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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 :)

GPU vs Red Rocket Card

T

Talon Clemow

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Hi there,

I'm currently trying to output a 2hr doco called 'Thundercloud' (https://vimeo.com/79639488) shot mostly on 4k and 5k Red Epic but also has mixed media elements (DVCPROHD, XDCam, H264 etc.) and I've tried multiple ways of getting it to export but each time something goes wrong.

I'm currently using :

27inch iMac
3.4 Ghz Intel Core i7
16gb RAM
Premiere Pro CS6
and I have 12TB plugged in via USB. (2 x 3TB Western Digital external in dual dock, 2 x 2TB Western Digital in dual dock and 1 x 2TB Western Digital Passport for Mac)

Would a Red Rocket Card enhance my current set up and smooth out my export problems?

Or,

Should I invest in a good GPU, SSD and 32gb RAM and use the Mac Pro 3,1 2008 model that I also have in my office and upgrade it to Mountain Lion?

Your feedback is appreciated as my efforts of rendering my timeline, exporting DPX's and even exporting through After Effects is getting depressing / frustrating.

In gratitude
Talon

One Palm Media
www.onepalmMEDIA.com
 
Would help if you told us what was "going wrong". Because, honestly, the iMac is probably better than that old Mac Pro, all things considered, and while the Red Rocket would help speed up R3D transcoding, it shouldn't make a difference in terms of reliability.

What's your workflow? What format are you rendering to? Is your destination drive formatted in FAT32? If you're rendering out one large file, say a ProRes4444 file, to a Fat32 drive, well, there's your problem (Fat32 formatted drives can't store any single file that is larger than 4GB). Of course, that's only one of a thousand possibilities, but without any sort of indication as to what, specifically, problems you're running into, it's hard to speculate.
 
Now that RCX is actually decoding the R3D compression on multiple CPU cores, the multi core machines really go fast. I'm still not sure why the GPU needs to be so powerful to complete the package. Rather odd, really.
 
Hey Nick,

Thanks for your reply and sorry that you didn't think I'd made my problems clear.

My exports and renders keep crashing my project. It's a little over 2hrs, the timeline, and whenever I try to render it so that I can watch a full res version, I leave it overnight and come back in the morning to see either a 'spinning wheel of death' beachball or if I'm exporting a DPX sequence through Media Encoder, I get the failed symbol.

I did one successful DPX sequence export and that was done in 50000 frames increments. The project is approx 180000 frames long so I cued them up into 4 separate parts in Media Encoder and that worked. But I've since trimmed that version by about 6 or 7 minutes over the course of the timeline and would like to re-export it to a DPX again to have my final watch through. Now it keeps failing; and say it gets up to 23829 frames of 50000, some of those frames are black and a jittery imagery, some just have the lower third name straps on a black background, when in actual fact there should be a talking head underneath it. The lower thirds are motion graphics in an animation codec exported from After Effects.

My drives aren't formatted to FAT32 or they wouldn't be able to hold any of my Red Epic .r3d files that are larger than 4gb.

I was wondering if a Red Rocket card would assist in the rendering or exporting stages or if they are purely for playback.

From the research I've done today it seems as though my hard drives and USB connection may be the issue. Some of the drives 'go to sleep' while another is working and when it comes time to fetch the next piece of data from the 'asleep drive' it's possible that the iMac can't process everything and just has a meltdown.

Advice has been given to me that I might need at 12 or 16TB raid which will keep all the drives working during the rendering or exporting process, subsequently keep not crashing the project and giving me a viewable document at the end of the process. I'm just a little pained to go back through and re-link the amount of data that I have on my 2 hr timeline on the off chance it might work.

Or is better to migrate my drives across to my Mac Pro, run them internally, invest in 32gb RAM and a good GPU (is a Red Rocket a GPU?) as the CPU in 2.8Ghz 8 core Xeon Mac Pro should be more powerful than the single 3.4Ghz of the iMac.

I was kind of hoping someone on here might have experienced a similar issue and may be able to help.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

In gratitude
Talon
 
If it's a drive sleep problem, you can go to Energy Saver in the System Preferences and uncheck "Put derives to sleep when possible" to see if that solves it. Easy to test. But I don't think that's it. I think that would slow things down to a crawl if it happened, but I don't think it would produce the symptoms you describe.

if you are making DPX sequences, I think you may be running out of memory when rendering full rez. Are the parts of the film that render wrong more complex in any way than the parts that render? (more effects? different effects? more layers?) Is the sequence 4K or 1080p or something else? If it's a 4K sequence, the memory requirements would be very high. But a few layers on 4K material in a 1080 sequence would also require a lot of RAM -- especially if you're rendering more than 8 bits to the DPX files.

The Red Rocket is not a GPU. It's a specialty card for de-compressing and debarring .r3d files. It'll speed up your .r3d renders, but it won't do anything else.
 
I don't think the system prefs setting for the HD sleep can change USB drive sleeping?
The iMac should be fine but if anything I would invest in the 32gb ram (owc/mac sales.com is great)....
with the prices of the old rocket right now it might be a good investment, especially if you won't upgrade to dragon anytime soon...
 
16GB of ram is really to low for this workflow with this media. DPX rendering in Adobe is extremely tempermental with regards to drive throughput available. You don't have to meet the bandwidth for the DPX media but you do have to meet the required speed expected by the file writer. In testing I have done any drive setup less than a 2 drive raid zero or a SSD drive had chances of failing export of DPX. So essentially you want a drive setup that gives you 200MB/s r higher and 32GB of ram. Those will go a long way in helping this export.
 
Last edited:
Talon Clemow said:
My drives aren't formatted to FAT32 or they wouldn't be able to hold any of my Red Epic .r3d files that are larger than 4gb.
Click to expand...


NOT TRUE. Red formats the magazines as Fat32. If recording is going to create a file that is larger than 4GB, the camera segments it into a separate files within the same clip folder. So if this is the only way that you know you're drives aren't Fat32, then it's not a sufficient method.

However, that being said, whether the destination drive is Fat32 or not doesn't matter at all if you're writing a DPX sequence (since every frame will be smaller than 4GB). Drive sleep is certainly a potential factor. Unfortunately, there are drive enclosures out there that will sleep the drive despite what the OS tells it. Having both the source and destination on the same directly attached RAID would prevent that. Cheaper than getting a RR and enclosure, too.
 
Which drive are you writing to? Is it a USB 3 drive?

Is your media spread out amongst a few drives or is it one drive doing the read/write?
 
Until you can fix things, what i've done in past with similar problem is render out small sections, then string those together and render from
that. Not the best, but if in a pinch it works.
 
Thanks for the responses, really appreciate your feedback fellas....

The media is spread across all of the drives except on drive in one of the docks that the DPX and render files are writing to.

I borrowed a mobile Red Rocket card with Thunderbolt input yesterday and left the timeline to render overnight. Alas, I got the 'spinning wheel of death' greeting me this morning. I think it's the RAM and Hard Drive issue.

I'm going to migrate over to the Mac Pro today, plug the drives in internally, upgrade the RAM, use a Firewire 800 dock, upgrade the OSX to Mountain Lion and fingers crossed that should do the trick.

Really appreciate the time you guys spent on my issue. Will keep you updated with the progress.

In gratitude
Talon

One Palm Media
www.onepalmMEDIA.com
 
You have to meet the transfer rate the File Writer for DPX will require. USB2 is not going to do that. USB3 and E-sata can however I have still seen failures on 4K DPX export if the write speed was under 200MB/s though 140MB/s will normally work with most exports.
 
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