My experience with 12-core 2.66GHz Mac pro & Quadro 4000

[Gabriele Turchi]

Resolve at 1/4 res is not OK at all.

i thought you don't have SDI yet...
i am saying out of the SDI ,i have a 58 " inches plasma display and on 4K (not 2K) 1/4 res out of resolve sdi is completely usable (so you have more nodes to grade realtime .)

if don't like ..well i respect that opinion , i prefer performances towards a touch less of sharpness

and again out of sdi is not the same s the GUI (because the decklink card rescale to HD )

g

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Upscaling to HD is one thing... but did you notice the image looking darker at 1/4 Res?

 

[Gabriele Turchi]

actually no i did not on the SDI...trust me ,
1/4 on the sdi really usable ,the difference on the monitor is not like the diff in the pics posted on this thread ...than render out higher rez...

g

 

[Andrae Palmer]

click on image for larger 5760x1080 image:


click on image for larger 5760x1080 image:


Resolutions in order are: 1/4 Res. Good, 1/2 Res. Good and Full Res. Premium

I'm observing that Half Res. Good appears sharper and that the image appears brighter as resolution is increased (look at the green branches in the background and the face).

 

[Andrew Ravani]

click on image for larger 5760x1080 image:


click on image for larger 5760x1080 image:


Resolutions in order are: 1/4 Res. Good, 1/2 Res. Good and Full Res. Premium

I'm observing that Half Res. Good appears sharper and that the image appears brighter as resolution is increased (look at the green branches in the background and the face).

Hi Andre - great comparison. when I take a look at those images - I see a more vivid image in the full res - especially in comparison to the first.

We should all keep in mind that Debayer is actually a three dimensional transform in the RED wavelet based codec - with precision in the algorithm affecting the depth and precision of the outcome (luminance, sharpness, and Chroma). Wavelet based codecs are all about precision - and rounding out precision when you decrease resolution.

This is really where RED seems to shine: at the full DeBayer end of the spectrum there is a vivid texture and color gradation that can be brought down to the lower resolution material (2K/HD arena) but only after processing it as if it were going to full res.

I would love to know what the real transformations are that are going on in the codec to give a difference between Half res premium and full res - but I suspect that only Graham and the RED codec folk are the only ones privy to that info.

OF NOTE: it should also be noted that the consensus is that the best debayers for full res are actually off of software/GPU combos (ALA: Quantel Pablo) rather than the RED Rocket - I suspect that it is again a precision issue - high frequency 64bit CPUs are just capable of more precision than a dedicated hardware card - although the Rocket is awesome for added speed and spitting out dailies!!!

 

[Andrae Palmer]

OF NOTE: it should also be noted that the consensus is that the best debayers for full res are actually off of software/GPU combos (ALA: Quantel Pablo) rather than the RED Rocket - I suspect that it is again a precision issue - high frequency 64bit CPUs are just capable of more precision than a dedicated hardware card - although the Rocket is awesome for added speed and spitting out dailies!!!

I was surprised to discover this on the boards yesterday. I had a RED Rocket card but sold it. Now I'm doing realtime playback at 1/2 res high and it's sufficient for my purposes. It's really amazing how optimized for multicore the Davinci Resolve is. Since I don't have the RR all my debayers will be CPU based. Is there any special software/algorithms to get the best debayer possible? I'm also wondering what the quality of the Davinci Resolve CPU debayer is compared to Pablo, RED Rocket, etc.

Andrew, did you notice the darkness in the 1/4 res?

actually no i did not on the SDI...trust me ,
1/4 on the sdi really usable ,the difference on the monitor is not like the diff in the pics posted on this thread ...than render out higher rez...

g

BM card came in this morning:

Will do some testing and see if there's any darkness in the luminance chanel at 1/4 res over SDI.

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

What scopes are you using here? Are those in the Resolve software?

Pablo debayer was shown compared to many by Cioni a year or two ago.

It was superior to RCX Scratch and Apple Color... was not done against Davinci

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Yes those are the scopes in Davinci Resolve. Yeah I saw those tests that he did after researching the debayering issue on the forums recently. I was just pretty surprised to hear some people say that the RED Rocket card is not good enough for mastering. That blew me away. Never realized there were so many debayering algorithms with each being different.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

so than when you have the SDI out you will realize how resolve at 1/4 res is really Quite OK ...i guess it does a good upscaling to HD ...

So if the system have no extra slot for rocket 1/4 res is good looking out of resolve sdi and handle more nodes ...

g

Just got a FSI 24" in yesterday... I can see the same 1/4 res difference. What type of display are you monitoring off? With a Mac Pro 12 core 2.66GHz or faster you can play footage realtime at 1/2 res good. Which is pretty decent... but I'm now of the opinion that a RED Rocket is still needed for an image without aliasing and true color fidelity and brightness.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Very nice example. It was my eyes.
I render it after with full debayer, but never noticed that I mess it up with brightnes.
With BT Rocket Hack comes 1000$ cheaper than MacPro 12core and you don't have to buy expansion box.
Asus P6T7 Supercomputer 460$
i7 930 250$
Memory 12GB 300$
Cooler 50$
Case 100$
285gtx 300$
GUI card 50$
HD 50$
BT Rocket 3000$
Total cca 4700$ and you will still have an extra PCIe to put another 285gtx or whatever.

ANdrae often shoots at 2K, I think that is what he is showing you. AT 4K the differences are harder to see in terms of just grading