Let's talk about Computer for Scarlet

[AJ Aguirre]

So what are we looking at as far as computer requirements to work with the footage coming out of scarlet?

I'm hoping to be able to get by with a top of the line iMac without having to buy a rocket

It would be great to hear from someone who has worked with different systems and red footage already and what you think would be suitable given Scarlet's specs. Both Mac and pc solutions would be great.



-----------------------------EDIT---------------------

So here's the best answers we've have gotten so far

---From Tom Lowe
"Get a gaming PC with a fast "extreme" i7 CPU that can be overclocked a bit + a nice cooling fan for the CPU + at least 24GB of fast ram + GTX 580 CUDA card + Adobe CS5.5. And you're all set!"

---From Brian Iannone
"For anyone building an editing PC, here's my setup that I would recommend. Cost is about $4,000.

CPU: Intel i7-2600K overclocked to 4.9 GHz with a Corsair H80 liquid cooling system
RAM: 16 GB Corsair Dominator (overclocked to 1800 MHz)
Logic Board: ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z (make sure you use the Intel Z68 model if you're using the 2600K)
GPU: x2 PNY GTX 560 Ti (I plan on replacing with two GTX '600's when they're released in a few months)
PSU: Corsair Pro Series Gold AX1200 (1.2 kW, enough for however many drives you'd ever need)
Case: Corsair Obsidian 800D (enough room for however many drives you'd ever need)
Storage: 120 GB OCZ RevoDrive Series 3 for the boot volume (Windows) and six 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT's striped in RAID 0 for data"

----Lengthy but good comment to read
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...er-for-Scarlet&p=858226&viewfull=1#post858226

 

[Carter Cammack]

I've been thinking the same. I'm WAY overdue for a new system and have been looking at a loaded IMAC.
I hear some of the pros aren't thrilled with the new Lion OS or the latest from Final Cut Pro, as if it's suddenly less "Pro" than it was.
Any comments, anyone?

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Premiere handles red files without effort on my i7 860.

 

[Brian Iannone]

I've been thinking the same. I'm WAY overdue for a new system and have been looking at a loaded IMAC.
I hear some of the pros aren't thrilled with the new Lion OS or the latest from Final Cut Pro, as if it's suddenly less "Pro" than it was.
Any comments, anyone?

When Lion came out, I kind of abandoned my 8-core Mac Pro and built a 4.9 GHz PC running Windows 7. I'm using Premiere and Avid now. To be honest, Final Cut Pro X is joke (I know that may cause some argument). Also, you can't put 18 TB of hard drive storage in an iMac. I haven't completely switched from Mac OS X to Windows, but for video editing I'd recommend something a little more powerful than an iMac.

 

[Ryan Sauve]

For PC folks out there who've worked with raw RED footage, I just recently put this machine together. Any thoughts on it's ability to edit 4k Scarlet-X footage in Adobe CS5?

Motherboard: Asus P8P67 PRO Rev 3.0 w/ Dual DDR3 1600, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, 1394, PCI-E, Quad CrossFireX / SLI
Operating System HD: OCZ Vertex 2 E Series 2.5in SATA II Solid State Drive, 240GB
Media HD: 2 x Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black 7200rpm SATA III w/ 64MB Cache
CPU: Intel Core™ i7-2600K Processor, 3.40GHz w/ 8MB Cache
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 570 Superclocked 1280 MB GDDR5 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card
Ram: 2 x Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB DDR3-1600MHz CL9 Dual Channel Kit (2 x 4GB) w/ Intel XMP
BD Writer: LG BH12 Super Multi Blue 12x Internal SATA Blu-ray Disc Writer, Black w/ Lightscribe
PS: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W ATX 20/24PIN SLI Ready Modular Cables 135mm Fan 80PLUS Power Supply
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium x64 (64-bit) DVD - OEM

I Raid 0'd the two 1TB WD drives. Thoughts?

 

[Brian Iannone]

For PC folks out there who've worked with raw RED footage, I just recently put this machine together. Any thoughts on it's ability to edit 4k Scarlet-X footage in Adobe CS5?

Motherboard: Asus P8P67 PRO Rev 3.0 w/ Dual DDR3 1600, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, 1394, PCI-E, Quad CrossFireX / SLI
Operating System HD: OCZ Vertex 2 E Series 2.5in SATA II Solid State Drive, 240GB
Media HD: 2 x Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black 7200rpm SATA III w/ 64MB Cache
CPU: Intel Core™ i7-2600K Processor, 3.40GHz w/ 8MB Cache
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 570 Superclocked 1280 MB GDDR5 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card
Ram: 2 x Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB DDR3-1600MHz CL9 Dual Channel Kit (2 x 4GB) w/ Intel XMP
BD Writer: LG BH12 Super Multi Blue 12x Internal SATA Blu-ray Disc Writer, Black w/ Lightscribe
PS: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W ATX 20/24PIN SLI Ready Modular Cables 135mm Fan 80PLUS Power Supply
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium x64 (64-bit) DVD - OEM

I Raid 0'd the two 1TB WD drives. Thoughts?

That's a solid build, but 2 TB doesn't sound like very much. I suppose it really depends on how much footage you plan on shooting, though. Also, you may want to try overclocking the i7. Overclocking is typically done in gaming PC's, however it can really speed up the system when processing video. The RAM can sometimes be overclocked also. You definitely want to use RAID 0. Just make sure you have a proper backup system. If you're using more than four drives, you may want to try RAID 10. Since you're using an EVGA GeForce GTX 570, you'll get some performance boost in Adobe CS5/5.5. Other than that, nice choices.

 

[Ryan Sauve]

That's a solid build, but 2 TB doesn't sound like very much. I suppose it really depends on how much footage you plan on shooting, though. Also, you may want to try over clocking the i7. Overclocking is typically done in gaming PC's, however it can really speed up the system when processing video. The RAM can sometimes be overclocked also. You definitely want to use RAID 0. Just make sure you have a proper backup system. If you're using more than four drives, you may want to try RAID 10.

Hey Brian, I really appreciate the feedback. I've got a few extra 2TB external HDs that I keep around for raw media files. It makes sense that I'll need a lot of storage for these bigger files. Moving up from a t2i is a fairly big step, heh heh. Now on to the Overclocking research I go!

 

[Arash Monjazeb]

I just shot a film using Red One with the Mysterium sensor. All 4K footage. I used Sony Vegas on a standard good PC and I can drag and drop the R3D files into my timeline and play them back in real-time. I'll do some color correction and some FX and I'm still playing back at around 24fps.
I also bought a mid range iMac with i5 cpu just a few days ago, to use with FCPX. Unfortunately Apple has not yet integrated RED into the workflow as Vegas and Premier have. So you still have to transcode to Prores before editing. I transcoded to Prores 422 and the footage plays back in real-time. I'll test transcoding to Prores 4444 in a few weeks. I've heard that Apple will release an update to FCPX in early 2012 to allow for dropping R3D files into the timeline. That should have been there from day 1, in my opinion.

 

[Nick Wernham]

I would really like to get a Mac Pro. In fact, I think that before we invest in further accessories or lenses that will be the next purchase that we work towards. It's probably not something that is in the cards until next year when the new Mac Pro systems are released though.

 

[Brian Iannone]

I would really like to get a Mac Pro. In fact, I think that before we invest in further accessories or lenses that will be the next purchase that we work towards. It's probably not something that is in the cards until next year when the new Mac Pro systems are released though.

I can't believe that I'm actually going to say this (I've always loved Apple), but I would recommend against getting a Mac Pro. However, you may not even need to make the decision. The Mac Pro may become discontinued: http://goo.gl/PhyRA, http://goo.gl/SYs9E (Of course, it's just rumor...)

 

[Paul Thomson]

Hi AJ,

I took a modular approach...

I bought a Dell T5400 from Ebay with a pretty basic spec then over time crammed it with other Ebay scores when I could afford it - 16Gb of ram (don't laugh - it was cheap and one day windows will learn how to use it), later a 1Gb Quadro FX and I updated the single processor with two beefy quad core Xeons. I scored a licensed copy of Avid Media Composer years ago and Avid have been very cool about buying upgrades. MC 6 just came out and I can get t for £100.

It has server me well as my 64-bit desktop Avid beast. Finally Avid will be 64-bit with version 6 so I'm hoping for a performance leap (famous last words). I have a pretty decent Macbook pro as well which has never let me down. I use that for after effects tasks and throw files around my home network. A nightmare workflow for some but I enjoy it I usually have a machine free when I need it!

Cheers,

Paul

 

[Arash Monjazeb]

For PC folks out there who've worked with raw RED footage, I just recently put this machine together. Any thoughts on it's ability to edit 4k Scarlet-X footage in Adobe CS5?

Motherboard: Asus P8P67 PRO Rev 3.0 w/ Dual DDR3 1600, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, 1394, PCI-E, Quad CrossFireX / SLI
Operating System HD: OCZ Vertex 2 E Series 2.5in SATA II Solid State Drive, 240GB
Media HD: 2 x Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black 7200rpm SATA III w/ 64MB Cache
CPU: Intel Core™ i7-2600K Processor, 3.40GHz w/ 8MB Cache
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 570 Superclocked 1280 MB GDDR5 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card
Ram: 2 x Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB DDR3-1600MHz CL9 Dual Channel Kit (2 x 4GB) w/ Intel XMP
BD Writer: LG BH12 Super Multi Blue 12x Internal SATA Blu-ray Disc Writer, Black w/ Lightscribe
PS: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W ATX 20/24PIN SLI Ready Modular Cables 135mm Fan 80PLUS Power Supply
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium x64 (64-bit) DVD - OEM

I Raid 0'd the two 1TB WD drives. Thoughts?

This will do fine with Vegas but not sure about Premier, but I would bet that Premier will do fine as well. You should have no problem using 4K files in your timeline at 24fps.

"RAID 0" however is a big mistake. Unless you're making daily backups to a non-raid drive I'd abandon "RAID 0". Go with RAID 1 or use a SATA drive as your video drive and then back it up to another SATA or external drive. Bottom line you don't need RAID.
I'm editing feature films on single drives and backing them up to externals. I get 24fps performance with FX, what else do you need?

 

[Mike Garrick]

I would 2nd that comment about raid drives. I use to cut everything in 10 bit uncompressed (very large files) with wild reel footage stored & backed up on external terrabyte drives, I found my raid system almost redundant. My next upgrade I will bypassing raid systems altogether.

 

[Carter Cammack]

So is there an improved, more "film-oriented" FCP in development that uses RED native files without transcoding?
I'd be very surprised if we've heard the last from Final Cut, but I'm wrong a lot. Any issues with Lion?

We have done some beautiful work with Vegas for church videos. I can build another hotrod PC if that would be better.
This would be my first MAC and only because I want to use Cheetah3d also. I've seen 3Dmaxx and it looks clumsy in comparison.

 

[Felix K.]

My opinion is: if FCP is ever to become a proffessional tool again, then only if Apple sells the brand to someone else. Their whole strategy in the last few years was: mass market. Mass market!!
There is even talk that they will ditch the whole MAC PRO concept because it doesn't sell well enough. Unlike RED, Apple is not too keen on "giving options". One size fits all is more like it nowadays.

 

[Mike Garrick]

Alot of longtime FCP users (I'm one of them ) are migrating to Premier or even Avid so what does that tell you? FCPX had a tour the other day still has issues (why freakin hell do you have to export everything thru compressor unless its a basic codec.!!) The real issue is there is no support for Red yet in FCPX but its coming, apparently. The other 2 NLEs mentioned both support redfiles I'm in the process of deciding which way to jump I suspect it will be Premier.

P.S. Both Premier & Avid have apple versions you can run

 

[Brian Iannone]

"RAID 0" however is a big mistake. Unless you're making daily backups to a non-raid drive I'd abandon "RAID 0". Go with RAID 1 or use a SATA drive as your video drive and then back it up to another SATA or external drive. Bottom line you don't need RAID.
I'm editing feature films on single drives and backing them up to externals. I get 24fps performance with FX, what else do you need?

I respectfully disagree. If all you need is capacity, then using individual drives is acceptable if you want all your data and footage in multiple locations all over the place. However, if you are serious about disk performance and want a centralized storage solution, the only option is to stripe the disks using RAID. Can you playback a 4K stream at 30 fps on one of your single drives? I'd bet not.

 

[Brian Iannone]

Alot of longtime FCP users (I'm one of them ) are migrating to Premier or even Avid so what does that tell you? FCPX had a tour the other day still has issues (why freakin hell do you have to export everything thru compressor unless its a basic codec.!!) The real issue is there is no support for Red yet in FCPX but its coming, apparently. The other 2 NLEs mentioned both support redfiles I'm in the process of deciding which way to jump I suspect it will be Premier.

Whichever you choose, you can't go wrong with either one.

 

[Brian Iannone]

I would 2nd that comment about raid drives. I use to cut everything in 10 bit uncompressed (very large files) with wild reel footage stored & backed up on external terrabyte drives, I found my raid system almost redundant. My next upgrade I will bypassing raid systems altogether.

10-bit uncompressed footage at 1080p30 has a bit rate of nearly 1 Gbps (125 MB/s). With the overhead of a regular single drive, it's highly unlikely that you'd get smooth playback. What resolution and frame rate are you working with?

 

[Mike Garrick]

@ Brian.

You raised a good point ref the raid drive, maybe with 4K rez i will actually start needing them afterall!!