Red Rocket decode errors on Sonnet/Retina MBPro setup - plz help!!

[Scott Summers]

Hey guys. I've just received the final part of my setup, and built it all, following RED's instructional PDFs.

Setup:
15" MacBook Pro Retina with two thunderbolt ports
Sonnet Dual PCIe Chassis
RED Rocket with SDI out ports fitted
Lacie little big disk Thunderbolt.

I installed drivers for the RR. Then plugged in the RR and updated it's firmware. All went fine.

Updated RCXpro, and loaded some clips. They played back at half res fine. I expected the occasional short load pauses due to Sonnets/thunderbolt limitations according to Jeff Kilgore (4x PCIe).

I started getting some weirdness on the second or third clip. It wouldn't play, until I changed to 1/16.
i noticed in the errors tab down the bottom that there were a bunch in there.

RR Callback etc etc

so I restarted the system.

setup an export of 2 R3D approx 2 mins long. Said it would take 1.5 hours to decode to 1080 4:2:2 prores. Churned away for about 2 mins then the errors started again, got up over 2000 and I aborted all.


can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? It's all brand new so I kinda hoped it would just be fairly easy once the install was all done correctly.


Scott

 

[Filip Vandoorne]

Don't yet use 10.8.2 Mac osx with the rocket

 

[Brent J. Craig]

Yes - 10.8.2 kills most thunderbolt drivers.

I had to downgrade to use my Sonnet Expresscard reader.

Process is here: http://iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=23486

The hard part will be finding a clean copy of 10.8.0 or 10.8.1, because Apple will only let you download the current revision, and your backup partition will also be 10.8.2

Since Macbooks don't come with OS DVDs I had to download a Torrent of 10.8.0

 

[Gary Jones]

When Scott gets it working, what sort of transcode times can he expect for his 2min clips?

 

[Bob Gundu]

pretty much realtime.

When Scott gets it working, what sort of transcode times can he expect for his 2min clips?

 

[Scott Summers]

yup realtime or faster is the only reason I got it




Thanks heaps for your help guys, I'm glad to find out that there's an obvious fix to it.

I'll let ya's know how I go finding the copy of osx, and how the decodes go with it.

 

[Scott Summers]

Seems to be working fine now, because OMG, watching my R3D footage is unbelievable. At 1/4 res too. I wish I had a native 4k monitor that I could playback on.

I'm now doing a decode test, to 1920x1080. The clip I chose is about 6-7mins long. It started by saying 30 minutes decode time, and has been going for about 5 mins but is down to 20mins. Is this normal decode length? Am I slowed by a setting I've chosen? I set it as full debater, and prores 4:2:2. No audio.

 

[Bob Gundu]

If you are using Red Rocket, it always debayers at full quality. Are you still running 10.8.2? Alchemy will slow down too.

Seems to be working fine now, because OMG, watching my R3D footage is unbelievable. At 1/4 res too. I wish I had a native 4k monitor that I could playback on.

I'm now doing a decode test, to 1920x1080. The clip I chose is about 6-7mins long. It started by saying 30 minutes decode time, and has been going for about 5 mins but is down to 20mins. Is this normal decode length? Am I slowed by a setting I've chosen? I set it as full debater, and prores 4:2:2. No audio.

 

[Tobias Straka]

You will not get realtime or faster, but close to that. Longer clips usually take a bit longer than short ones. Just make sure you have fast enough storage... And yeah, don't bother trying with 10.8.2 - it just will not work...

 

[Scott Summers]

Yeah sorry I should have been more clear. I took the advice and downgraded to 10.8.0 at which point I was able to decode without a problem. So yeah, playback was sooooooo pretty. Blew me away. I've been putting up with 1/8th at best for so long now.

it was a 6 minute clip that took about 18 or so minutes. As Tobias said that's probably why it took a little longer? I'm going to do some more testing and timing, as I'd like to be able to tell people on set how long a 64gb card is going to take to decode if ats what they're after. Hopefully it will make them out more thought into the old "keep rolling, keep rolling, now this time I want .....blather blather....we still rolling?"

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Hello Scott,

Could you please tell me :

What CPU/Ram Retina version you have?
How long it takes to transfer a 256GB card?
Do you use USB3 or FW800 on the RED SSD reader?
Can you playback 1/4 debayer 5k 25p RT on the Macbook Pro only (without RR)?

Any answer welcomed!

Thanks

Patrick

 

[Matthew Love]

seems like it's taking too long?

I typically can render a 5k FF clip 5:1 to 422 1920 prores in real time and if not, sometime faster (did a test yesterday with a 5k WS 5:1 shot to prores 422, a 6 minute clip took about 5 minutes to transcode).

2.3 i7
16gb ram
macbook pro retina with sonnet enclosure.

going out to G RAIDs

 

[Eric Haase]

I have mbpr with sonnet and LaCie esata hub. 6 minute clips take about 6 minutes to prores. (no alchemy, grain, or skin controls). You should be able to get almost realtime from 5khd or 5kff footage. Just a bit slower. But certainly not 3x slow.

 

[Matthew Love]

I agree with Eric, I"m curious as to what your bottle neck could be.