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RED Footage editing on a Mac Book Pro?

sandro-bachmann

sandro-bachmann

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Is it possible, to edit, Red Footage (R3D files) on the strongest Mac Book Pro, and render the finished projekt to export?
if so?, how would the editing workflow look like, to get the best result ?
:thumbdown:


thanks for help?
 
Yes, with a Rocket card...

Yes, with a Rocket card...

sandro-bachmann said:
anybody?
Click to expand...

You can do it, I have but it was painful on latest and greatest Macbook Pro...

Not enough...buy a rocket card and mobile rocket box, take it all with you, pain free....

Only way to really do it right...

You can do it without, view the footage without a problem, if you've got CS5 Premiere Pro you can take a look at the files, Red CineX is fine also for viewing, grading but without the rocket, you'll be doing overnight renders or longer.
 
Possible? Yes. Recommended? Eh, maybe. Depends on what you're working on.

Painful? Oh yeah. My Mac Pro recently went down in the middle of a Color render, and I ended up having to render the last 20 minutes of the piece on my MacBook Pro. 4K scaled to 1080P, 24.98. 65 *HOURS* of rendering.

As far as workflow goes, I would suggest heading over to the Apple Workflow forum and doing a bit of searching. We've covered the basics more times than I can count.
 
Sandro, dont even fight it.
It is far to intense and demanding to ask the top MBP or even top MacPro tower to deal with the 4K footage editing.
It does work somewhat but the problems you run into are far to troublesome to be worth the hassle.

Honestly transcode all of your footage to a form of ProRes either LT or SQ not necessarily HQ unless your doing an online workflow. LT is the smallest and still looks great for an offline workflow.

do your entire edit.
Then revert back for an online, only to the clips you used with the help of Clipfinder and REDCine x
you will fight less with the computer that way.

If you still have questions on this workflow pm me and ill go more into detail.

best of luck
Luis
 
I've done it with 1080p ProRes downconverts (created on a Mac Pro with a Red Rocket). But I wouldn't wish the entire RED workflow with just a MBP on my worst enemy.

Noah
 
Thank you guys very much so far, sounds depressing. :001_huh:

so how would the workflow be, if i would like to edit with FCP, but would like to have a 4k Master in the end. FCP is limited to 2k right?

wich is the most simply way to get a 4k master? or meabe there is no easy way to do that.

what other programs could i use on Mac, to edit in 4k, or get an 4k export if i like to?
 
There's no logical reason to *EDIT* in 4K. Run off ProRes proxies at 1080, edit in FCP, then use Clipfinder to reconnect to the 4K for grading and rendering in Color or RC-X (Both of which *can* support 4K)
 
Pro Res Proxies Edit with these first.

Pro Res Proxies Edit with these first.

Ben Brainerd said:
There's no logical reason to *EDIT* in 4K. Run off ProRes proxies at 1080, edit in FCP, then use Clipfinder to reconnect to the 4K for grading and rendering in Color or RC-X (Both of which *can* support 4K)
Click to expand...

Ditto...sounds like a plan if you really need 4K output... and if you don't have a Rocket card, stand by, you'll have some time on your hands....

I'm a firm believer now in having a Rocket, if you're working with RED footage it's a must. I procrastinated long, and spent man hrs. waiting for footage.

Can't do without it now.

Red CineX great software, Storm will also be well worth the money.
 
Frazier Nivens said:
Ditto...sounds like a plan if you really need 4K output... and if you don't have a Rocket card, stand by, you'll have some time on your hands....

I'm a firm believer now in having a Rocket, if you're working with RED footage it's a must. I procrastinated long, and spent man hrs. waiting for footage.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Rocket's a must if you're going to be doing any serious work. See previous statement about 65 hours of rendering.

One other thing to consider: Do you *REALLY* need 4K? I know, it's nice and all that, and a lot of people swear by it. But if you're talking about editing on a MacBook Pro, you're probably in a situation where you may want to consider alternate solutions. You'd be amazed at the results you can get from a 1/2-high debayer.
 
thanks, i got you guys, my idea behind 4k, is not that i need 4k right now, but if i have 4k footage, i would like to have a 4k master, just for the archive, and from that 4k master, i can downsample to 1080 or 720, or what ever i need. so my point is, wehnever there will be an option to use the editet projekt in 4k, i have it. nobody will ever like to edit a film a second time right?
 
Re-conforming is the answer. Just store your originals. By the day you will really need 4K, you should have the money to get a decent machine for it.
 
I'll be the devil's advocate here, but I have ONLY used my MBP for 2 years I've had my Red. I've rendered and edited commercials and short films, some direct for HDTV, some for film print for cinemas. It always worked wonders, though it's true, the debayering/rendering process is very long. I've had a one week shoot of dailies that took us nearly a month to render...

But now that I have my Mobile Rocket system, it's just pure bliss.

I like the idea to be mobile, to work wherever I want, to bring my MBP on set and play with the footage...

Oh and by the way, my MBP is 3 years old, not even the last one, so...

Unless you're a big company and do dailies or post intensively, on a more small scale and personal work level, MBP is for me the way to go. You can't load them as much RAM wise etc, but they work just as good as the towers AND are mobile...

Also, I have a MP tower, but I never use it anymore. My MBP is even faster (without the Rocket)! I have tested both and used both to split and speed up jobs, and my MBP has always rendered faster than the tower MP.

So son't be depressed, it works really well though it's long. But without a Rocket, it will be long on a tower MP too.

My idea is get the latest MBP, jack it up RAM wise, and get a Mobile Rocket kit if you can. If you can't, no worries, it'll work just fine, but don't fool yourself. An hour of R3D will take up to 45 hrs to render... So you might want to get a PS3 and a few good books as well...
 
Hi Lewis. Hope you're well.

Which MacBook Pro have you got, and which mobile Rocket solution do you use?

Thanks
Eric
 
I have a MBP 17" (the old one)* with 2,4 Ghz processor Intel Core 2 Duo + 4Gb RAM, that's it!

I use it with the Mobile Rocket system from Maxx Digital.

It looks like this:
laptopMR_S_verb.jpg


*But with this Mac instead:
apple-macbook-pro.jpg


Works perfectly!
 
Lewis-M Soucy said:
I'll be the devil's advocate here, but I have ONLY used my MBP for 2 years I've had my Red. I've rendered and edited commercials and short films, some direct for HDTV, some for film print for cinemas. It always worked wonders, though it's true, the debayering/rendering process is very long. I've had a one week shoot of dailies that took us nearly a month to render...

But now that I have my Mobile Rocket system, it's just pure bliss.

I like the idea to be mobile, to work wherever I want, to bring my MBP on set and play with the footage...

Oh and by the way, my MBP is 3 years old, not even the last one, so...

Unless you're a big company and do dailies or post intensively, on a more small scale and personal work level, MBP is for me the way to go. You can't load them as much RAM wise etc, but they work just as good as the towers AND are mobile...

Also, I have a MP tower, but I never use it anymore. My MBP is even faster (without the Rocket)! I have tested both and used both to split and speed up jobs, and my MBP has always rendered faster than the tower MP.

So son't be depressed, it works really well though it's long. But without a Rocket, it will be long on a tower MP too.

My idea is get the latest MBP, jack it up RAM wise, and get a Mobile Rocket kit if you can. If you can't, no worries, it'll work just fine, but don't fool yourself. An hour of R3D will take up to 45 hrs to render... So you might want to get a PS3 and a few good books as well...
Click to expand...

Tanks lewis, for all that info, sounds really intresting and promising.
so how much faster will the render times be, if i use a mobile rocket?

were can i buy, that mobile rocket? and how much is it ?

thanks so far :wink5:
 
Don't use a macbook pro, there are better options on the PC market. I've edited a whole feature film on my two year old PC laptop, also a pilot which I did some online work on.
Only set back I have is the disk speed, but you have more options there as well with Esata ports and USB3, to which you can do an external RAID.

Premiere can use 4K. Edit proxies or native R3Ds.

For heavy on-set work I see no reason to use macbook pros, they are far too slow and limited. If you want a mac on set and do this kind of editing, the most expensive Mac Pro would be the option.
Then again, with a little patience, the HP 8370w Elitebook is powerful enough for most heavy work. It also has a dreamcolor display as it's laptop display which is enough for a good grade.

The mobile rocket is not a price efficient solution. You can get a monster laptop for the same price doing stuff almost a easy a with the rocket.
 
Thanks Lewis!
 
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