Is Rocket-X still useful?

[Tim Morten]

I expect to upgrade to a 16 core system with RTX 3080 graphics in 2021. Is the Rocket-X still useful at that point?

 

[Mike P.]

I don't own/use one, but I'm thinking it wouldn't be all that useful. Not only will the RTX3080 do the majority of heavy lifting (presuming you're using an NLE that supports the latest RED SDK with CUDA R3D decompression, like Resolve), but Rocket-X doesn't work with anything other than MX and Dragon footage, which I think the 16c CPU could chew through well enough by itself.

That said, I don't know what kind of resale value they have and it's not like it's gonna hurt anything to throw it in a vacant slot... ...Wait, unless the drivers don't work well with the latest version of Windows (then it might actually hurt stability.)

 

[Björn Benckert]

As written above. Likely you have more struggle with it then without. And only for dragon and earlier cameras. But if having such then the SDI out of the rocket is handy to have if not having a 4k video card like the BM deckling or such. But except for that a 1080ti or faster Nvida card or equal AMD card does what the rocket do or more.

 

[Tim Morten]

I'm using Premiere. I shoot Monstro, and was not aware there was a cut-off in terms of cameras. You're saying my debayers are already not accelerated? It seems surprising to me that I would have any performance at all for playback on my current system without the Rocket-X, but I will try disabling it to see if there's a difference.

 

[Tim Morten]

The B&H description for the Rocket-X explicitly mentions Helium and does not exclude Monstro. My impression is that it is not camera limited and simply offloading the debayer to this co-processor, leaving the CPU and GPU free for other tasks. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bh...digital_cinema_775_0005_red_rocket_x.html/amp