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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

DRAGON debayer options - Red Rocket-X hardware versus RCX-P software only

Bob Gundu said:
BTW, Lightiron did software outputs for Flight. That said, I still use my RR card for 95 percent of my work. :biggrin:
Click to expand...

I don't for the following reasons:

For working on grades, it is misleading - because color is different. You pull a secondary in resolve, for example, it will look wrong when you switch to software in the end. We rough secondaries in 1/4 res, then do a test render in full, fine-tune, then move-on. It doesn't take that long, as the render is in background while doing other grading work.

For offline editing, 1/4 in Premiere is more than good enough. When you pause it switches to full, so you can check focus. Anyway offline is offline.


We always do a final render in software, because the quality is slightly better, and really, what's a few hours of render time at the end after a month of hard work prepping, shooting, editing etc.?
 
Johnny Friday said:
Robert: you have left out a big gap in your assumption: There are those of us that make a pretty decent living selling stock images. I for one have increased my sales by dramatic numbers and reached clients i would normally have NEVER sold to because my work is available at 4k & 5k. Now, to be fair i agree with much of what you say. Much of the work i do today for commercial or doco work is 1080p and it's for today only. Nobody is going to re-run a Corona commerical i shot ten years from now in 4k.

BUT, i do sell 4k & 5k stock to clients that use in feature films, or do 2d to 3d conversions. And in fact sold shots to producers of Dome Theater productions....so yes, there are a growing number of us that work in these K's and our clients in fact ask for it. I have three clients i am shooting for NOW doing 4k finish or 3180x2160....Funny that they are all overseas--China, Korea and UK.

4k tv market i think you have very wrong....i am only now seeing companies like OTF (off the fence productions) now gearing up for 4k productions....now 3d tv is certainly dead....but what i do know is i have a high demand and only growing for 4k clips and shorts.....most are these foreign broadcasters and some television manufacturers themselves that will host their 4k material on their site. Sony is a perfect example...they have employed a number of film makers to produce shorts in 4k and finish at 3180x2160 and that material will be hosted on their website for download to customers buying their 4k televisions......it's a complete other discussion on delivery methods over the airways i know....but you may not be working in this area, but there are those of us that do and more than you may know....
Click to expand...

Fair enough - you're right, stock needs to be future-proofed as much as possible, particularly things like landscapes and underwater work which are timeless. But how many Red owners are in your shoes? What percentage sell stock at all?
 
Neil.

Thanks so much for taking the lead with these tests. I about a couple of weeks I would be asking the same and was concerned about the previous RR card's lower quality renders than software.

Again, much appreciated!
 
DRAGON at SMPTE Conf and Createasphere ETE

DRAGON at SMPTE Conf and Createasphere ETE

Will Keir said:
Neil.

Thanks so much for taking the lead with these tests. I about a couple of weeks I would be asking the same and was concerned about the previous RR card's lower quality renders than software.

Again, much appreciated!
Click to expand...

Pleasure Will ... hoping to run some more tests in the near future but up to my neck preparing EPIC footage for 4K/UHDTV demos at SMPTE Expo (Oct 21st to 24th) and Createasphere ETE on Nov 6th and 7th ... my lab is full of UHDTVs being burned in and calibrated at the moment ... 4K gone wild!

The cool thing is that Ketch and Jarred have given us the blessing to show some shots of 'The Red Dress' DRAGON footage at these events on the clear understanding we show them on a decent 4K projector or UHDTV set up ... trying to get something organized as we speak ... will also be taking the Red Rocket-X along with us, so if people want to come and see for themselves 6K DRAGON footage being played back in realtime with FULL debayer, they're more than welcome to come along and have a play with the gear.

I'm still amazed by the image quality of the DRAGON footage ... as more cinematographers get to shoot with it in different lighting conditions I think we'll start to understand the real power of the sensor and the wide range of latitude it has .... it has a seductive smoothness to it all the way from the shadows to the highlights ... it's not just resolution alone that defines the 'look and feel' of the DRAGON .. I think there's something new in how it's doing the bayering and how the SDK is doing the debaying ... perhaps some day Graeme will enlighten us on what's going on on under the hood.

In the meantime, start saving up your pennies for a RR-X ... the GPU enabled debayering is definitely going to be a viable option but at some point, professional filmmakers are going to have to think of the RR-X card as an integral part of the total DRAGON camera system in the same we as we do with lenses and matt boxes, etc ... 6K digital acquisition demands a fast 6K integrated workflow ... the good news is that you're no longer dependent on heavy-iron post solutions ... a standard Mac Pro with a RR-X card plus FCP X with Resolve 10 will get you most of the way to finishing your DRAGON 6K project quickly and efficiently (and cost-effectively).

We used to have a saying in the computer industry (I used to work for Dgital Equipment Corp and Microsoft before setting up Hollywood DI and LumaForge) that the 'network is the system' ..... meaning that once distributed client server architectures became dominant you couldn't think of your computer as a stand alone island anymore. I think the same is becoming true of the content creation and distribution industry ... the 'ecosystem is the camera' ... getting the imagery from sensor to screen in the most cost-effective way is the real challenge facing us all ... RED are addressing many of those complex issues with the DRAGON sensor, RR-X card and the new debayering SDK ... bloody amazing when you think of what JJ and his crew have achieved in eight short years.

Cheers.
 
Niel,

Super cool of you the be so generous with your time and postings:)

Which software down sample algorithm did you use in redcineX to compare your hardware transcode? - the standard mitchell or a sharper one?
 
Neil W. Smith said:
... a standard Mac Pro with a RR-X card plus FCP X with Resolve 10 will get you most of the way to finishing your DRAGON 6K project quickly and efficiently (and cost-effectively).
Click to expand...

As long as it requires a $7000 single purpose card, I don't see this being "cost effective" unless Red is the only camera you ever have to deal with and R3Ds are the only files you ever receive. And that is rarely the case.

And let's revisit the term "standard Mac Pro" in about 2 weeks.
 
Bob Gundu said:
BTW, Lightiron did software outputs for Flight.
Click to expand...

Every major facility I know of uses only software debayer for full quality final renders and has for a long time now.
 
Axel Mertes said:
Hi Gabriele,

you asked for it, so here we go. This is a comparison of RED ROCKET vs. RED Software decoding.
Please read the text inside the images carefully to understand what you are looking at


We made this for our customers to understand why we use software only decoding for VFX and final RED output work.

As to our experience, the difference is always there.

Regards,
Axel
Click to expand...

That looks familiar.

Rocket still has a lot of applications.

Will be interesting to see rocket vs GPU vs CPU vs Rocket-X.

When things are in release.
 
Neil W. Smith said:
Pleasure Will ... hoping to run some more tests in the near future but up to my neck preparing EPIC footage for 4K/UHDTV demos at SMPTE Expo (Oct 21st to 24th) and Createasphere ETE on Nov 6th and 7th ... my lab is full of UHDTVs being burned in and calibrated at the moment ... 4K gone wild!

The cool thing is that Ketch and Jarred have given us the blessing to show some shots of 'The Red Dress' DRAGON footage at these events on the clear understanding we show them on a decent 4K projector or UHDTV set up ... trying to get something organized as we speak ... will also be taking the Red Rocket-X along with us, so if people want to come and see for themselves 6K DRAGON footage being played back in realtime with FULL debayer, they're more than welcome to come along and have a play with the gear.

I'm still amazed by the image quality of the DRAGON footage ... as more cinematographers get to shoot with it in different lighting conditions I think we'll start to understand the real power of the sensor and the wide range of latitude it has .... it has a seductive smoothness to it all the way from the shadows to the highlights ... it's not just resolution alone that defines the 'look and feel' of the DRAGON .. I think there's something new in how it's doing the bayering and how the SDK is doing the debaying ... perhaps some day Graeme will enlighten us on what's going on on under the hood.

In the meantime, start saving up your pennies for a RR-X ... the GPU enabled debayering is definitely going to be a viable option but at some point, professional filmmakers are going to have to think of the RR-X card as an integral part of the total DRAGON camera system in the same we as we do with lenses and matt boxes, etc ... 6K digital acquisition demands a fast 6K integrated workflow ... the good news is that you're no longer dependent on heavy-iron post solutions ... a standard Mac Pro with a RR-X card plus FCP X with Resolve 10 will get you most of the way to finishing your DRAGON 6K project quickly and efficiently (and cost-effectively).

We used to have a saying in the computer industry (I used to work for Dgital Equipment Corp and Microsoft before setting up Hollywood DI and LumaForge) that the 'network is the system' ..... meaning that once distributed client server architectures became dominant you couldn't think of your computer as a stand alone island anymore. I think the same is becoming true of the content creation and distribution industry ... the 'ecosystem is the camera' ... getting the imagery from sensor to screen in the most cost-effective way is the real challenge facing us all ... RED are addressing many of those complex issues with the DRAGON sensor, RR-X card and the new debayering SDK ... bloody amazing when you think of what JJ and his crew have achieved in eight short years.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

And there's the problem - the real machine is the existing infrastructure of users who could care less that I just bought a Dragon - what you describe is not "professional filmmaking" - it's one man band filmmaking (which can be professional and high-end too, but is far less common in the industry than separation of tasks to dedicated professionals). Many post pros (especially editors) will NOT buy an RR-X card. So even if I opt to spend that money, it means when I am simply hired as DP plus camera rental, now I will have to do the debayering - which likely producers will push to get for free to compensate for the inconvenience of shooting Dragon - which was not necessary with 5K as it was editable without a Rocket, as a growing number of editors use Premiere (I know of zero pro editors who use FCPX - only wedding guys and Vimeo Kiddies).

Still not addressed is the impossibility that RR-X debater, if different, is better than software debayer. Software debayer can take as long as it likes, why would it be less good? How could it be less good (unless deliberately crippled to force an RR-X buy , which is not at all Red's style)?
 
M Most said:
As long as it requires a $7000 single purpose card, I don't see this being "cost effective" unless Red is the only camera you ever have to deal with and R3Ds are the only files you ever receive. And that is rarely the case.
Click to expand...

Let's add some facts to this thread

* standard Rocket-X price is $6,750, not $7000, not $7500

* Rocket-X pricing with Dragon (new or upgrade) is $4,495

* it comes with a standard 2 year warranty (up from 1 year), and you can purchase an extra year as well

* it's already faster than the original Rocket, and it will be way faster

Right now we're working through a couple of bugs that early users such as Neil are finding before we crank the speed dial to 11. As mentioned above it is currently already faster than the Rocket ever was.

At IBC we did our first GPU release, for free to all RED users, not just camera owners. This yet again shows that we are committed to making RED workflow as easy and affordable as we can, and as always we will keep working on this.

If you are a company that needs to crank through a ton of footage then Rocket-X is gonna make a big difference. If you don't need that much power then the GPU solution is there for you for free, which will only get better as CPU's & GPU's increase in power.
 
Robert: GPU workflow might be the answer there? That will help with not just RED footage as well.
 
I have some experience in debayering RAW images. I am super keen to see how the RRX does on a super sharp 5K image.
By super sharp, I mean no optical blur filter used. That's where the rubber meets the road on debayer algorithms . Can I send an r3d to someone to run for me ?
Thanks
 
I'm sorry, that I do not know. Please contact our support department for that.

US prices are always listed before tax
 
This was a HUGE step to open the doors to the RED workflow. It's something we've all wanted for a very long time and there were those that thought it would never happen, including some folks who needed GPU debayer in their software products like DaVinci Resolve. A nice surprise for us all, an open door.

Rob Lohman said:
At IBC we did our first GPU release, for free to all RED users, not just camera owners. This yet again shows that we are committed to making RED workflow as easy and affordable as we can, and as always we will keep working on this.
Click to expand...
 
Really looking forward to the Cuda support. I think that's gonna blow the doors even more open :)
 
Thing is
Rocket is cool. Used it a lot.
Speed.

CPU is cool, too.
DRX and effects and smoother.

GPU is super-cool, and Dragon files was not hard to work with even without that.
If the GPU = CPU, all the more force to the GPU debayer.

RRX, super excited to see what it does.


6k realtime full debayer and downscaling was playing all the time at IBC.
If that translates into transcoding... :)

That was not even with a Titan or Cuda.
 
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