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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Old Rocket Cards

Only valid for MX footage. Does not work with dragon. Or at least for now. RED does not seam to have any plans on making it work.
 
Derek Nickell said:
So, what's the deal with these original used Red Rocket cards being so cheap? Will they improve playback on R3D footage overall?

Interested in getting one to increase playback during editing and in Resolve 11.1.

Thoughts?
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If you're working with Red MX or M files, they speed up playback a lot. Resolve works well with a Rocket card, so does Premiere. I don't have personal experience with FCP or Avid and the Rocket, but I think they do as well.

They are not compatible with Dragon footage. I upgraded my camera to Dragon, so I'm selling my original Rocket card.

Take a look if you're interested: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...d-Red-Rocket&p=1480529&highlight=#post1480529
 
Thanks David,

Saw that post earlier, which led to this post.

So, with a Rocket installed, you will play back M and MX footage faster, but does not affect the Dragon footage, meaning that the Dragon footage instead uses the GPU. Correct? So, I'm not going to get some random error when I try to play Dragon footage, it just wont accelerate it...

Correct me if I'm being a 'tard.

Thx.
 
The original RED Rocket has application specific hardware for decoding the data structures used in M and MX based r3d code.

Dragon r3d code uses new/expanded structures that the original Rocket can not decode. That is why Rocket-X was created.

Due to advances in GPU architecture, r3d decoding can now be done on GPU enabled systems as an alternative to using Rocket or Rocket-X.

So to answer your question:
On a plain machine, you will not get an error playing M/MX/Dragon footage but it will be very slow.

If you have a GPU, you will get much better performance of all M/MX/Dragon footage, the performance increasedepends on the capability/capacity of your GPU.

If you have a Rocket, it will only improve performance with M/MX footage, note that some GPUs can now decode fast as the Rocket.

If you have ROCKET-X you can achieve the highest amount of performance handling M/MX/Dragon footage.

So if you have a ROCKET installed, it will accelerate M/MX footage, dragon footage will be handled by the GPU if installed.

Please note: If you are mixing MX/Dragon footage on your timeline your editing application may have an all or nothing result.
 
In your OP you specifically asked about Resolve. resolve does a lot with GPUs, so a rocket takes the debayering load off the GPUs and thereby speeds up Resolve's performance significantly.
 
The last bunch of Resolve benchmarks I saw showed that a new Mac Pro below 12 cores can't play back 4K or 5K above 1/4 res.

So the GPU helps take the load off the CPU but isn't a magic bullet unless your CPU is very fast too.

And as Mr Fuller pointed out above a rocket can help take the load off the GPU when using MX and M footage.

FYI I'm buying a rocket off a user on this forum because I'm getting a 6-core mac pro and want to guarantee 1/2 res playback. Not worried about Dragon footage too much because 6K at 1/4 res on my HD monitor looks great anyway.
 
Derek Nickell said:
Thanks David,

Saw that post earlier, which led to this post.

So, with a Rocket installed, you will play back M and MX footage faster, but does not affect the Dragon footage, meaning that the Dragon footage instead uses the GPU. Correct? So, I'm not going to get some random error when I try to play Dragon footage, it just wont accelerate it...

Correct me if I'm being a 'tard.

Thx.
Click to expand...

You've got that exactly right. The original Rocket doesn't accelerate Dragon footage, but it doesn't cause any error with Dragon footage. They just ignore each other.

(Nothing 'tarded about the question at all.)
 
Keep in mind 6K at 1/2 or 1/4 can change the look of the grain structure enough in certain shots to make it (more) difficult to judge color, exposure and overall grading. AKA a scene with varying levels of blacks that are pushed may appear fine at 1/4 res but could actually be unacceptable once rendered at full. The rocket helps to realize a lot of that by playing full res realtime and in case of Dragon a Rocket-X.
 
I love my rocket x and wouldn't want to encode without it
 
Brian Merlen said:
I love my rocket x and wouldn't want to encode without it
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I feel the same with my old BT ROCKET.

With my Scarlet MX, I still need to have that grunt power for quick exports.
 
What an easter egg it would be to have the original rocket be able to help decode Dragon footage, even the least little help would be nice. :)
 
David Battistella said:
What an easter egg it would be to have the original rocket be able to help decode Dragon footage, even the least little help would be nice. :)
Click to expand...


That would be a nice gift ;)

Heck if you need two or three ROCKETS to match a single ROCKET-X, that would be sweet ;)
 
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