RED Rocket update...

[Peter Majtan]

Nice pics, Peter. I see you have chosen to suffer the path of the GTX285 along with me. Hehehe... Damn they need to release a driver update for that card like, uh, yesterday.

What are the issues You are facing?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I have no inside info here, and who knows, perhaps it may... but I'm pointing out that just becasue the Rocket has been designed to do real-time ops for one type of data in no way implies that it can for another.

I have no inside info either. We'll just have to see what the Rocket and supporting SDK actually bring to the table in capabilities. I think there's more power and capabilities there than a lot of people are making assumptions for. But that again also will be determined by just how programmable the hardware is.

Color correct, yes. Play at a locked 24 fps to a proper color correct monitor, no.

Touche' :sifone:

We'll see what the new FCS3 brings to the table. My 09 Mac Pro and "slightly" modded '08 octomac are both oh so close to doing this with both 2K DPX and 1080p ProRes HQ. They both definitely could if the software were up to snuff.

 

[Peter Majtan]

Testing the new FCS3 as we speak...

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

What are the issues You are facing?

Issues? Uh, shitty drivers for the GTX285.

There's severe speed throttling issues on the '08 Mac Pro, but seems to be better, but not perfect, on the '09 Mac Pro. Overall performance and optimization of the card is absolutely terrible compared to the Windows drivers. I get more than double the performance out of it when I boot the system into Vista64 and run the same apps (Maya, Modo..). In fact, it performs no better than the ATI 4870 under OSX in most situations. Combine that with the nagging nVidia driver bug of "popping" or "flashing" screens when connected to two dual-link display devices. ...card doesn't do this when booted into windows, it's an EFI or OSX driver issue that dates back to the Power Mac G5 days and still hasn't been fixed. If I weren't trying to drive two 30" displays on this system, I would pull the GTX285 and put the 4870 card back in.

 

[Jannard]

Looks like they had a RED Rocket party at Reducation. I heard that they had it up and running and even projected footage? Better tug on those mooks to get the straight scoop.

Jim

 

[M Most]

We'll see what the new FCS3 brings to the table. My 09 Mac Pro and "slightly" modded '08 octomac are both oh so close to doing this with both 2K DPX and 1080p ProRes HQ. They both definitely could if the software were up to snuff.

New Color software alone won't solve this. The real fix might arrive when a rewritten Quicktime is shipped with the rewritten OS X.

 

[Peter Majtan]

Issues? Uh, shitty drivers for the GTX285.

There's severe speed throttling issues on the '08 Mac Pro, but seems to be better, but not perfect, on the '09 Mac Pro. Overall performance and optimization of the card is absolutely terrible compared to the Windows drivers. I get more than double the performance out of it when I boot the system into Vista64 and run the same apps (Maya, Modo..). In fact, it performs no better than the ATI 4870 under OSX in most situations. Combine that with the nagging nVidia driver bug of "popping" or "flashing" screens when connected to two dual-link display devices. ...card doesn't do this when booted into windows, it's an EFI or OSX driver issue that dates back to the Power Mac G5 days and still hasn't been fixed. If I weren't trying to drive two 30" displays on this system, I would pull the GTX285 and put the 4870 card back in.

Did You install the drivers from the included CD, or from the internet?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Did You install the drivers from the included CD, or from the internet?

The latest drivers downloaded online... Which are still over a month old. The 2F16 revision at nVidia.com was released in the EVGA forum on June 12. They didn't make it to the nVidia site until July 9, but I downloaded the set from nVidia just to be sure, the checksums matched between the two versions, I installed anyway.

I've talked with EVGA, all my issues are "known issues". I'm not the only one bitching about them -- just look at all the people bitching in the EVGA and nVidia forums. Unfortunately, the drivers are stable, even though they suck, and I'm afraid that EVGA and nVidia may just consider them to be "good enough" since the actual sales volume of this card for Mac users is really small. The tech at EVGA told me that a driver update is in the works, but he even admitted it's not a high priority. :banghead:

 

[Peter Majtan]

The latest drivers downloaded online... Which are still over a month old. The 2F16 revision at nVidia.com was released in the EVGA forum on June 12. They didn't make it to the nVidia site until July 9, but I downloaded the set from nVidia just to be sure, the checksums matched between the two versions, I installed anyway.

I've talked with EVGA, all my issues are "known issues". I'm not the only one bitching about them -- just look at all the people bitching in the EVGA and nVidia forums. Unfortunately, the drivers are stable, even though they suck, and I'm afraid that EVGA and nVidia may just consider them to be "good enough" since the actual sales volume of this card for Mac users is really small. The tech at EVGA told me that a driver update is in the works, but he even admitted it's not a high priority. :banghead:

Now that sucks. I was really looking forward to get the best out of this combination...

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

yeah, it does suck. I've had the card since June 11, day after it was released. I thought it was a good sign that they had a driver update on the 12th... Too bad there has been nothing since.

Anyway, enough about that. The GTX285 card is just OK under OSX, needs help, nothing I can do about it I guess.

FedEx is supposed to deliver my Rocket on monday... Woohoo. I'm sure we'll have RocketCine-X by then.

 

[Jarred Land]

yeah, it does suck. I've had the card since June 11, day after it was released. I thought it was a good sign that they had a driver update on the 12th... Too bad there has been nothing since.

Anyway, enough about that. The GTX285 card is just OK under OSX, needs help, nothing I can do about it I guess.

FedEx is supposed to deliver my Rocket on monday... Woohoo. I'm sure we'll have RocketCine-X by then.

Everyone that has their Rocket delivered already now have the Alpha version of RocketCine-X as of this afternoon.. Lot's of big smiles out there

I cant express to you guys how hard Deanan and Rob (and Matt) have worked over the last two weeks to turn REDRocket into a reality... Deanan is so sleep deprived he is actually acting really normal.. which is the scariest thing I have seen in a long time.

 

[Brook Willard]

Mine shipped! I hope you guys sprung for Saturday delivery...

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Deanan and Rob deserve some smooth tequila ...

Sincere thanks for the hard work - Rocket is a monster game changer -

 

[Kevin Wild]

People are going to be very happy with the new RED RocketCine-X. There are still some alpha-issues, but I'm loving the simplicity of the interface. It has awesome potential...

Once you start seeing the clips real-time as you color, well, there is no going back.

 

[Shane Betts]

Got our Fedex number, they're rocketing across the globe as we speak. Cannot wait. It's going to be interesting to see how they work in our '08 MPs until we can get some newer ones. I see this as laying the foundations. The building may take a while but we're about to see the shape of things to come.

We've been told before that the reason for no SCRATCH on the Mac is the lack of support for the nVidia SDI option.

I had a fairly "in depth":banghead: online conversation with Luki over this some time back and it came down to this. Assimilate are currently uninterested in porting to Mac because they would have to deal with Apple and that would simply be too frustrating and problematic for what they perceive as limited(?) returns. Fair enough for them, a disappointment for Mac die-hards. Personally I think they're missing the boat. Somebody aside from Apple is going to wake up to this, produce a low cost grading app and do a Final Cut on the high-end guys. How many times does this scenario have to play out for companies to see where the bucks are? Low cost x big user base = big $$$.

I think the potential for Color (and many other apps) to do real time with the RED Rocket™™™™ is enormous, with both CPU and GPU totally free to apply LUT info to an uncompressed (read, nothing to decode) RGB stream. That's a lot of resources. And everyone going on about how long it will take to render out to DPX, read the posts people! 32fps. That's not fast enough for ya?!

 

[M Most]

I think the potential for Color (and many other apps) to do real time with the RED Rocket™™™™™ is enormous, with both CPU and GPU totally free to apply LUT info to an uncompressed (read, nothing to decode) RGB stream. That's a lot of resources. And everyone going on about how long it will take to render out to DPX, read the posts people! 32fps. That's not fast enough for ya?!

Well, I suppose if you consider "grading" to be basic color settings on the entire image, you might have a point. But real "grading" involves keys, area isolations, blurs, tracked shapes with variable opacity and different blending modes, multiple 3D LUTs when needed, control of individual saturation and luminance curves, and in some cases multiple basic grading toolsets and approaches - all implemented via a combination of software and GPU rendering, and all in real time. This requires a lot of interaction via Open GL and other approaches, and a lot of very sophisticated software to pull it off. And an awful lot of support from the software and hardware vendor to satisfy the users who need it to work every day, all day. The Red Rocket, as far as I know, is designed to do debayering and basic SDK RAW conversion adjustments in real time. It is not designed to implement any of the other things I just mentioned.

However, for basic dailies what you're saying has validity.

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

Well, I suppose if you consider "grading" to be basic color settings on the entire image, you might have a point. But real "grading" involves keys, area isolations, blurs, tracked shapes with variable opacity and different blending modes, multiple 3D LUTs when needed, control of individual saturation and luminance curves, and in some cases multiple basic grading toolsets and approaches - all implemented via a combination of software and GPU rendering, and all in real time. This requires a lot of interaction via Open GL and other approaches, and a lot of very sophisticated software to pull it off. And an awful lot of support from the software and hardware vendor to satisfy the users who need it to work every day, all day. The RED Rocket, as far as I know, is designed to do debayering and basic SDK RAW conversion adjustments in real time. It is not designed to implement any of the other things I just mentioned.

However, for basic dailies what you're saying has validity.

How much Mike, how much?! It is going to be a sweet life... I'll do my own stuff, RT, full quality, stunning. Then people like you come into the picture, and make it supercalifragilistic!

There is no downfall. We get to do ten times more before you, just think of the amount of crappy graded Red footage that will disappear from the www! Once we get to work in RT with proper output and we don't burn out a few shots into a sequence.

And you get to do your thing cheaper and faster. In fact, you'll probably be able to use two of these in SLI and get somewhere closer to 64fps for renders! Or grade real time while rendering RT in the background!!! MUAHAHHAHA!!! That would be so f'ing SWHEET!! Please let it be! :emote_popcorn:

I'm even getting about 4:1 DPX render to a firewire drive! For faster than realtime renders, you obviously need a RAID or wicked fast SSD that can handle the speed of RED Rocket output.

Jim

Could you guys work out the transfer rates necessary to maximize render/preview times? It would be a shame to hold back the beast if all you'd need were a faster SSD here or better RAID card there.

 

[Shane Betts]

Well, I suppose if you consider "grading" to be basic color settings on the entire image, you might have a point. But real "grading" involves keys, area isolations, blurs, tracked shapes with variable opacity and different blending modes, multiple 3D LUTs when needed, control of individual saturation and luminance curves, and in some cases multiple basic grading toolsets and approaches - all implemented via a combination of software and GPU rendering, and all in real time. This requires a lot of interaction via Open GL and other approaches, and a lot of very sophisticated software to pull it off. And an awful lot of support from the software and hardware vendor to satisfy the users who need it to work every day, all day. The RED Rocket™™™, as far as I know, is designed to do debayering and basic SDK RAW conversion adjustments in real time. It is not designed to implement any of the other things I just mentioned.

However, for basic dailies what you're saying has validity.

I don't dispute any of what you're saying Mike. I'm just saying that, with the RED Rocket™™ dealing with the debayer and decode (and, correct me if I'm wrong, the basic colour settings on the entire image as well, depending on how the app uses the SDK), that leaves the CPU and GPU to do the rest. No matter what sort of performance a given app is able to deliver now, with another device processing debayer, decode and basic colour settings, it has to be faster now. OK, maybe this won't mean RT, but it will be a hell of a kick in the right direction and, if the app can't do R3D's in RT with RED Rocket™™, it sure as hell ain't gonna do it without it. Potential is what I said.

 

[M Most]

Somebody aside from Apple is going to wake up to this, produce a low cost grading app and do a Final Cut on the high-end guys. How many times does this scenario have to play out for companies to see where the bucks are? Low cost x big user base = big $$$.

As long as Apple is going to continue essentially giving away Color for free, it is unlikely that anyone is going to consider putting a sophisticated competitor on the Mac platform. In fact, my feeling is that the only reason Adobe is able to compete on the Mac is because Apple doesn't really have anything to seriously compete with Photoshop (or After Effects, much as they keep trying with Motion). Apple users in general feel Apple can do very little wrong, and that goes with software as well as hardware. With that mindset, most of them would much rather see Apple "fix" color - for free -than spend even 10 cents on a competitor's product.

That's my view, anyway.

 

[M Most]

I don't dispute any of what you're saying Mike. I'm just saying that, with the RED Rocket™™™™ dealing with the debayer and decode (and, correct me if I'm wrong, the basic colour settings on the entire image as well, depending on how the app uses the SDK), that leaves the CPU and GPU to do the rest. No matter what sort of performance a given app is able to deliver now, with another device processing debayer, decode and basic colour settings, it has to be faster now. OK, maybe this won't mean RT, but it will be a hell of a kick in the right direction and, if the app can't do R3D's in RT with RED Rocket™™™™, it sure as hell ain't gonna do it without it. Potential is what I said.

Time will tell. There are a lot of architectural issues involved with getting data from one card to another and then back to a display card (since Apple doesn't support SDI output on NVidia cards), and particularly with the current operating system. That's where the primary bottlenecks are, and they won't really begin to be addressed until the new operating system is finished. That said, yes, it is likely that handling the debayering and decompression in hardware has to ultimately be an advantage. The question is whether Apple is willing to either integrate that into their media handling layer (aka, Quicktime) or be willing to work around it. And whether Apple users see fit to spend more for that card (the Rocket) than they did for the computer it's running on.