MX/RED Rocket™ Upgrade Poll

[Rick Darge]

What are you cats doing with your hard earned money?

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

Rocket Bundle. BEST VALUE $8750- 1250 Trade In Allow - 4500 MX= $3000 for RR CARD!

Waiting on Rental return, then sending our R1 via Rocket to RED HQ, ASAP for surgery

 

[Andrew Walker]

I would have liked to get the Rocket card but I really didn't need it. Rendering gives me time to watch a movie or play some Xbox.:smile5:

 

[Kwan Khan]

I would love to have both power,
but if my budget = unapproved, then MX will be 1st choice
and Render time = play starcraft

 

[Ryan E. Walters]

Going for both (As long as my budget will swing it when my number is called.) - after working with the Card at Tim's studio (Indent) I could clearly see the benefit of having it available for instant dailies as well as for the transcoding. Very impressive stuff!

 

[Karl H]

I'll prob wait for Epic as I don't need 2 cameras. I may change my mind if I can make the money back on rentals between now and it's release.

With the Adobe mercury playback engine on the horizon, this points to 4K GPU playback of red footage in apps in the near future. Surely Apple will not let Adobe leapfrog them for long. Having said that Red have enough on their hands and I doubt it'll be priority to implement GPU acceleration in any of their own apps, especially as you can buy the rocket.

Again it's a question of can you make money from it until then, I think I can wait. Realtime GPU playback of redcode within Prem/FCP is one of the key things that will make the workflow become useable. Once this happens and you can edit redcode like DV, it's adoption will increase (IMO of course). The market for a fixed Scarlet is one more suited to corporate/event/prosumer crowd where this technology is crucial to it's user base.

 

[Nils Ruinet]

Waiting for the Epic.
If I want a second camera, I'll get a Scarlet.
But I'll probably also get a Red Rocket at some point.

 

[J Davis]

Budget wise the RED Rocket is expensive which is why I propose the debayer module
if it doesn't need to interface with a computer can it be cheaper?
$1000 would be nice

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=40956

 

[Stacey Spears]

I own a RR and I am waiting for EPIC.

 

[Jordan Livingston]

When data rates go up (RC-100) EVERY production is going to NEED the REDRocket, no question. For camera-owner-indies, this is a no brainer. For rental houses and boutique shops, I foresee "overnight dallies" becoming a new revenue stream...

Too bad for me (I offer that service!) but as we all know by now, you can't stop [RED] progress, and more ubiquity means we'll all compete based on on value-added-service and professional experience, not just our toys.

So, blast off people - REDRockets for all! ;-)

- Jordan

 

[Karl H]

When data rates go up (RC-100) EVERY production is going to NEED the REDRocket, no question. For camera-owner-indies, this is a no brainer. For rental houses and boutique shops, I foresee "overnight dallies" becoming a new revenue stream...

Too bad for me (I offer that service!) but as we all know by now, you can't stop [RED] progress, and more ubiquity means we'll all compete based on on value-added-service and professional experience, not just our toys.

So, blast off people - REDRockets for all! ;-)

- Jordan

Hey Jordan, won't it be the other way round? at the moment redcode is heavily compressed at 36MB/sec. if the data rate goes up, the compression is less and therefore cpu power needed to decode is also less. In theory. So Recode 100 should play back smoother than it does now.

Also as I said earlier, GPU acceleration as implemented by Adobe/Nvidia may bypass the need for rocket altogether withinin the next 6 months (or when cs5 is released)

If this technology is implemented in FCP along with other editing apps, dailies will be a thing of the past. What people really want is realtime editing/decoding like DV; and I believe this is an important step for the Red workflow to take for greater market penetration. With the GPU tech on the horizon, no-one will pay for red processing in the near future. What would be nice would be to have redcine type control within the editor so you can grade on the fly.

 

[Jordan Livingston]

Hey Jordan, won't it be the other way round? at the moment redcode is heavily compressed at 36MB/sec. if the data rate goes up, the compression is less and cpu power needed to decode less. In theory. So Recode 100 should play back smoother than it does now.

You have a great argument there, and I believe you are correct, in theory. But my understanding is that more data volume = more processing power needed at the end of the day.

On my system, I've clocked RC-28, RC-36, and RC-42, and noticed no discernible difference in transcode times. My understanding is that the debayering process itself is independent of compression quality; and bigger files simply mean longer processing times, because of the interaction between the disc and CPU, etc. Please feel free to correct me if I have this wrong...

Also as I said earlier, GPU acceleration as implemented by adobe may bypass the need for rocket altogether withinin the next 6 months (or when cs5 is released)

I personally doubt it, because my understanding is that the R3D codec is closed-source; third party vendors can't implement it except through REDLine, which looks to the REDRocket for it's hardware acceleration. You can throw more cores and more GPUs at debayering in general, but I doubt a third party product is going to address R3Ds at the hardware level in realtime.

- Jordan

 

[Karl H]

Hi Jordan,

Yes, that does seem logical. If the de-bayer is the stumbling block, and not the compression itself then we may see no-little speed increase from redcode 100. I guess only the Red team know the answer to this.

Adobe are already demoing realtime 4K playback from r3d files with an nvidia card (check out the adobe forum for demos of it working. Infact they are keying 4K debayered footage in realtime from native r3d files). The tech should be available in CS5. So I think this would temper my enthusiasm for a RR.

However it does not seem like they have access to the same level of control as Redcine (I think, it just imports with the camera metadata). A way to go, but interesting times.

 

[Jordan Livingston]

Hi Jordan,
Adobe are already demoing realtime 4K playback from r3d files with an nvidia card (check out the adobe forum for demos of it working. Infact they are keying 4K debayered footage in realtime from native r3d files). The tech should be available in CS5. So I think this would temper my enthusiasm for a RR.

I could be wrong, but I think they are using REDLine architecture, addressing a REDRocket card in the system (like Assimilate does with Scratch). Or perhaps they wrote their own debayer algorithms for nVidia, in which case it would be fascinating to see which does a better job at the debayer (better isn't just faster either; it's also a matter of sharpness and accuracy, as the Apple debayer codec will [sadly] demonstrate). Or perhaps Adobe's in bed with RED more than I previously realized...

However it does not seem like they have access to the same level of control as Redcine (I think, it just imports with the camera metadata). A way to go, but interesting times.

This would indeed seem to suggest that they are NOT using REDLine / RR; that they ARE using their own custom programming. It will be VERY interesting to compare their output head to head with REDRocket output.

- Jordan

 

[Karl H]

This would indeed seem to suggest that they are NOT using REDLine / RR; that they ARE using their own custom programming. It will be VERY interesting to compare their output head to head with REDRocket output.

- Jordan

Sounds about right as the engine is not for Red only but for accelerating any complicated format on the timeline such as AVCHD. Effects are realtime too, as are 3D transitions and transformed clips.

I'd love to know if you can export red 4K using the media encoder to a selected file format, faster than realtime.

 

[Santiago Marti]

I personally doubt it, because my understanding is that the R3D codec is closed-source; third party vendors can't implement it except through REDLine, which looks to the REDRocket for it's hardware acceleration. You can throw more cores and more GPUs at debayering in general, but I doubt a third party product is going to address R3Ds at the hardware level in realtime.

- Jordan[/QUOTE]

Don't be so sure about that. Besides, if you can edit in realtime native material with lots of effects, why would you need the transcoding stage? The rocket is great for 4K output. Otherwise, a 400$ gtx 285 or a 1500$ quadro 4800 will give you plenty of realtime horsepower and fast render exports to any format. I am also on the pc side, quadro cx and a dreamcolor monitor, so to use the rocket means a lot of trouble, loosing my 10bit display port and putting a lot of money for something i am doing now.

 

[Rick Darge]

Really? You can get realltime 4k renders using a Quadro???

Can someone else back this up?

 

[Santiago Marti]

Lets wait till CS5 comes out and then we can start benchmarking different video cards. I said fast render exports and realtime playback, yes. Personally, i can't afford assimilate's scratch, so, on the pc side there won't be much support than that for the rocket. hopefully i am wrong but i don't see any software supporting the great rocket. I do love the new redcine-x, but if i will be using PPRO the rcoket is useless for now. If you plan to make a business transcoding, then the rocket is the best option now. Whem CS5 is out, it will be really cool to benchmark transcoding times rendering with CUDA enabled. As said before, if you have a 4K projector or monitor, Redrocket is a must. For me, my Quadro CX and CS5 make a great bundle for now.

 

[Karl H]

Im not sure about transcode times. You see editing r3d in realtime and they claim this is 4K playback. You might assume if it can playback 4K in realtime it could export in realtime too, but the realtime playback may not be a full debayer. So we'll have to wait for more information.

Whether it's rocket speeds I do not know.

 

[Jeremy Torrie]

So 3 out of 4 are getting the upgrade...out of 7,000+ cameras that's roughly 5,500 cameras...if they are realistically servicing 500/month that will be next Xmas before they do all the upgrades and make Stage 2 a reality after that.

Early adopters have a nice cushion with which to make their money back from the upgrade cost before Epic, even though Jim wants it by this summer...