# Best Mac for Qlab



## 4Papa (Mar 24, 2017)

Hi, newbie here with a question about Qlab. I'm a director tasked with equipping a small, touring musical at schools in the New England area. Our show has live and recorded audio, live and recorded video and animations all (rear) projected on a screen up to 12' diagonal. I'm told QLab running on a laptop is the best program to handle our needs. As we'll be buying everything from scratch, I've got a ton of questions, starting with how powerful a laptop I need to run the approx. 45-minute show. I've a ton of other questions also, but I'll start with that one as to not overwhelm. Thanks in advance! Great site, BTW.


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## MNicolai (Mar 24, 2017)

Fully loaded Mac Pro with tricked out processor, cards, memory, flash storage, and digital audio interfaces, of course! 

Which leads to the first question of course, how much is your budget?

Realistically, the power req'd will be dictated by the number of simultaneous cues, if you're doing video as well, and how large the files are that you're using, etc. Qlab leverages your available memory by taking your audio files and storing them in a buffer. Then it plays out out of your available RAM instead of trying to fight your OS for read access to your hard drive. More RAM and a flash-based hard drive are ideal. Connectivity is something to look at right away. The new Mac Books have limited ports on them. Not a deal breaker, but if portability isn't dire for you, a Mac Mini or iMac may serve you better because of the physical I/O options available without adapters.

Can you tell us a little more about what you'll be using Qlab for?

Some overlapping cues?
Many overlapping cues?
Audio-only?
Single-screen video?
Multi-screen video?
Manipulation and processing of live audio inputs?
Does your venue's audio system have any Dante capability for transporting audio over ethernet?
How many audio outputs are you intending to run from Qlab into your system? (i.e. Left/Right/Sub, or Left/Center/Right/Sub/FX1/FX2/FX3/FX4/Delay1/Delay2/Delay3/FrontFills1/FrontFills2/etc)


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## 4Papa (Mar 24, 2017)

Hi Mike and thanks for the prompt response. My project is 45-minute, touring musical that will be touring school assemblies (K-12) on a daily basis. The production is totally mobile and operates on a 18' x 12' riser with two crew (engineer and stage manager) and four singing cast members. Please see attached rendering. To answer your specific questions:

-Overlapping cues? Not sure what would constitute few or many, but when cast members are talking/singing, there will be video images (HD stock video, live video, still photos or animation) rear-projected on a single, 6'-12' floor-mounted screen.
-Live audio? The FOH engineer essentially running the tech in the show is responsible for all live audio, as well as the projected video elements as above. 
-Venue audio? We will be entirely self-contained, with the exception of lighting.
-Number of Audio Outputs? Unsure as to how to answer. We've got four mic'ed singers with some audio from the projected video. If I had to guess I would say Left/Center/Right with FX1 (if that means effects)

Besides obtaining the right laptop to run Qlab, I'm also concerned about selecting the right projector given the unknown lighting control we'll have at our various venues. My uneducated guess was to get the brightest (lumens) rear projector we can afford with the shortest throw lens as space behind the stage can be unpredictable. Our budget is approx. $20K for the tech.


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## Jay Ashworth (Mar 24, 2017)

I have a mid-10 MBP, and I've run overlapping audio cues on a single stereo output (with Qlab2), and also run single video cues with no keystoning or anything (with Qlab3) -- the latter required some transcoding to get a couple of the cues into a code the machine was happy with, to avoid hitching.

That machine is a Core2Duo, I think, and had 10GB of RAM at the time.


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## 4Papa (Mar 25, 2017)

Jay Ashworth said:


> I have a mid-10 MBP, and I've run overlapping audio cues on a single stereo output (with Qlab2), and also run single video cues with no keystoning or anything (with Qlab3) -- the latter required some transcoding to get a couple of the cues into a code the machine was happy with, to avoid hitching.
> 
> That machine is a Core2Duo, I think, and had 10GB of RAM at the time.


Thanks for the reply. Sorry for being the newbie, but what's a "mid-10" Mac Book Pro?


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## Swade White (Mar 25, 2017)

4Papa said:


> Thanks for the reply. Sorry for being the newbie, but what's a "mid-10" Mac Book Pro?


The Mid 2010 MacBook Pro https://support.apple.com/kb/sp584?locale=en_US


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## Jay Ashworth (Mar 25, 2017)

Swade, that link is redirecting weirdly here...

and I don't know why, cause I got the same link. Yay. Looks like my browser got hijacked.


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## Jay Ashworth (Mar 25, 2017)

No, it looks like it's the board.

@dvsDave? This is the link I get when I copy from that, and it just goes to a homepage at viglink. Broken redirector, or attack?

[ And now, magically, it's working again. Oops. ]

```
https://redirect.viglink.com/?format=go&jsonp=vglnk_149045678889317&key=f26d5230869ee116d3412ed86393879c&libId=j0pfee1a01000dwy000DA7fpippai&loc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.controlbooth.com%2Fthreads%2Fbest-mac-for-qlab.41784%2F%23post-360994&v=1&out=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.apple.com%2Fkb%2Fsp584%3Flocale%3Den_US&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.controlbooth.com%2Fthreads%2Fupdating-windows-on-strand-palette-board-doesnt-start-up.41783%2F&title=Best%20Mac%20for%20Qlab%20%7C%20ControlBooth&txt=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.apple.com%2Fkb%2Fsp584%3Flocale%3Den_US
```


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## dvsDave (Mar 25, 2017)

Jay Ashworth said:


> No, it looks like it's the board.
> 
> @dvsDave? This is the link I get when I copy from that, and it just goes to a homepage at viglink. Broken redirector, or attack?
> 
> ...



Viglink probably just hiccuped for a moment.


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## 4Papa (Mar 25, 2017)

Thanks. The amount of RAM for that year laptop seems to be the defining factor. Current Apple website sells 13" MBP with 8GB Ram. You have to step up to 15" to get 16GB. Not familiar with Macs. Wonder if you can add ram to the base MCP. My problem is I have to buy one and a backup.


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## Jay Ashworth (Mar 25, 2017)

You can, if you get the right speed, which I did not.

I had 2+2, and bought 8+8. They were one speed too fast, and it won't boot with both of them, but it lets me run 2+8 just fine.

There's a program that will rewrite the SPD on the DIMMs down so that I can run 8+8, but 10GB has been plenty so far.


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## MNicolai (Mar 25, 2017)

So it sounds like you're primarily using Qlab for video playback and extent that audio may be included will probably just be the stereo feed attached to the videos, and only using a single video output to drive a single projector. The microphones and such are only going through an external mixer your sound guy is running. No multi-channel audio effects required. Does that sound about right?

With the current Macbooks, you can not retrofit upgraded RAM. You have to buy it on the front end.

If you need a redundant rig, I think you would be better off getting dual tricked out Mac Minis (preferably the 2.8GHz model, but I would stay away from the base 1.4GHz model), with an external monitor. This will be much kinder to your budget than dual Macbook Pros. Unless of course, the form factor of a Macbook is really important to you, which you'll pay a premium for. Go for the 16GB RAM, and upgrade at least the 256GB SSD. Figure53 says on their website that under no circumstance should you go with the stock fusion drives.

As for redundancy, if you want the 2nd Mac on-site just in case you run into issues, you don't need any add'l hardware than the 2nd unit. If, on the other hand, you want it to be a hot standby you can switch to at any moment, then you would:

load the same content and show file into both units and open Qlab on both devices before your show starts
add a KVM to switch your keyboard, mouse, and monitor between both units,
add a dual-output trigger that you use to trigger both Qlab shows simultaneously,
and either run...
one HDMI cable up to your projector and just pull the cable out and switch to the other if need be
two HDMI cables up to your projector and used a _wired_ remote to switch the input of the projector over if for any reason you need to

For connectivity, use the built-in HDMI output of the Mac Mini for your projector, and use a Thunderbolt > HDMI adapter for your local monitor. Primarily just because the HDMI connection is more firm and less likely to become unplugged than the Thunderbolt. If you only need stereo audio, you can use the 1/8" output. If you need more channels of audio playback, then you would need to add an external audio interface of one flavor or another.


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## 4Papa (Mar 27, 2017)

>>So it sounds like you're primarily using Qlab for video playback and extent that audio may be included will probably just be the stereo feed attached to the videos, and only using a single video output to drive a single projector. The microphones and such are only going through an external mixer your sound guy is running. No multi-channel audio effects required. Does that sound about right?<<

I think so. The tech guy who will be programming our show thinks the current mac mini's won't be powerful enough for what we need. He did say if we can find a 2012 mac mini server, that might work. Here is what he's saying about our needs in a conversation we had this weekend: "We discussed "One big MacPro" setup yesterday. But after brain storming with some of my co-workers at the current show I'm working called "Amelie", I start feeling that two laptops system, one for music and one for video, isn't a bad idea. But this time, two laptops without Time Code synchronization. This revised system is much simpler than the one we had discussed. The 1st MBPro, running Qlab for video cues, and MIDI cues that are sent to the 2nd MBPro running Ableton LIVE for music. QLab on 1st MBPro sends just "Start" "Stop" "Vamp" "Devamp" cue and music tracks at 2nd MBPro are free wheeling from each cue point. On this method, we can eliminate Timecode tracks, and expensive synchronizer and so on. Another advantage is video editor and audio editor can work separately on two different computer. With one big MacPro system, video and audio programmer can not work together." 

Thanks again for your thoughts.


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## MNicolai (Mar 27, 2017)

Here's what Figure 53 says about this:


> For audio-only users, GPU considerations are probably negligible. For video folks, what you need depends entirely upon what you're trying to accomplish. A late-2012 Mac Mini can drive two HD displays simultaneously; one for your operator and one for your projector. Since those two displays share a single GPU, you can improve overall performance by lowering the resolution on your operator's display; fixed GPU power doing less work for the operator's display means more power available for video crunching. If you use a Mac Pro "cheese grater" tower (that is, pre-2014), dedicating one modest video card for your operator display and one higher-end card for each projector, or one card per two projectors, is a good strategy. For the newer "trash can" Mac Pro, all graphics connections are on the same GPU, which is much more powerful than its predecessors. Testing is, as always, important.



I don't believe there's anything special about the Macbook Pro over a Mac Mini except magnitude of price and form factor. You can load both up to 16GB, you can put an SSD in either, you can put a ~2.8GHz or 3.1GHz dual-core processor in either, except you pay 2x for the Macbook Pro version as you do for the Mini. The only difference you would care about is that the Mac Mini is based on Intel's Iris Graphics chipset, and the Macbook Pro is based on the Iris _Pro_ chipset. I can't quantify for you though how much of a performance improvement that represents.

Unless you're doing all kinds of graphics layers or buy the bottom tier model, I have a hard time imagining you'll push a new tricked out Mini to its limits with 2 HD outputs, one for your op and one for your projector.

I would question what you're planning on using Ableton Live for. If it's strictly for Q'ing up your tracks and putting them in a playlist, there's no reason you can't eliminate that altogether and put those tracks into your Qlab cue stack with your video cues -- in which case it would be easier to justify a Mac Pro if you really wanted one instead of buying 2 devices.

It's really going to come down to how much you can afford to spend on this though. If you've got $30K of tech you need to buy/rent and a $20k budget, then it really doesn't matter if you want a sup'd up Mac Pro or dual Macbook Pro's.

If you wait around a little longer here, someone may have more direct experience that can guide you better on this. You can also contact Figure 53 directly and ask them what they think. I haven't worked with them myself but I've heard from others that they're pretty responsive.


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