an upgrade path to take it further if needed.

BTW I'm on El Capitan so will see how that holds up, if necessary I'll go to Yosemite...one of the steps I completely skipped on this machine. Maybe I'm lucky and I'm certainly not a power user but I've had no issues with El Capitan.

I said I would update once I had upgraded my Mac Pro, so here I am.

Today I installed a 'flashed' GTX 980 GPU and upped my RAM from 12 to 32GB. This is on a single-processor quad-core 2.66MHz MacPro, 4.1, running El Capitan. (BTW no problems with El C so far.) And long as I had the computer open, I added a 4-port USB3 card.

My computer still had Resolve 10, and when starting that up I got a message about the hardware not being up to snuff, though not the same one as before, about graphics acceleration. Despite this Resolve ran okay, but for some audio choppiness. Having just learned on 12.5 though, 10 seemed dumb by comparison, so I downloaded 12.5 (free version so far) and opened up my projects from Warren Eagles' workshop.

It all works a treat! The grades from my projects are there, all looks good, no audio issues. I am so happy with this amazing software, the ability to get the most out of my pictures--even more than I could back in my black and white darkroom days, ha ha---and now, being able to get new life out of my venerable computer. Thanks again for the helpful advice, Marc, Uli and Jack. (Andrew K, not so much.)