RedCine feedback..

[Anthony Gratl]

If you had an Intel-based Mac, you'd know why he did it... :biggrin:

Please explain....ive actually heard from retailers that there have been many problems with intel based macs from a manufacturing pov. Something about chipsets not passing muster....by the way, Ive been a loyal mac user since the first time I used an Avid, so its not sour grapes from someone who really wants a pc or anything.

 

[Bill Goehring]

Conspiracy theory notwithstanding, IntelMacs are relatively new on the market, and so I guess my observation is that making Redcine only compliant on Intel based macs was not necessary for any development issues, but rather the result of agreement between Red and Apple.
...and most programs that run on pre-intel machines also run on intels, right? So I don't think that development time is really the reason for this, although it's not an unreasonable comment.

This sounds very much like a conspiracy theory to me, so quit cryin' and start buyin'!

Yes, MacIntels are relatively new on the market, and, yes, most programs that run on pre-Intel Mac boxes also run on MacIntels, but what you're failing to acknowledge is that most Mac software on the market was developed before MacIntels existed; therefore, that software was originally written for PPC and UPDATED to universal when MacIntels became available.

If software companies wanted to keep their programs relevant, they HAD to update for MacIntels or be left in the dust, whereas RED is a new arrival on the market and does not pre-date MacIntels.

What kind of sense does it make for a forward-looking company with limited time/resources to make their wares backward compatible to a configuration that is rapidly becoming outdated?

Answer: It doesn't.

 

[Rob Lohman]

I've got a whip fast dual g5 processor with all kinds of ram!

Actually you have a pretty slow processor... sorry

And so I'm thinking why redcine was designed to work with intel processors only. It wasn't necessary to do that, so why do it Jim?

It's a free tool. We've clearly indicated from day 1 that REDCINE would be Intel only. You've had about a year to prepare for that.

Have you ever programmed? High performance stuff? It's not just a switch you flick on. There's tons of hand written assembly code (low level cpu stuff) and platform specific optimizations in it. It takes months and months to do.

The PowerPC platform just isn't the future. Looking at that combined with the time / resources (and thus money needed) with none of the major platforms going in that direction why would we build for it? Do you also want us to support your G4 because you still have one for your render "farm"?

That in conjunction with only being able to edit in FCP makes me think that Apple and Red have more than an aquaintance relationship. And that makes me unhappy, because I don't like exclusionary policies, since those kind of platforms invariably mean that the consumer pays extra for admission! And I'm thinking that it's starting to look like that's really whats happening here. And I know I'm going to get fifty responses saying, dude, Red technology is so cheap, you should shut up, but I'm feeling that this Redcine only on Intel processor business is nothing more than a squeeze.

Please do some research before saying "nothing more than a squeeze". How many iPhones has Apple sold again?

Which other 4K camera can you buy for this money with this level of support? All our software tools are FREE OF CHARGE.

Finally, we've stated again and again that we are looking into supporting other apps. These platforms are the ones that perform well and we are comfortable with so that's what we started out with.

Had we started out supporting everything under the sun you wouldn't have had ANY post tools AT ALL for the next couple of years. You have to start SOMEWHERE.

We have pledged to do the best we can. We stated from the beginning that we'd be in constant development and everyone's along for the right. Don't mistaken this for a finished fully polished product. This is in development and in beta.

If this is not how you like to work then I kindly suggest you look somewhere else.

Peace out,

 

[Clint Johnson]

Sorry to pile on as well Evolve but the G5 chip was behind the tech curve before it was released. While Apple was doing their dog and pony show to convince you that it was "whip fast", they were busy negotiating with Intel on an exit strategy.

And it may be a few years since I wrote any code but when you are doing low level coding, I suspect that the processor architecture is still where the last erg of performance comes from and we need every bit we can get.

If they tried to support old architecture then it wouldn't be anywhere near ready for us to beta test nor would it be anywhere hear realtime at any reasonable resolution.

The Red team has accomplished another great step and it is because they didn't support an old, slow processor.

Even if it hurts us a little in the wallet it is for our own good.

 

[Casey Green]

after update to 10.5.1 is the same single frame in quicktime renders...
no changes. and if I try to export jpeg picture sequence my mac book pro 2.4 crashes...

I'm also getting the single frame output... with ProRes422.

MBPro 2.16GHz ICD
1GB 667MHz RAM
FCP 6.0.2
QT 7.3.0
OSX 10.4.11


(by the way, Awesome Software and Interface!! Thank You for the generosity!)

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Evolve, when it was first announced that there would be no support for PPC I was disappointed because I have a very fast G5 (Quad). But I understood the position they were taking then and now that I have played with Redcine on an Intel (Macbook Pro 2.4ghz) I can see why they went in the direction they did. My Macbook is doing okay with settings at 1/4 high but I'm already thirsty for more power. I'll be going for one of the next generation Mac Pros when they come out. Red was quite upfront from the beginning that these are professional tools, and despite the low cost of the camera, some of the other tools are expensive when you add them all up.

Steve

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Ok I've played with it for only about 30 minutes during lunch but:

It does run on Windows XP 64bit (despite the "Windows XP 32 SP2 Only" Warning.)

Debayering 4k REDCode felt SLOW. About 5-12 seconds per frame (Render times seemed to fluxuate wildly.) I had some heavy 1080p comps today that were rendering considerably faster. If that's what we should expect for REDCode RAW I would strongly advise using REDCode RGB if it's considerably faster or else evaluate your other options.

I would like to be able to zoom using the scroll wheel.

Pressing R/G/B for shuffling channels would be nice while in the viewport.

Histogram took forever to update about the same amount of time as it took to debayer the frame in addition.

C*/FFI style pan/zoom buttons for tablet users would be nice. (For those who don't know what that is: A "Pan" Button and a "Zoom" Button. Which when pushed act like the middle mouse button and Al+middle mouse button for tablet users.

When zooming it would be nice to get a context box pop up to let you know what zoom level you're at. Say have it come in bold up in a corner and then fade out.

Proxy levels work very well.

I was dissapointed there were no 'quick export' options. Aka. a drop down in the export tab to just say "SD" "720p" Or what have you. Scaling and repositioning is great for final shots but it would be nice to just batch out a hundred shots to SD proxies for the offline edit and worry about cropping and polishing later once you know if they'll even be used.

What's with the Slate font? IMO it's a bit too cute for a slate.

Still crashy but its recovery/autobackup worked very well every time.

I think I found a bug on Dual monitor systems where the ?hot box? On the screen divide won't go away when the mouse leaves.

No render glitches at all.
---

Intel E6600
Nvidia 8800 GTX
4GB of RAM
Windows Xp Pro 64bit Edition

---

<rant>

I've got a whip fast dual g5 processor with all kinds of ram!

I've always thought that most brilliant piece of marketing BS that Apple has ever been able to perpetrate upon the computer using public was the 12 month period where Steve Jobs with a straight face stood in front of a thousand people and to cheer and laughter proceeded to espouse the amazing powers of the G5 processor compared to those stupid PCs. And then... just a few months later go in front of another group of very independently minded individuals cheer as he sold the new *cough asus* laptop as more than 10x faster than the old G5! Thank you Apple for giving us the x86 Architecture! Ha take that PCs and their super slow... wait..
</rant>

I've run Linux x86 Shake and Dual G5 Shake side by side and there was no comparison the G5s were pure garbage compared to an x86 system more than 12 months older. You got "squeezed" alright... it was when you invested in the powerPC architecture.

 

[Lucas Wilson]

Debayering 4k REDCode felt SLOW. About 5-12 seconds per frame (Render times seemed to fluxuate wildly.) I had some heavy 1080p comps today that were rendering considerably faster. If that's what we should expect for REDCode RAW I would strongly advise using REDCode RGB if it's considerably faster or else evaluate your other options.

4K debayer is slow, but not THAT slow. Something funky in your system. I hate to bring this up, but you ARE running an unsupported and untested OS with untested drivers. There are some very well-known problems with NVidia drivers in 64-bit land.

I would like to be able to zoom using the scroll wheel.

Hold down "Alt" at the same time, and you can.

Pressing R/G/B for shuffling channels would be nice while in the viewport.

Hold down "Ctrl" while pressing R,G,B.

Histogram took forever to update about the same amount of time as it took to debayer the frame in addition.

See previous comment about unsupported stuff.

C*/FFI style pan/zoom buttons for tablet users would be nice. (For those who don't know what that is: A "Pan" Button and a "Zoom" Button. Which when pushed act like the middle mouse button and Al+middle mouse button for tablet users.

Click+Drag anywhere on the image for a Pan. Alt+Click+Drag for zoom.

I was dissapointed there were no 'quick export' options. Aka. a drop down in the export tab to just say "SD" "720p" Or what have you. Scaling and repositioning is great for final shots but it would be nice to just batch out a hundred shots to SD proxies for the offline edit and worry about cropping and polishing later once you know if they'll even be used.

This does exist for Quicktime. If you don't do anything, and just use the dropdown in Output to select a different resolution, scaling will be done on output.

But, this also uses Quicktime for the scaling, which is much, much slower than doing the scaling first in the GPU in REDCINE.

Lucas
-----
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

 

[Simon Blackledge]

So the OUTPUT > FORMAT is best left to what the Project in RC is or if not QT is used to scale it ?

cheers

s

 

[Simon Blackledge]

Woahh soo much quicker!.. 3min render dropped to 33 seconds

Thanks

s

 

[Russ Campbell]

So the OUTPUT > FORMAT is best left to what the Project in RC is or if not QT is used to scale it ?

cheers

s

Can you elaborate. The format options are DPX, Tiff, Quicktime, etc. I am still finding render times slow on my MBP 2.4GHz with 4GB Ram when I select the QT option.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Thanks Lucas.

Is it possible to click somewhere on the timeline and set that to the current time. So instead of click dragging just clicking? That was one other question I had forgotten yesterday.

 

[Rob Lohman]

Gavin: I'm not sure what you're asking?

 

[mikeburton]

I sat down and started showing a DP friend of mine yesterday the Redcine beta. Granted I myself have only had about a day to play but its a pretty simple app to get right in and start playing (although it does have nice hidden features under the hood). I was playing Jims dragster clip on my MacBook Pro 2.33 ghz with 2 gigs of RAM. We were at 1/4 RES but was able to play realtime. My DP friend was blown away being able to grade in realtime and have curves to adjust. He loved having all the freedom that Redcine provides with the timeline options to resolution options, etc. Two things we both wished for was dual monitor support. I'm not sure, maybe I just don't know how to enable it but we would have liked it to automatically at start up to recognize your second monitor and be able to use it as a display. As far as workflow is concerned, right now if I just wanted to do a quick offline from the r3d files I would definatly use Redalert over Redcine but that is obvious and sounds like Redcine will eventually have the option to create proxy footage. However this is a great option for creating files for online or vfx plates.
Render times are a little heavy but let's face it, we are working with heavy material here, 4k!
I think everyone knows that this is beta 1.0 and the bugs and render times will only get better. I have done quite a bit of beta testing visual effects software like e-onsoftware's Vue product line to render management software and crowd simulation software for Maya etc. I must say for being a beta 1.0 it is quite stable and has performed quite well so far (and yes I too experienced the single frame QuickTime renders etc.) my best advice is to have fun with the app, report the bugs, but don't expect a fully functional, ready to use on a job just yet. We are all beta testers and need to help get this app to where it should be for production purposes. It can be frustrating at times but have fun with it and thank the guys that allowed us to participate every so often.
My two cents.

 

[Eric Edwards]

Ya, I would have to add that this is probably the most stable beta 1 of anything I have ever tried...just by that fact alone I was very impressed with what we can do already in this stage.

Great Job Red Team.

 

[Simon Blackledge]

Exporting to BlackMagic uncompressed and setting to Lossless worked fine.

S

 

[Anders Holck]

On my system pressing "1:1" zooms to something not quite 100%, and shows a lot of aliasing. Zooming to 200% and it's smooth again.
Exports are fine also.

Seems like the GL texture isnt scaled to exact size?

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Well there is the small timeline. If you grab the frame indicator you can scrub. But it won't advance to where I click on the timeline.

So if I just click on the timeline at the end it won't just jump to that frame.

 

[Nick Shaw]

You don't need to drag the CTI, just scrub momentarily anywhere in the timeline and it jumps there.

 

[robbo]

What a great app, guys !

Thanks Jim, Rob and all others involved with putting together Red Cine.
Sheesh, Apple could have done something like this with Color ...