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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 has screwed my workflow - where is my red rocket x?

Nathaniel Kramer

Nathaniel Kramer

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I got my dragon.. I shot a direct to client lingerie spot. The files are spectacular! Thrilled with the quality. But anyone under the assumption that the better dynamic range means they need less light ( especially in the blacks) is mistaken, at least that is my experience with one project. I can definitely see a huge improvement in the highlights though. But the major problem is that without a rocket x, our workflow has been screwed. I am hoping that we in fact are doing something wrong. Premiere is very slow. we do not create proxies as we never had to with our rocket and premiere so we usually did most grades right in premier. Actually havent used RCX for 9 months. But now it looks like we have to transcode to pro res, and then do the grade in in RCX, and thats no fun. We are on a late 2008 mac pro with 96 gigs of ram, quadro 4000 and red rocket. The rocket is doing nothing. My in house editor says its time to go windows. But I dont think we can dump files on set to a macbook and the external will then play nice with windows, or will we need a windows laptop too? I can only blame myself, not red, for not resarching our post flow, before i shot on our dragon. None of this would really matter if this was an agency job, as we wouldnt be doing any post except for a directors cut, but then again, i assume most post houses dont have rocket x either. I really prefer not to, but it seems for now the only alternative is to edit with proxies and then go back out to rcx. Am I wrong. I appreciate any help and guidance anyone may have.
 
Yoru problem is the 2008 Mac Pro and its pixel bandwidth limitations. For way less than a Rocket X (which has lower rendering quality than software - unless you like nice, sharp pores and facial lines which I think I can safely guess you do not) you can get a 12 core used mac Pro 2010 or 2012. It will make all your work faster - not just Red debayer.

Quadro 4000 is also slow and old and an issue. I have a GTX 570 for sale (PM me) which is about 2 to 3.5 times faster, and in a 2010/2012 Mac Pro way, way faster still.

I could work no issues in 1/4 res on any 6K file (assuming fast storage) in Premiere, and rendering was about 1/3rd real time in such a machine using a GTX 570. Now with Titan and new (unreleased, but soon to be) Version of Premiere with GPU debayer, I am almost realtime in full res 6K, realtime in half res.

Go on eBay and get yourself a used Mc Pro 12 core with a GTX 570 or better. (trashcans are slower and much more expensive than this combination (online comparison reviews use the horrible GPU card that comes with the Mac Pro, not a better GPU- and you'll never be able to upgrade the GPU in a trashcan)
 
Not sure if you need to change platforms for that.

However, if you went PC, you wouldn't HAVE to buy a new laptop.

There are other options for reading and writing files between a Mac laptop on-set to a Windows desktop, EG take your pick of:

1. Write to a Mac-formatted drive and use Macdrive to read / write on the Windows desktop.
2. Write to a PC-formatted drive on the laptop using Paragon NTFS or other NTFS driver.
3. Run Windows on your Mac laptop via Bootcamp and use a PC-formatted drive
4. Put Parallels on your laptop and run it in the background (this give you access to the Windows drives even when running OS X) and use a PC-formatted drive

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Nathaniel Kramer said:
But I dont think we can dump files on set to a macbook and the external will then play nice with windows, or will we need a windows laptop too?
Click to expand...
The folder and file-structure always remains the same, regardless of the operating system or file system you use (file system should be able to handle bigger file sizes and RED naming conventions of course, old stuff like Fat32 is not recommended). Only thing that can happen when working in mixed Windows OS X environments could be the .ds store file thing but this can be disabled or gotten automatically rid off with tools.

As long as your storage is write and readable from the different operating systems it's totally no problem to mix machines (e.g. data wrangling on an MacBook Pro, post work on a HP workstation -> but as always; only a personally tested workflow is a good workflow)...
 
As another thought, the update that enables GPU debayering in Premiere should hit sometime this month apparently - though the Quadro 4000 in your system is probably showing its age at this point.

In regard to working with various file systems cross platform I run two ways (as I'm windows based)

If that data being shared is for more than simply copying footage as it comes off the camera than I typically format it as HFS when using a Mac on location then I use Macdrive in the studio to get the footage off the drive and into the edit.

My other option is to format the drive as Fat32. This can only be done when individual files sizes on the drive don't exceed 4GB - perfect for data wrangling as this is how the Red will split the files anyway. Fat32 can both be read and written to by OSX and Windows :)
 
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Good thought Daniel, though with ExFat you won't have compatibility on Linux by default.

I think I used to avoid ExFat because a while back it didn't play as nice with OSX, but it seems those days are behind us :)
 
Daniel Pearson said:
Unless I'm missing something, format the drives you'll be offloading to as ExFat, this can then be used with OSX and Windows...
Click to expand...
Yep, that's what I do (you can format as ExFat using Disc Utility in your Mac). The only drawback is the speed at which your files will be copied to your external drive from your MAC, unless your external hardrive supports both USB3 (for PC) and firewire or thunderbolt (for Mac). But it is definitely possible as Daniel points out.
Hopefully, the new update for premiere is coming soon.
cheers
 
Björn Benckert said:
get a fast graphics card and wait for the premier update.
Click to expand...

Well, a 2008 MacPro for 6K work - I mean that is a 6 year old computer with serious limitations. A 2010 12 core on ebay will change your life. I just talked a friend into making the investment - he hugged me a few minutes after turning it on. But, agreed, wait for new version of Premiere - it will rock your world on a good GPU (no more need for Redrocket X - you could get a Titan Black for way less.)
 
Nathaniel Kramer said:
We are on a late 2008 mac pro with 96 gigs of ram, quadro 4000 and red rocket. The rocket is doing nothing. My in house editor says its time to go windows.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. I'd say it's time to not use a six-year-old computer anymore. Get a more recent model with a couple of fast GPUs. Grading in Premiere or RedCine-X Pro won't be nearly as flexible as doing so in a full-featured color-correction program like Resolve.
 
Marc Wielage said:
Not necessarily. I'd say it's time to not use a six-year-old computer anymore. Get a more recent model with a couple of fast GPUs. Grading in Premiere or RedCine-X Pro won't be nearly as flexible as doing so in a full-featured color-correction program like Resolve.
Click to expand...

For certain situations some people like less buttons to move from a to b. I think if you are a DP then it's quite a commitment what you are suggesting. Just like most things, I think driving a "fully featured color-correction program" and doing it well is kind of like everything else... you need those first + 10000 hours to do it well. A lot of people want to shoot edit, quick color fix and be done with. jumping to resolve from premiere is of course opening up much grater options for grading but yes, if you do not hold your tongue right when you do it you also risk a fair share of round tripping issues. All of a sudden you find your self in XML hell with a multilayered timeline that holds, speed changes, texts, scaling, etc... Then it can easily be a time consuming fiesta that takes up more time and money than what was estimated for the project all together.

A DP can easily download resolve for free and become a good colorist just as any colorist can easily grab a camera, go out and become a professional DP... or maybe not :)
 
<1. Write to a Mac-formatted drive and use Macdrive to read / write on the Windows desktop.

I just want to warn against this. I tried this and got very bad performance and some very scary crashes. Macdrive is not save according to my tests.
Myself I work with proxies all the time in FCPX and this is a fast workflow for me. Of course would be even faster with a rocket, but I like proxies since I can render with very small file sizes.
/Andreas
 
Brad Allen said:
Good thought Daniel, though with ExFat you won't have compatibility on Linux by default.

I think I used to avoid ExFat because a while back it didn't play as nice with OSX, but it seems those days are behind us :)
Click to expand...

I did more heavy research and ExFat I would avoid. Its a file system meant to be used by SD cards. It lacks a lot of safety features that the other systems have. Basically your risk of losing data is much higher.
/Andreas
 
Fat 32 isn't really handy when it is about working with big files.
You could also install in your mac "NTSF disk mounter", so you can read and write on a disk format in NTSF in your Mac.
Cheers and good luck.
B.
 
Huh... I'm new to Windows and installed MacDrive on the PC I just bought. I transferred several terabytes of files from one RAID to another with no crashes and without any decreases in speed.

YMMV
 
Would be great if the classic Rocket could be compatible with Dragon.
Not asking for the same performance but I don't want the 2 I own to become obsolete.
 
Marc Wielage said:
Grading in Premiere or RedCine-X Pro won't be nearly as flexible as doing so in a full-featured color-correction program like Resolve.
Click to expand...

And considering SpeedGrade can seamlessly transition back and forth between your premiere timeline and your SpeedGrade timeline there's no reason to not at least use SpeedGrade. It's just a button push away.

As to RedRocketX I agree with Marc, don't bother. You can buy a lot of computer for $9,000. Hypothetically speaking you could probably put together a Quad Socket Xeon for $9,000. The tradeoff would be general capability to render anything vs the lower power and noise from a RedRocket-X.
 
I am still hopefull for (non real time) RED-ROCKET support for DRAGON... But with the ROCKET-X and GPU support I fear it will never happen... Sad to have such a useful piece of hardware made obselete with a sensor upgrade

(still hopeful because I noticed while checking what was on a ssd before formating it the other day that an EPIC can playback DRAGON footage in real time, even if 6K... even tho it might not be full res debayer)
 
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