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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Viewing Mark's 007 Footage

D

David Dennis

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I have a brand new i7 27" iMac with the SSD option and 12GB RAM, which I believe is the fastest computer Apple makes other than the Mac Pros.

When I download and try to play Mark's 007 pillow_fight.zip clip in RedCine, it cannot play properly - it will play smoothly for a few seconds, stop and then play for a few more seconds and so on. It looks gorgeous as a series of still images but I would really like to see the motion.

I know this isn't the fault of the camera or the clip - it's that my computer isn't powerful enough to play it. But this seems strange - the quad-core 2.93 ghz i7 with hyperthreading shouldn't be that much slower than low-end Mac Pros.

I had no problem with the Felix clip from a while back - that played beautifully - but of course that was shot on Scarlet 3K not Epic.

I suppose I could say this is a reason I should be happy I can afford Scarlet Fixed and not EPIC, since EPIC would obviously require a honking big Mac Pro to even play back at all, but of course I really would like to see what EPIC can deliver.

My CPU graph consistently shows low usage figures until I try to play the clip. Stopping iTunes didn't change a thing.

Am I somehow doing something wrong here - are there settings I can tinker with to make it work better? Or is this just an inherent aspect of RED footage that most hardware is simply not ready for it?

If my hardware is not fast enough, what is the minimum hardware that is?

Thanks for any thoughts.

D
 
David Dennis said:
I have a brand new i7 27" iMac with the SSD option and 12GB RAM, which I believe is the fastest computer Apple makes other than the Mac Pros.

When I download and try to play Mark's 007 pillow_fight.zip clip in RedCine, it cannot play properly - it will play smoothly for a few seconds, stop and then play for a few more seconds and so on. It looks gorgeous as a series of still images but I would really like to see the motion.

I know this isn't the fault of the camera or the clip - it's that my computer isn't powerful enough to play it. But this seems strange - the quad-core 2.93 ghz i7 with hyperthreading shouldn't be that much slower than low-end Mac Pros.

I had no problem with the Felix clip from a while back - that played beautifully - but of course that was shot on Scarlet 3K not Epic.

I suppose I could say this is a reason I should be happy I can afford Scarlet Fixed and not EPIC, since EPIC would obviously require a honking big Mac Pro to even play back at all, but of course I really would like to see what EPIC can deliver.

My CPU graph consistently shows low usage figures until I try to play the clip. Stopping iTunes didn't change a thing.

Am I somehow doing something wrong here - are there settings I can tinker with to make it work better? Or is this just an inherent aspect of RED footage that most hardware is simply not ready for it?

If my hardware is not fast enough, what is the minimum hardware that is?

Thanks for any thoughts.

D
Click to expand...

David,

I have a 2009 8 core MacPro with the standard Apple 6GB of memory and it plays fine on there.

Have you the Build 356E version of REDCINEX?

Steve
 
David,

This sounds about right, unfortunately. When you load the clip, RC-X will buffer so much of the clip, until it runs out of however much it is allowed for the buffer. It will play smoothly until it reaches the end of what is buffered. Change your resolution and debayer settings. If you are at 1/2 resolution, it will most likely stutter and skip and overrun the cached buffer. 1/4 resolution should play just fine unless perhaps you have it scaled to full screen. Your system should play back as fast as a Mac Pro. The only thing the Mac Pro is offering at this point is expansion slots, an additional CPU for up to 4 or 6 more cores, faster drives, etc.. But Redcine-X isn't multithreaded to take advantage of the extra CPUs/cores at this point. It's optimized for the Rocket.

This footage is more demanding than RED One 4K. Not only is it 5K with a lot more pixels, but it's 16bit RAW instead of 12bit RAW. My 09 Mac Pro I'm sitting at now will play back 4K clips at half res in RC-X just fine without the Rocket. But I have to switch to 1/4 res to not overrun the buffer when viewing 5K Epic clips. ...Or at least that's the case thus far with the two clips I have. :/

Playing 3K Scarlet clips is a breeze...
 
Well, I solved my problem more or less by accident - I decided to try quitting and restarting RedCine. Playback Quality (the drop box to the left of Image Size) reverted to the default of 1/8 and it started working just fine. Is that the same as Resolution? I thought Resolution was Playback Size, to the right. It seems that no matter what my Playback Size, I can't play back the clip smoothly if my Quality is more than about 1/8th.

Oddly enough I don't notice any quality difference between 1/8 and higher settings. Guess that's Nattress magic at work.

Of course the main advantage of the Mac Pro is being able to use the Rocket. It is a pity RedCine won't take advantage of the additional CPUs, though - that's good to know. It's too bad, and somewhat inexplicable to me, that the Mac Pro (required to use the Rocket) is so much more expensive than the iMac when the iMac includes laptop components (which i would think are more expensive than desktop) and a lovely screen that adds $999 to the Mac Pro price. Ouch.

As I said, this is a bit moot since I suspect I will be buying a Scarlet Fixed, not an Epic, and my computer should be just fine for that.

Thanks for your input!

D
 
There are two resolution settings. One is the debayer resolution -- 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, or full. The other is output size.

As for the iMac, yeah, it's kinda pricey and Apple has a gaping hole in their product line. They need something between the iMac and Mac Pro, but if you look at their line in terms of prices, there's not really a gap there, so I think they don't bother to fill a hole in the hardware. The 27" iMac actually uses desktop class CPUs and RAM, not laptop components. The Mac Pro, uses Xeon processors, which Intel targets for workstations and servers and they are significantly more expensive, able to run in parallel, etc..

Old Redcine made good use of multiple CPU cores. Redcine-X will presumably do so at some point in the future. But for now, they're concentrating on use with the Rocket and adding features while maintaining stability. To me it seems that multiprocessor support would've been a priority right from the beginning, but I'm not RED, so can't really speculate as to why certain decisions were made. I think a lot of it just has to do with getting a real working product out the door to keep customers happy and to keep up with their own hardware.
 
If you don't mind the question, since I'm sure it's complex, what does debayer resolution mean?

Actually, when I bought my RAM for the iMac, it was listed clearly as laptop RAM. The processor, however, seems distinct - alas, it never made it to the Macbook Pro or I would have bought one instead of my iMac.

It's easy for me to think that a desktop-style computer with slots should be cheap to make, since we see a lot of really cheap desktops, but of course the engineering that went into that aluminum case is still quite impressive. I'm just surprised it should be more expensive to get a case with slots (Mac Pro) than an enormous, beautiful display (iMac). In reality it's probably low volume more than anything else that makes the Mac Pro more expensive. Not to mention Steve Jobs' well known loathing of fans and wires, both of which are needed to make Mac Pros go.

I wonder how use of multiple cores like the 12-core Mac Pro would compare with use of a RED Rocket which is quite a bit more expensive. At the same time I have faith in the RED Team who I really don't think would make something like RED Rocket unless it was really important, since it takes a lot of development and production energy they could otherwise put into Epic and Scarlet.

D
 
David Dennis said:
If you don't mind the question, since I'm sure it's complex, what does debayer resolution mean?
Click to expand...

You are effectively setting how much information it processes to create an image frame. So if you're working with a 4K clip that is 4096x2048 and choose 1/2 resolution as your setting, then you're effectively working with 2048x1024 resolution images from the same file. Some of this is dependent on the Bayer process, but more so it is an R3D wavelet compression thing. Wavelet compression allows multiple levels of detail to be extracted from the same file. Lower detail levels offer quicker extraction and less processing, obviously at a trade-off in image quality or detail.

Actually, when I bought my RAM for the iMac, it was listed clearly as laptop RAM. The processor, however, seems distinct - alas, it never made it to the Macbook Pro or I would have bought one instead of my iMac.
Click to expand...

Sorry, the RAM was a bad contrasting item there. The systems take PC3-10600 1333MHz SO-DIMMs. SO-DIMMs are the form factor of memory modules primarily used in laptops, but are also used in compact desktops, printers, RAID systems, etc.. The point was, it's still a desktop-class CPU, not a mobile version; Desktop-class host chipset, not a mobile chipset, etc..

The Mac Pro, while it often gets compared (unfairly) to common desktop PC systems. One thing you have to keep in mind is the Xeon processors, as I mentioned before. If you look at the Intel X5650 "Westmere" 6-core Xeon CPU @ 2.66GHz, as used in the base 12-core Mac Pro. Those CPUs are $1020 each when purchased on the open market from discount vendors like NewEgg, ZipZoomFly, etc.. So even a do-it-yourself system builder working out of his garage is going to spend $3200 for a good system board, two of those CPUs, adequate cooling system, 6GB RAM and a decent case to put it in. That may or may not buy you a decent power supply, depending on which day of the week you go shopping. Throw in HDD, optical drive, OS / software, video card, etc.. and you're going to be at $4K no matter how you look at it. Factor in Apple's special system case, warranty and customer support on top of that... They're not charging much, if any, of a premium unless you buy additional HDD and RAM from them -- I guess that's why they charge so much for those additional HDD's.

It's easy for me to think that a desktop-style computer with slots should be cheap to make, since we see a lot of really cheap desktops, but of course the engineering that went into that aluminum case is still quite impressive.
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong, this is true. It could be. If they took a desktop class quad or six-core i7 CPU and rolled it into something comparable to standard single-socket desktop PCs with a single triple-channel memory bus, they could probably sell them for less than the open-market cost of one single 2.93GHz Westmere Xeon ($1600). I wish Apple would do this, lots of us have been wishing for that for a long time. Not everyone needs a dual processor behemoth with two workstation/server class CPUs that cost a mint. And those of us who do need such a system still don't need it on every desktop in the office. Sometimes the iMac would do just fine, if we could connect an external RAID or HDD system to it with something better than FW800.

I wonder how use of multiple cores like the 12-core Mac Pro would compare with use of a RED Rocket which is quite a bit more expensive.
Click to expand...

They don't stack up as well as you would think. It takes all 6 cores in system running full blast to just play back a 4K 16:9 R3D clip at full quality. And even that's a stretch at times. But on a 12-core '10 Mac Pro, I can edit 5 streams of RED 4K in real-time at 1/4 resolution in Premiere CS5. Have to turn the Rocket card off in Premiere until I go to do a final render output because it actually slows down the multi-processor lower quality playback.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Don't get me wrong, this is true. It could be. If they took a desktop class quad or six-core i7 CPU and rolled it into something comparable to standard single-socket desktop PCs with a single triple-channel memory bus, they could probably sell them for less than the open-market cost of one single 2.93GHz Westmere Xeon ($1600). I wish Apple would do this, lots of us have been wishing for that for a long time. Not everyone needs a dual processor behemoth with two workstation/server class CPUs that cost a mint. And those of us who do need such a system still don't need it on every desktop in the office. Sometimes the iMac would do just fine, if we could connect an external RAID or HDD system to it with something better than FW800.
Click to expand...

Too true. Even if they didn't make a desktop, it would be great to have an iMac with an eSATA port (or two), as well as an ExpressCard 2.0 port (which is twice as fast as regular ExpressCard) so you could connect up a Rocket in an enclosure.
 
Steve Johnson said:
David,

I have a 2009 8 core MacPro with the standard Apple 6GB of memory and it plays fine on there.

Have you the Build 356E version of REDCINEX?

Steve
Click to expand...

I have like its Mac Pro ( 8 core,6Gb, quadro Fx 4800 ,SSD 128 system ) and REDCINE-X 356, but can't play this R3D's. In bin this R3D's shown as black square with red cross.:rant: ... Also I can't find REDCINE-X 356E version on red support... :banghead:
 
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