MacPro better performance?

[Chris Vrakotas]

Hi,
I'm using a 8-core MacPro with 5GB Ram and 1,5 TB HD (besides Macintosh HD).
I need to boost the performance for Redcine renderings. I suppose I have to add more Ram, up to 16 or maybe 32 GB.
I'm thinking also to add another external HD, so I'll have my R3D material to one Hd and the render destination to another HD. The external HD has to be Raid? Does this helps?
If a set up a render farm with PCs, will the Redcine take advantage of it?

Chris

 

[Uli Plank]

Clipfinder beta for the Mac has a feature called PMDR (poor man's distributed rendering) – give it a try.

 

[Kaku Ito]

As Uli mentioned Clipfinder, Monkey Extract or REDrushes use more CPU power upon rendering, thus the rendering time will be shorter. REDCINE's rendering process is the bottleneck so rendering to the faster drives will help a bit but not a lot. Rendering to faster drive will help to playback later when you comfort that in to FCP or such though.

Clipfinder pretty much gives you everything you need to process your R3D clips.
If you are not working with native workflow with FCP and Color, then edit in FCP, save the timeline as XML, then read the XML in the clipfinder so clipfinder could only render out what you have used in the edit. You could use the "edit look" in the Clipfider with each clips to edit the look of each clips then RSX (edited meta data) gets created automatically, and you can set in the rendering section to use the RSX setting of each clips to render with that look.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Clipfinder and RedRushes are going to give the best render performance on your system. RedCine isn't too bad though and currently the color grading / color profiles are incompatible between the different software tools. There are a lot of applications where RedCine is the superior app -- it's the better grading tool vs. Red Alert.

As for increasing the performance of that Mac Pro, more RAM will help to some extent. RedCine and the other RED tools are all 32bit software, so the apps can't see or use more than about 3.5GB of total RAM anyway. However, 5GB in a Mac Pro is a bit on the light side and if you try to continuously load and work with multiple applications -- RedAlert, Photoshop, RedRushes in the background, etc.. It all adds up.

In an 8-core Mac Pro that runs mostly 32bit software, 8GB is a decent amount of RAM, 12 or 16 is even better, but more than 16GB is overkill.

Take a look at hard drive performance. This is going to be a real bottleneck if you only have a system drive (what is your primary Mac HD?) and an additional 1.5TB HDD. Is that 1.5TB drive internal or if external, how is it connected? I've seen lots of similar systems where the collective read/write performance of the drive(s) being used is the biggest obstruction.

If that 1.5TB drive is internal, I recommend adding two more just like it and making a RAID-0 striped array. That will give you about 260MB/s sustained. Just be sure you have a good data backup system in place because if one drive fails, you lose the data on all three as they are collectively striped together for performance.

Do that and and add some more RAM and you should be good to go. If it's still not as fast as you would like, then it's time to look at adding another system or something more powerful.

 

[Chris Vrakotas]

As Uli mentioned Clipfinder, Monkey Extract or REDrushes use more CPU power upon rendering, thus the rendering time will be shorter. REDCINE's rendering process is the bottleneck so rendering to the faster drives will help a bit but not a lot. Rendering to faster drive will help to playback later when you comfort that in to FCP or such though.

Clipfinder pretty much gives you everything you need to process your R3D clips.
If you are not working with native workflow with FCP and Color, then edit in FCP, save the timeline as XML, then read the XML in the clipfinder so clipfinder could only render out what you have used in the edit. You could use the "edit look" in the Clipfider with each clips to edit the look of each clips then RSX (edited meta data) gets created automatically, and you can set in the rendering section to use the RSX setting of each clips to render with that look.

The workflow for a TV commercial is the following:
1. Shooting in 4K
2. The director chooses the useful material
3. Color Grading in Redcine
3. Render 2K output from Redcine
4. The director takes the material for Editing. ( to another facility, or he can continue to my facility)

Maybe I'm wrong but I don't see how Clipfinder can help.

Pls can you explain what is RSX?

 

[Chris Vrakotas]

... If it's still not as fast as you would like, then it's time to look at adding another system or something more powerful.

You mean another MacPro?
Or something else? Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks
Chris

 

[Kaku Ito]

Clipfinder will be faster to render than REDCINE, so that is the gain here.

RSX is the color metadata preset that gets saved when you adjust the ISO, exposure, colorspace, gamma space, RGB balance and so on. The adjustment you can make in REDAlert!, that gets saved as RSX, the Clipfinder's "edit look" function works the same way.

Nothing wrong with using REDCINE if like that sytle, but I went through the route before but now I prefer using Clipfinder in many situation. If REDCINE can generate RSX, I'd use REDCINE more to do one light grading since Matrox MXO can output REDCINE screen to master monitor pretty accurate.

Clipfinder advantages:
1. render faster
2. works with FCP XML directly
3. copy R3D easily from XML in case you need to
4. offer poor man's render farm

Disadvantage
1. the operation in edit look is sluggish comparing to REDCINE which uses GPU for color adjusting
2. doesn't have a timeline

 

[Chris Vrakotas]

Clipfinder will be faster to render than REDCINE, so that is the gain here.

RSX is the color metadata preset that gets saved when you adjust the ISO, exposure, colorspace, gamma space, RGB balance and so on. The adjustment you can make in REDAlert!, that gets saved as RSX, the Clipfinder's "edit look" function works the same way.

Nothing wrong with using REDCINE if like that sytle, but I went through the route before but now I prefer using Clipfinder in many situation. If REDCINE can generate RSX, I'd use REDCINE more to do one light grading since Matrox MXO can output REDCINE screen to master monitor pretty accurate.

Clipfinder advantages:
1. render faster
2. works with FCP XML directly
3. copy R3D easily from XML in case you need to
4. offer poor man's render farm

Disadvantage
1. the operation in edit look is sluggish comparing to REDCINE which uses GPU for color adjusting
2. doesn't have a timeline

Thanks for the info about RSX. The main advantage of Redcine is that you can color grade on a timeline, when the shootings are finished, and you don't have to wait for any conversion. And of course, Redcine's color grading is fine for many tv commercials.

 

[Chris Vrakotas]

Clipfinder and RedRushes are going to give the best render performance on your system. RedCine isn't too bad though and currently the color grading / color profiles are incompatible between the different software tools. There are a lot of applications where RedCine is the superior app -- it's the better grading tool vs. Red Alert.

As for increasing the performance of that Mac Pro, more RAM will help to some extent. RedCine and the other RED tools are all 32bit software, so the apps can't see or use more than about 3.5GB of total RAM anyway. However, 5GB in a Mac Pro is a bit on the light side and if you try to continuously load and work with multiple applications -- RedAlert, Photoshop, RedRushes in the background, etc.. It all adds up.

In an 8-core Mac Pro that runs mostly 32bit software, 8GB is a decent amount of RAM, 12 or 16 is even better, but more than 16GB is overkill.

Take a look at hard drive performance. This is going to be a real bottleneck if you only have a system drive (what is your primary Mac HD?) and an additional 1.5TB HDD. Is that 1.5TB drive internal or if external, how is it connected? I've seen lots of similar systems where the collective read/write performance of the drive(s) being used is the biggest obstruction.

If that 1.5TB drive is internal, I recommend adding two more just like it and making a RAID-0 striped array. That will give you about 260MB/s sustained. Just be sure you have a good data backup system in place because if one drive fails, you lose the data on all three as they are collectively striped together for performance.

Do that and and add some more RAM and you should be good to go. If it's still not as fast as you would like, then it's time to look at adding another system or something more powerful.

I've read in a post (I don't remember which one) that Redcine uses GPU for the renderings. If so, a better graphics card will give better render times??

 

[sebastian toro]

Calibration

Calibration

Hi Kaku, i agree clipfinder is a nice nice tool. Help a lot for on set work with the r3d files and also for postproduction at the studio.

I am a bit stucked with the monitoring calibration on MAC. You can notice that the QT window of CLIPFINDER shows the clips darker than REDALERT or REDCINE. I have a eye1 for wide calibration purposes. What do you suggest for this. I am on 2.2 gamma but i think that QT windows ask for 1.8 gamma.

Also i am on the cineform side about mastering and archiving instead of dpx, and also have a multibridge pro2 that i can't use in many red workflows situations.

regards

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I've read in a post (I don't remember which one) that Redcine uses GPU for the renderings. If so, a better graphics card will give better render times??

The GPU support in Redcine is mostly for color operations and real-time display. Hence it plays back footage a lot more smoothly than RED Alert does. Actual render output doesn't benefit.

The best render output performance with the RED tools comes with using RedRushes and you can select how many CPUs and threads it uses.

The RSX color files are handy in that they are automatically created when you load a clip into Red Alert and you can save multiple RSX "look" files. You can apply these looks to other clips or you can load RSX files to apply to individual clips or multiple clips in Red Rushes.

Redcine does have the advantage of being able to grade on a timeline... However, I think that workflow -- conforming back to Redcine -- has lost its appeal these days now that we have native RAW access and color space support in Adobe CS4, Vegas and FCS.

 

[Chris Vrakotas]

... that we have native RAW access and color space support in Adobe CS4, Vegas and FCS.

Yes, we have R3d access in CS4, but what about color grading in real time?
How you color grade in AE CS4? With Color Finesse or something else?