Running C1 7 on a tablet. Has the day finally arrived?
This day was bound to come.
Surface Pro 3 is out. Finally we can run C1 on a tablet with specs that are good enough to make it worth to trade the extra speed for portability and the boon that is the touch interface.
I've figured my ageing i7 870 @2.93GHz mini tower with 16Gb of Ram could be replaced by a Surface Pro 3 with an Intel Core i5, 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. Personally I cannot justify to go with less than 8GB because I'll be using a few of the Adobe CC tools for video editing.
But the interesting bit is that this market will probably be set on fire from below, just take a look at this:
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/tablets/th ... #techspecs which by looking at benchmarks doesn't seem all that bad (2x-3x slower) considering the thermal envelop which is 10x smaller.
Has anyone used C1 on any of these platforms? Are there any big barriers to this approach?
BTW, do you think that with progressive support for OpenGL we will be able to have HW acceleration with integrated GPUs sometime in the near future?
Surface Pro 3 is out. Finally we can run C1 on a tablet with specs that are good enough to make it worth to trade the extra speed for portability and the boon that is the touch interface.
I've figured my ageing i7 870 @2.93GHz mini tower with 16Gb of Ram could be replaced by a Surface Pro 3 with an Intel Core i5, 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. Personally I cannot justify to go with less than 8GB because I'll be using a few of the Adobe CC tools for video editing.
But the interesting bit is that this market will probably be set on fire from below, just take a look at this:
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/tablets/th ... #techspecs which by looking at benchmarks doesn't seem all that bad (2x-3x slower) considering the thermal envelop which is 10x smaller.
Has anyone used C1 on any of these platforms? Are there any big barriers to this approach?
BTW, do you think that with progressive support for OpenGL we will be able to have HW acceleration with integrated GPUs sometime in the near future?
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Not a surface Pro 3 by any stretch, but I am running Capture One Pro 7.2.2 on an Asus / i5 Windows 8 Tablet and it works OK. Fairly slow due to memory and storage limitations, but useable. I plug in a larger external display and use a wireless keyboard and mouse when I am at my desk.
The tethering is too slow for me and runs strangely (I am assuming because of limited RAM and HD space?), so I use DigiCam Control or Helicon Remote for thethered shooting which I don't do very much. My main use is outdoors, so I use my Galaxy S4 for almost all thethered shooting when needed and just save the files in the camera.
System specs:
i5 processor 1.33 ghz
Win 8 64 bit
4 gb ram ( not enough of course)
64 gb SSHD (way too tiny-only about ten gigs free which is a big issue)
External 3tb HD (VERY fast hard drive - VERY slow via USB 2 but it works.)
Wacom touchscreen ( I haven't tried the Wacom pen yet with Capture One, but it works great with Photoshop)
I have my eye on a Surface Pro 3 or something equivalent to replace this Asus eventually, but I am going to hold out for at least an i7 of some kind.
I did a trial run of all the major RAW converters for about a month, and decided on Capture One Pro, mainly for the clearly better looking RAW conversions it provided, plus it was on sale. I would not have paid the regular price for it. I really liked DXO's offering, but Capture One had an edge over all of them with its super RAW conversion.
The only reason I was looking at the various offering was for creating the best RAW conversions I could get. I use it almost exclusively for producing 24" to 32" wide gallery prints and wanted to extract the best image I could out of the RAWs. I originally planned on going with Lightroom using the educational pricing (half that of Capture One on sale!), but The Asus B121 sometimes won't run Lightroom at all. Most of the time it just shows blank numbered boxes where the image previews are supposed to be (memory issues I presume) and no matter what I have tried, Lightroom will not do a dual display configuration. Whatever window is displayed on the external monitor is always blank. The RAW conversions from Lightroom were to my eye starkly inferior to what I was getting with Capture One Pro so it ended being the only logical choice at this point in time.
The file management in Capture One Pro 7 is adequate, though there are several things I would like to see in it like the ability to instantly MOVE entire folders and sub folders within Catalogs (if there is a way to do this I have not found it), and group renaming like FastStone has. I didn't buy it for the file handling, but it will be fine for my use. I rename and sort all images first with FastStone, then just import the folder into Capture One when ready for processing and cataloging.
Because of the 64 gb SSHD limitations on the Asus I have to store all my images on an external drive which is a real bottleneck due to the painfully slow USB 2 interface. Fully rendered previews on a 21" display take 7-12 seconds (D800 Raw Files) to complete as long as Capture One is done with its proxy thing. When looking at multiple thumbnails and scrolling down, due to the slowness of the external hard drive, it can't keep up, so I have to pause for the previews to load sometimes. In 100% view on a 21" display it takes 30 seconds to render the visible portion. Obviously this system is way under powered, but its all I have right now.0 -
I think having a light computer that can accept a larger monitor and stuff is a good thing So, I am not trying to be negative. If you care to check into it, try to find out how the devices behave under sustained load. MS Forum or whatever.
I have no idea about Surface 3, but some devices with high clocks only provide that speed for short periods of time. They heat up and the CPU is throttled. So, the CPU fit in the smaller devices and work but they can't always dissipate the heat like a larger case would...
I have seen the Surface 3 and it isn't as slim as some of the devices I have read about (other tablets or even phones) that heat up and throttle. So, the Surface 3 may be designed more with working in mind rather than just being thin and stylish. This may not really apply to Surface 3, but I don't know.
Regardless, it will be important, I think, to be sure the device has good airflow for cooling. Maybe propped up so air can flow around and it isn't just flat on a table and definitely not on something cloth like a cushion or table cloth or whatever...0 -
Thanks for all the answers.
It puts the C1 workflow into perspective on a Windows tablet.
I'd like to believe that the Surface Pro 3 might just be a bit faster than the machine you mentioned, but with a lot more screen resolution to manage, I'm wondering whether it will eventually feel faster in the end.
I'm not worried about rendering times as I do it mostly in batch, but near edit feedback in near real time is a must. I guess we'll need to wait for Phase One to target integrated GPU's HW acceleration before we commit to this kind of platform. ☹️0 -
I am getting a Surface Pro 3 with the Core i7. And obviously, it will be a pretty nice machine with the ability to drive big screens out of the box.
So, I'm still waiting obviously 😉
I'll try and point out a few niche items that I have tracked down just in case they're interesting to you...
While the i7's Intel HD 5000 GPU chipset will not quite have enough cores to really do much OpenCL (even if C1 supported it - see, they have to "enable it" - Photoshop will), there is something that the Surface Pro 3 may support (via the Docking Station) that was revealed in a Reddit AMA session with Panos Panay...
This may go far beyond your desire to do hardware stuff (and would work "at home" only)... but the new power connector and docking station has the potential for Thunderbolt expansion. It's unknown to me how it would connect to a real Thunderbolt adapter. The potential makes this quite a unicorn.
If that works... there is a relatively cheap ($300 + video card) "eGPU" solution that would allow you to drive any external graphics card / monitor combination (maybe even the Surface's screen) and then use real OpenCL for heavy lifting at home. A MacBook Pro could do this in theory too. My current laptop (Lenovo can). But very few current models can (they lack ExpressCard or Thunderbolt ports).
This thing requires an ExpressCard port, and then something like this Village Instruments box (of Amiga fame). So, you'd need something that goes from the Surface Pro's expansion port (?) -> Thunderbolt -> ExpressCard (which exists).
Once you get it hooked up to your docking station, in theory, you'd just leave it there. Most people say you have to cold-boot into the configuration. Which would be fine for me.
Anyhow, I've been using a "Tablet 2-in-1" Lenovo x220T for Capture One (Core i7, 2.7GHz, HD 3000, 16GB of RAM) for the past 3 years. Editing on screen with the Wacom pen has been good and bad. Mostly due to Wacom drivers / calibration. Capture One's support of the pen is not superb on adjustment layers. Those work the CPU really hard.
The amount of engineering in the new pen in the Surface Pro 3 gives me hope. And busting out of the 1280x768 resolution will be amazing...
About the new Surface Pro 3 pen:
Hope that gives some perspective on my thoughts.
For "real typing" etc. I'll use a real keyboard. I've used both Surface keyboards in the wild, and they're fine. But the docking station will change everything for me. And a 128GB SDXC card will give me an extra "cache" of images.
I use FastPictureViewer for culling images already - possibly the slowest thing CaptureOne could be used for post-shoot.
It does not have a good "touch" experience though. But its keyboard shortcuts and GPU acceleration make quick work of RAW files. Also its codecs help MediaPro if you go that way.
TTFN
Gregg0 -
Cheers Gregger!
Thank you, that was very informative. Please report back when you get that machine.
I wasn't very worried about speed, but you are the second person I see reporting the touch interface to be mostly a no-go. And that's worse news, because it's what I was counting on.... ☹️
Is it because the buttons are too small? Can the pen compensate for that?0 -
The actual answer about touch is 2 separate, but related issues...
The touch interface is basically an issue due to the toolbars / buttons being tiny. That will get worse on any Surface Pro - but it is totally fixable if Phase One decides to treat these displays like a Retina Display. I can't test this though...
The stylus, of course, probably makes that OK (usually).
On my Lenovo today, though, calibration issues (mostly around the edges of the screen because Wacom "forgot" to write new drivers for Windows 😎 caused all sorts of unpleasantness. I don't expect to find that on the Surface Pro 3. That was both touch and pen stuff. That's mostly eliminated due to new drivers.
I'm unsure as to whether Phase One has implemented "High DPI" support for Windows 8.1, but if they haven't, then the "UI scaling" that is required to use any application on the Surface's display will be quirky. The stylus would be your only route to happiness where buttons are concerned.
I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts in C1 because of the nested nature of Capture One's toolbars (where one icon really represents several items). Photoshop is pretty similar in that way. A keyboard usually makes things work way faster.
Adobe worked specifically with Microsoft to create a "High DPI Version" of Photoshop CC for the Surface Pro 3. And it is fairly "touch friendly" (you've probably seen this already).
Previously, Photoshop users were forced to do workarounds like this:
I don't know if there is a workaround like this for Capture One. But it's basically the same issue. If Phase One can support a Retina display properly, then the Surface Pro 3 / any High DPI display should be supportable.
Sorry for the long answer...
I'll let you know how it goes when I get mine all set up!
I guess that's another 30-50 days from now...0 -
Ah, here we go... from the Adobe Forums - a Manifest file to fix Capture One's tiny interface (dated from this year, so there must be a reason they're doing it):
Note that I don't expressly warrant anyone do this... just that this information exists.
Upon inspecting my own CaptureOne Manifest (as delivered in 7.2.2), the setting in question is "True/PM" (meaning "True, Per Monitor") rather than "false" (as noted in the article above).
So, apparently, Capture One is set to the expected defaults for Windows 8.1 as established by Microsoft:<asmv3:application>
<asmv3:windowsSettings xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2005/WindowsSettings">
<dpiAware>True/PM</dpiAware>
</asmv3:windowsSettings>
</asmv3:application>
This hack would change it to "false" (I'm using the delivered manifest and modifying it below):<asmv3:application>
<asmv3:windowsSettings xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2005/WindowsSettings">
<dpiAware>false</dpiAware>
</asmv3:windowsSettings>
</asmv3:application>
Meaning that, if Capture One's icons are still tiny for you, then Phase One needs to build better UI elements for bigger displays(?).
So, creating a new Manifest, editing the registry, and changing this setting to "false" would simply start scaling / stretching up your Capture One UI - it would be chunky, but usable.0 -
Incredibly useful information.
Thank you so much!!!
😄0
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