Speed up Red Rushes on a Quadcore

[nima]

Hi all,
I am in the critical moment when a lot of r3d footage needs to be converted (I assume they say "conformed") using RedRushes, in order to be brought into a FCSP timeline.

On a new Quadcore 2.93Ghz (12 Gb ram), ATI Rad HD4870 512mb with Dulce (4 drives in Raid 5) things are moving pretty slow.
Any suggestion to speed things up?

Would Red Rocket do the job?


Sometimes I feel like moving to CS4.. and have r3d files right into the project. What's the catch?

This has been probably discussed millions of time, sorry about that. But times are also slightly different now and few things maybe changed and I am missing something here.

Thanks by now

 

[MichaelP]

If you want to quickly transcode to any other proxy codec, the ROCKET card will accelerate the process by debayering the R3D files in real time - easily the biggest bottleneck in the process when looking at peformance. In both cases of FCP and CS4 - performance will vary when accessing the R3D file directly or via the QT wrapper to the R3D files. What is your final delivery format?

Michael

 

[joe hedge]

First, make sure you're only transcoding to the quality level that you really need. Doing a full-res debayer in RedRushes on everything you've shot will take forever. Unless you really are conforming (uprezzing the footage you've already edited), you should set the settings in the Render tab to no higher than half-res standard.

Next, in the Resize tab, scale to half of whatever you shot. If you shot 4:1, scale to 2k, if you shot Quad HD or 4k 16:9, scale to 1080. 50% rescale = cleaner resizes with less math = faster transcodes. You could also resize down to 720p which is the fastest way to go.

Make sure the Output tab codec settings are also not unnecessarily high, ProRes or ProRes LT are good enough for offline editing.

Make sure the Settings drop-down menu in the Menu bar is set to Render: 2 clips at once and 4 cores (or 8 if you have a dual quad MacPro, and not just a quad)

And then make sure no other programs are running while transcoding, RedRushes and the OS and that's it. I use 2 drives with identical copies of the R3D's, and plug each drive into it's own 3ghz 8-core MacPro. With 2 machines doing 2 clips at once, I get 8 frames a second from RC36 4k 16:9 scaled to 1080, half res-high, ProRes HQ, and 1 hour of footage takes about 3 hours to transcode. These quality settings give the client the option of either using those transcodes for color correction and final output, or we can go back and uprez the shots in the edit to ProRes 4x4 full res debayer, and conform and output those. Good Luck!

 

[nima]

What is your final delivery format?

Michael

Hi Michael, final delivery is DPX files (4K 2:1). I will keep these files on a side so one day, if needed, I will be able to transfer them to film (or 4K tape storage). Meanwhile I will mostly deliver 1080p files.

We are also thinking to consider a 4K finishing with Assimiliate Scratch.
Although so far the most time consuming part of the job is transcoding to Apple ProRes HD.

 

[nima]

Unless you really are conforming (uprezzing the footage you've already edited), you should set the settings in the Render tab to no higher than half-res standard.

Beside transcoding, how much benefit can you get out of the Red Rocket when conforming?

In the end I would definitely like to have each master in original shooting res (4K).. you never know. They are all shorts destined to festivals.

 

[MichaelP]

The Rocket card won't do anything for conforming as that is a metdata thing. The card will accelerate whatever files you want to export such as DPX, DNxHD, ProRes, etc. Conforming is part of the software application's ability to recreate, pull, and align original sources to match the editorial decisions of the sequence.

Michael