RED Rocket DIT in San Francisco

[chrislayhe]

We are really happy to let everyone know that CLAi now have a fully equipped 8-Core Mac with a blazingly fast RED Rocket™ card up and running very happily to add to our on-location DIT service and RED setup, to complete the shooting picture along with our shiny new RED Pro Primes.

Now we can offer on location hourlies (never mind dailies or "rendered in three days"-ies!) color corrected and in full 4k as ProRes 4:4:4 or 1080p files or as realtime output to HDCAM or DVCProHD tape - as well as about 30x faster rendering and output on our five FCP RED suites and Avid Media Composer suite for pre-post work, project editing in 4k and complete color correction, finishing and mastering in 4k.

Fun, fun, fun anywhere in the San Francisco Bay to LA area, especially when you add all of this to our big Class A RV mobile dual edit suite...

Chris

 

[chrislayhe]

more info on RED Rocket rental with DIT in San Francisco

more info on RED Rocket rental with DIT in San Francisco

More info on what this means in terms of speed and worflow:

Like anyone who shoots RED on a regular basis we have struggled for two years trying to find the best way of combining production speed with the highest quality, but at the end of the day the simple truth is that while shooting is relatively straightforward and usually faster than with film the jump between shoot and post is pretty horrendous for anyone used to working with video. The problem is always the same - getting files into a format that keeps all that wonderful quality the RED is capable of, that an editor can work with on any system without ruining your images, and doing so without the hours and days of rendering that distress clients at the end of every shoot.

We did some testing this week that show this reality. It is very simple... you shoot just 10 minutes of 4k 16:9 23.98 footage in a day, transfer it to a hard drive or two and then have to present it to your client in a way that he can use at once. The worst option is that he just uses the quicktime proxies - and you can forget about correct color, contrast, look and quality right there and then. Second worst option is that he brings the R3D files into Final Cut using Log & Transfer - very long render times for him (usually unexpected), and then a 2k image that uses some of the metadata with no option for tuning the image. Both very bad news for everyone concerned - especially for your footage. The third option is that you render out ProRes, DPX or DNxHD files for him to work with - where at least you get to control what is seen and worked with in post.

But exactly how long does a 10 minute 4k clip really take to render in the real world with a basic one light color correction? Well, on a 4 core mac tower with 6Gb memory, running from an 8 drive array (so a far higher spec and speed than the best DIT laptop) we got these times:
4k Full Debayer ProRes HQ = 5 hours 1 minute = 30.1x real time
2k Full Debayer ProRes HQ = 6 hours 18 minutes = 37.8x real time
1080p Full Debayer ProRes HQ = 5 hours 28 minutes = 32.8x real time
2k Half Debayer ProRes HQ = 2 hours 11 minutes = 25.1x real time

Not many people go there and bring out a full blown 8 core mac with 8Gb memory, but if they did - well, we got these times with one of ours:
4k Full Debayer ProRes HQ = 4 hours 18 minutes = 25.8x real time
2k Full Debayer ProRes HQ = 5 hours 1 minutes = 30.1x real time
1080p Full Debayer ProRes HQ = 4 hours 34 minutes = 27.4x real time
2k Half Debayer ProRes HQ = 1 hour 47 minutes = 10.7x real time

Slightly better, but those dailies are not looking likely daily, even at the lowest resolution and size where you can clearly see what is happening. Then we brought in our super-souped up 8 core mac with the RED Rocket™™™ card and tried that, and the results were pretty impressive to say the least - although I prefer staggering as an adjective:
4k Full Debayer ProRes 4:4:4:4 = 47 minutes = 4.7x real time
4k Full Debayer ProRes HQ = 48 minutes = 4.8x real time
2k Full Debayer ProRes HQ = 13 minutes = 1.3x real time
2k Full Debayer ProRes LT = 12 minutes = 1.2x real time
1080p Full Debayer ProRes HQ = 11 minutes = 1.1x real time
1080p Full Debayer ProRes LT = 11 minutes = 1.1x real time

…so the 2 hours of footage you probably shot is going to take many many days to render at full quality 4k on a 4 core, many many days to render on an 8 core and just 9 hours on our RED Rocket™™™ system even at 4k ProRes 4:4:4:4 (and virtually the same times were got for DNxHD files).

I guess that leads to another question we get asked all too often - is there really a drop in quality between working with a 4k ProRes 4:4:4:4 file at full Debayer and a 1080p file at half Debayer when the final result is going to be a 1080p program? Often we have to fudge the answer and say “well, yes there is, but is negligible…” or the like simply because delivering useable edit files at the highest possible quality in a reasonable timeframe is more or less unrealistic. But really is there a difference? Of course there is - full size, full Debayer 4:4:4:4 have vastly more information in them than a less than half size, half Debayer 4:2:2 file… which, of course, is why we all try to go back to the original R3D files for color correction and finishing!!!

So, after all of this fabulous information, what is the new service we have been working on at CLAi? Well it's very simple, incredibly effective and can make everybody very happy - and it happens at your location... and we call it our “Render on the Road” service.

Hopefully you'll be saying how much better it sounds than “I’ll have some quarter Debayer ProRes LT files for you to watch in two or three hours and you can sort of see what we shot” or even “yes, ready to edit files for you to start into by, oooh, Friday 1am?” or the tragic “yes, those quicktime proxies work perfectly for dailies and editing - just like the real thing until we can have the 4ks out next week!”…

Chris
__________________