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Red Rocket Necessary With New Mac Pros?

M

Mike Simmons

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So, we're putting together our budget for next year. We're for sure upgrading to the new mac pros, but I'm not sure if we'll need red rockets or not. Mostly I'm wondering about the need for an external chassis with Thunderbolt 2, since we can't just plug the cards into the new macs.

Would bottlenecking be an issue, or would the cards still be worth it?

Any input would be great,
Thanks!
 
It really depends on the type and quantity of work you are planing (or having already).

The new Mac Pro will handle RT 4K editing and grading for most timelines. And for those complex shots you can always render.
Something to consider as well - you can have two of the basic MP models for the price of one RR-X...

:sifone:

Peter
 
The basic new MP quad core will start out at $3k, while the six core will be $4k, the rocket costs $3k for a replacement or battle tested version and $4750 brand new, I'm not sure $3000 really goes into $4750 twice. And we're not even discussing accessories like 4K/UHD monitors and TB2 expansion chassis. As far as transcoding goes Open CL/GL opens up the non-rocket workflow substantially, my 4.3 GHz quad core system with a GTX 770 handles 5k full-debayer at 13-15 FPS, while my MBPR with the GTX 650M does 5-6 FPS, however both systems transcode 5K at around 25-29 FPS with a red rocket (internal pcie or over thunderbolt).

So if you shoot with one camera and end up with 2-3 hours of footage, it will only take my quad core 5-6 hours to transcode which isn't that bad. But if you have three cameras, each shooting 3-4 hours (total of 10-12 hours of footage), that will take my system 9-10 hours with a rocket and 20-24 hours without a rocket, which is a far cry from a year ago when 10 hours of footage would have taken 60-80 hours to transcode without a rocket. I'm sure the quad core Mac Pro will have more Open CL processing power than my GTX 770, so it will be faster, but to know how much faster we'll just have to wait and see. I would suggest you're better off spending the money on the six or eight core Mac Pro vs buying a older red rocket (4-5 year old technology), the rocket-x however will be about the same price and several times faster than the current rocket, though considering the Macbook Pro and iMac are using internal PCI-e x8 lane graphics cards, I'm not sure how much or how little of a bottleneck TB2 is going to be. My understanding is the new Mac Pros will be using (x2) PCI-e x8 lane FirePro cards, x8/x8 graphics processing, which is more efficient than a single x16 lane card.
 
Last edited:
Shiblon Wixom said:
The basic new MP quad core will start out at $3k, while the six core will be $4k, the rocket costs $3k for a replacement or battle tested version and $4750 brand new, I'm not sure $3000 really goes into $4750 twice. And we're not even discussing accessories like 4K/UHD monitors and TB2 expansion chassis. As far as transcoding goes Open CL/GL opens up the non-rocket workflow substantially, my 4.3 GHz quad core system with a GTX 770 handles 5k full-debayer at 13-15 FPS, while my MBPR with the GTX 650M does 5-6 FPS, however both systems transcode 5K at around 25-29 FPS with a red rocket (internal pcie or over thunderbolt).

So if you shoot with one camera and end up with 2-3 hours of footage, it will only take my quad core 5-6 hours to transcode which isn't that bad. But if you have three cameras, each shooting 3-4 hours (total of 10-12 hours of footage), that will take my system 9-10 hours with a rocket and 20-24 hours without a rocket, which is a far cry from a year ago when 10 hours of footage would have taken 60-80 hours to transcode without a rocket. I'm sure the quad core Mac Pro will have more Open CL processing power than my GTX 770, so it will be faster, but to know how much faster we'll just have to wait and see. I would suggest you're better off spending the money on the six or eight core Mac Pro vs buying a older red rocket (4-5 year old technology), the rocket-x however will be about the same price and several times faster than the current rocket, though considering the Macbook Pro and iMac are using internal PCI-e x8 lane graphics cards, I'm not sure how much or how little of a bottleneck TB2 is going to be. My understanding is the new Mac Pros will be using (x2) PCI-e x8 lane FirePro cards, x8/x8 graphics processing, which is more efficient than a single x16 lane card.
Click to expand...

thanks for this- its just the info i was looking for as I'm placing my first RED order and asking myself the same thing as I'm debating spending the extra money on a new mac pro instead of a rocket card
 
I'm told the original RR card will not work with ANY Dragon footage, so there's that to think about as well.
 
So we have three edit bays that we plan to upgrade to new Mac Pros (probably 8 core with 32 or 64 G RAM and faster GPUs). We are running daVinci Resolve with a full panel which is currently supported with 2 nVidia 400 GPUs in a Cubix PCI expansion chassis (along with a RR card). We are upgrading our two Epics to Dragon, and planning to move from FCP7 to Pemiere.

Would the RRX be needed for ingest and playback of Dragon r3d files within premier or DaVinci (with multiple nodes?). Or would the New Mac Pros do the trick?

Any thoughts/suggestions appreciated.

M
 
I just bought the new macbook late 2013 video card GT750m and iris pro does 2k no problem like red rocket but in 4k choppy little,
 
Tarek salman said:
I just bought the new macbook late 2013 video card GT750m and iris pro does 2k no problem like red rocket but in 4k choppy little,
Click to expand...

Hi Tarek,

I am sure you you have this set as such, but may be useful to be certain you are on AC power and have the automatic graphics switching disabled.

Thank you very much

Fury
 
I've been transcoding older Red one 4KHD content on my Mac Pro 2013 and it does quite well witout a RR. But Dragon is another story, the nMP will work but it's slow.
 
I would love to get a little more definitive answer on this topic. We would primarily be using the mac pro for Premiere and Davinci. Is there an advantage to having a red rocket as well for 4k/5k footage?
 
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