Edit 4k in real time for $1200 complete system

[Erick von Schulz]

I was building a new PC and looked around for the cheapest way to build a 4k red real time edit station.

This system edits full RED 4k footage in real time at full resolution. A note half res is fine for most applications.
I already had an SDI card and case.


The system is:

Asus P8P67 revision 3 motherboard

Intel i7 2600k CPU
16gb PC1600 DDR3 ram
Nvidia GTX 560 2gb
SSD Sata III 120gb boot drive
2 1 TB drives in Raid 0 config

I got the above for around $1,000 and figured an extra $200 if you have to buy your case and power supply.

I had a case and 750 Watt power supply on hand.
Decklink Pro SD card

I am using adobe CS 5.03 and running it out to SDI

I setup the system hooked the SDI out to my ecinema display and everything is real time at Full 4K resolution.

It will also play realtime to my JVC DTL monitor as well at the same time..

Effects are a little slow to render at full 4k res..

I rendered out a three minutes film look using saphire FX and it took about 7 minutes per minute to render at full 4k res.

No red rocket or any additional hardware.

Just thought I would share since it is such an inexpensive build for the power it provides.

I have a q6600 with a gtx 570 that can only play red 4k at half res. So this is a big jump in power for the money.

 

[Solomon Nero]

Funny...I am building a 24core workstation, and was wondering if I could get away with not getting a red rocket card...still might get one...but in case I cant get one immediately, nice to know another option works. Thanks for the post!

 

[Joshua Raven]

I must be doing something seriously wrong, as I recently built this:

Intel Core i7 970 6 Core Processor 3.2GHZ (Overclocked to 3.8GHZ) 12MB Cache 4.8GT/S
ASUS Rampage III Extreme E-ATX DDR3 4PCI-E16 Motherboard
24 GB Corsair Dominator GT 24GB DDR3-2000
EVGA GeForce GTX 580 3GB GDDR5
4 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB SATA 6GB/S In RAID 0
OCZ Vertex 3 120GB 2.5IN SATA3 6Gbps Sandforce SSD Boot Drive
32" 1080p LCD via hdmi

And I am only able to do 1/2 resolution in Premiere 5.5. I notice you are using an sdi card, where I am using HDMI out to my LCD, might this be the culprit? Should I be looking at a Decklink 4K? Any insight you (or anyone else) might have as to what component may be slowing things down would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

I have a similar build as Erick (Core i7 2600K), and I can only comfortably do 1/2 res. Overclocked to 4.8 GHz and its about 18 fps for 4K full-res. All 8 threads are stressed out to 100%, so there are no bottlenecks either. Of course, dropping Debayer Detail to Low could help - is that how you achieved full res playback? In any case, full-res is of no use to me as I don't use a 4K display. (If I could afford one I would invest in a 10-core Xeon) 1/2 res is still 2K and just enough for all monitoring purposes. Paused Resolution is full res, of course.

By the time affordable 4K displays are out, I am sure improved CPUs, GPUs and software optimization will make 5K full res playback a reality for mainstream computers.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

GeForce cards are not optimal for work with CS5.5. There are two things needed when trying to stream high quality or 4K. Disk bandwidth and GPU acceleration.
I would say max out on the bandwidth even more and get two Quadro cards instead. Trying to stress the processors with decoding 4K is only gonna bottleneck your system.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

GeForce cards are not optimal for work with CS5.5. There are two things needed when trying to stream high quality or 4K. Disk bandwidth and GPU acceleration.
I would say max out on the bandwidth even more and get two Quadro cards instead. Trying to stress the processors with decoding 4K is only gonna bottleneck your system.

PPBM5 suggests quite the opposite. GeForce cards are right on top of Quadro.

Of course, that is no surprise. Quadro 5000 - 352 CUDA Cores @ 513 MHz; GeForce GTX 580 - 512 CUDA Cores @ 772 MHz. In fact, even the GTX 560 Ti is more powerful. For CAD/CAM apps, the Quadro drivers do make an enormous difference, however. There are the connectivity options as well. But as far as performance in Premiere Pro is concerned - get a GeForce.

Also, CUDA acceleration is not accelerated with SLI.

Agreed on the disk bandwidth, and also, using multiple disks. However, one modern 7200 RPM hard drive can read 4K REDCODE 42 just fine. 2 streams and you might need RAID0. High bitrate 5K EPIC files and you might want to invest in SSDs.

If your CPUs are stressed to 100% and you still don't get real-time playback, then you know what the bottleneck is - the CPU. If not, then there are other bottlenecks to consider.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

I highly doubt Erick is drbayering at full quality. Perhaps he's confusing settings somewhere.

 

[luigivaltulini]

Erik , you are sure????
can not be a full 4k debayer with this machine ...
REDROCKET full debayer only .....

 

[Joshua Raven]

"I would say max out on the bandwidth even more and get two Quadro cards instead. "


Unfortunately, Premiere is not yet multi-GPU aware, so I'm not sure how more than one Quadro is going to help in this instance. In reply to a recent query, Dave from Adobe had no timeline as to when Premiere might be able to take advantage of more than one GPU, which is disappointing. I'm sure they've got to be working their asses off on it though. People would be flocking to Adobe (more than they already are) and Nvidia would be selling a ton of cards. Just imagining having three 3GB GeForce 580's SLI'D - 9GB of video RAM and 1536 cores for $1600 - would be so sweet if Premiere could make use of it.
Just to confirm - the consensus is that a Decklink card is not going to help here? What Mb/s am I going to have to hit with my raid before I can get full 4K?

 

[Subhadip Sen]

"I would say max out on the bandwidth even more and get two Quadro cards instead. "


Unfortunately, Premiere is not yet multi-GPU aware, so I'm not sure how more than one Quadro is going to help in this instance. In reply to a recent query, Dave from Adobe had no timeline as to when Premiere might be able to take advantage of more than one GPU, which is disappointing. I'm sure they've got to be working their asses off on it though. People would be flocking to Adobe (more than they already are) and Nvidia would be selling a ton of cards. Just imagining having three 3GB GeForce 580's SLI'D - 9GB of video RAM and 1536 cores for $1600 - would be so sweet if Premiere could make use of it.
Just to confirm - the consensus is that a Decklink card is not going to help here? What Mb/s am I going to have to hit with my raid before I can get full 4K?

To be fair, it's not really required. The bottleneck is always the CPU. I have never seen the GPU usage go above 30% on a GTX 560. The CPU is always struggling at 100% though.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

GeForce cards are not optimal for work with CS5.5.

eh??

I would say max out on the bandwidth even more and get two Quadro cards instead. Trying to stress the processors with decoding 4K is only gonna bottleneck your system.

As Subhadip says, the bottleneck here is the CPU (and, storage, and RAM). But in the case of CS5.5, it's the CPU in most cases. GPU is only used for certain tasks and is rarely maxed out. Unless you're talking about multiple GPU cards for use in Resolve or for SLI for games, you're wasting your time. Adobe's current CUDA implementation doesn't support more than one GPU anyway.

If you're doing a lot of work with R3D's, I recommend a RED Rocket. Of course, that kinda shoots this whole $1200 thing in the head...

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

Get a battle-tested (re-certified) Rocket directly from Red. They go for about 3k when they have them. I think dual overclocked CPUs could keep up, but if you can throw a rocket in there you get all that power for your work. It also gives you proper output!

Then all you need is a $300 gaming card.

Think about what systems used to cost... and the resolutions they would handle! This stuff is practically free now.

If you got talent, it is a small investment to let you work, and earn some good cash.

Editing ---the negatives--- in real-time with a little rig is just ludicrous... insane.

We should kiss a block of silicone and thank the heavens for what we can do today.

0.02

 

[Kevin Olsen]

I went ahead and just *added* my Geforce 560Ti to the supported cards list and it flys. I'll try to post some concrete results so show RED speed but I need to find some good R3Ds since I don't have a camera yet. Help a brother out!

Just built a similar system as well:
Asus P8Z68V-Pro MB
Intel 2600k (stock speed for now)
16GB RAM
Palit Nvidia Geforce 560Ti 2GB
Intel 510 120GB system disk
(4) 640GB WD Caviar Black - Raid 10 - swap/scratch
750watt PSU
Antec H620 CPU water cooler
Antec P183 case

 

[David Rasberry]

I'm looking at building a similar Sandy Bridge system for 3k Scarlet footage. Sounds like it should be quite adequate for my needs. Not so concerned about rendering time as I won't be doing much in the way of fast turn work outside of the occasional TV spot.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

I'm looking at building a similar Sandy Bridge system for 3k Scarlet footage. Sounds like it should be quite adequate for my needs. Not so concerned about rendering time as I won't be doing much in the way of fast turn work outside of the occasional TV spot.

AMD's upcoming FX CPUs might be ideal for Scarlet 3K. Early engineering sample benchmarks show it to be far ahead of Core i7 2600K and almost the same as Intel's 6-core CPUs in multi-threaded apps (which CS5.5 most definitely is) thanks to its 8 cores. Fingers crossed if all the reports are true, the final retail AMD FX-8000, which ships in early September (hopefully, the same time or just before Scarlet releases!), could end up being a good 25%-30% faster than Sandy Bridge for the same price. The catch is - of course - outside of CS5.5, X264, Vegas Pro, Cinema 4D and few other post production software; few other usage scenarios are so heavily multithreaded, and they simply won't be able to utilize all 8 cores. (Though to counter this the CPU shuts off 4 of its cores and overclocks the other 4 by 1 GHz - but that's a different discussion altogether) So, us multi-threaded users end up getting the bargain. Plus, AMD is all about value for money, to combat Intel's incredible marketing and channel prowess.

Add in a GTX 560 (non-Ti) and 4 hard drives (2xRAID0 for source footage - the updated Scarlet will feature SSD Module, so if one uses SSDs and a high bitrate a single hard drive will be a bottleneck), and I think this could be the perfect rig for Scarlet 3K footage. 3K scaled to 2K will be a piece of cake (though CS5.5 doesn't have this option, yet), and I just have this feeling it might just even debayer 3K real time - definitely with overclocking.

By the time 4K displays are available at reasonably affordable prices - I am certain CPU, GPU and software improvements will make debayer to 4K real time a reality for $1200 PCs. Today, debayering to 2K with a $1200 PC is already a reality. That's hardware that costs lesser than the software it runs!