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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Graphics Card / FCP X / Red Scarlet

C

Cris Cunningham

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Curious for a bit of help. I would like to cut the r3d files as apposed to creating prores files. Time consuming. Is that feasible?

For context, I'm new to Red, bought a scarlet, have FCP 7, & own a 2x2.4 Quad-Core Intel Xeon with 6GB ram (8 slots to fill). Also my graphics card is the ATI Radeon HD 5770. Also, I don't have a boat load of cash, but am willing to spend some to make this happen.

Looking for guidance where to begin.
FCP X? Premiere?
Graphics card upgrade (can't swing for red rocket).
Ram upgrade?

Thanks for any thoughts! Appreciate it!

Cris
 
depending on how long your video is...i like for short form FCPX and you have the right graphics card for it as it's Open CL as apposed to Premier which uses Cuda Cores and then Nvidia is your choice. You just need to invest in more RAM to make it go well. Still going to be slow, but best you can do for cutting R3d's
 
What generation is your Mac? Most likely it's a 2010-current, however you may have CPUs and RAM operating at a bus speed of 1066MHz as opposed to 1333MHz since you have a 2.4GHz 8-core model.

What do you have for hard disks / RAID storage?


FCP 7, while still incredibly popular, is not the greatest editor to use an R3D workflows. You would be much better served to move to Premiere and/ or FCPX. Both are freely available for 30-day trial periods.

More RAM is definitely a must when you move to either of those softwares as they can and will use a lot more.

Your drive speed is critical, you should be working from a decently fast RAID if you can.

Your video card is fine and the video cards don't currently accelerate any R3D related functions. Your video card does accelerate other functions and effects in both FCPX and Premiere. A lot of people recommend nVidia CUDA cards for Premiere, however some non-nVidia cards are supported for acceleration with the latest updates to Premiere 6 and your ATI 5770 is one of those cards. The nVidia CUDA cards provide much better acceleration in Premiere. But they don't work miracles, I wouldn't upgrade the video card at this point, better to fix other bottlenecks first -- RAM and storage.
 
I have a 2011 Imac with 32 gigs of ram installed. I can cut simple 4k projects in FCPX without a problem. Also I enjoy that I can adjust my raw settings in FCPX. It's not perfect but just get more ram. Other World Computing has great deals on ram. Trust me it makes a world of a difference.
 
Also, with FCPX you can have a perfect marriage between the quality of 4K R3D and the fast cutting of Prores:

You just import your R3D clips, tell FCP X to make proxies, and bam, you check on Proxy Playback in your preferences, edit your whole piece in Apple Proxy. When you're ready to export, just check of the Proxy Playback in the preferences, and you have FCP X referencing the original R3D again.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
What generation is your Mac? Most likely it's a 2010-current, however you may have CPUs and RAM operating at a bus speed of 1066MHz as opposed to 1333MHz since you have a 2.4GHz 8-core model... You would be much better served to move to Premiere and/ or FCPX. Both are freely available for 30-day trial periods... I wouldn't upgrade the video card at this point, better to fix other bottlenecks first -- RAM and storage.
Click to expand...

Awesome! I don't know why my mind didn't go toward downloading the trial. Did just that and without changing a thing, I'm able to play / cut natively via FCPX. Thanks for the card advice as well. Will upgrad RAM (you are correct that I'm at 1066) and look into storage. I have about 6TB laying around, but they are Costco purchases (7200 I believe). Any advice on inexpensive RAID options?

Thanks a ton! Already I feel like this is gonna work out!!! FCP 7 was a mortifying experience.
 
Johnny Friday said:
depending on how long your video is...i like for short form FCPX and you have the right graphics card for it as it's Open CL as apposed to Premier which uses Cuda Cores and then Nvidia is your choice. You just need to invest in more RAM to make it go well. Still going to be slow, but best you can do for cutting R3d's
Click to expand...

Thanks Johnny. Curious your thoughts on why don't you like FCPX for long form? What would recommend for long form? Most of what I do is short form, but have a feature film in the works and hope to shoot this summer (whoot! super pumped about it!!)
 
Cris - it's all a matter of taste, the timeline navigation (table of contents sidebar), roles, compound clips, etc all make long form editing in fcpx very nice.

And - I have much lower spec-d mac pros cutting native r3ds in fcp x.

And here is an unknown tidbit - With scarlet footage the prores proxies are BIGGER than the r3ds. So... It is more about CPU speed than disk speed. (Any 2tb or larger drive can easily sustain Scarlet r3d data rates). In fact, any laptop drive can do it too.

The ability to cut r3ds really changes the game from relying heavily on storage throughput to relying heavily on CPU throughput. Just get more Ram.

Pro tip that I keep recommending - Don't waste your time making proxies. If you really need to edit something with native prores speed, just drop those clips into the timeline and render them (control-R) FCP X will use the rendered prores files. Much faster than making proxies for a ton of footage you may never need.

Additionally, make RMD files in red cine x with your clips before importing into FCP X. If you do this, FCP X will link to the original RMD files making it easier for you to open up red cine, change the raw decoding grade, and immediately see a change in FCP x.

Have fun. Spend some time learning the trim (T) tool.
 
I've found after loading up a timeline full of R3d's & then drop various layers of effects....you then see how it bogs down...Well, maybe i should speak for myself...add to that complicated effects like neat video noise reduction....It seems to me FCPX is not utilizing my rocket card as well as Premier.....I can easily do 3minute vids in FCPX....well, as long as not big effects AND keep in mind, i'm not optimized since i have an NVIDIA card. but my Retina notebook is fine....again, get into 50mins and i see huge differences in FCPX and Premier.
 
I sure appreciate all the response on this. I'm cutting a project in FCP 7, then going to purchase FCP X, I"m thinking. I have another project on my Scarlet coming up so I'll gain ample experience soon enough. I've been toying around with the stabilization effect in FCP X and it's pretty smart, I'm learning. I've been flying a gopro on a small quadcopter and it really smooths things out. Now to deal with the jello effect! That's yet another story.

Thanks yal.

c
 
The Warp stabilizer in AE or Premiere is the bomb. I wish FCP had that.

Cris Cunningham said:
I sure appreciate all the response on this. I'm cutting a project in FCP 7, then going to purchase FCP X, I"m thinking. I have another project on my Scarlet coming up so I'll gain ample experience soon enough. I've been toying around with the stabilization effect in FCP X and it's pretty smart, I'm learning. I've been flying a gopro on a small quadcopter and it really smooths things out. Now to deal with the jello effect! That's yet another story.

Thanks yal.

c
Click to expand...
 
ignacio guzman said:
Other World Computing has great deals on ram. Trust me it makes a world of a difference.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the recommendation. Just dropped for 16gb (2x8gb) to start with. That'll put me at 22gb total now. Again, thanks. Seemed decent pricing!
 
In case you missed it - FCP X has a stabilizer for rolling shutter that is separate from the "camera shake" stabilizer.
 
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