Computer for Scarlet

[Chase M. Wrenn]

Didn't know if this should go in workflow or Scarlet, but as it pertains specifically to Scarlet, I figure what the heck. So...

I would like some advice from anyone with on-set or post experience with the RED One. I plan on purchasing a Scarlet once it comes out, and am also debating on a new computer system. I can't decide on whether I should get the 17-inch MacBookPro or a MacPro system. With a MacPro, I'll be able to have a heavy duty editing computer I suppose, with fast data transfer speeds, internal back-ups, and the ability to purchase and input a Red Rocket card (btw, will we need that for Scarlet footage?) All of this will obviously be a bit pricier than MacBookPro, which I would get w/ maxed out RAM (8GB right now), 500 GB Serial ATA Hard Drive @ 7200 RPM (while I desperately want the solid state drive, I can't justify the price right now, and would prefer more space on the internal), and the 2.8 GHz Core i7 processor. The 17-inch model comes with the Expresscard/34 slot, which I could get an e-SATA adapter to transfer footage to some raw Internal drives through a dock on location. Basically, a portable tower isn't an option for me, as most of my shoots are low level guerilla style events. Would it be better to have a laptop to transfer off footage on location, and get right back into the action, or a tower base station where I just wait until I get home to offload and work?

Also, I already have an early 2009 iMac that's in pretty good shape, but lacks some of the options of the newer iMacs. And I have Final Cut Studio on it, but my external drive with my .dmg died, so unless I were to buy another copy of FCS, I may just invest in something like STORM (if that's appropriate?) or some Adobe software. Anybody have recommendations?

(P.S. Currently leaning towards the laptop so I won't have to buy as much CF or SSD cards if I offload, and it will also let me write at coffee shops around LA I wanna seem hip, you know?)

 

[Bastien Tribalat]

If not having Final Cut Pro is not a problem for you, what I can siggest is considering Windows 7 platforms.
I'm a Mac user and lover, but when it comes to price, it just hurts ! (lol)

For LESS than a Mac Pro, you can have an Alienware Aurora with a 6 cores I7 3.3GHZ processor, 24Gb of DDR3 Ram, 2x2TB in Raid 0 and a plenty of cool video cards options that you won't find at Apple (officially). Add an e-sata connector, water cooling for the processor, lots of USB ports, firewire 400 (yeah no 800...) and so on. You can have that + a balanced 17" MacBook Pro for about $6-8K. I don't know if it fits your budget but just the Alienware station would be less expansive than the Mac Pro.
And Red Rocket is Windows Compatible.

It's just a matter of tastes.

As my signature says, I also have an early 2009 iMac (see my signature for the specs) and for editing Red footage in 3K (which I actually did) in Final Cut it can't take it in RAW in real time so I transcoded to ProRes4444 which was very long but then worked smoothly. On Avid Media Composer 5, with the Raw files it's almost real time BUT downsized at 1080P and I suppose Avid as some software that runs secretly to transcode on the fly. Never tried on Premiere for now.

So my suggestion for the workflow for Scarlet you have to ask you some questions :
- Do you need to edit directly on RAW files or not ?

If yes : do you have the time (which can be a matter of budget for you clients) to make proxies in any formats and use the RAW just for color grading and final output ?

If no : do you need to deliver in 3K ? For color grading do you need 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 color space ? Do you have special effects shots and compositing work to do ?
​

- Do you have to work as quick as possible ? (aka : how many time do you have to do your work ? Is it in a hurry or not ?)

- Can you afford a Red Rocket ?

- Do you have enough storage ?

All that kind of questions I think you should think about to help you choose the right way.

Whatever, if you had a very large budget, go for a Mac Pro Station with full options and a red Rocket. That will do the work for sure. As we say in France : fingers in the nose !

 

[Mark Holmes]

I edit 4K RED 1 MX footage on a late 2009 Mac Pro with 6 GB of RAM, both in Final Cut Studio 3 and in Windows 7 Bootcamp on Sony Vegas Pro 10. I prefer the Sony Vegas editing experience. Just drop the R3Ds on the timeline...

 

[Ákos Jeney]

And what about an older (Latest) Black Macbook 2.4 ghz 4gb ram. Any chance to co-operation with scarlet?

 

[Bastien Tribalat]

And what about an older (Latest) Black Macbook 2.4 ghz 4gb ram. Any chance to co-operation with scarlet?

Won't do the job. First of all because the hard drive is only 5400 rotations per minute. It is way too slow for what you're asking.

 

[Ákos Jeney]

Won't do the job. First of all because the hard drive is only 5400 rotations per minute. It is way too slow for what you're asking.

So what would be the minimum configuration for Scarlet's footages?

 

[Sam Eilertsen]

Won't do the job. First of all because the hard drive is only 5400 rotations per minute. It is way too slow for what you're asking.

I wouldn't think that would be too much of an issue -- with a laptop you want to edit off of an external drive so you don't have to share disk time with the operating system. Once the program is in memory, I would imagine it would stay there while you are working. The only effect internal drive speed would have would be that the CPU time taken by background processes would be a little longer when the OS has to page them off the disk.

 

[Benoît-Joan Clariana-Roig]

I use a Intel i7 970 6 cores @ 4 ghz & 12 GB RAM, a system SSD, a SLI of Gigabyte SOC 470 GTX on Windows 7 pro, with a 3D display.

It's working like a charm with the new mercury GPU engine on CS5 : I can preview & work with RAW R1 rushes, applying color grading & effects without any problem. I can render at any resolution in few minutes : all the work is done by my GPU. ^^

I have a friend with a Macbookpro and he can't even work with crappy AVCHD files...he's planning to get a Win7 system.

 

[Ákos Jeney]

And the Black Macbook with a mobil red rocket and external hdd?

 

[adam r]

I use a Intel i7 970 6 cores @ 4 ghz & 12 GB RAM, a system SSD, a SLI of Gigabyte SOC 470 GTX on Windows 7 pro, with a 3D display.

It's working like a charm with the new mercury GPU engine on CS5 : I can preview & work with RAW R1 rushes, applying color grading & effects without any problem. I can render at any resolution in few minutes : all the work is done by my GPU. ^^

I have a friend with a Macbookpro and he can't even work with crappy AVCHD files...he's planning to get a Win7 system.

What mother board and ram are you using?

 

[Benoît-Joan Clariana-Roig]

Asus Rampage 3 extreme & Noctua on the CPU

6 X 2 GB DDR3 Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600 CAS 7 triple channel

Pics of the setup (upgraded to 12 gb few weeks after) working on R3D rushes:
http://img843.imageshack.us/slideshow/webplayer.php?id=workstation1.jpg

I'm waiting next year to buy few 2 TB HDD and a new colorimeter for my screen.

 

[Franck De Togni]

Here's a link where It's already been discussed:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=51201&highlight=franck+togni

I had a real willing to have a great editing system to work on location.
Anyway I'm gonna keep my home system and upgrade it a little bit, then go for an I7 full of ram and good gpu.
I already worked on FCP, and if you can avoid it, CS5 or Vegas are way better. Just my opinion.

And if you can wait a bit more and afford it, future laptops with the new gen Intel Sandy Bridge CPU's should be available before mid 2011.

 

[Nathan Kanoun]

MacBook Pro System

MacBook Pro System

How about a 2.66 GHz i7 MacBook Pro w/ 4GB RAM and an SSD? Would it choke up with less than 6 gigs?

 

[Franck De Togni]

Some people already edit 4k on this type of configuration. So yes it should work.

 

[Sean Finnegan]

I feel like a top of the line Macbook Pro (either 15" or 17") would be adequate to handle Scarlet's footage as long as you got an SSD and 8gb of RAM.

 

[Robert Rogoz]

I have a friend with a Macbookpro and he can't even work with crappy AVCHD files...he's planning to get a Win7 system.

You are distorting things a bit. MBP would handle AVCHD just fine, it's the lack of FCP support for native edit of AVCHD. As the matter of fact you can use utility like Clipwrap 2.1 and re-wrap AVCHD to H.264, as AVCHD is just a flavor of H.264, which is Apples own codec. Now if you just want to make a few cuts and pop it out using H.264 in FCP is just fine. However editing in H.264 or AVCHD something that needs to go through several generations of edit will destroy the footage in no time, so transcoding to ProRes works better in the long run any way.
You can edit footage from iPhone at 720/30p H.264 in iMovie without any problems, and we are talking native edit. So to say MBP would not handle AVCHD is simply distorting things beyond the reason. It's the insistence of Apple as far as choosing support platforms in FCP.

 

[sbcooler]

For Scarlet I'm thinking of buying an iMac Quad Core i7 2.93Ghz and a 256 GB SSD. And then possibly using Firewire 800 for the external footage on a 7200 RPM drive. Or OWC (Other World Computing) can add an input for an esata for faster speeds if necessary, but I think firewire 800 should handle 3K footage pretty ok from Scarlet.

What do you all think?

Also, I'm guessing Apple will be coming up with a COMPLETE REVAMP of Final Cut Studio 3 by April NAB time or before. It should handle more codecs, speed ups and possibly combine Motion, Soundtrack Pro and Final Cut into 1 program....maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, I hear it will be open for all variations of RED codecs. Apple to take the lead, yet again, in video editing. Never count them out.

 

[Art Chong]

You are distorting things a bit. MBP would handle AVCHD just fine, it's the lack of FCP support for native edit of AVCHD. As the matter of fact you can use utility like Clipwrap 2.1 and re-wrap AVCHD to H.264, as AVCHD is just a flavor of H.264, which is Apples own codec. Now if you just want to make a few cuts and pop it out using H.264 in FCP is just fine. However editing in H.264 or AVCHD something that needs to go through several generations of edit will destroy the footage in no time, so transcoding to ProRes works better in the long run any way.
You can edit footage from iPhone at 720/30p H.264 in iMovie without any problems, and we are talking native edit. So to say MBP would not handle AVCHD is simply distorting things beyond the reason. It's the insistence of Apple as far as choosing support platforms in FCP.

Agreed. AVCHD is a funky footage to be editing in to begin with. I've personally found that an otherwise powerful system can choke on AVCHD even when it theoretically shouldn't.

 

[Eric Santiago]

I have a friend with a Macbookpro and he can't even work with crappy AVCHD files...

hmmm we work with R1 in both MBP and MP. They seem to handle all R3D's exported to DNxHD220 easily (yes both systems). Only bonus is that MP has RR in it. Not for long, were budgeting for the MobileRocket
Ive cut/worked hours/years of footage in MC and FCP using the MBP.
I think your friend needs to change formats

 

[Justin Batchelor]

AVCHD is fine on a Macbook Pro, as long as you import it correctly into FCP by transcoding it into something like Pro Res.

Speed and grunt, that's what you will need to edit Scarlet/Epic-L footage. Beef up the ram as much as possible on a laptop, and reinstall the drive to a high speed. If you go for Solid State, only use it to run apps, and have a Firewire 800 drive out the side.

You could probably get away with a lower specced machine, but you'll find, over time, that you have more hair in your hands than in your head.