Premier Pro CS5.5 - RED Rocket vs Nvidia 4000

[Steve Johnson]

Okay, so I have a MacPro and a MacBookPro 17" (new version with TB).

Planning on getting a RED Rocket to go in a Magma TB Expansion Box and use that with the MBP for out and about playback through RCX Pro and Transcode to ProRes and DNxHD etc for editing for clients if required.

My question is regarding my Edit station for Premier Pro. I have the standard graphics card in slot 1 for the MP, but trying to decided the best way to go for slot 2-4.

So the question is:

1. Is it best to have either the RED Rocket Card or the NVIDIA 4000 in slot 2 to make use of the 16 lane slot or is it better to have both cards in the machine? If so, which slots work best?

I am trying to work out what each of the cards are doing for Premier Pro.

My understanding is that PP is build around CUDA, and that helps the acceleration of playback of the R3D files in PP. So by that argument, is there any need to have a RED Rocket card in the system if its not going to be used for transcoding?

If I do put the NVIDIA 4000 is Slot 2, will the RR work in Slots 3 or 4 given that they are both x4 lane PCIe slots?

Any help would be appreciated.

Steve

 

[Paul Leeming]

From what I understand the CPU is used to do the heavy lifting in debayering the R3D file. The GPU only kicks in for timeline effects and the like.

Hope someone else can confirm that though!

Cheers from Tokyo,

Paul

 

[Guest]

According to the Red Rocket installation guide (I installed mine last night) you need the power provided by the X16 slot.

I had just asked Jeff Kilgore about this via PM. This is what he told me. THANK YOU JEFF!

As for your questions on the Mac Pro... You have 4 slots, two of them are X16, the other two are X4. The bottom slot, which is slot #1, is double-width. The ATI 5770 is a double-width card, so it has to go in slot-1, so it doesn't block any of the other precious slots. A Quadro 4000 is single-width and can go in any of the slots. The Quadro works quite well in the top slot (slot #4), if you will be using it to accelerate Resolve. Resolve acceleration doesn't tax the bandwidth that much, so it's fine for that purpose in an X4.

Now this is where the tricky part comes in. Resolve and Premiere both use nVidia CUDA for acceleration. Actually Resolve now uses OpenCL in a limited capacity, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. The tricky part is that Premiere expects CUDA to be active on the display(s) where the Premiere is being used. Resolve, however, expects no displays to be connected to any of the cards it uses for CUDA acceleration and will not engage a CUDA card if it has any active display.

Having run and also helped others with similar configurations, the solution usually ends up being an annoying practice of switching your display(s) to the Quadro 4000 for Premiere and some other apps where you can benefit from CUDA or superior OpenGL / OpenCL performance. And then switching the displays back to the ATI card for launching Resolve, so that it can have access to the Quadro card without any displays attached to it. Depending on your displays, you may get by with a switcher, but in most situations, you will have to physically swap the connector(s) to the appropriate card. The other solution is that is popular, but more expensive, is to run a Quadro 4000 for your primary display and a second Quadro 4000 for acceleration in Resolve. A number of people who have opted for the PCIe expansion box have installed other GPUs like the GTX480 in the expander. This takes some tweaking...

You have 4 slots, so adding an eSATA card is no problem. Adding a RED Rocket or a BMD Decklink (or similar) card is also no problem... Not sure what all you will ultimately want to add. If you have 5 or more cards, then you will start running into a situation where you have to pick and choose or purchase a PCIe expander box like the Cubix or Cyclone.

 

[James Drake]

major respect to Jeff. The man is a gold mine of information, and he shares it willingly!

 

[Jack Cooper]

I am trying to work out what each of the cards are doing for Premier Pro.

Steve, Reach out to Joseph Knutson. He posted his experience on reduser with both I believe. As many have reported, you are able to edit red files natively in PP. The nvidia card helps processing of the files in such a way that we get a realtime work environment at 1/2 res on our older HP workstation.

I believe Joseph reported that Red Rocket helps in the rendering stages (among other things).

Also, search the board, Tom put a video on vimeo and reduser about his box...

 

[David Collard]

The GUI card must be in slot one - either a Quadro 4000 card or ATI 5770 standard.
The GPU card must be in slot two - either the REd Rocket or a Quadro 4000 card. Don't plug your monitor into slot 2 by mistake.
Slots three and four are too slow for the RR card. It'll limp. Not sure it's worth the price of admission.

In order to truly pimp your system you need a compatible external box which uses slot 2, then you'll
have four new 16x in either single or double width.

Haven't checked out Magma expander box, but sounds like it'll solve your problems if you follow the above.
Make sure it's 100% certified to work with Resolve.
Cheers.

 

[Jack Cooper]

As a comparative note to your configuration...Tom's video...

http://vimeo.com/31104360

 

[Steve Johnson]

Thanks for all the great feedback guys.

Tom's video is really good. And its very impressive what CUDA and an additional NVIDIA card can do for editing.

Doing more research and when I get the system up and running, I will be doing some nice videos on Vimeo for all to see.

)

 

[Steve Johnson]

Steve, Reach out to Joseph Knutson. He posted his experience on reduser with both I believe. As many have reported, you are able to edit red files natively in PP. The nvidia card helps processing of the files in such a way that we get a realtime work environment at 1/2 res on our older HP workstation.

I believe Joseph reported that Red Rocket helps in the rendering stages (among other things).

Also, search the board, Tom put a video on vimeo and reduser about his box...

Jack, can you see any posts by Joesph Knutson? I have done a search - am I missing something?

)