REDRocket Laptop Solutions

[Jordan Livingston]

Has anybody conducted a shootout or does anybody know the key differences between the Mobile Rocket, the Launchpad, and the Magna solutions for using a REDRocket card with a MacBook Pro?

From my informal web-scouring, it seems like the Mobile Rocket is the way to go for best performance. However, I haven't seen any real-world specs to back up this implication.

Also, do any of the three solutions allow the REDRocket to work in conjunction with the Rocket Box? Nobody's website mentions anything about that one way or the other.

Any compilation of the pros and cons of the three solutions would be extremely helpful to the community. I'm happy to help with this myself if anybody has any facts they can share.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Deanan]

We've done alot of testing with the Maxx Mobile Rocket and have made some firmware/driver improvements based on the extensive testing. I'd recommend going with the Mobile Rocket but I'm looking forward to testing Launchpad also. The Magma has heat issues which could kill a card so I don't recommend buying it.

The Rocket Break Out Box will work with the Mobile Rocket. (not tested on the other two yet)

 

[Jordan Livingston]

We've done alot of testing with the Maxx Mobile Rocket and have made some firmware/driver improvements based on the extensive testing. I'd recommend going with the Mobile Rocket but I'm looking forward to testing Launchpad also. The Magma has heat issues which could kill a card so I don't recommend buying it.

The Rocket Break Out Box will work with the Mobile Rocket. (not tested on the other two yet)

Thanks, Deanan! Wow that was a fast response!

Aside from the inherent performance differences between a MacBook Pro and a MacPro tower, are there any major REDRocket performance deficits that come from using the Rocket in this manner?

I guess what I'm really asking is is; will it be feasible to do realtime playback and some 'temp' color grading of R3D files on set with my laptop as opposed to bringing my bigger MacPro DIT cart.

Is there anything in particular that the Rocket will NOT do in the Mobile Rocket rig?

- Jordan

 

[Ron Amborn]

Has anybody conducted a shootout or does anybody know the key differences between the Mobile Rocket, the Launchpad, and the Magna solutions for using a REDRocket card with a MacBook Pro?

From my informal web-scouring, it seems like the Mobile Rocket is the way to go for best performance. However, I haven't seen any real-world specs to back up this implication.

Also, do any of the three solutions allow the REDRocket to work in conjunction with the Rocket Box? Nobody's website mentions anything about that one way or the other.

Any compilation of the pros and cons of the three solutions would be extremely helpful to the community. I'm happy to help with this myself if anybody has any facts they can share.

Thanks in advance!

Jordan
Please contact me at ron@maxxdigital.com and I will put you on the list to demo our mobile Rocket. We will be posting some results soon. Deanan an the guys at RED have been hammering this box for over 100 hours and we are now shipping. I am still interested in real world feed back form you the RED user professionals. Look forward to hearing from you and Happy Holidays.
Magma runs very hot and the third option is not available yet.

 

[severin schultze]

Jordan,

did you get any further on this? We have an on set solution with a MAC PRO as well and looking for a smaller setup. I thought of a MBP with the MAXX Mobile Rocket. But i'd need two HDD's and a CF cardreader hooked up to the MBP as well. I also checked the Magma PCIe expansion which would give me another PCIe slot to get an eSata breakout to hook up the two HDD's. But i won't risk the health of the RR. MAXX's Mobile Rocket Raid would give me a Raid plus 3 PCIe slots. But this doesn't seem to be available for the moment. So are there any solutions out there or did you experience anything?

Thanks in advance,
Severin

 

[Kaku Ito]

We've done alot of testing with the Maxx Mobile Rocket and have made some firmware/driver improvements based on the extensive testing. I'd recommend going with the Mobile Rocket but I'm looking forward to testing Launchpad also. The Magma has heat issues which could kill a card so I don't recommend buying it.

The Rocket Break Out Box will work with the Mobile Rocket. (not tested on the other two yet)

I guess I'm gonna get better fans for my Magma ExpressBox2.

 

[Jordan Livingston]

Jordan,

did you get any further on this? We have an on set solution with a MAC PRO as well and looking for a smaller setup. I thought of a MBP with the MAXX Mobile Rocket. But i'd need two HDD's and a CF cardreader hooked up to the MBP as well. I also checked the Magma PCIe expansion which would give me another PCIe slot to get an eSata breakout to hook up the two HDD's. But i won't risk the health of the RR. MAXX's Mobile Rocket Raid would give me a Raid plus 3 PCIe slots. But this doesn't seem to be available for the moment. So are there any solutions out there or did you experience anything?

Thanks in advance,
Severin

Hi Severin,

I'm currently rockin' (cheesy pun intended) with my own Mobile REDRocket Rig! In short, I LOVE it, and can't recommend it enough; but here are my thoughts on the matter:

1.) WHY Mobile Rocket (instead of Magma)?

As you noticed, the RED folks strongly advised me against the Magma. As you said, I can't afford to use anything that would jeopardize the REDRocket card's health. I invested in this tool as a business platform, and it just needs to work, period. So I went with the "official" solution for peace of mind and for the fact that RED themselves support it (at the time of this writing, I have had numerous email correspondences with Deanan, who has personally helped me troubleshoot my workflow... I couldn't ask for better support from any company!).

2.) What about eSATA?

I too was greatly tempted by the Magma's ability to share the enclosure with an eSATA card, but upon further consideration, I realized there would be little or no performance gain, and possibly even a performance loss...

The MacBook Pro contains a 1x slot. The REDRocket ideally wants an 8x slot, and most eSATA cards ideally want a 4x slot. So, if you think about it, the REDRocket is theoretically already working at just 1/8th of it's performance potential [that's not nearly as bad as it sounds - more on this later], and with an eSATA slot also working at 1/4 of it's potential, or, as I understand it, because it's sharing the bus with the REDRocket, it'd be like working at half-of-one-fourth of it's potential, while the Rocket would be working at half-of-one-eight of it's potential, I decided the performance gains would be negligible over FireWire800, possibly even worse!

Yes, I know, my numbers are fuzzy...

Okay, okay, the half-of-one-eight and half-of-one-fourth are definitely fuzzy math, and those characterizations don't do justice to what's really going on. The truth is, with the REDRocket installed in the Mobile Rocket enclosure, reading and writing with two FireWire 800 drives, I am consistently getting 12fps performance WITH audio! That's just a little bit less than 50% of the REDRocket's theoretical performance potential in a desktop, or, if you prefer approximately 2:1 transcode performance.

2:1 performance is GREAT! An hour of dallies - with audio - transcoded in just two hours - on a laptop - simply unheard of! As you can see, the real world performance is far better than the "1/8th" bandwidth limitation would seem to allow for, BUT, throw an eSATA card into the mix and you're bound to slow that down, because now your 1x bus is having to address two devices instead of just one. The result can't possibly be any better than 2:1, perhaps it'd be slightly worse, but in any case, the point is that the FireWire 800 drive speed certainly isn't hurting your performance at this point.

3.) My mobile config, some problems, and what I did to cope with them

The biggest problem I faced was that when I had the Mobile REDRocket hooked up, plus two FireWire 800 hard drives, plus a FireWire 800 CF card reader and / or RED Drive, the data transfer speed slowed to a painful crawl, and often, would timeout altogether.

I personally use R3D Data Manager to archive the R3D files to AT LEAST two distinct drives while in the field. Because my Mobile Rocket kit also needs to be an archive station as well as a transcode / playback station, the slow, unreliable performance resulting from daisy-chaning too many FireWire 800 devices was simply unacceptable.

I found that the only rock-solid-stable configuration for me was to daisy-chain NO MORE than two FireWire 800 drives, which are independently powered (NEVER bus powered). As for the CF Reader or RED Drive, I have reverted to FireWire 400. This isn't as bad as it sounds. I've found that a 16GB CF card will backup with checksums to both FireWire 800 drives using R3D Data Manager in approximately ~30 minutes or less. That's certainly not "good" performance, but it's relatively unlikely that the camera team will fill up another 16GB card up before I'm ready.

NOTE: On a newer unibody MacBook Pro, I believe they eliminated the FireWire 400 port, which means you'd have to mimmic my above config with USB2 instead. :-\

In any case, in those situations where they're letting the cameras roll and burning through cards or drives faster than I can keep up, I disconnect the Mobile REDRocket and go back to my trusty Sonnet eSATA adaptor, feeding the two drives with eSATA connections, and connecting the CF Reader or RED Drive via FireWire 800. In these situations, it simply doesn't make sense to have the Mobile Rocket rocketing AND the archive workflow going at the same time - the performance is just too slow on a laptop competing for your drives. On these faster-paced shoots, I might not even connect the Mobile Rocket until lunch; transcoding everything then, and later switching back to archival mode when shooting resumes.

4.) Prioritize / Manage Expectations

It's all about priorities. If the show is budgeted for no compromises, chances are, you can get your full MacPro tower on board. But, if we're talking about laptops and and extreme portability, or perhaps lower budgets that can't afford full-size DIT carts, then you have to prioritize safe, robust, data archival over on-set transcodes. I'm usually able to juggle both just fine, and the production is never burdened or slowed down by the needs of the DIT. In a given 12hr day, there's usually enough time for everything; you just have to manage expectations and be realistic about the limitations of the tools you are using.

In an ideal world, we would always have two systems on set, sharing fast, networked RAID storage. One system would handle the archival, while the other would perform REDRocket transcodes and playback. Many of us can't realistically afford this toolset, or if we could, we'd be rolling with MacPro towers anyway, and wouldn't need the Mobile REDRocket in the first place.

Still, if you're willing to put up with a bit of hardware swapping, the Mobile REDRocket will not disappoint you. Even just the ability to do transcodes at lunch or in the hotel room - without lugging my MacPro tower on location - makes the Mobile Rocket a no-brainer, in my opinion.

Of course, once your DP and client see that they can grade and watch RAW playback in realtime, they're going to gravitate toward your cart, as their images have never looked so good on set before. When the director asks to see a previous shot in his SDI monitor and you can tell him "sure thing!" (as opposed to the old "sorry, you have to come over here to the DIT tent") you are literally going to make his day.

5.) On Set / Studio Roundtrip

The last thing I wanted to say about the Mobile REDRocket is that with the HBA kit, you can also use it with your MacPro. That was a BIG selling point for me, as I need to be able to quickly repurpose my REDRocket between on-set DIT work, and in-studio dallies and color grading services. I was a bit disappointed to learn that you have to open up the enclosure and adjust two jumper switches to toggle between "laptop" and "desktop" mode, but the folks at Maxx Digital tell me they are working on an "auto switching" firmware update for this. In any case, despite this minor inconvenience (about 2-3 minutes if you're as careful with your Mobile Rocket innards as I am), the Mobile REDRocket migrates seamlessly between both platforms.

I hope this answers your questions and sheds some light on a "real world" workflow. I think the REDRocket is going to become ubiquitous very soon, as dallies need to become hourlies, and overnight transcoding in a hotel room on-location is going to be the normal expectation. I will always push for my no-compromises MacPro tower rig, but it's great to know that on lower-budget gigs, or remote location shoots, I have a viable solution that legitimately meets my clients' needs.

Don't hesitate to let me know if I can answer any additional questions or clarify anything else about the Mobile REDRocket or REDRocket workflow in general.

Best,

- Jordan

 

[Sam Parnell]

Great info Jordan, this is really helpful to me as well!