Underwater Bubble Blowin' Users Group

[Tom Hamilton]

Rudi,

Am looking at switching back to PC for editing 5K, what would you recommend as a basic setup?

Cheers,
Tom

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Tom,

Well, what I have is probably somewhat old by now, but believe me, I've been working RED footage on these systems without a problem. There are many people on the forum who can advise you way better than me, but I'll tell you what I'm running:

- An i-7 processor, comes in different flavors, up to 3.4 ghz, but they can be overclocked to 15%-20% of their rated speed without any trouble or overheating at all, and it is in fact, an 8 core processor. They are very cheap nowadays, under $300, sometimes way under that, here are some deals: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ATCH&N=-1&isNodeId=1&Description=i7+processor
- motherboard designed for these processors, there are tons of them, but you can get a decent one for around $150, which will allow you to bypass BIOS and overclock the processor if you so want, and just as importantly, make sure your fast memory is running at its full potential. I'm using ASUS boards, including their cheaper brand, AsRock, which sells the X58 Extreme board for around $150 nowadays and lets you control every bit of hardware in the system. There are better boards yes, but I'm all about good, solid equipment that does the job, and these do. Here are several of the i-7 specific boards, known as x58: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...H&N=-1&isNodeId=1&Description=x58+motherboard
- DDR3 memory. I buy the Corsair dominator overclocked memory, which is really fast and really stable and makes the best out of the DDR3 spec, and I use the maximum the motherboard is designed for, depending on what board you choose, anything from 12 Gb to over 30 GB. These modules sell for as little as $50 per 2GB stick, and go from there, but you can basically get all the memory you need for around $300. Have a look: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N=-1&isNodeId=1&Description=corsair+dominator
- Nvidia GTX or Quadro cards, your pick, you want multiple cuda cores and fast clock speeds to work with the Mercury engine, it all comes down to what you want to spend, GTX is cheaper than Quadro, but entry level Quadro is not bad these days. The top of the line GTX can be had for around $500-600 and the entry to mid level Quadros, like 3800, for $700-900. I'd go with GTX.
- Other than that, I run my boot drive and my programs on raided SSD, for the sweetest, most unbelievably fast experience, Premiere loads in under 7 seconds, Photoshop in under 12, and I get file transfer speeds of over 300 gb/sec. I cannot emphasise enough how important this is, as opposed to using regular hard drives. You can raid 2 x 128 Gb for under $400, but you need to limit your C drive to just OS and programs, in my case, I run the whole Master Collection and a few other things like Cineform, Magic Bullet Suite, RCX, a few other plug ins and that's about it, I strictly keep the C drive clean of anything but the essentials. You can of course run a regular hard drive and decrease the price tremendously.
- I then run all my scratch and look folders on a separate drive, which need not be raided, just a good 7200 rpm drive, as big as you want it to, but again, only look up files go here, not video files, which go on a separate partition, in this case raided, or you can use an external array if you want. I have a "daily" 4 drive RAID internal that I use for whatever files I'm working with that day, and then keep the whole of the video files on a separate external array, which I can back up on another identical array. For the internal arrays, I use WD drives (don't bother with Caviar, very unreliable) which run you about $60 per TB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136782
- after that, you need a tower, fans, ESata cables and the like, but depending on your budget, you can get a VERY good RED system for ~ $ 3K, which can run all day and give real time performance as long as you do your video previews at 1/4 resolution, which at 1080 is basically what most monitors can take anyway. If you really "have to have" 4K previews, well then, quadruple the amount I just quoted you, but if you can watch your 4-5K videos at a "measly" HD resolution and then check your paused videos at 4K, the combination I just gave you will work just fine with RED footage, and incredibly well with anything under that.

Hope this helps,

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Thanks very much, Rudi, for the detailed reply.

At first glance it looks like, for less than the price of a Rocket card, you can be up and running with a full Red edit station. (This shiny Mac I'm typing on is starting to look suspiciously over-priced). Some of my planned aerial stuff will involve intensive use of HDRx, any thoughts, computing-wise, on dual 5K data streams?

Did you ever compare the rendering times your system is capable of, to a Rocket-equipped Mac?

At the moment I have 2 x 256 Red SSD's, possibly up to 4 at some point in the future. Seems to me a waste of very fast drives sitting there when the camera is not actually out in the field earning a crust or two. Any idea how to advantageously incorporate them, via a hot-swappable external multi-bay perhaps, into an edit system for extra horsepower?

Tom

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Tom,

It all depends how fast, meaning, how close to real time, a performance you want out of the system. HDRx at 5K would undoubtedly put some strain on the system I just described, but for example, with the fastest of the i-7 processors and super fast disk arrays and a Quadro 6000 card it should not be a problem, setting you back to around $4.5K, PROVIDED you don't need RT performance. If you do, then you have to have a Rocket. Don't get me wrong, I have a system with a Rocket which we use when we have the occasional client with us or when we need to transcode files to send out quickly, but otherwise, I do 90% of my work on these stations with the help of the awesome capabilities of the Adobe suite. that's my style, it works for me, but it may not work for many others. Mostly, I don't need real time performance of 4 or 5K files, and that makes a huge difference on what's needed.

As for your SSD cards, I don't think you can use them on a system on an of-and-off basis. for your boot drive, you need to leave the SSDs there and never take them out obviously, and as for video drives, they don't have enough capacity to really make it a practical choice for you, which is a shame because of how expensive they are, but in truth, in a computer system, they only make sense for a boot drive, not a storage drive.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Rudi....HDRx 5k is a REAL SLOW monster....in fact with Rocket at 1/4 i get unbelieveable slow performance...wondering if that's why they started pushing 2 cards...for HDRx

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Johnny,

You're probably right, I haven't done any HDRx yet, though I've done quite a bit of Epic 5K stuff and it moves relatively easy (easy being a very relative term of course so I was basing my assumption on a single stream performance but I should have known that dual streams are not just double that load on the system, but more...

 

[Johnny Friday]

yeah, 5k plays smooth...but do an HDRx and you will think your Rocket Card is broken....UNUSABLE completely IMO....so i just work on a fast grade and transcode ANY HDRx to Prores....for work in Premier. Other R3d's i use RAW

 

[Tom Hamilton]

.so i just work on a fast grade and transcode ANY HDRx to Prores....for work in Premier

That's a good work-around for the moment, hopefully when HDRx gets really up and running with all those Epics shipping, someone will come up with a cost-effective solution.

 

[Rudi Herbert]

...and in the meantime, while we wait for systems to get faster, which they will, anybody done any HDRx underwater yet? I had a couple of Epics with me for a 3D test a client asked me to conduct, but couldn't take them out on the boat the week I had them due to horrible weather so I played with the cameras a lot but couldn't run the battery of underwater tests I had planned. I had a whole set of locations, both reefs and wrecks, to test the "reef/wreck on the bottom half of the frame with the slow exposure and the surface on the top half nice and crisp with the fast exposure" among other things, but couldn't do any of it. Anybody got around to it yet?

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Next week, will send you some sample files if you like.

 

[Rudi Herbert]

That'd be great Tom, would very much like that!

 

[Tom Hamilton]

My pleasure Rudi. If you have the time maybe we can get together at your studios and sort this whole HDRx thing out once and for all, very interested to see how your considerable editing skills and computer savvy stack up against the dual 5K beast. Am in Florida on a regular basis, will PM you a heads-up before next visit.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Here's a few frame grabs from our latest shoot....a documentary about the movements of pregnant whale sharks (sat. tagging) at Darwin Island....in the Galapagos.

 

[Rudi Herbert]

As usual, looking nice Johnny!

Tom, sure, let's do that. I spent the last 10 months without doing any work to enjoy my daughter's birth and first months, and now I'm slowly starting to take on things, so I may be out of Florida when you're in, but I'm not our for long periods anyway so eventually we will coincide. Let me know.

 

[ANDY BRANDY CASAGRANDE IV]

Pawel - I have never heard of the CinePort? Can you please provide references of people in the industry that have used it and can provide some type of 3rd party review & feedback? It sounds like an amazing port option - would love to check it out! Thanks very much - ABC

 

[ANDY BRANDY CASAGRANDE IV]

Here's a few frame grabs from our latest shoot....a documentary about the movements of pregnant whale sharks (sat. tagging) at Darwin Island....in the Galapagos.

Awesome work Johnny Friday - I think your name is fake though. Thanks for sharing! What's your real name?

 

[ANDY BRANDY CASAGRANDE IV]

Mark Thorpe, Johnny Friday, Ken Corben - CONGRATULATIONS ON THE EMMY AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING CINEMATOGRAPHY FOR YOUR WORK IN GREAT MIGRATIONS - NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC! WELL DESERVED TO ALL! - ABC4

 

[Johnny Friday]

Umm.....Mr. ABC, if my name is a fake, i have to call you out on yours---Andy Brandy Casagrande the fourth....?? First, your first name is Andy...Irish or Scottish? then what's with Casagrande? I looked you up and you are far from mexican......i won't even get into the Brandy portion of this....you must be an alien and picked up random names from various parts of n. america as well as different gender.

....holy crap, welcome to the bubble users my friend.....the deep, dark jungle where you never know when someone will jump from the bush and rip your throat out.

Hey.....and congratulations to you as well....i see you worked on 7 segments of Great migrations....Peace!

 

[ANDY BRANDY CASAGRANDE IV]

RED EPIC 5K - GREAT WHITE SHARKS - THE DEVIL'S TEETH

RED EPIC 5K - GREAT WHITE SHARKS - THE DEVIL'S TEETH

3-Time Emmy Award winning Cinematographer & Director - Paul Atkins shooting Great White Sharks in Guadalupe Mexico @ 5K full-frame with Andy Brandy Casagrande IV & his Red Epic-M #744 using Focus Optics Ruby 14-24mm in the "Pelagic Explorer - Shark Sub" with Ken Corben's Red Epic underwater housing! Shooting for Paul & Gracie Atkins feature film project "The Devil's Teeth" with executive producer Terrence Malick! Very special thanks to Bob Cranston & Ken Corben - as well as John & Pamela at Gates Underwater Housings for providing incredible support to the project! Please see link below for more details on The Devil's Teeth - including the trailer. Frame grabs attached have not been shot on Red and are not very epic - but you get the idea - 5K footage being processed - a new trailer will be cut & posted - thanks - ABC

http://www.devilsteethmovie.com/index.htm

 

[Mark Thorpe]

"The Devil's Teeth" ? We've stepped backwards from the title 'Jaws' on that one. Great work Andy otherwise.