Red Rocket - NO OLPF or Noise Reduction

[roryhinds]

I found out today that the Red Rocket does realtime 4k debayering but without
OLPF compensation and noise reduction.

So the RR card is not suited for Finishing/Mastering and is more geared towards dailies which don't require the best possible images quality.

How come?
And can/will OLPF and noise reduction be supported on the RR card?

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

I believe the Rocket isn't intended as a finishing solution or a dailies solution.

Its a dedicated processor for debayering and playback of R3D data. It doesn't do anything else.

You should couple a Rocket, used for its compute power, with a more traditional video i/o card for monitoring. (Like a BlackMagic Decklink or AJA Kona for 1080p & 2K finishing)

The Rocket will hook up directly to various display devices and give you an image, but I don't know any software aside from Storm and RedCine that uses it that way. Neither of those are finishing solutions. Maybe Scratch?

In fact, I don't know ANY video i/o hardware that does noise reduction or OLPF compensation. Every system I've ever used does this in software. Even systems that use hardware acceleration (Like Resolve) are just taking advantage of special interfaces (Like CUDA or OpenCL) to run their software on hardware that's better suited to it than a general purpose CPU.

 

[Peter Moretti]

Roy,

[The below is actually NOT correct b/c the process "OLPF compensation" is done out of camera. I confused this with the OLPF filter itself. Very sorry for that.]

I can say that whoever told you that is absolutely wrong as far OLPF is concerned. That is because "OLPF" stands for "Optical Low-Pass Filter." So the OLPF is a light diffusion filter that is positioned inside the camera just in front of the sensor. There is no possible way that a RedRocket card inside a computer can in anyway affect the OLPF.

As for noise reduction, I imagine the RR does whatever is set in RC-X, but I can't say that as emphatically as what I've said above.

 

[Peter Moretti]

...
Its a dedicated processor for debayering and playback of R3D data. It doesn't do anything else.
...

I just want to point out that part of that "playback" is decompression. Debayering is not as processor intensive as decompression is. And FWIU, doing a 1/4 or 1/8 debayer is not so much fater b/c the debayer is less but rather b/c less decompression is involved.

 

[Anders Holck]

OLPF conpensation - basically an unsharp mask - a post process thats better done in a finishing app.

Noise reduction - There is definitely some kind of reduction going on in the processing, but very very subtle - again more coarse reduction is best done in a finishing app.

Again te rocket seems to be purpose built for extracting the perfect frames from R3D files. Further processing like DNR, Sharpening, secondairies is better done on the GPU thru a decent grading app, and not redcine-x.

 

[Frank Cueto]

Roy,

I can say that whoever told you that is absolutely wrong as far OLPF is concerned. That is because "OLPF" stands for "Optical Low-Pass Filter." So the OLPF is a light diffusion filter that is positioned inside the camera just in front of the sensor. There is no possible way that a RedRocket card inside a computer can in anyway affect the OLPF.

As for noise reduction, I imagine the RR does whatever is set in RC-X, but I can't say that as emphatically as what I've said above.

Well, You are technically correct about OLPF, you are forgetting that the red sdk DOES include OLPF compensation. Which in turn give you sharper images.

Same goes for the chroma denoise.

I believe Michael cionni explained how they decided to CPU debayer instead of rocket for precisely that reason.

 

[Peter Moretti]

Wow was I WRONG!

:emote_couch: :blushing: :emote_hanged:

Seriously, I'm very sorry giving out the wrong info. and doing so so vehemently. :frown:

 

[Gunleik Groven]

There's a couple of more nice things about CPU debayer, DRX is my favourite, but I can now emulate it pretty close manually for rocket-renders...

 

[Frank Cueto]

Wow was I WRONG!

:emote_couch: :blushing: :emote_hanged:

Seriously, I'm very sorry giving out the wrong info. and doing so so vehemently. :frown:

Dont worry. That's why we are here.

To share our knowledge and get better.

Oh, I forgot about DRX!

 

[roryhinds]

So its correct in saying the Rocket is not best suited for High Quality Finishing work and you should always do a CPU transcode to get the best possible picture to work with.

I'm sure the Rocket is fine for TV and other delivery formats that don't require the utmost quality but need a fast turnaround.

 

[Frank Cueto]

It is kinda depressing to know that a 5000 dollar card can't do proper finishing. Even worse is that I have two of them. Also, the guys from Filmlight (makers of Baselight) told me about many of their clients feeling the same way about the rocket.

 

[roryhinds]

I guess it does what it does and thats fast turn around low quality transcoding (but still high enough quality for most people) and for Finishing work you're better off having a render farm type system so spend the money on some more CPU's then on the Rocket.

That is certainly where I'm heading, I'd rather have a faster CPU (X5680) then get the Rocket as it doesn't do what I need it to do for my Finishing work.

So does Resolve, Scratch and Filmlight all use the Rocket for interactive work then switch over to the CPU for final rendering/transcoding? Or are people just using the Rocket transcoding as the best they can get without going to CPU processing for optimum quality?

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Rocket is sharp enough demosaic to not need the OLPF compensation in RC-X, indeed, I don't often recommend it's use - it's something best done at the end of the processing chain. Similarly with the NR, which is just chroma BTW, which is quite nice in RC-X (Mike Seymour seems to love it) but again, not a necessary thing as most shots don't need it, and if they do need NR, the NR tools in the finishing software are usually up to the job.

Graeme

 

[Peter Moretti]

Graeme,

I'm sorry, I'm not sure if you are saying that when using a Rocket card the noise reduction settings in RC-X are used or aren't used?

Thanks.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

There's no chroma NR on Rocket.

Graeme

 

[Michael Olsen]

As something of a neophyte, I'd like to try my understanding here...

ROCKET is suited well to being used for the quick production of offline files due to it's realtime ability to transcode RAW into a variety of filetypes from RCX.

High quality finishing work may be done with the online files after editorial when there is more time for the CPU to do its work though whatever finishing app is being used, since the ROCKET will not provide OLPF compensation and/or chroma NR.

Correct?

 

[ericyoung]

Wait, Rocket transcode isn't finishing quality? Since when?

OK, it doesn't have noise reduction or OLPF compensation, but the Debayer is full resolution and potentially useable for cinema quality finish otherwise right?

 

[roryhinds]

I think thats just it Eric, for Cinema Finishing you'll want to do a CPU transcode/debayer to get the optimum quality from your footage which your finishing tool can work with.

 

[Frank Cueto]

Eric, I haven't used it for finishing yet, I have been using it for dailies mostly every day.

That said, I recently had a long chat with people who have tried to use it for finishing, in an environment where every lil bit counts, and they decided that the quality of the debayer isn't exactly the same and that the CPU debayer does look better. They reckon that red might have to skimp out on somethings of the algorithm to get realtime debayering.

Wanna chime in Graeme?

 

[Graeme Nattress]

The Rocket demosaic isn't necessarily better or worse than the software one - they're different. Rocket is sharper naturally, so no need for the OLPF compensation control, but also, a tad noisier. It's a tradeoff, and again, it's designed for hardware realtime, whereas the software one can be more flexible via it's software nature.

Graeme