Playback of 5K R3D files on a MacPro 5,1

[Dennis S.]

Hey there,

i am asking myself what hardware would be required to play back 5K R3D files 1:1 without a red rocket and what the most common limiting factors for playback performance are.
We are currently using a MacPro 5,1 with a Hexa Core Xeon clocked at 3,33GHz with 32GB RAM and a NV GTX570 with 2,5GB VRAM and we would like to stay a little longer with the MacPro 5,1 before we invest into the new MacPro or
something different.

Real-Time playback of 5K R3D material 1:1 isn`t possible not with REDCINE-X nor with the latest Adobe Premiere CC (even though it seems to be much faster in CC)
We did a few tests with a bunch of short testclips (5K files with a compression rate of 12:1) and copied them on the SSD so i assume disk I/O is not the limiting factor in our case.

Is the debayering process of 5K R3D such a cpu intensive tasks that even a Gulftown Xeon (W3680) isn`t enough to playback the files at 1:1?
Does the compression rate of the R3Ds has a significant impact on the playback performance e.g a less compressed R3D (lets say 7:1 or 8:1) play back faster then a higher compressed version of the same clip?
Currently we need to go down to at least 1/4 to get good playback performance which, in the opinion of our camera guys is not good enough to evaluate the quality of the shot.

We do have a RED rocket at hand but our MacPro 5,1 doesn`t have any PCIe slots left (well not at least a slot which delivers 8x lanes which the Rocket demands)
Is is possible to let the GTX570 help by accelerating the decoding/debayering of the RED Files? (i assume CC does it out of the boy already)

Thank you for your help.

Dennis S.

 

[Nick Morrison]

In my experience you really need a RR in a Mac Pro Tower to help improve playback.

 

[Todd T]

Are you just wanting to play the files back or are you doing post-processing?

Remember that R3d data is an acquisition codec, very information heavy, needing lots of cpu cycles need to debayer, and easier to manipulate. It is not optimized for playback.

Normally you would transcode to a distribution codec for normal playback (i.e. h.264 h.265, or .RED if you have a REDRay) which is much more lightweight and optimized for playback.

 

[Dennis S.]

@Nick
Thanks for your opinion Nick, i already assumed that the rocket is the only way to improve R3D playback significantly.

@Todd
Mostly playback to evaluate the quality of the shot, post will be done in an intermediate codec i assume. (dnxhd or prores, not entirely sure about that)

-------

Playing back the files on the MacPro is one part of the problem but the real issue starts when our camera guys are abroad.
They need a convenient way to preview the files in order to be able to trim the clips or watch it in a quality where you can say for sure if the shot is good or not.

What is "common-practice" for all you people who probably have to face the exact same difficulties? Are you transcoding your R3D material before previewing/evaluating it, (in the field)
If thats true, thats probaly very time consuming.
On the other hand playing back R3D 5K files 1:1 is nothing current notebooks can handle without the acceleration of a red rocket.

The feedback of the camera guys was that 1/4 is not enough to properly judge a 5K shot, so i guess for them 1/2 would be the best compromise they can accept.
How is the latest MacPro dealing with 5K files 1:1 compared to for example our MacPro 5,1? If the playback performance increases significantly (which i assume wouldn`t happen) we might reconsider.
I know a few people here built a few pretty high end DIY workstations without a red rocket but i don`t have any performance figures to compare it to.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

There are things you can do to upgrade that Mac Pro to give better performance, but... It all comes at a cost and by the time you spend for more/ new RAM, new GPU and potentially upgrading to dual CPUs, it would probably make more sense to go for a new computer.

The most cost-effective upgrade or solution is to pick up a RED Rocket card. The original Rocket can be had pretty cheap these days on the used market and while they don't work with Dragon footage, it will give you the realtime performance you seek for playback on your MX footage. It really isn't going to speed up editing in CC much, often not at all on more capable systems, due to how the Rocket works. But it's a great solution for high quality playback, transcodes, or rendering from a full quality R3D decode. Even better would be a Rocket-X card. You would get a lot more out of it than out of a new computer. You'll have to get creative with power connections inside the Mac though to run your current GPU (or any decent GPU, for that matter) alongside the Rocket-X. You'll have to supplement power from an external PSU or steal it from the optical bays.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

In terms of scrubbing footy to check focus, continuity, details, etc the RedRocket-X is the obvious choice. That said, the video outputs on the RR-X are still not enabled. If they were, please RED, please - then it has even more utility as the RR-X could travel in a TB2 expansion chassis for laptop based situations and then slide into your tower as desired.

IMO, there are two decent options if you want to stay Mac:
1) Tower based- get a nVidia 980 (Maxwell) w/4GB or more of VRAM, a RR-X, and auxiliary PSU and do the system RAM upgrade Jeff mentioned. Should do 1/2 res with anything and 1:1 with some formats.
2) Get a NeoMP (cylinder) with D700 GPUs, 64GB RAM and the 8 core CPU. If you are doing a lot of Resolve work and transcoding, the 10 or 12 core version might pay off, but for scrubbing R3Ds the faster clock speed of the 6 or 8 core is a plus, not to mention substantially cheaper. If you, and/or your team is savvy enough - there's also the option of getting a lower spec NeoMP and swapping out the CPU and RAM.

Cheers - #19

 

[Dennis S.]

I am sorry for anaswering so lately but thanks again for all your helpful replies.
That being said, we still have a "vanilla" RED Rocket at our disposal but the reason we didn`t put it into our MacPro 5,1 is the obvious lack of PCIe slots (not to mention lanes)
(We have a FC 8Gbps card, AJA Kona3, GTX470 with MacFirmware, eSATA card)

I was thinking to maybe replace our AJA Kona3 with the RED rocket cause back when we purchased trhe RED rocket we also got the breakout box.
Unfortunately we have a bunch of speakers which are XLR only and with the RED breakout box offering HDMI and SDI, i probaly need to "de-embed" the sound to be able to convert to XLR.
Such converters are expensive and i would like to know if the RED rocket is a fully capable replacement for the Kona3 otherwise, because i am not an expert with that particular hardware.