Can Red Rockets be replaced?

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Hi

I have been searching the forum for an answer but haven't found anything conclusive, so I hope this is the right place to ask.

On set, is there an alternative to the Red Rocket (or two of them), for debayering 5K? E.g., via a better CPU or GPU or I/O Card, etc.

The reason I'm asking is, I'm finding many new DIT cards without Red Rockets on board. Is that for budget reasons or has there been advancements in computer components that makes the Rocket obsolete?

If this has been answered already, I would be grateful if anyone pointed out the link. Am looking for real world advice or case studies. Thanks a lot!

 

[Michael Lindsay]

Interesting question...

Other DIT experts will jump in ....but from my research the only 'cheap' satisfactory route is 'with' a red rocket... There are some premium Daily systems that don't seem to use red rockets but they are not cheap. (I may be wrong as pricing is confusing)...

I also believe it is all in Reds hands how onset processing will go this year.. The data implications of 6k are not trivial. A cheap RR system will do about 28fps (4k) 22fps (5k) at the moment. If you want, as I always do, high quality editorial files at the end of each day I might be struggling with our current tools once I start shooting 6k.

Interested to hear from Red on this but suspect it wont be for a few months...

Michael

 

[Andrew clemson]

I guess it depends on your work. over 75% of my freelance work is on the Alexa, where the rocket is dead weight. Hence why I don't own one personally.

When I need one, I borrow one.

 

[Tom.Wong]

Andrew kind of hit it on the head on that one...

rocket card is about 5 grand brand new... my waveform scope was 5,500, and I use it on every shoot I'm on. It's all about the economics of what some DIT's is needed on their day in and day out work. Some DIT's don't transcode on every job, nor do they shoot RED on every job, so the decision to subrent a rocket when it's needed can sometimes be more economical. The other flip of the coin is the past failure rate of rockets. Hard to choke down a 5k investment, to replace it so relatively frequently for 3 grand when it's out of warranty. part of the beast i guess.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

A current dual-Xeon box with E5-2687W or E5-2690 CPUs essentially makes the Rocket obsolete. If you're mostly doing transcodes or generating dailies, the Rocket isn't going to offer anything on these newer more powerful workstations. Even a current model 12-core Mac Pro, which is the previous generation of Xeon CPU, and other PC workstations like it, also essentially negate the Rocket. Or do for sure in most practical applications. The Rocket is half the cost of a hot-rod HP Z820 workstation with dual 2687W CPUs, unless you're lucky enough to score a battle tested one. Even then, it's 30% of the cost of one of those workstations. Most DIT's out there are also working on gigs shooting ALEXA or Canon or Sony cameras too. The Rocket is dead weight in those situations, as Andrew already pointed out. I would much rather spend that $3~5K on better and faster RAID storage and more RAM in my workstation, than on a hardware accelerator card that is nearing obsolescence.

I own two Rocket cards myself... One in a Z820 workstation and it gets used regularly for all my final rendering. The other is in a Mac Pro, but doesn't see as much use these days, it's really more of a spare than anything else. I figured that when the next iteration of Ivy Bridge Xeons drop here in a few months and with their lower thermal profile and 22nm architecture, we'll be able to overclock them much more than the current batch of Xeons. 1866MHz RAM will be standard for DDR3 RDIMMs on these systems too. The Rocket will just be in the way, I'll probably sell both of my Rocket cards -- if they're both still operational. I've had both for some time, the one I use most was one of the first that RED ever shipped. No problems yet <knock wood>. If it dies, I have the spare. If they both die, I doubt I will replace. I would actually put both of them in the same Z820 workstation, if i had the slots for it.

I do hope that RED is investigating the newer GPU and compute card options out there. Seems to me that Intel's MIC (Xeon Phi) is a good fit for the wavelet decompression and could be a great option for replacing the Rocket card and will offer more scalability at a lower cost as it evolves over time.

 

[joe hedge]

Hi

I have been searching the forum for an answer but haven't found anything conclusive, so I hope this is the right place to ask.

On set, is there an alternative to the Red Rocket (or two of them), for debayering 5K? E.g., via a better CPU or GPU or I/O Card, etc.

The reason I'm asking is, I'm finding many new DIT cards without Red Rockets on board. Is that for budget reasons or has there been advancements in computer components that makes the Rocket obsolete?

If this has been answered already, I would be grateful if anyone pointed out the link. Am looking for real world advice or case studies. Thanks a lot!

I get 18 frames a second with 4K footage, and 12 FPS at 5K, on a current 8-core MacPro running Resolve with an nVidia Quadro 4000 (half-res debayer)

Goes faster or slower depending on in-camera compression ( figures quoted above are based on 5:1) and whether quadHD aspect is used, or 2:1/FF (those last 2 mean slower transcodes if you're going out to 1080).

Also bear in mind that transcoding will slow down if you're downloading the RedMags and/or playing back the transcodes at the same time, depending on how much drive bandwidth you're working with

Without a RR, Resolve is much faster than RCX - and it's just as free as RCX is - of course you still have tp spring for the nVidia card...

I've had 3 RR cards go belly up, don't really trust them any more

 

[Gabriele Turchi]

A current dual-Xeon box with E5-2687W or E5-2690 CPUs essentially makes the Rocket obsolete. If you're mostly doing transcodes or generating dailies, the Rocket isn't going to offer anything on these newer more powerful workstations. Even a current model 12-core Mac Pro, which is the previous generation of Xeon CPU, and other PC workstations like it, also essentially negate the Rocket.

Jeff ,
using what application ? maybe adobe ? because i don't think that RCXpro would be realtime @ half res for 5K or 4K files ...

g

 

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

I also believe it is all in Reds hands how onset processing will go this year.. The data implications of 6k are not trivial. A cheap RR system will do about 28fps (4k) 22fps (5k) at the moment. If you want, as I always do, high quality editorial files at the end of each day I might be struggling with our current tools once I start shooting 6k.

Interested to hear from Red on this but suspect it wont be for a few months...

Michael

Yes, that's a very important consideration. Could it be that the Meizler module is intended to negate the need for onset processing?

 

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

I guess it depends on your work. over 75% of my freelance work is on the Alexa, where the rocket is dead weight. Hence why I don't own one personally.

When I need one, I borrow one.

The Alexa is gaining momentum by the second here, in my country, too.

By the way, Andrew, it's been a couple of years since I've been to Dubai. How's it like nowadays? Same old?

 

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

A current dual-Xeon box with E5-2687W or E5-2690 CPUs essentially makes the Rocket obsolete. If you're mostly doing transcodes or generating dailies, the Rocket isn't going to offer anything on these newer more powerful workstations. Even a current model 12-core Mac Pro, which is the previous generation of Xeon CPU, and other PC workstations like it, also essentially negate the Rocket. Or do for sure in most practical applications.

Thanks, Jeff. That's exactly the advice I was looking for. A clarification: Would a dual-Xeon replace two Red Rockets or just one?

I do hope that RED is investigating the newer GPU and compute card options out there. Seems to me that Intel's MIC (Xeon Phi) is a good fit for the wavelet decompression and could be a great option for replacing the Rocket card and will offer more scalability at a lower cost as it evolves over time.

Are there any current GPU cards that come close? Like the Tesla for instance?

Along with the Meizler module, will a dual-Xeon box cover all on-set 'real-time' scenarios? I guess all said and done it still is a question of money.

 

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

I get 18 frames a second with 4K footage, and 12 FPS at 5K, on a current 8-core MacPro running Resolve with an nVidia Quadro 4000 (half-res debayer)

Yes, that's exactly what I've been hearing, too.

Without a RR, Resolve is much faster than RCX - and it's just as free as RCX is - of course you still have tp spring for the nVidia card...

I've had 3 RR cards go belly up, don't really trust them any more

Ah, only three? Now I'm definitely not getting one, Joe!

Would you say a dual-Xeon with a Quadro would significantly improve debayering, possibly to the point of 5K FF 3:1 at 24p? On a Resolve, that is.

 

[joe hedge]

Would you say a dual-Xeon with a Quadro would significantly improve debayering, possibly to the point of 5K FF 3:1 at 24p? On a Resolve, that is.

Don't know, but it's a safe bet, based on what Jeff has posted

Another thing I've read on this site about full-res debayeing is that it isn't as "sharp" as half-res, because of full-res being intended for final output, during which the final de-noising and sharpening pass occurs, so it's left a little soft

Therefore dailies actually look better (barring noise issues) when rendered out at half-res

If this is an old wive's tale though, leftover from the Red One days, I will gladly be disabused of this scurrilous notion

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

ASICs to the rescue

ASICs to the rescue

Recent test using an older Golbalstor Extreme-DI system single Xeon CPU, one Rocket, AMD Radeon 7970 GPU out via HDMI to a Sony VPL-ES1000 4K projector with 4KHD 5:1 footage, full decode was just a hair shy of keeping up with 23.98fps playback - every few seconds there would be a slight hitch, but very watchable and reviewing takes in 4K minutes after shooting was hella cool.

Hard to recommend the Rocket at this stage as an investment, but if you can ROI it quickly on a bigger gig then go for it.

I think we are all expecting better options before the end of 2013 either through ASICs from RED, or one of the newer CPU/GPU hybrids like Jeff referred to. Even if Ivy Bridge CPUs did manage to handle 4K full decodes in real time it's unlikely they could handle 6K at better than 12fps since its brute force math. My bet is on ASICs from RED on PCIe 3.0 in a second gen Rocket, but that's only a guess.

Cheers - #19

 

[Tom.Wong]

A current dual-Xeon box with E5-2687W or E5-2690 CPUs essentially makes the Rocket obsolete. If you're mostly doing transcodes or generating dailies, the Rocket isn't going to offer anything on these newer more powerful workstations. Even a current model 12-core Mac Pro, which is the previous generation of Xeon CPU, and other PC workstations like it, also essentially negate the Rocket. Or do for sure in most practical applications. The Rocket is half the cost of a hot-rod HP Z820 workstation with dual 2687W CPUs, unless you're lucky enough to score a battle tested one. Even then, it's 30% of the cost of one of those workstations. Most DIT's out there are also working on gigs shooting ALEXA or Canon or Sony cameras too. The Rocket is dead weight in those situations, as Andrew already pointed out. I would much rather spend that $3~5K on better and faster RAID storage and more RAM in my workstation, than on a hardware accelerator card that is nearing obsolescence.

I own two Rocket cards myself... One in a Z820 workstation and it gets used regularly for all my final rendering. The other is in a Mac Pro, but doesn't see as much use these days, it's really more of a spare than anything else. I figured that when the next iteration of Ivy Bridge Xeons drop here in a few months and with their lower thermal profile and 22nm architecture, we'll be able to overclock them much more than the current batch of Xeons. 1866MHz RAM will be standard for DDR3 RDIMMs on these systems too. The Rocket will just be in the way, I'll probably sell both of my Rocket cards -- if they're both still operational. I've had both for some time, the one I use most was one of the first that RED ever shipped. No problems yet <knock wood>. If it dies, I have the spare. If they both die, I doubt I will replace. I would actually put both of them in the same Z820 workstation, if i had the slots for it.

I do hope that RED is investigating the newer GPU and compute card options out there. Seems to me that Intel's MIC (Xeon Phi) is a good fit for the wavelet decompression and could be a great option for replacing the Rocket card and will offer more scalability at a lower cost as it evolves over time.

Jeff what kind of FPS are you seeing off full debayer 5k with the latest dual xeon cpu's?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Jeff ,
using what application ? maybe adobe ? because i don't think that RCXpro would be realtime @ half res for 5K or 4K files ...

Premiere mostly and Resolve does well too. RCX is, unfortunately, optimized for the Rocket and is not highly multi-threaded. It's pretty much a dog without the Rocket if you try to run at higher resolution or quality settings.

Thanks, Jeff. That's exactly the advice I was looking for. A clarification: Would a dual-Xeon replace two Red Rockets or just one?

The software and how the R3D support is implemented plays a huge role here. But I think a current 16-core (32 thread) dual Xeon system, especially the faster models I've mentioned, are capable of what a single Rocket can do as well as some extra. They're not a replacement for two Rockets yet, but one also has to consider that two Rockets is a $10K USD purchase. We can build render node purposed PC's with as much power (or more) as a RED Rocket for about the same money as a Rocket and they can do more than service R3D files.

Are there any current GPU cards that come close? Like the Tesla for instance?

In terms of dual precision GFLOPs, the Kepler architecture Tesla K20X should be very comparable. But it's designed a bit differently and may not be as directly applicable to wavelet decoding. I do think both the new nVidia Kepler architecture and the Intel MIC have a lot to offer here and hopefully RED is exploring these options.

Along with the Meizler module, will a dual-Xeon box cover all on-set 'real-time' scenarios? I guess all said and done it still is a question of money.

I don't know, it's hard to say. It seems that every time I think I have all the possible scenarios covered, someone throws me a curve ball and I have to come up with some new solution. These days, I'm not doing much DIT work. And for my own projects, I'm wanting more mobile and less intrusive / expensive solutions on set. A dual Xeon 16-core mega-workstation is great to have, but something like my Z820 is a $10K box just for the tower, not including the Rocket card, not including monitor(s), BMD card, etc... Actually is was just shy of $10K before adding the Quadro GPU!

I think the crux of it all right now is that there are CPU solutions that can replace the Rocket, but they're not any cheaper at the moment. Price is almost parallel between the Rocket and equivalently capable CPU solutions, the Rocket has some advantages in that it can be adapted to work with laptops or more compact systems via Thunderbolt. Or it can be installed in one of the highly capable workstations and still offer a nice boost to a system that could perform the same task without it. Almost like doubling up, in some regards. Which can be an advantage -- RCX / REDLINE can be using the Rocket and batching out transcodes in realtime while we're also playing through R3Ds natively, piecing together dailies or even rough cuts right there on set. All on the same system. The down side is that system on which we're doing that sort of thing is an expensive monster. Dual E5-2687W CPUs, 256GB RAM, dual REDMAG SSD readers, internal RAID-0 (450MB/s sustained), external RAID-5 (900MB/s sustained), Quadro 6000 GPU, Rocket card, etc... That Z820 workstation setup with all the trimmings is pushing close to $25K by the time we factor in everything including the dual 30" LCD's, 50" plasma, etc...

Sure, you can assemble a system that will be as capable as a cheap PC with a Rocket installed. It's not going to save you any money. Just a different approach at this point. I probably won't buy another Rocket, as I said above. Each time new CPUs hit the market, it chips away at the Rocket's advantage. A couple more generations of CPUs and a $1K PC will out-do the current Rocket card. Hopefully by then the Rocket is either a lot cheaper or will have been replaced by something else. Even if the current Rocket card is still available, it will be a good option if the price is right, more processing power, in whatever form, is usually a good thing.

 

[Rob Anderson]

A current dual-Xeon box with E5-2687W or E5-2690 CPUs essentially makes the Rocket obsolete. If you're mostly doing transcodes or generating dailies, the Rocket isn't going to offer anything on these newer more powerful workstations. Even a current model 12-core Mac Pro, which is the previous generation of Xeon CPU, and other PC workstations like it, also essentially negate the Rocket.

Jeff, I think your insight on this forum is always top-notch, but I've got to strongly disagree with you there. I've got a shop with 2 of the very latest, top-end, 2012 12-core Mac Pros (64 GB RAM each), running on a RAID 0 SSD configuration for data, SSD for applications, and another SSD for the OS. Inside the box we've got Radeon HD 7970 GHz Editions and one RED Rocket card for each.

We get 5K FULL quality, real-time playback with a single Rocket in each of those boxes. Without the Rocket installed (or enabled), we cannot playback 5K FULL quality footage in real-time. We get 1 second bursts with approximately 7 seconds of wait. We can't even pull 1/2 quality real-time playback with 5K footage. It's only when we dip down to 1/4 that we get real-time footage and even then, we usually have to wait for a few seconds of debayering for every 10 seconds of footage.

There's no question, having that Rocket card gives us awesome bang for the buck and I wouldn't want to be stuck shooting and processing R3D footage without it.

That said, the step up to these 2012 Mac Pro's did cut down on our costs. A lot. We had 3x Rockets running in a 2009 Mac Pro for the same performance and we got huge bumps in performance when we upgraded to Retina Macbook Pros. 1/4 real-time playback is very nice when running mobile DIT. In that scenario, we dumped the need for a Rocket card on-station completely. But for work in the shop, we absolutely wanted FULL quality playback. We're very pleased with what we're getting now.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Rob, in retrospect I worded that statement poorly, the one you quoted. The Rocket does offer something to any system, even a system powerful enough to do 5K realtime playback without it. See my post just above yours.

As for what you're describing with the Mac Pro, 1 second burst followed by 7-10 seconds of recovery, what app are you seeing that in? You should have better results than that in Premiere. In RC-X that sounds about right, but the recovery between bursts should actually be longer than 7 seconds. RC-X is heavily optimized for the Rocket and does rather poorly without it. For playback there's a lot of things going on that can have an effect on performance. And it can get very system specific.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Jeff what kind of FPS are you seeing off full debayer 5k with the latest dual xeon cpu's?

I'll get you a better answer to this shortly. I haven't profiled it with the latest CS6 and Resolve updates. 24fps isn't a problem, 30fps should be just fine. I doubt I'll get 50 or 60 Hz, but I'll try it and see where it breaks.

 

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Dual E5-2687W CPUs, 256GB RAM, dual REDMAG SSD readers, internal RAID-0 (450MB/s sustained), external RAID-5 (900MB/s sustained), Quadro 6000 GPU, Rocket card, etc... That Z820 workstation setup with all the trimmings is pushing close to $25K by the time we factor in everything including the dual 30" LCD's, 50" plasma, etc...

Are you sure this is one computer, or five? Just kidding. Thank you for the detailed answer. It is extremely helpful.

I am going to stick to your advice and aim for dual Xeons, and I can always add a Rocket if it comes to that. Thanks again, Jeff.

 

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Recent test using an older Golbalstor Extreme-DI system single Xeon CPU, one Rocket, AMD Radeon 7970 GPU out via HDMI to a Sony VPL-ES1000 4K projector with 4KHD 5:1 footage, full decode was just a hair shy of keeping up with 23.98fps playback - every few seconds there would be a slight hitch, but very watchable and reviewing takes in 4K minutes after shooting was hella cool.

Hard to recommend the Rocket at this stage as an investment, but if you can ROI it quickly on a bigger gig then go for it.

I think we are all expecting better options before the end of 2013 either through ASICs from RED, or one of the newer CPU/GPU hybrids like Jeff referred to. Even if Ivy Bridge CPUs did manage to handle 4K full decodes in real time it's unlikely they could handle 6K at better than 12fps since its brute force math. My bet is on ASICs from RED on PCIe 3.0 in a second gen Rocket, but that's only a guess.

Cheers - #19

Thank you, Blair. I guess the writing is on the wall for me.