What equipment do you give to your creative professionals?
Posted by M4niac81@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 40 comments
As title - we have a marketing department, they produce all of our online and printed content in house using the full Adobe suite including premier for 4k video and Keyshot for animation. Recently however the machine(s) they have are starting to becoming more un-reliable and seem to struggle with what they are doing, but I'm a bit lost as to where to go with this because the machines are not that old and I think a pretty good spec.
I do not use this type of software so I have no idea what a "normal" setup might look like for this type of person and the creatives in question are not technical, they just use the software but really don't know what they want or need hardware wise. Some of the Keyshot renderings are taking days which is one of the issues, although we do have a network rendering workstation this is simply an older machine that we put a graphics card in but still takes a similar length of time to render really short animations - is this normal? (like over a day to product 10 seconds of animated video even on the laptop.
At the moment the two people in question each have a HP Zbook Studio G10, these have 64GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU with 12GB of graphics memory and 2TB Nvme drives - a pretty good spec so I thought. They are running windows 11 25H2 which is patched up to date in line with our patch management. They work from home 2 days a week which is why we provisioned laptops, but I'm beginning to wonder if this was the best choice and if I'm missing a trick somewhere and we should be doing this differently?
If anyone reading this has any helpful ideas on what might be a better way to do this or recommendations on equipment that might work better or even a totally different way of setting this up so I don't get multiple tickets a week telling me their machine keeps freezing up/crashing etc. etc. that would be awesome! (and yes I've been through a hell of a lot of troubleshooting with little effect)
And before anyone says give them a mac - I would consider it, but my boss has vetoed that on account of the fact none of us really know how to setup and support macs (which is true) and again wouldn't have a clue what model to buy.
lordjedi@reddit
What's the processor though?
I would just get them Mac and then learn how to use Jamf (it's really not that hard). Rendering is going to be just as fast on a Mac, but the CPU is more tuned toward what they're doing on a regular basis.
M4niac81@reddit (OP)
Part of the problem is I've nothing to benchmark against to rationalise if the rendering times we're getting are silly or just expected with the complexity of the 3D rendering they are doing and the 4k videos they are rolling out. Is our marketing guy doing something particular in his work that's causing the long rendering time? Is the hardware woefully under specced for the kind of work they're being expected to do? Is this just the way it is and 24 hours of rendering for 13 seconds of 3d animation is normal? I dunno, I'm figuring it out.
I can't actually remember the processor, it's an intel i9 but I can't remember the exact one, the laptop is only 18 months old.
I think it's quite clear what I need to do here, I'll start looking at macs. 😂😂
lordjedi@reddit
> Is this just the way it is and 24 hours of rendering for 13 seconds of 3d animation is normal?
Depends on how many polygons they're trying to render. If it's suppose to look like a storyboard, not normal. If it's suppose to look as close to lifelike as possible, that might be completely normal.
According to Google, it took about 200,000 rendering hours for some of the shots in EndGame. They're likely using clusters of computers in order to render everything. So it might not be a problem with the computer, you just need more computers and have them setup in a cluster for rendering.
mods_are_lame1@reddit
Crayons. 64 count, if they’ve been good.
GBICPancakes@reddit
Like everyone else has said so far - for such users, I recommend Macs. MacBook Pros or Mac Studios. Beef them out - Pros at minimum, get a Max if they're doing a lot of video editing.
Take the time to look at Apple Business (the replacement for Apple Business Manager) or another MDM (I'm partial to Mosyle) but even if you end up hand-installing the Macs (since there's only two people) it's still better long term.
Adobe products still have issues and problems on Macs (Apple can't fix Adobe) but much less than on Windows. And you'll need to look closely at what over requirements they have to make sure everything they need exists for Macs, but in general there's a good reason most marketing/creative people are on Mac.
The specs on those HP Zbooks are really good - more than enough according to Adobe. It's just Windows getting in the way. Adobe is CPU-heavy, and Windows *still* doesn't manage multi-core CPUs as well as Apple has since OSX 10.6 and the launch of GCD.
I tend to avoid Apple displays unless the users explicitly request it. I do agree the Studio Display does a great job color matching, just the price is really high. I feel a nice high-end LG or similar can work really well. But like you I'm not a creative, so I tend to defer to them for such things.
BlockBannington@reddit
ABM is gone? Since when?
GBICPancakes@reddit
ABM was replaced by Apple Business a couple of weeks ago. It's now ABM+MDM+A lot more.
https://www.apple.com/business/
Either-Act-3406@reddit
you might be running into a mix of thermal throttling and network rendering bottlenecks, especially with laptops. For comparing actual usage stats, atera is useful and it can highlight if the GPU or CPU is hitting it's limits under load. You could try setting up a beefier desktop as a dedicated render node and then use atera to track the difference over time.
malikto44@reddit
A Mac infrastructure takes some thought. Get ABM set up, first thing before buying any new Macs. After that, get a MDM, even Apple's will do. From there, see if you can get your VAR to pre-provision new Macs, so they will enroll themselves into the MDM automatically.
Get a cheapie Mac for testing profiles and such.
Now, once you have this in place, then go for the Apple stuff.
M4niac81@reddit (OP)
We have intune and I believe you can use this for managing Mac although I've no experience doing it. We have ABM set up and linked to intune as we buy iphones for some of our users who prefer them so we're halfway there already. Thanks 👍
Entegy@reddit
Intune can deploy Adobe CC to Macs which was my biggest blocker in getting rid of Munki, which is Disney's open source Mac app deployment tool.
Everything else I deploy with either an Installomator script or, if I can, VPP from the Mac App Store.
Intune is good enough for a Windows shop supporting a small number of Macs. You're already a good chunk of the way there with having Apple Business connected to Intune.
M4niac81@reddit (OP)
I mean it is only going to be two machines so it's not essential I can fully manage them anyway. We install Adobe manually at the moment as I've never packaged it up and it's on so few machines it's not worth my while. We are not a massive company, 200 employees or so.
Entegy@reddit
Man, I packaged Adobe CC for way less employees. Windows I don't even care because it's in the Microsoft Store and I just deploy that.
lordjedi@reddit
While you can use Intune, it isn't really ideal for managing Mac. You might want to consider switching to Jamf.
We use Jamf with ABM for managing Mac and iPhone.
M4niac81@reddit (OP)
Thanks for that recommendation I'll do some reading
traviss8@reddit
Your current computers are more than powerful enough, this is a configuration/optimization issue. Whether it's incorrect drivers or windows services running rampant or power saving mode being enabled or the iGPU being used instead of the dGPU, it's something stupid like that.
ObiLAN-@reddit
For most we go the Apple route, especially if they heavily use Adobe software.
Have a desktop system rocking threadripper 7965WX with RTX 6000. Mainly just for large rendering projects.
Monitors have been subjective, some like the Apple Studios, others prefer the Dell S3225QC.
98723589734239857@reddit
the biggest misconception in media creation is that the GPU is the workhorse. it is not. the CPU does most of the heavy lifting during editing. if you're rendering video in a CUDA or NVENC friendly format, it will be sped up quite a lot. the 4080 wont be idle during normal workflows as effects like color grading are offloaded to the GPU.
i'm not familiar at all with animations but i would have to assume the 4080 would make a big difference there. did you go through the acceleration settings?
M4niac81@reddit (OP)
Oh yes it maxes out the GPU and the CPU when it renders in keyshot, we've been through their support and apparently this is as good as it gets. To be honest keyshot is most of the issue, premier isn't too bad on it. I was looking at remote rendering services, not sure whether these are cost effective thou, again it's an area I know very little about so I have no experience to draw on. Previous companies always outsourced their creative stuff, although I've been here 7 years I think the marketing department have upped their game in recent times and are generating higher resolution and more demanding content and the hardware can't keep up even thou we gave them what I considered to be very good machines. I've resigned myself to the fact we probably need to give them different hardware, it's figuring out what's the best road to go down.
stxonships@reddit
I am surprised they have not demanded some type of Mac. Creative types always believe that Adobe on Mac works better than on Windows. They might even be correct, I don't have much experience with Adobe products.
Goldenu2@reddit
We've been handing out Surface Laptop Studio's to anyone needed visual horsepower, but we have a new CAD designer that's being asked to take on some truly outrageous work, so for the first time in years, I'll likely be building out a Dell 7875 or 7960 workstation.
diarrhea-forecast@reddit
Honestly anything recent would be more than enough, Mac is really the only way. Mac would save you guys money in the long run.
M4niac81@reddit (OP)
I think you're right, it is consuming a lot of support time right now. I literally got a ticket just as I was leaving tonight with a summary of "today's issues" which triggered this post. Ha ha.
diarrhea-forecast@reddit
I have a M1 air and it runs photoshop and illustrator and video editing software extremely well, pretty quick loading times. I’m 100% sure that anything more would be worlds better for a marketing department. Ours run M4’s 16” and I never get any complaints besides printer complains which are the norm lol
phoenix823@reddit
Figure it out. Your company is not special, all companies deal with this issue. These people have jobs to do and deserve the right tools to do it with. In this case, that's a Mac. These end users do not exist to justify your boss's tech decisions. Wow.
M4niac81@reddit (OP)
I guess what I'm establishing here is what the right tools are, that's part of the problem. However if I can go and say hey I asked this question and pretty much every reply said Mac, well then it's harder to argue against it. I've not supported Mac before but I did used to look after 600+ iPads in another place so the Apple eco system is not a total stranger to me.
I'm in the middle of a team of three here so I have some influence just not the final decision.
jcleme@reddit
What do the users themselves want?
M4niac81@reddit (OP)
They don't care as long as it works. 🤣 I've had this conversation and honestly they don't know, they use the software, they don't know much about the hardware.
Adimentus@reddit
This is always the case. Usually our creative clients get HP ProBooks (Nvidia cards) or EliteBook (Intel ARC cards) with plenty of RAM and plenty of storage. These designers get a little crazy for sure though >.>
jetlagged-bee@reddit
99% of my users wouldn't have a clue.
Master-IT-All@reddit
Get a Mac.
It's not that hard. Tell your boss that I said to stop being a little bitch.
anonymousITCoward@reddit
ME: Hey boss, u/Master-IT-All said to stop being a little bitch... whats that I can go home now? YAY... oh wait what do you mean i don't have to come back anymore, I get permanent vacation?
bryan4368@reddit
MacBook Pro and Apple Studio Displays
As long as it is approved it isn’t my money to care.
the_doughboy@reddit
Macbook Pro Max, 64GB RAM, 1TB (at least), don't F with the creatives that produce products for your company.
M4niac81@reddit (OP)
Thanks 👍
Oh believe me I want to make sure they get a good experience, hence this post!
the_doughboy@reddit
MDM managing Macs isnt hard, its about the same level of difficulty as managing phones. You can even do it with Intune if you wish though most swear by Jamf or Mosyle.
anonymousITCoward@reddit
We give them crayons, colored paper, and safety scissors...
I jest... They get Mac's, usually Mac Book Pros, the full time video editors get iMacs, both get 64gigs of RAM, and 1tb of drive space... they manage their own software.
M4niac81@reddit (OP)
Every time we get problems anywhere I suggest going back to paper. 🤣🤣
Thanks 👍
rootsandstones@reddit
Make sure they use the power supply, you can charge them using USB C with a HP docking station but they are not getting full power.
plump-lamp@reddit
There are several configuration guides for each adobe product to properly set them up to ensure they are using the graphics cards, using scratch disks, etc. reach out to their support as you are paying for it