red rocket and avid MC

[Cüneyt Kaya]

hi i dont use avid, but wanted to know...

1. avid uses the sdk, right?
2. with redrocket will MC be able to edit native with RAW files or will it be only again DS (which i honestly dont understand, is this a philisophy to keep the value of DS, reall dont know)
3. is MC able to export h264, UC, DPX
4. can you render in 10 bit RGB in MC
5. does it have CC Tools (primary and secondary...something like Color)
6. Titling
7. denoising
8. resolution independant or at least 2k



fcs2 can give you half debayered DPX at the end

nr 5 and 6 are not that important, it would be a nice bonus, what about the rest

 

[Shane Betts]

Don't count on it.

Don't count on it.

I'm pretty sure Avid have developed their own workflow independent of the SDK - I could be wrong. Another thing I could be wrong about (and we'd all be surprised) is that I don't believe Avid will ever allow access to something like Red Rocket from within MC. They have a history of a/not playing well with other people's hardware (how many people would love to use their AJA or BMD cards with MC? Never gonna happen) and b/protecting their higher end solutions by hobbling their basic apps. How do you sell DS as a high end 2k solution when you can, for $5k, turn MC into a 4k solution?

Like I said, I could be wrong - and would be very, very happy to be. But don't go holding your breath...

Of course, the caveat here is will (or when will) FCP access Red Rocket on the timeline? Whilst a transcode is needed to perform an edit (I know, Premiere), MC is still, IMHO, the best interface for said edit. Apple integration of Red Rocket into its suite might just blow things apart. Only time will tell I guess. That's one thing that just might change.

 

[M Forrest]

1. avid uses the sdk, right? Yes, Avid DS and MetaFuze use the SDK.
2. with redrocket will MC be able to edit native with RAW files or will it be only again DS (which i honestly dont understand, is this a philisophy to keep the value of DS, reall dont know) Won't know until they get one and an SDK to go with it. There is more of a difference in the two products than frame size. One is an editor and the other is for finishing. Completely different toolsets.
3. is MC able to export h264, UC, DPX H264 yes, UC? DPX no.
4. can you render in 10 bit RGB in MC
5. does it have CC Tools (primary and secondary...something like Color)Primaries yes, Secondaries no. Secondaries only in Symphony and DS.
6. Titling Yes basic unless you use 3rd party or Marquee.
7. denoising No
8. resolution independant or at least 2k No, 1080 max.

As for Red Rocket, we don't know yet since they don't have it. Again, just because you throw a Red Rocket into MC and can play 4K, it doesn't perform the same tasks as DS. And Avid DS does integrate with 3rd party hardware, the Aja Xena board. The Nitris is no longer used on the newer DS systems shipping from Avid. Will MC and Syphony follow suit? Your guess is as good as mine. But I've been in this business long enough to never say never.

 

[MichaelP]

As Forrest says, we don't know what RED Rocket does until we see the card and the SDK. We will see all of that most likely the same time you do. Other than a real time debayer and such, we weed to see how it integrates into the player pipeline since different NLE's process effects, layers differently and sometimes requires multiple passes. Will the card allow for that? Again, we don't know.

We can't speak to future development being a public company. But currently MC works in SD and HD YUV color space. AMA is one architecture that will allow for camera manufacturers to integrate their formats natively with metadata into the editing system. So far Sony CDXAM HD, XDCAM EX, and P2 work this way.

DS is the Avid resolution independent product that allows for LUTs, and color management, DPX, R3D natively, etc. It has deep compositing and a feature set that is meant to deliver and master final project whether for theater, or home video.

Avid uses the SDK for its work as so FilmLight, Digital Vision and others. Unknown is Adobe and Apple since RED themselves develop those tools and whether they use the SDK or direct access to the file is up to them.

Michael

 

[M Forrest]

Red Rocket. Red Rocket RedRocket. Just wanted to see if the trademark is added automatically or is someone adding it after the fact.

 

[M Forrest]

There you go, added automatically.

 

[Peter Moretti]

...

We can't speak to future development being a public company. But currently MC works in SD and HD YUV color space. ...

I just wanted to point out that YUV is not limited to 4:2:2, 4:2:0, 3:1:1 or 4:1:1. YUV can represent 4:4:4 as well. So maybe retooling Media Composer and Symphony to work w/ 4:4:4 is not as daunting as it first seems.

Also, perhaps RED Rocket is blessing in disguise for Avid's MC/Symphony product line.

FWIU, an advantage of wavelet compression is that accessing the file in lower resolution is relatively easy b/c the downrezing can be handled by how the coefficients are read--which does not entail any additional processing power. So getting 4:4:4 2K out of .R3D is no harder than getting 4K out.

MC and Symphony are constrained to 1080p and I believe 10-bit 4:2:2. But even though Red offers up to 4K 12-bit linear 4:4:4, for all intents and purposes, isn't viewing 10-bit 4:2:2 enough for most workflows? And 1080p is almost as big as 2K.

So perhaps RED Rocket could provide enough acceleration to MC and Symphony to access 4K .R3D's and transcode on the fly to 1080p 10-bit 4:2:2 YUV. FWIU, the transcoding from RGB to YUV can be done without any significant loss. (It is going from YUV to RGB where some colors can't be accurately represented.) This would essentially be Metafuze on-the-fly.

Here's another potential advantage. As long as MC or Symphony can render out 2K or 4K RGB who cares if you aren't seeing the footage in native resolution and depth on the monitor? I.e. 1080 10-bit 4:2:2 is enough for decision making purposes. But when it comes time to render, perhaps RED Rocket could help with accessing and processing the native 4K .R3D's. With RED Rocket's help, it seems more feasible for MC or Symphony to work in 1080 10-bit 4:2:2 but render 2K (or less likely I would think, 4K) 4:4:4 directly from the .R3D files.

Just thinking aloud at 3am. Hope it makes sense in the light of day, LOL.

 

[Peter Moretti]

There you go, added automatically.

Kinda spooky.:frown2:

 

[MichaelP]

As mentioned, it remains to ne seen what the actual specs of the card will be as well as the SDK. Once we see it, we will have a better idea. Certainly a 1080p/4:2:2 on the fly proxy is something we have considered - it's all a matter of how it can fit into the pipeline. I mentioned elsewhere on the site, that things get more complex and we don't know what the card design is for doing something like a dissolve, or multiple layers. I suspect 1/2 debayer gets you two streams.. but don't know for sure. Also some effects need to run through a pipeline several times. For straight cut editing, it could work very well, once you get into the more complex (and common) timelines we see today, it's a different story. Also consider that if the timeline does exceed the number of streams that the card is capable of streaming - a render must be done. One cannot render back to R3D - so how it is a mixed format timeline. How quick one can go back an forth, overlay and mix is a function of the NLE and those things are not easy tasks all the time.

I have read that the card allows transcoding - I "think" right now it allow for a debayer on the fly which can be quite CPU intensive - the encoding is the other half of the process - what they do on board is up in the air as far as DNxHD is concerned unless they are still going to QT wrapped DNxHD. So a lot of this looks like a dailies management tool and real time playout for viewing of dailies in its first pass. I would love to see what the plug-in looks like and if it has XML out of the "timeline and all associated metadata. If so, it could feed a MetaFuze for direct MXF wrapped DNxHD and get QuickTime out of the loop - with the debayer part done on the fly - it is conceivable to create DNxHD in real time or perhaps 2x faster when working in 1/2 debayer.

All of this will be known one we know what it actually is.

Michael

 

[Peter Moretti]

Michael, thanks for the insight.

BTW, is this a somewhat realistic approach for MC and Symphony to consider?

Work with with Red files by transcoding to DNxHD with Metafuze (like is done now), but have the option to perform the final render directly from original .R3D files and to higher resolution formats than 1080 4:2:2 10-bit?