most affordable Apple laptop for editing and color correcting, grading

[Ben Brainerd]

Also, to the OP (Cristina):
You've set yourself up with a set of conflicting criteria. You want a fast machine (for realtime/close to it) that's cheap and can do high-power things like grading. I'm reminded of the old project triangle thing. Fast, Cheap, Good. Pick two. There's really no way to get all three, especially from Apple hardware.

As a working Colorist, I've gotta say that you're never going to have a satisfactory grading experience on a laptop. Trust me, I did my first half-dozen projects, including two RED features on a MBP. Between the limited processors, drives, and outputs, you might end up with a *tolerable* experience, but never good. Not unless you set up to something like Andrae's second picture, with a mobile Rocket box and a lot of extra addons. But at that point you're so far out of "Cheap" territory it's not even funny.

 

[M Most]

As a working Colorist, I've gotta say that you're never going to have a satisfactory grading experience on a laptop.

I agree. Asking what laptop to use for color grading is like asking which Mini Cooper to buy for towing a 100 foot yacht. Or which GoPro model to use for shooting an Imax 3D movie. It's simply not an appropriate tool for the job, even if it's technically capable of doing it.

 

[Mate Marić]

For the most part, Rocket doesn't link to your editing software. A number of Color-Grading software packages support it, but I don't know of any NLEs that do.

The big thing that Rocket helps with is proxy creation. The more or less de-facto workflow with RED footage is to generate ProRes/DNX/Etx proxies and edit those. Rocket can help you run off those proxies quickly.

It's not going to help you edit bigger files. See "Not Linked to the NLE". If your system maxes out at 1080 with ProRes, you're still going to be limited to 1080. But you'll be able to generate those 1080 proxies a lot faster with the rocket.

Why would you want to *edit* 4K online? To be blunt, that makes no sense whatsoever.

To sum it all up, Rocket saves you a LOT of time in rendering. Both in generating proxies and in generating final/semi-final files for grading.

Thanks. I dont wont to edit 4K online, I just ask is that the way rocket works because RED use term "realtime" a lot and I dont understand in which context. Now i know.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

For the most part, Rocket doesn't link to your editing software. A number of Color-Grading software packages support it, but I don't know of any NLEs that do.

Premiere Pro CS5, AE CS5 and AVID MC5 all support the Rocket. I believe Sony Vegas now supports the Rocket as well. All are Windows/Mac, except Vegas being Windows only. One issue in Premiere is that the Rocket needs to be turned off during editing since it actually SLOWS DOWN the real-time performance with their Mercury Playback Engine. Depends on the system, but on a 8-Core 2.93GHz system or 12-core system with a good GPU, the Rocket actually becomes a bottleneck within Premiere. Switch the Rocket back on for rendering your actual output though.

And of course, AE isn't an NLE... DaVinci Resolve, Scratch, and more support the Rocket within their color grading and finishing environments.

Currently only Storm and Redcine-X support video output via the Rocket.

The big thing that Rocket helps with is proxy creation. The more or less de-facto workflow with RED footage is to generate ProRes/DNX/Etx proxies and edit those. Rocket can help you run off those proxies quickly.

Proxies, transcodes, etc.. RC-X can be used with the Rocket for real-time primary grading and look file creation. These looks can be loaded into other supporting apps or loaded back to the camera. Of course, the Rocket isn't needed for this, but it sure helps smooth the process and allows you to feed HD-SDI output to a calibrated monitor path.

Offline / proxy editing is a diminishing workflow. REDCODE R3D files are rather small for what they contain. As CPU horsepower increases and developers make better use of the hardware we have (as we see with Premiere CS5), people are going to spend less time generating proxies and doing an offline edit with a re-conform later. When connected to a moderately fast eSATA RAID-0 of two fast 1TB HDDs, my 17" Macbook Pro can edit smoothly with 2~3 streams of 4K REDCODE at 1/8 to 1/4 resolution, depending on which FX and transitions are applied. Why should I bother generating proxies for most common editing tasks? In Premiere, these playback / editing streams are done WITHOUT the Rocket enabled.

Why would you want to *edit* 4K online? To be blunt, that makes no sense whatsoever.

REDCODE and wavelets don't work that way. You choose your resolution and debayer level. Keep in mind that REDCODE-36 4K from the RED One is approximately 38MB/s w/audio. Not a whole lot bigger or different than ProRes 422 @ 1080p. If you set your debayer level to half and your resolution to 1/4, you're effectively working with 720p proxies right from the 4K R3D files without actually building separate proxy files. Of course, not all NLE systems support this...

To sum it all up, Rocket saves you a LOT of time in rendering. Both in generating proxies and in generating final/semi-final files for grading.

Yep. But there are plenty of other hardware purchases that should probably be considered before plunking down $3K+ on a Rocket. Just sayin' I love the Rocket and have two systems equipped with one. I think 99% of what I do with RED footage passes through the Rocket at some point. Lately, the editing step hasn't involved it, but grading, finishing and final rendering all benefit.

 

[Angus Mackay]

on a 8-Core 2.93GHz system or 12-core system with a good GPU, the Rocket actually becomes a bottleneck within Premiere. Switch the Rocket back on for rendering your actual output though.

That suggests, Jeff, that Cuda also takes care of playback as well as effects. Some people claim that Mercury/Cuda only makes a meaningful difference once effects are applied. Can you confirm that that isn't the case? And, if so, how much difference does it make (compared to the same scenario without Cuda)?

Also, why do you turn on the Rocket for the final render?

many thanks

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

That suggests, Jeff, that Cuda also takes care of playback as well as effects. Some people claim that Mercury/Cuda only makes a meaningful difference once effects are applied. Can you confirm that that isn't the case? And, if so, how much difference does it make (compared to the same scenario without Cuda)?

CUDA is only used to accelerate color/LUT application, transformations (scaling, rotation, etc..) and FX that are specifically GPU-accelerated. Premiere labels all GPU-accelerated FX as such. The rest of the Mercury engine is entirely CPU-based and it scales very well up to about 10 or so physical CPUs or about 14 or so logical/virtual. At least that has been my experience. In a 12-core system, watching the CPUs, it struggles with the full 12 (or 24 virtual).

Anyway, the R3D support is all CPU-bound when getting it into Premiere. The CPUs perform all decompression, debayer and initial transformation of the R3D frames. But utilizing multiple CPUs allows current workstations to plow through a lot of it. The CUDA acceleration makes a difference once the REDCODE is decoded/debayered and a color LUT is applied via the GPU. This frees up the CPU to keep doing what it's doing. Not having the GPU there, even though it's doing a much smaller portion of the heavy lifting, will impact the performance by quite a bit. The CPUs also process all FX that are not designed to be GPU-accelerated.

Also, why do you turn on the Rocket for the final render?

Because you will presumably want to render from a full-resolution, full-quality debayer and the Rocket will decode at that natively and in real-time. A full resolution, full debayer can grind each CPU to a crawl, so in this regard, the system is waiting on CPUs to generate frames and not the Rocket. So opposite of when set to lower resolution and debayer quality during editing.

During editing, the Rocket becomes a bottleneck because it still does a full debayer and then scales to the selected output resolution and so its frame generation can actually be slower and not in-sync with what the CPUs are doing. Premiere/AE both support multiple Rocket cards, but I have not tried multiple Rockets to see what that does. I have two systems with a Rocket installed, but have never combined the two -- one in my primary Mac tower and the other in the Mac on my DIT cart. I'm planning to get another Rocket once I finalize my budget and purchase lists for the Epics I have coming... I plan to put the next Rocket (maybe two of them) into a Windows box.

 

[Uli Plank]

I wonder if a laptop with the Rocket in an expansion box might be faster under Premiere CS5 when editing.

 

[Angus Mackay]

Excellent, lucid explanation, Jeff.

Thanks very much