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Dragon without a Rocket X options

J

James Hogarth

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Hi All,

I've been pencilled in for a Dragon shoot in May (I'm a DIT).

I refuse to spend £6000 on a Rocket X As I only bought a normal rocket 2 years ago which now gathers dust and will never be of use again. I would buy a rocket x if there was someway of knowing that it would be worthwhile.

Frustrating thing is they are shooting 4k which on an epic the rocket works but not with a dragon.

My question is what would the users of this forum recommend as a solution for quick dailies from 4k dragon footage?

1. 1/4 debayer lo res files

2. Atotomos or similar recording to DNxHD

3. Any better solutions...

As always many thanks in advance for you responses
 
Rent a Rocket X and have production pay for it.

Otherwise your gonna spend well over $6000 on a fast computer & SSD RAID to make up the difference.

In LA you can find them for $150/Day totally worth it not sure what rates are in GB...
 
Thanks Cid.

I did consider telling them to get one but they are very cheap so it's one of the above options or the DOP will have to shoot Alexa.
 
James,

Check out the PIX-E5 or E7, these are great for having fast proxies on set and both have excellent panels inside.

Or maybe rent a Scarlet-W which has 4K Dragon and ProRes built-in.

For this particular job the production could even save a bit on camera rental going this route.

Keep us posted! ;)
 
I own an Atoms Shogun for shoots where I need to turn around ProRes files quickly after a shoot. Via SDI, it starts and stops as you record on the Epic. A lot smaller and lighter than the PIX options. You can also get a cable to power it from P-Tap making it even lighter and less noticeable. Its also a good tool to have as a second monitor for focus assist with the Dragon, or even recording 4K with an A7s. Good luck...
 
DC Chavez said:
I own an Atoms Shogun for shoots where I need to turn around ProRes files quickly after a shoot. Via SDI, it starts and stops as you record on the Epic. A lot smaller and lighter than the PIX options. You can also get a cable to power it from P-Tap making it even lighter and less noticeable. Its also a good tool to have as a second monitor for focus assist with the Dragon, or even recording 4K with an A7s. Good luck...
Click to expand...


Hi Mate,

Thanks this sounds interesting. What would your workflow be on a 4k dragon shoot using an Atomos?

Would I run an SDI out from a video village monitor then connect to the Atomos? Does it record automatically when the Dragon records? Does it hold Metadata? and if there is a look in the camera will it be recorded on the Atomos? Based on what I've read about it I could record 422 proxies then bring them in to Resolve and turn into MXF for the edit (cutting on Avid). This would give me proxie files for playback, Quickly make MXFs for the offline and then just copy the mags using Shotput pro so we have the Raw files backed up too. Does that all sound right and something that would work easily with this piece of kit?

Many thanks again to you and everyone for contributing
 
I just got a weapon that records prores, so I might consider selling my rocket-x... It's in the nice Sonnet TB2 enclosure. It's probably worth about $4000 to have it, but if you're gonna spend $6K that's a good savings.
 
Why not use a standard GPU? With my 980 ti I can get 65-75 fps on a 4K to ProRes 422 transcode on a classic mac pro which throttles the GPU to PCI 2.0 speeds. Still pretty fast though.
 
Wow that's impressive! Before I got the redrocket-x I upgraded to the highest end GPUs on the new Mac Pro and there are 2 of them -so they are supposed to rock, and the debayer was still well below 24fps... Are you doing a full quality de-bayer?
 
Wynn Padula said:
I just got a weapon that records prores, so I might consider selling my rocket-x... It's in the nice Sonnet TB2 enclosure. It's probably worth about $4000 to have it, but if you're gonna spend $6K that's a good savings.
Click to expand...


Hi Wynn, Thanks for this and I would have been 100% up for taking this off you but I've arranged to meet a guy in LA next month to buy his. If for some reason that falls through then I'll be in touch but he has assured me that the deal is on. Can I ask what enclosure you are using? I've just bought the Sonnet Echo Express III
http://www.eastwoodsoundandvision.c...iii-d-thunderbolt-2-to-pcie-expansion-chassis
 
The completely maxed out current Mac Pro works well without a rocket. For not too heavy and single to double track edits a macbook pro from 2012 actually can cope well without a rocket. Its not perfect, but does the job. The Rocket is probably nowadays only really necessary if you need quick prores conversion, Very heavy color grading or effects compositing or complex, multi track editing. I own one Rocket X and I only use it for complex work. outside of it a current Imac 27" Maxed out or my 2012 Retina (first edition) Macbook Pro work well enough for me to bother with the Rocket.
 
Yeah, but if you need to convert a day's worth of footage to ProResHQ 4K at a full de-bayer to give a client to edit with... you're looking at a couple hours vs. a couple days.
 
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