Flame on Mac Studio reviews and best configs?

I have been running Flame on the Google Cloud while working with LA VFX companies. Works great. But you need to have a great IT guy or somebody like Gunpowder.tech to get you started and keep you going.
Or should I just buy a Mac studio.
I was in Colorist land for a while.
But doing VFX remote from Wisconsin has been great.
Looking forward to your feedback.

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Hiya @jeffolm.

It all depends on what you have, what you do, and what you need. If you are a colorist, ingesting material to the cloud can take some time unless you have a spare 1GB/s upload or preferably a couple. If you are doing HD or 2K finish then the lower tiered 16cores Google provides can be had for $450-650 ish a month for normal working hours, not including license. It’s nice because if you don’t have work you turn it off and don’t pay for it. But what you save will likely be shared with sysadmins to keep it going. Plus, theres only a couple/three sysadmins I’d trust with the accessibility of my work machine.

Mac Studios are just now starting to be delivered and we’ll see some benchmarks trickle in. If I was a betting man I’d wreckon they’d be close to current 2019 Mac Pro 12 or 16 core benchmarks of about 12-14 minutes for the Flame Benchmark. But, of course they are half the price of the 2019 Mac Pro. Linux machines can be had for a substantial savings and substantial performance improvement but at the sysadmin tax is also a factor.

So, you’ll really need to lay out some details. Are you a computer tinkerer? What kind of jobs are you working in? What kind of footage/plates do you receive? Do you ever receive drives from clients with footage? What existing networking infrastructure do you own? Whats your typical client schedules and budgets? How often do you work for vfx studios controlling their gear? Etc etc.

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Randy
My user profile
I’m a Flame and Resolve guy these days. Everything 4K and above.
Not a sys admin type.
Gun for hire.
For top end LA houses.
Spots and TV Flame VFX
Resolve for 4K features.
I edit on Resolve and Premiere Pro.

I am totally in on the cloud.
Fast transfers. No commitment.
Windows I am all in as the Director of Cloud solutions for eclipsetech.co
Linux in the Cloud.
Or Linux on the ground.
I totally need a sys admin.

After all that my question is.
Is Mac studio useable at 4K and above for flame and resolve?

Where in Wisconsin? I used to live there. Sorry for the Hijack.

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Hey Jeff! Hope you’re doing well, man. Everything I’ve read is that Resolve screams on M1, even th earliest Mac mini’s, so you should be more than fine with the Mac Studio. There’s a thread on the forum about Flame on Mac Studio and it seems wicked fast as well.

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1 hour west of Madison. North of Dodgeville. In the boonies with no people around just cattle cows. I have an office in Spring Green home of Taliesin former home of Frank Loyd Wright for fast internet for my Flame on the Cloud.

I lived outside Oconomowoc when I was a kid. Lovely! Back to flame…

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