Support for Red Rocket X for 2019 Mac Pro Catalina/ Big Sur

[Sulekh Suman]

I recently got the 2019 Mac Pro 16 Core with 2x AMD Pro Vega II Duo 96Gb RAM and would love to be able to use my Red Rocket X on Catalina/ Big Sur. I still use it with my 2013 Mac Pro running Mojave. Are there any planned updates to the firmware? It will help in transcoding 8K Monstro/ DXL FF footage. I am unable to install the firmware in its current iteration. Thank you for your help.

 

[Joel Voelker]

I’m not sure how big a difference the Rocket X will make on that system. What kind of frame rates are you seeing without it?

 

[Sulekh Suman]

15fps

15fps

15fps in Metal on my 2019 Mac Pro in half res good
30fps in Metal on my 2013 Mac Pro with RRX

I am troubleshooting it with Blackmagic. Blackmagic forum members are recommending dialing down the debayer to quarter res good. I don't need 2019 system if I have to do quarter res debayer. I have 16x lanes on 2019 Mac Pro that can truly leverage RRX. So far it has lived in a Sonnet Chasis over thunderbolt 2 and never really lived up to its potential.

 

[Sulekh Suman]

Resolved(Pun intended)

Resolved(Pun intended)

After changing the preference in decode from debayer to decompression and debayer, the frame rates improved. Metal decompression was implemented in Resolve in 16.2.1

8K FF Ana to DNxHD (Half res Good) went from 15fps to 78fps
8k FF to DNxHD(Half Res Good) went from 32fps to 88fps

GPU usage has shot up to 15X and CPU usage has gone down 4X. I would still hope that Red would upgrade the firmware to work with Big Sur for RRX since it allows Full Res debayer.

 

[Jose Delio Ares Garcia]

Hello, I have an iMac 2020, and while I may have 2 Egpus connected via Thunderbolt, I am really in need of installing my Red Rocket. It would really help! Has anyone found a way to install the drivers on Big Sur?

 

[Johnny S]

These instructions have worked on Catalina, not sure about Big Sur. Most instructions are in Terminal.

DIRECTIONS:
# You need to have the RRX kext driver to do this. It's in the installer file and can be extracted (Suspicious Package) or taken from a previous supported system.
# Big OS updates will likely kill this driver and it will need to be reinstalled. It will NOT run under M1 because it was compiled for Intel.
# DISABLE SYSTEM INTEGRATION PROTECTION
sudo spctl --master-disable
# CHECK IF DISABLED
sudo spctl --status
# ?? MOUNT BOOT VOLUME AS R/W (DOES THIS DO ANYTHING?)
sudo mount -uw
# COPY KEXT INTO PLACE
sudo cp -R /path/to/redrocketx.kext /Library/Extensions
# REPAIR PERMISSIONS (-rwxr-xr-x) FOR EXTENSIONS RECURSIVE
sudo chmod -v -R 755 /Library/Extensions
# REPAIR PERMISSIONS (ROOT) FOR EXTENSION DIR
sudo chown -v -R root:wheel /Library/Extensions
# TOUCH EXTENSIONS DIR
sudo touch /Library/Extensions
# UPDATE KEXT CACHE
sudo kextcache -i /
# REENABLE SYSTEM INTEGRATION PROTECTION
sudo spctl --master-enable
# REBOOT MACHINE
sudo shutdown -r now