MX/RED Rocket™ Upgrade Poll

[Santiago Marti]

Yes, i am in the #4000 and live in argentina, imagine that! I really want to upgrade, but it is really difficult for people in my situation. Guess i'll wait for my turn and buy a ticket to take the camera myself. That extra cost of going to the US and staying till the cam is ready leaves me without my rocket!
I already have a Quadro CX, so that is my choice, lol. Don't know if i can say this, but editing at 2K, full debayer, 32 bit, i get a lot in realtime, believe me, a lot. It is amazing, 3 way color corrector, gaussian blur and 3d motion and it all plays in realtime. I think i can live with that! I use the Quadro CX with a dreamcolor monitor, as i said before, and for me full quality 2K playback is enough.

 

[MichaelHalsell]

For Cameras limited to 3K and below, RED could consider releasing a 3K Rocket at a slightly reduced cost and performance threshold. Overall cost of ownership is now becoming a worrysome issue both and camera and post-production side of things.

-Thread unhijacked-

 

[Eirik Tyrihjel]

For Cameras limited to 3K and below, RED could consider releasing a 3K Rocket at a slightly reduced cost and performance threshold. Overall cost of ownership is now becoming a worrysome issue both and camera and post-production side of things.

-Thread unhijacked-

Don´t worry, if budget is an issue (and time is not as much), it has worked perfectly fine for me with RED 4K footage and no rocket for two years...

That said, I look forward to the rocket at last.

I have edited large projects with multiple RED cameras in 2K using the proxies and get realtime playback in FCP, need an overnight render for full quality, but it works.... and it works everytime.

 

[Shawn Nelson]

So 3 out of 4 are getting the upgrade...out of 7,000+ cameras that's roughly 5,500 cameras...if they are realistically servicing 500/month that will be next Xmas before they do all the upgrades and make Stage 2 a reality after that.

Early adopters have a nice cushion with which to make their money back from the upgrade cost before Epic, even though Jim wants it by this summer...

That's an interesting thought. They would probably sell more Epic's if they were at least 6 months after the M-X upgrade. Sure, there are some who can afford the "give me two of everything on my AmEx", but others have to make their money back in this economy and some to try and get into Epic.

 

[Jordan Livingston]

Don´t worry, if budget is an issue (and time is not as much), it has worked perfectly fine for me with RED 4K footage and no rocket for two years...

With respect, I have seen some massive disruption in the post marketplace when it comes to RED. Most "big" post houses with networked storage pipelines and clusters of CPU cores are 'eating' the cost of transcoding RED footage because their hardware investment is already in place and their revenue comes from landing the editorial and finishing work itself.

This 'hidden cost' of posting RED has largely spoiled producers, because they don't properly value the transcoding service itself, and thus they don't budget for it, nor do they allow any extra time for it, though they obviously still need it to get done.

Enter the indie / boutique post service providers (such as myself), who do NOT have quarter-million-dollar pipelines already in place, and yet are faced with transcoding a glut of RED footage on more modest hardware systems.

The REDRocket card allows this group of post professionals to remain highly competitive - in the true indie spirit of RED - without going out of business in the process. It's also allowed us to offer uncompromising, high-end services to lower-budget indie projects, such as short films and music videos, that would otherwise never have been able to afford a true DI workflow.

At the end of the day, we're not selling the REDRocket, we're selling better quality images, and 'future proof' 2K or 4K masters. We're adding real value to our clients' projects, and we're not cutting unnecessary corners just because of budget constraints and render times.

And that's just in post... There's a whole other argument for having a REDRocket on set, which I won't get into too much here, but suffice it to say; offering clients 4K playback and dailies (hourlies) transcoding in the field often means the difference between landing a RED DIT gig, or not.

I have edited large projects with multiple RED cameras in 2K using the proxies and get realtime playback in FCP, need an overnight render for full quality, but it works.... and it works everytime.

This was also my workflow before I started using the REDRocket, but the problem is that the debayer quality offered by the Apple plugin (at least for now) is noticeably inferior to RED's own debayering. I have found in my informal testing that debayering down to the deliverable size (i.e. 2K or HD) using the RED software's "full" quality setting yields sharper images every time than working with the proxies and / or wrapped RED files in Final Cut Studio.

Even if you "just" online in 1080 HD - the 1080 files debayered by RED software look at least twice as crisp, if not moreso, than those generated by FCS. AND, at least for now, the FCS apps do not yet support the latest RED color science, which in and of itself is a huge reason to use RED's software over Apple's for debayering your online media.

It's certainly easy to rationalize that "no one will notice," and "we just need 2K or HD deliverables;" but if recent history has taught us anything, it's that the resolution and quality demanded by the marketplace - even in consumer technologies - is increasingly exponentially.

I was recently grading a short film using RED proxies in Apple Color. It happened to be an ultra-low-budget passion project, but the DP was an experienced, professional, commercial guy. He's used to conforming in Pablo or Scratch, but had no choice for this particular project due to the budget...

In any case, he took one look at the output and could INSTANTLY tell that the sharpness and detail he remembered from his own first pass at a REDCine-X 'OneLight' grade was missing. Sure enough, we brought the R3Ds back up in REDCine-X, and he was absolutely right. We were loosing noticeable detail; noticeable even at "just HD" quality.

The point is, just because the budget is low, doesn't mean the end product should have to suffer. Indie projects have to compete for the same eyeballs and short attention spans that big-budget commercial projects do. The ability to do realtime debayering at FULL quality on the REDRocket is something that every DP and producer is soon going to demand.

YES, it has a relatively expensive initial cost of entry, but for those of us who do this type of work for a living, it may mean the difference between pleasing our client and landing another gig, or disappointing and letting the work go elsewhere. If you choose to look at it that way, the REDRocket quickly pays for itself.

- Jordan

P.S. If I may segue into a shameless, self-promotional plug, my company DIGILOID® is offering full-quality realtime REDRocket transcodes to any codec at prices starting as low as $100 / hr of raw footage.

There's no reason to compromise your editing workflow by working with slow, ugly proxies, and mastering with half-res debayered footage. Please keep us in mind for your next RED shoot or post gig!

Thanks very much for indulging my pitch... I just couldn't resist.

 

[C.H.Haskell]

For me it depends when RED calls, some days I have the budget and I am ready to go MX then and there...other days I feel like waiting for EPIC. Part of me wants stage 2, but for an indie like me would prob involve other investors, maybe I will just wait for stage 3. So mark me down as undecided. Ugh.

 

[David Battistella]

For me it depends when RED calls, some days I have the budget and I am ready to go MX then and there...other days I feel like waiting for EPIC. Part of me wants stage 2, but for an indie like me would prob involve other investors, maybe I will just wait for stage 3. So mark me down as undecided. Ugh.

If a job can pay for it. Do it. If you are pulling it out for a vanity purchase wait for EPIC.

Has RED made you a better DP? Knowing the characteristics of the R1 sensor is valuable if you know the tendencies.

If it's an i-have-to-have-it-because-everybody-else-does purchase then consider that carefully.

It has to be a business decision.

I know that if I do not upgrade to MX I still have my place in line for EPIC. With the new NCS coming in the R1 in the next week or so it will be good.

Also, they are in the 600's now (out of 7000 cameras) so who knows how many M-X's there will be out there. I'm not sure how the M-X and the M will intercut so having an R1 might not be a bad thing in a few months. If only 1000 cameras are upgraded, you won't be one of the cool kids but you will be in the majority.

The early adopters (evangelists) will almost certainly go for the gadget purchase. This will also be true for rental houses.

But is waiting for EPIC such a bad thing when you have an amazing tool that you understand really well?

When I see well lit vs. well lit side by side the R1 is still an excellent imaging machine.

If EPIC starts shipping in the summer I can have one by maybe this time next year. Fine with me. I just hope that the upgrade didn't force me out of line and that RED doesn't consider upgrade customers preffered customers.

David