8K Red Worflows in late 2017

[Freya]

What is the present situation with editing and post for Red 8K footage?
Is a RedRocket-X useful in this context or would you be much better off with 2 NVidia Titan cards or something similar?
I know the RedRocket-X and the Titan cards are not really the same kind of thing but maybe the 2 Titan cards would be more useful?

What kind of spec for the CPU and Ram?

Is it possible to get better than 1/2 debayer at 24fps?

What about grading in Resolve in 8K?

What are people using now and is there any new tech that has arrived that might make things easier?

Freya

 

[jussi rovanpera]

What is the present situation with editing and post for Red 8K footage?
Is a RedRocket-X useful in this context or would you be much better off with 2 NVidia Titan cards or something similar?
I know the RedRocket-X and the Titan cards are not really the same kind of thing but maybe the 2 Titan cards would be more useful?

What kind of spec for the CPU and Ram?

Is it possible to get better than 1/2 debayer at 24fps?

What about grading in Resolve in 8K?

What are people using now and is there any new tech that has arrived that might make things easier?

Freya

I don't think there is a CPU that can decode 8k in full premium. You need a top of the line CPU to decode 6k in full premium, and 8k is almost double the pixels of 6k.

 

[Marc Wielage]

What about grading in Resolve in 8K?

And there are two major hurdles:

1) there is no way to show 8K theatrically anywhere in the world, and online streaming is a dream at this point

2) there are no Grade-1 8K grading displays. 4K grading displays are very costly as it is.

I would think a $100,000 8-GPU system would struggle with 8K raw material playing back in 8K with any kind of grade applied to it. Not too long ago, I saw a $2 million system crash while attempting to play back 8K raw through a not-that-big 8K display.

I think your workflow is generally dictated by where the project ultimately has to be delivered. Determine that, then work your way backwards to figure out a rational method to get there from dailies, to the initial edit, VFX, titles, to the conform, to color-correction, and final delivery.

 

[Misha Engel]

What is the present situation with editing and post for Red 8K footage?
Is a RedRocket-X useful in this context or would you be much better off with 2 NVidia Titan cards or something similar?
I know the RedRocket-X and the Titan cards are not really the same kind of thing but maybe the 2 Titan cards would be more useful?

What kind of spec for the CPU and Ram?

Is it possible to get better than 1/2 debayer at 24fps?

What about grading in Resolve in 8K?

What are people using now and is there any new tech that has arrived that might make things easier?

Freya

It all comes down to your budget.
The sweet spot at the moment is a system of around $ 8..10.000, 10..16 cores, 128 GB-RAM, 2 GPU's (VEGA or 1080ti), and a fast scratch drive (8k 16bit DPX 24 FPS = 4,75 GB/s).
The only reason to go beyond 1/2 debayer is when you own an 8k Dell screen.
Why would you grade in 8k?

 

[jussi rovanpera]

Half Premium and Full Premium use the same amount of CPU I think? At least on my machines the fps is similar.

Now that Windows is going to support 4 CPUs, maybe we'll see a computer that can decode full 8k in near future...

 

[Freya]

It all comes down to your budget.
Why would you grade in 8k?

For NHK Super Hi-Vision.

Freya

 

[Freya]

It all comes down to your budget.
The sweet spot at the moment is a system of around $ 8..10.000, 10..16 cores, 128 GB-RAM, 2 GPU's (VEGA or 1080ti), and a fast scratch drive (8k 16bit DPX 24 FPS = 4,75 GB/s).
The only reason to go beyond 1/2 debayer is when you own an 8k Dell screen.

Would 2 1080ti GPU's be better than one and a RedRocket-X?
I've never been quite able to work that out.

Freya

 

[Misha Engel]

For NHK Super Hi-Vision.

Freya

Good luck finding a monitor, I think they color grade on a 4k sony oled.

 

[Misha Engel]

Would 2 1080ti GPU's be better than one and a RedRocket-X?
I've never been quite able to work that out.

Freya

Yep same counts for VEGA or TitanXP and a lot cheaper to.

 

[Dermot Shane]

Good luck finding a monitor, I think they color grade on a 4k sony oled.

1) set your timeline to match the deliverables and monitor, if you are limited to monitoring n 4k, then set the timeline to 4k, outside of a lab, as Misha mentioned, there is no 8k monitor in late 2017

2) debyering on the fly over and over is watefull of everything, once you are happy with the debayer settings, use source cache, if you are working in ACES, just use source cache from the start, so now... who careas about the load placed on the CPU anymore, that's a mind set from a decade ago tht's stuck in a groundhog day style loop. Bring lotsa fast disks tho

 

[Björn Benckert]

People approach this all wrong, like they need to see it in 8k while doing the work. That is not the case.

Work in 1/4 or less debayer and then for final render up your resolution to what ever is requested.

I can easily edit, grade and and do the VFX work and master a 8k feature on my old mac no problem.

1- Edit with proxies or with low debayer of the raw files. Works fine in premiere and FCPX.
2- Make an XML in your NLE , move to resolve.
3- In resolve in preferences set your debayer to something low, like 16:1 or so, and conform from one source disc at the time and use the media management tool to export trimmed source as r3d trims. (10 frames of heads tails or such). Preferably to a fast raid.
4- Relink your XML to the the trimmed source.
5- Set your debayer for redefines in resolve preferences to a level where your machine works fine without frame drop and no crashes. 1:4 8k material on a UHD screen looks way good enough to judge the image and se colors etc.
6- Export your VFX cuts as DPX sequences or even prores 4444HQ at 8k or 4k.
7- Have the VFX guys deliver back prores 4444 or DPX sequence- I prefer prores 4444 as massive abount of DPX files tend to slow things down.
8- bring back the VFX clips into your resolve timeline on a top track. (you can do the VFX clips in 4k if 8k is to massive and let resolve upscale those clips for 8k mastering.
9- Let the Graphics guys deliver the credits, intro etc. and DPX or PRores 4444 to the resolve timeline.
10- When you got all your VFX clips and titles in there together / on top of the graded source. Hit the save button and export the whole enchilada as a prores 4444 8k file. with export setting set to full resolution.

Sure that last export might take time if your computer is not latest and grates with multiple GPU´s and super fast thunderbolt 3 raid. But even with a old mac and one 1080ti card and a single spinning disc it takes about a night or so to export a feature.
And to me a nights wait is not much. It was not long ago we waited way more for lab processes and other things.

We are just finnishing 10 x 45 minutes episodes web stream drama series this way. First round we bumped it out in UHD but as the material is 7k helium and we actually have all linked up we will re render everything for a 8k release and the test done so far looks stunning on my 5k display. Like nothing I ever seen before in terms of quality moving images.

 

[Zeb B]

@Björn
Yup. There are many strategies to work with 4K+ footie that don't include playing out at full rez. In Resolve keeping things like Neat Video and fat transition efx off until you're ready to print keeps playback fluid. Time spent learning how to optimize your system / software to reduce CPU load is way better spent than throwing more $ at the problem

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I have never seen a "white paper" from RED (red paper?) that lays out processing topologies for R3Ds in detail. If there is one, it would be most helpful. There are a number of situations where I would absolutely want a RedRocket-X in my pipeline, especially if the system in question would be stupid slow without it. OTOH, if I do have a bomber workstation with at least 2x 1080Tis/Titans/etc then I would consider adding such an expensive card poor resource usage.

I've often wondered if there might be a processing pipeline configuration that would use the RR-X to speed up the initial decode (taking load off the CPU(s)) but would leave the GPUs to handle it from there. Sadly, I have no way of knowing if such a topology is even possible, let alone desirable. With the era of SSGs - high end GPUs with onboard solid state memory (i.e. 2TB of M2 NVME) - on the horizon, what resources are most critical to support them? Lots of fast DDR4 RAM? Lot's of slower cores? Fewer cores with high clocks? MoBos with PCIe4 on package? Etc.

AFAIK, RED has shifted engineering resources from RR-X drivers/dev to coding for nVidia GPUs. No idea how much, or how little, effort has been put into AMD/OpenCL optimization. After blowing Jarred's socks off a couple months back with a demo of an alpha build of the Vega based SSG, perhaps AMD is now very much on RED's radar.

ATM, Freya, I see more questions than answers in terms of what resources are needed for real time 8K monitoring/operations. If I got an assignment tomorrow to build out a system capable of real time 8K editorial/grading/etc my first thought would be to integrate two systems with a VERY fast access common storage pool. One system turns R3Ds into 8K ProRes clips or 8K 10bit log DPX image sequences and dumps them into the storage pool at 20fps or better. The second system leverages SSG(s)/GPU clusters/etc to perform real time operations on the RGB media. Yes, this config would not be true "real time" but as long as the "ingest" rate was better than a 1.4:1 ratio to base frame rate, it would rarely be noticed.

Cheers - #19

 

[Misha Engel]

People approach this all wrong

Do you mean different?

 

[Björn Benckert]

Do you mean different?

No wrong as in people banging their heads in a wall trying to work and view their material in the native or mastring resolution. When most steps of the post process that is absolutely not needed, sure nice if it works, but for the most part that is not the case. Up your render powers and disc speeds as much as you can, sure, but instead of hitting that wall that they normally come with try work around the resolution bolt neck. R3d´s are wonderful files and they are built to provide a way around the problem using very efficient sub debayering, but people tend not to take advantage of it doing is more wrong than different I think.

 

[PatrickFaith]

People approach this all wrong, like they need to see it in 8k while doing the work. That is not the case.

Work in 1/4 or less debayer and then for final render up your resolution to what ever is requested.

I can easily edit, grade and and do the VFX work and master a 8k feature on my old mac no problem.

1- Edit with proxies or with low debayer of the raw files. Works fine in premiere and FCPX.
2- Make an XML in your NLE , move to resolve.
3- In resolve in preferences set your debayer to something low, like 16:1 or so, and conform from one source disc at the time and use the media management tool to export trimmed source as r3d trims. (10 frames of heads tails or such). Preferably to a fast raid.
4- Relink your XML to the the trimmed source.
5- Set your debayer for redefines in resolve preferences to a level where your machine works fine without frame drop and no crashes. 1:4 8k material on a UHD screen looks way good enough to judge the image and se colors etc.
6- Export your VFX cuts as DPX sequences or even prores 4444HQ at 8k or 4k.
7- Have the VFX guys deliver back prores 4444 or DPX sequence- I prefer prores 4444 as massive abount of DPX files tend to slow things down.
8- bring back the VFX clips into your resolve timeline on a top track. (you can do the VFX clips in 4k if 8k is to massive and let resolve upscale those clips for 8k mastering.
9- Let the Graphics guys deliver the credits, intro etc. and DPX or PRores 4444 to the resolve timeline.
10- When you got all your VFX clips and titles in there together / on top of the graded source. Hit the save button and export the whole enchilada as a prores 4444 8k file. with export setting set to full resolution.

Sure that last export might take time if your computer is not latest and grates with multiple GPU´s and super fast thunderbolt 3 raid. But even with a old mac and one 1080ti card and a single spinning disc it takes about a night or so to export a feature.
And to me a nights wait is not much. It was not long ago we waited way more for lab processes and other things.

We are just finnishing 10 x 45 minutes episodes web stream drama series this way. First round we bumped it out in UHD but as the material is 7k helium and we actually have all linked up we will re render everything for a 8k release and the test done so far looks stunning on my 5k display. Like nothing I ever seen before in terms of quality moving images.

Absolutely! From a business side if I saw someone attempting a raw 8k workflow I'd cut them immediatly from the project(and question who hired them). I also agree on the prores 4444, it's so nice, I only do per frame sequences when I'm forced to (normally only on heavy vfx stuff that has a lot of layers and/or render time).

 

[Reuben Evans]

I'm in post on a documentary and nearly all the b-roll is shot in 8K. This is the path we are on. And we did this for the trailer.

Copy to storage
Open and first light in RCXP (save RMD)
Ingest into FCPX
Create proxies with RRX in FCPX
Edit proxies in FCPX (I'm currently in this step)
XML out to Resolve
Conform
Grade in Resolve
Export clips and XML out back to FCPX (definitely use RRX, experimenting with GTX 1080 eGPU)
Lay clips out, compound clip, lay back into main timeline, conform
Export from FCPX

Trailer for reference https://youtu.be/WJ0LocVNvMo

 

[Björn Benckert]

Absolutely! From a business side if I saw someone attempting a raw 8k workflow I'd cut them immediatly from the project(and question who hired them). I also agree on the prores 4444, it's so nice, I only do per frame sequences when I'm forced to (normally only on heavy vfx stuff that has a lot of layers and/or render time).

Yes , but anything that goes trough CG kind of needs to be in frames as those packages does not handle prores.

 

[Björn Benckert]

I'm in post on a documentary and nearly all the b-roll is shot in 8K. This is the path we are on. And we did this for the trailer.

Copy to storage
Open and first light in RCXP (save RMD)
Ingest into FCPX
Create proxies with RRX in FCPX
Edit proxies in FCPX (I'm currently in this step)
XML out to Resolve
Conform

In between here I would recommend a media management r3d trim and relink in resolve. This narrows down your source material and makes it so you only get the used r3d´s with a choosen number frames of handles. This way you can fit your source on a small drive and you get a much nicer cleaner package to do your grading and online from.

For our part we had over 100 source drives to conform 10x 45 minutes. So simply extracting every episodes trimmed source narrowed that down to a small 20tb raid where we also fit the rest of the VFx material and what not. keeping all drives hooked up to the resolve station is simply not feasible. This way to me is preferable as pretty much every shooting day had it´s own 3tb drive.

The r3d trimming is essential and very important feature of the r3d workflow. Way different, and to me very much preferred from doing a flat pass or render raw to 16bit dpx etc. As the r3d trim is pretty much as fast as copying and it´s none destructive and it keeps material as native compressed raw so it takes way less space than going into other formats.

Grade in Resolve
Export clips and XML out back to FCPX (definitely use RRX, experimenting with GTX 1080 eGPU)
Lay clips out, compound clip, lay back into main timeline, conform
Export from FCPX

Trailer for reference https://youtu.be/WJ0LocVNvMo

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Just work with proxies and if editing in Premiere you can switch between proxies and R3D files with a click. However, I never color grade and master files within the NLE. I just do as it's always been done: edit proxies, EDL or AAF to Resolve, color grade and VFX and then assemble into a master file. I'm not sure why workflow seems so complicated for so many people. If you want to edit 8K files in full debayer, then there's only one way to do that smoothly... with a shitload of cash put into hardware. However, it's so unnecessary. I do 6K to 4K workflow on my old 2011 PC Desktop. Yes, it's 16GB tends to mess things up, but with Resolve's cache system I don't really need more other than making the experience a little smoother.
Upgrading for me now is just something I've been too lazy to do so it's not about expenses, but rather that I do not need full debayer R3D workflow to be able to finish in 4K.

If you're doing VFX in 4K then yeah, you might want heavier hardware, but not so much for R3Ds. Focus on fast drives and processors to handle 10-bit DPX at 4K. If you can run that smoothly with VFX you are set for a long time.