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The "I need a new PC to edit RED" Myth

A

Andrew Allsbury

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I have been hearing a lot of:
"Oh my god I need to spend $5k+ on a new computer to edit RED 4k"

This is just plain wrong. In preparation of our new Scarlet, we just finished running some very taxing tests on both of our systems (desktops and laptops) using REDRAW footage supplied by users on this board and around the web. We've worked with everything from 5k HDRx to 3k. Even our 1-2 year old Sony laptop had no problem working with the footage in CS5.5 and color grading in Redcine-X Pro Beta. In some cases, such as color grading in Redcine-X VS MB Looks, our workflow has actually gotten FASTER.

The specs on our laptop are:
Intel i7 @740 @ 1.73Ghz
6GB of RAM
64bit Windows Ultimate
NVIDIA GeForce GT 425M
Lacie 1TB USB3 Portable HD

Bottom line is...this transition shouldn't be half as scary as most people are making it sound. Download some test footage and see for yourself!
 
Andrew:

Well, some of us who had state of the art PCs in 2005 NEED this upgrade anyways, as rendering even 2K has gotten taxing on a 32-bit XP pro machine. I will be getting a gaming PC with an Nvidia GTX 590 3GB card for around 4K. But like I said, I needed an upgrade even without RED files.

Marcos
 
Oh..but do take into account that you are going to need ALOT more storage space if you are coming over from mpeg2/4 cameras!
 
Marcos,

Gotcha, I just wanted to make it clear to the people with "standard" video editing computers that they do not NEED a liquid cooled, dual xeon, with 32gb of RAM and the most expensive Nvidia card around. As usual, if you spend more, you will have a better system, but it's not necessary.

Andrew
 
I need a good excuse for an upgrade anyway, so I was shopping around.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229283
Less than a grand will get you in the game.
I would add a hotswap bay and double the ram, maybe an SSD for OS and software, and it will cost about half what I paid for my first laptop.

Vegas Pro 11 is a great way to start. $600.
 
Andrew Allsbury said:
I have been hearing a lot of:
"Oh my god I need to spend $5k+ on a new computer to edit RED 4k"

This is just plain wrong. In preparation of our new Scarlet, we just finished running some very taxing tests on both of our systems (desktops and laptops) using REDRAW footage supplied by users on this board and around the web. We've worked with everything from 5k HDRx to 3k. Even our 1-2 year old Sony laptop had no problem working with the footage in CS5.5 and color grading in Redcine-X Pro Beta. In some cases, such as color grading in Redcine-X VS MB Looks, our workflow has actually gotten FASTER.

The specs on our laptop are:
Intel i7 @740 @ 1.73Ghz
6GB of RAM
64bit Windows Ultimate
NVIDIA GeForce GT 425M
Lacie 1TB USB3 Portable HD

Bottom line is...this transition shouldn't be half as scary as most people are making it sound. Download some test footage and see for yourself!
Click to expand...

Andrew... Many of us will be rendering 3D imaging as well as 4k. We need machines that will handle advanced plugins in AE, as well as some other programs that are video, or CPU intensive. I personally have a really good rig that is much faster than yours, with 12 HT cores, PCIe SSD, 24GB Ram, Dual 1GB Video, the CPU is running at 3.7MHz, and my CPU usage is still pegged at 100% during an AE render.

Bottom line is I still need more, and if you try to convince my wife that I don't, then I will be pissed! LOL... As far as she knows we need a futuristic computer that will materialize cheeseburgers to render R3d files, lol.
 
throw up a 30minute or longer timeline in raw....and tell me you don't need more horsepower. Certainly every situation is going to be different. but i know that i can't sit waiting for slow renders or running timeline at 1/16th......add in some transitions and other effects and you have a HUGE tax on your system.


Now....that said, i know folks (and my mentor of underwater films included) that don't mind waiting overnight for transcodes and then next day work on final edits.....But i don't have that kind of patience....and in the real world of working with clients....they don't usually have the time and i find they will want to know up front my turnaround times....YES, don't need liquid cooled or $2000 NVDIA card....but the $750 NVDIA card and 16gb ram 8cores etc....
 
Johnny Friday said:
throw up a 30minute or longer timeline in raw....and tell me you don't need more horsepower. Certainly every situation is going to be different. but i know that i can't sit waiting for slow renders or running timeline at 1/16th......add in some transitions and other effects and you have a HUGE tax on your system.


Now....that said, i know folks (and my mentor of underwater films included) that don't mind waiting overnight for transcodes and then next day work on final edits.....But i don't have that kind of patience....and in the real world of working with clients....they don't usually have the time and i find they will want to know up front my turnaround times....YES, don't need liquid cooled or $2000 NVDIA card....but the $750 NVDIA card and 16gb ram 8cores etc....
Click to expand...

Yup, that's right. I sometimes do have to wait overnight for renders, but that's when I end up finishing at midnight and send it to render then. I don't like waiting forever, and I don't like my CPU pegged at 100% for hours upon hours either.
 
Jon Jones said:
...with 12 HT cores, PCIe SSD, 24GB Ram, Dual 1GB Video, the CPU is running at 3.7MHz, and my CPU usage is still pegged at 100% during an AE render.
Click to expand...

Jon, so what is this rig? Custom built? I'm looking for recommendations on CURRENT workstations that pass AVID's certified systems list and are being used with RED ROCKET actively by people in the field. Info as in - HP Workstation model blah blah, with blah blah config.

Having a hard time getting info on this despite a few threads I've thrown up here in the forums. :(
 
Yes I built this rig from the ground up. It is maxed out completely on upgrades in CPU, RAM, and Video. Look, just do some rendering to realize where your system is at fault at. My system when I am rendering, despite it's Intel i7 990x 6 core CPU, is severely lacking in CPU, I can tell because it shoots straight up to 100% when I'm rendering a 3 minute AE composition. I can also tell that I am lacking in Video ram, because when I render in PP, and the CPU is at around 70% my computer is lagging quite a bit, and I don't dare do anything else, or it might lock up. Yes I do have dual 1GB GeForce 460 video cards running in SLI config. but Adobe does not recognize a second video card. There is only a 1GB channel for my video to render through. And it does the same thing with bigger Geforce cards like the GeForce 590 that has (2) 1.5GB cards either, because then again it is 2 separate video cards on one board. Yes it has double the cuda cores, which does help a lot when gaming, but it however does not when Rendering.

You guys, this is not the only reason this profession is expensive. If you want clean product outcome, your going to have to save up the money for the products that it takes to buy them...( I know, I know it's a foreign concept in America to actually save, but it can be done... I pay for all of my equipment with money saved...) Or use a credit card.... It's up to you, lol. Either way if you want a good clean finished product that will keep your customers coming back over and over, and still protect your investment, from heat mostly, because those GeForce cards are hotter than hell's attic, then your going to have to come up off of some cash, some real cash.

Me personally, am going with a SR-2 classified motherboard as my base. Why? well because it is really upgradable, and it's a dual CPU board, which allows for twice as many cores :). Next I'm going with the Nvidia Quadro 6000 video card. Why? Well I figure with a 6GB video rendering channel, I will be able to render to my hearts content without pegging the odometer, and burning up everything in my system within 2 years time. I'm also going with Xeon cores because in general they don't run as hot, and they are more reliable, and THIS IS WHAT THEY ARE BUILT FOR!

I'm sure you guys with your GeForce cards will be fine... for a while at least, because you know just as well as I do that they run hotter than hot, and whilst your CPU is doing just fine right now, it is running at a constant 130-150 degrees while rendering and burning all of it's long term life away. I'm going to protect my investment and buy the products that were made to do the things I'm going to do with them. I am not a gamer, so I will not be building a gaming rig, I am a video editor, so I will be building a video editing rig. And that means filling it with products that were made for the professional sector.

Oh and I forgot to mention the sometimes choppy video I get after rendering with my current rig... You guys, I'm trying to say this in love but, this is a very expensive business to get into, and if you don't have the money, either get another job, or find another hobby. This is the reason that you have a very small percentage of people who make professional films, and while the percentage of people making indi films is much bigger, the percentage of people making amateur short films is far greater than that of the previous two categories.

I suppose if your just going to shoot weddings all your life, then you'll probably be fine, but I have higher aspirations.
 
My editing station is still G5, so I do in fact need a new PC. ;-)
 
Nikhil Kamkolkar said:
Jon, so what is this rig? Custom built? I'm looking for recommendations on CURRENT workstations that pass AVID's certified systems list and are being used with RED ROCKET actively by people in the field. Info as in - HP Workstation model blah blah, with blah blah config.

Having a hard time getting info on this despite a few threads I've thrown up here in the forums. :(
Click to expand...

My guess would be to look on the Avid site for a list of certified, turnkey workstations, if that is the big issue.
I wonder if these are on the "Avid Certified" list. Looks like a great place to start. http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Power_Mega_3000/
 
I decided to wait until the Intel X79 chipset got released.
So here's what I've finally decided on:

CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-3960X Extreme Edition 3.30 GHz 15MB Intel Smart Cache LGA2011
FAN: CyberPower Xtreme Hydro Liquid Cooling Kit 240MM w/ Dual Fan
MOTHERBOARD: (4-Way SLI Support) Asus Rampage IV Extreme Intel X79 Chipset Quad Channel DDR3 ATX w/ ROG Connect, ROG UEFI Bios, BT GO, 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, USB3.0, SATA-III RAID, 5 Gen3 PCIe X16 & 1 PCIe X1
OS: Microsoft® Windows 7 Professional (64-bit Edition)
OVERCLOCK: Extreme OC (Extreme Overclock 20% or more)
VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 Dual GPU SLI 3GB 16X PCIe Video Card
MEMORY: 32GB (4GBx8) DDR3/1600MHz Quad Channel Memory Corsair Vengeance

I don't want to upgrade every year. The last pc upgrade I did was in 2005, so hopefully I won't need another upgrade in 5 years ;).

Marcos
 
Most of the time it's about the bandwidth of the video stream from harddrives. What should be spent on is a graphics card (for CUDA playback) and good RAID's with fiber or thunderbolt to be able to playback at realtime. The rest is rather redundant, especially since RAM-prices are low.

so hopefully I won't need another upgrade in 5 years
Click to expand...

You most certainly will I'm afraid. Technology is exponential, so things change faster and faster. Five years ago is not five years from now.
 
I'd like to know how my setup would fare with R3d files:

27" Imac
3.4 GHz i7
4GB 1333 MHz DDR3 (I am going to upgrade to 12GB or 16GB)
AMD Raedon HD 6970M 1GB
1TB 7200rpm

I will also add a 3TB G-Drive.

Thanks in advance to anyone who responds.
 
Hi,
Just wondering if it would make any difference what processor speed,motherboard,RAM etc you have to render and playback R3D files if you invest in a Red Rocket Card? I recently purchased a second hand Macbook Pro 15"(Intel Duo Core,2.4Ghz,4GB ram) with an Express 34 slot with the hope of purchasing Red Rocket soon.Also another question for Red Rocket users(probably should post on that thread)-has anyone had success with MAXX Digitals Mobile Rocket? I e mailed them to ask whether their product is compatible with the 15" MBP i recently bought-they answered that their set up is usually configured to work with the 17"MBP but because my 15" has the Express 34 slot it could possibly work-they just couldn't really tell me whether the firmware would support the 15"....
 
Thanks Carter. Yeah, I'm guessing I'll have to do a lot of learning here to figure out the config for my next system. PC, Avid Certified, works well with RED Rocket, and have some expandability (a second RED Rocket?) will be the main considerations. Once I make some progress, I'll post back on here and see what people think.

Carter Cammack said:
My guess would be to look on the Avid site for a list of certified, turnkey workstations, if that is the big issue.
I wonder if these are on the "Avid Certified" list. Looks like a great place to start. http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Power_Mega_3000/
Click to expand...
 
Without more info, I would say: as is, it will be usable but frustrating. If you upgrade the RAM it will help slightly (by the way, you can max it out at 32GB). R3Ds need either a RedRocket card (which you can't install in an iMac, excepting for in an external thunderbolt PCI enclosure [coming to market soon, I believe] ) or CPU cores. So you will have to play with it and see if you can run 1/4 debayer or 1/2, but it will peg all your cores to 100% if you try to get overzealous.


William Graydon said:
I'd like to know how my setup would fare with R3d files:

27" Imac
3.4 GHz i7
4GB 1333 MHz DDR3 (I am going to upgrade to 12GB or 16GB)
AMD Raedon HD 6970M 1GB
1TB 7200rpm

I will also add a 3TB G-Drive.

Thanks in advance to anyone who responds.
Click to expand...
 
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