New Mac Mini or Old Mac Pro

dave6562
dave6562
in SecuritySpy

Hi Ben. I am currently running 9 cameras on a Late 2013 Mac Pro with 12 cores, 2.7 GHz, 512 GB storage, and 16 GB memory. Security Spy stores its footage on a 16 TB external Raid array. 8 of the cameras are 5 MP Axis cameras. 1 is a DoorBird. Everything is hardwired. Mostly I am happy with the set-up. The only problem I experience is lagging and freezing when playing lots of cameras back quickly. Recently I was looking at the new M1 Mac Mini. I could get one well loaded for around the same price as my Mac Pro trade-in, maybe a bit more if I loaded up the Mac mini with everything. Which would be better -- the Late 2013 Mac Pro or the M1 Mac Mini -- for the Security Spy setup I have described? Thank you!

Comments

  • Ben
    Ben

    The M1 mini will provide better performance than the Mac Pro, but how much better depends on a few things such as which video codec is in use, and whether you make heavy use of SecuritySpy's web interface for viewing live video.

    The basic summary is that if you use H.265 video data, or you make heavy use of SecuritySpy's web interface, then the M1 mini should provide significantly better performance. However, if you use H.264 video data, and you make only light use of SecuritySpy's web interface, then the gains from the M1 will be marginal.

    Your 2013 Mac Pro is a very powerful machine, however it lacks any kind of hardware-accelerated video encoding/decoding, so everything has to be done by the CPU. Since video decoding/encoding is the main task that SecuritySpy has to do, hardware acceleration makes a big difference to performance, and the M1 has this (as well as a lot of CPU power in addition).

    Overall, I would say that switching to the M1 mini would be beneficial. Make sure to get the 16GB version.

    If you decide to stick with your Mac Pro, you could try reducing the frame rates of your cameras a bit - this should ease the lagging upon playback.

  • dave6562
    dave6562

    Thank you, Ben! I really like your product and especially appreciate the rich support environment. I think a hardware switch makes sense for me.

  • dave6562
    dave6562

    Thanks for your advice, Ben. I bought the M1 Mac mini. Playback performance is much improved over the 2013 MacPro. I've also brought the cameras up to max resolution and increased the frame rate. Very happy with all these changes. Onboard the new mini, I have 4 TB internal SSD storage. This gives me weeks of recording time, which seems fine for my application. Problem: I have SecuritySpy set to delete old files by available space. When it reaches that trigger threshold, it erases all the existing video, instead of incrementally removing the oldest video as new video gets written. Instead of a perpetual backlog of several weeks of the most current video, every few weeks I am reset with no recordings. This was not happening previously, when my 2013 MacPro was writing to an external hard drive. What is going wrong? Thank you! Dave

  • Ben
    Ben

    Hi Dave,

    Great to hear that the performance is much improved with the M1 mini!

    As for the deletion problem: SecuritySpy has to go by what the system is reporting is the amount of free space on the drive. With cases of unexpected file deletion, this always comes down to unexpected numbers being reported by the system for free space. We have had discussions with Apple engineers about this previously, and the situation is complex, especially for the system drive, with the very concept of "free space" being increasingly nebulous in recent system versions.

    Here's one example of what can happen: Time Machine can fill the system disk with its temporary snapshots. This then looks like the disk is full, which triggers SecuritySpy to start deleting files. Time Machine sees that there is more space available due to this file deletion, and uses this space for even more snapshots. This triggers SecuritySpy to delete more files etc. I'm not sure if you are using Time Machine, but this is the sort of thing that can happen.

    If you are in fact using Time Machine, turning it off could resolve the problem. If not, what I would recommend is that you either use an external drive for SecuritySpy's video footage (any externally-connected SSD or HDD from a reputable brand connected by USB 3.x or Thunderbolt should be fine). Or if you are going to use the system drive, set SecuritySpy to delete files by age rater than by disk space.

  • dave6562
    dave6562

    Thank you, Ben. I am not putting Time Machine onto the system disk, so I know that is not the problem. But it sounds like there could be other ways that the Apple system software is tripping SecuritySpy on available space. I will try age-based deletion and let you know if I have any problem with it. I really appreciate the help. Dave

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