System Performance

[Ben Norton]

There has been a lot of discussion around editing systems and the performance required. Could someone help clarify which parts of the system become bottle necks. I imagine the core areas are:

1) Processors
2) RAM
3) Hard Drive
4) Graphics Card

As a starter for 10, what sees the pressure when:

1) Editing
2) Coloring
3) Rendering
4) Compressing

In preparation for Scarlet, I recently updated my '08 8-core Mac to 10gb of RAM and a 2x1tb software striped RAID for rendering etc. The RAM barely gets touched and the processors always have lots of head room...I am assuming that my hard drives are the slowest part.

 

[Stephen Gentle]

I think your system will hold up fine - a lot of people have had success editing RED footage on MacBooks and so on. Storage is generally the issue (especially in a 15 inch MacBook that doesn't have an express card slot to hook up an eSata card) but if all yours is internal in your Mac Pro then it should be sufficiently fast enough.

The main problem people seem to have working with RED ONE footage is that doing the high quality full debayer and decode when you render out a project can take a very long time on a regular computer, which is why the RED ROCKET was released. It speeds up decoding to close to (or maybe faster than) real time.

They're pretty pricey though so I at least am willing to just edit with lower quality proxies and then re-link with the original files for editing and leave it going overnight to render the full quality finished products of the stuff I'll do.

 

[Jeffrey T. Morgan]

yeah, efficient workflow will be the main weapon for a lot of us, I think. Especially those in the Scarlet pricepoint.

Dropping 5-10k on a camera makes it hard to drop 16k more on a Red Rocket and new computer. But I imagine this will be like working with uncompressed HD and other older formats... you just make work arounds. And have your workflow set up so you can let the computer work while you sleep... or spend time with your family, lol.

jeff

 

[AnuAmun]

I just finished building a system that could handle the 3k raw files without breaking the bank. I just stress tested build 101 and the work flow is smooth.

So for a PC build , under 1500$

AMD Phenom II x4 955 (3.2 Ghz) 159 $
OczTech 2x2gb DDR3 ram 109 $ (upgradable to 8 GB ram)
Windows 7 (i think it's a must for a good stable 64 bit platform) 109$ (the home Premium edition)
ASUS M4A77TD AM3 motherboard 89 $
10k Rpm 70g Sata Hard drive (i had this prior i would use this as a bridge to the storage drives in the future )

To get the full potential of the system i would go with SSD drives , they are expensive at the moment but you don't need more then 100 150 G to run the OS and FC Pro or Vegas
and as far as storage i do understand the reasoning behind RAID'ing 2 1 T drives but budget wise i think you would be safe with just one 1.5 T internal SATA drive.

and now for the video card there are a couple of options out there , most of the high end stuff runs about 500$ . Personally i built systems before using Radeon and experienced glitches and bugs , so i moved back to NVIDIA

There are cheaper systems out there , you do NOT HAVE TO go Intel and break your bank .

Oh and btw , core 6 is coming out from AMD

 

[Andrew Luczenczyn]

Is there a need to switch to the iCore system? I have a rig running a Pentium Quad core (3.2Ghz at 1333Mhz FSB). What is more taxing on the decode, RAM, Clock speed, or the FSB. If its either of the former, that can be remedied by the older (cheaper) tech, but if its the FSB speed, i guess id have to start from scratch and move to the iCore.

 

[Andrew Huse]

I'm building a new system next month, and I plan to have the new Nvidia FERMI GTX 480, since Adobe Premiere CS5 will utilize CUDA.

Intel® Core™ i7 960 Processor
NVIDIA GTX 480
12 GB [2 GB X6] DDR3-1333
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7
300 GB WD Velociraptor
2 TB HARD DRIVE
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional

I'm hoping this will be enough power to edit RED 3K files when the Scarlet Fixed arrives. My system right now can barely handle EX1 footage, so I really have to step it up.