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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 :)

What computer Spec do I need.

J

james Mallon

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I was wondering to get the fixed lens. A simple question Is there an out of the box Mac computer that will edit 3K red. If so which ones and which spec. The question is also for PC and am wondering what spec I need to have to comfortably edit 3K.
 
Well, things are different now with the announcement of RED Rocket. The assumption would be "don't worry about it" and pick the fastes system you can afford. In this case, if you're working with FCP go with a Mac Pro setup and be happy. You could always use Adobe Premiere on there too but that's up to you. Otherwise it's a PC of some kind, again, as fast as you can afford it to be. Then, once RED Rocket comes out, get that and you should be good.
 
If you're set on an FCP workflow, then you just get an 8-core mac pro, as fast as you can afford, there's no other realistic choice for mac. But if you're not decided on a particular workflow yet, I'd wait until 8-core nehalem PCs start filtering out from the OEMs, and then make the decision between Mac, PC, Avid, Premiere, or FCP. Don't make the decision on the price of the box if that's going to leave you unhappy with your workflow though, the software should be the principle reason you choose one platform or the other.
 
does that mean, for the fixed lens scarlet, that in order to be able to edit with it you need at very least a mac pro? I have a macbook pro I was hoping to use with the scarlet. My intention was to downres before editing, but i don't really know much about red workflow yet, so i don't know if thats "how it works" but i thought i would be able to do editing on my macbook pro, slow, but still functional.
 
I think, Peter's question is more like "what is the cheapest still working solution" right?
 
Cheapest and still working solution? then i have to say better u go for iMac 3.6ghz with 8 GB memory and ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory you will get nice perfomance (better than new MacBook Pro) beacouse i saw people editing 4k (Red One) files on an old iMac. (not faster like Mac pro)
 
A general rule of thumb is that if you're in this industry, you're very unlikely to ever regret spending extra money on a faster computer....
 
I edit and render stuff on a MacBook Pro (latest version) in the field all of the time. 3K won't be a problem at all, and you certainly don't need a Red Rocket card to do it. There will always be a "faster option" out there, but as far as the original poster's question about which "out of the box" Mac will be capable of editing 3K footage, a solid iMac, MacBook Pro, or any Mac Pro work just fine.
 
I use a iMac 3.0ghz Core 2 Duo, 4gb ram, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS 512mb....got it refurbished from Apple back in October and it works great for me. Obviously a mac pro would be better, but for the price (with my own money), can't complain at all, it definitely gets me by.

Buddy of mine just got a new Macbook Pro....and was kind of blown away it handles the "native" files used in FCP, no lagging, smooth

Now with the RED rocket announcement, I'm most likely going to get a sweet mac pro setup (although it's a different story now since I'll have outside funding)
 
I am also looking?

I am also looking?

I am also looking?
How about the previous generation aluminum 24 inch IMAC 2.80GHz 4GB of Ram MAX W/ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory?


Ron
 
It all depends on how patient you are. Virtually any Intel Mac that can run Final Cut Studio can be used for working with Red footage in some capacity.

I'm assuming if you're considering an iMac, you don't need to work with DPX files in real time or anything. There are several possible compressed workflows. What I'd probably recommend for slower machines is that footage be transcoded to 720p ProRes with a quarter res debayer edit like that, and then conform through Color, outputting as 1080p ProRes or whatever else you might want.

This workflow has a couple of advantages for slower hardware:

1) You don't have to transcode all of your footage at "half res high" (the usual setting for a 1080p finish, which takes about two hours for every hour of footage on a new 8-core Mac Pro, and so probably takes on the order of 8-10 hours on an iMac). Only the exact footage you actually use in your edit has to be transcoded at this quality (which happens when you render out from Color).

2) You don't have to edit from proxies or wrapped R3D data. Working directly with R3D data is very CPU intensive and a bit sluggish, even on a Mac Pro. Cutting from 720p ProRes, on the other hand, is fairly lightweight. The data rate is low enough that you can play the footage back in real-time even from an internal laptop drive, and the files aren't that huge, so you can plausibly toss all the footage even for an entire feature onto an external drive and edit on the go.

This workflow will work just fine on essentially any Intel Mac that can run Final Cut Studio. It's the exact same workflow we often use for larger projects on our more serious hardware; if you're using an iMac you're just going to have to wait a little longer for the initial 720p transcode (a Mac Pro will do that in real-time or close to it), Color won't be as responsive (but it doesn't get real-time playback with R3D grading even on faster systems yet, so this isn't a huge loss), and rendering our of Color is going to take longer.
 
All of this advice all sounds great. But the one thing to consider is your budget. Because it is your money you are spending. Get the fastest processor and as much memory that you can afford.

As for me I went for a DIY PC.

Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz (Will be upgrading to Intel Core 2 Quad 3GHz.)
MSI P7N Diamond Motherboard
4GBs Memory
NVidia GT9600 with 1GBs video memory
X-Fi PCI-E audio card
(4) 32GB Patriot SSD Drives in Raid 0 for my OS Drive
OS Windows XP Pro

After purchasing my parts seperately over time I found a new i7 machine with many of the same features for roughly the same money. The only thing my DIY unit has over the prebuilt one is the raid0SSD set up.

I find that to no for certain if you will be able to use any of the "computers", PC or Mac, on the market today is to the one that you have with some of the r3d footage found on redrelay. If you can use yours with that footage then you are okay. But if not then look at the spec of your "computer" and upgrade from there.

Here is a hint MORE MEMORY is a must. 4GHz or more.
 
Mind you, it's important to keep in mind in all of this that by the time Scarlet ships, Red workflow might be totally different. Six months ago, the Color workflow I describe above didn't exist. If Apple really releases FCS3 at WWDC, that could change things again. And I wouldn't be too surprised if Red is designing some more straightforward consumer-friendly workflows in preparation for Scarlet.
 
Don't forget to consider your disk systems. For some operations, especially with the Red Rocket card, your limiting factor could be your disk throughput and not the CPU.
 
Ron Shaw said:
I am also looking?
How about the previous generation aluminum 24 inch IMAC 2.80GHz 4GB of Ram MAX W/ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory?


Ron
Click to expand...

If that's a computer you have now, then that should be OK. If you're looking at buying one though, I'd wait at least until your Scarlet was shipped, and see what you can get then.
 
I was told that ANY Mac Pro would be more powerful than the previous generation IMAC.I am now considering older Mac pro dual VS. a previous generation IMAC. I have a 24 inch dell already. (economy)
 
Chris Kenny said:
What I'd probably recommend for slower machines is that footage be transcoded to 720p ProRes with a quarter res debayer edit like that.
Click to expand...
While Chris is right that ProRes footage will scrub more easily in FCP than wrapped R3D footage, it's still completely possible and feasible to edit with the proxies in unlimited RT and bypass the transcode altogether. You don't need a fast machine to do this, and the obvious advantage is that it saves you the time of transcoding everything you've shot (which can take a lot of time depending on the amount of clips you have) and you can start editing immediately. I do this on a MacBook Pro all the time from standard FW drives, and then render the final project on an 8-core later. Since you have to go back and re-render everything for full quality after you're done anyway, I have never really understood the desire to add an additional rendering step at the beginning of the process and slow yourself down. The great thing, however, is that there are many options and you can choose the workflow which works best for you. :)
 
Häakon said:
Since you have to go back and re-render everything for full quality after you're done anyway, I have never really understood the desire to add an additional rendering step at the beginning of the process and slow yourself down.
Click to expand...

The key is, you don't have to go back and render everything. You can cut 720p ProRes files, then switch them out for proxies and send to Color (or use an EDL to go to Color and point it at your R3D directory when it asks for footage), and you've got your 1080p or 2K Color project. The higher quality transcode basically occurs when you render out of Color, and only the exact frames used in your final edit need to be transcoded at that higher quality.

It's true, this is still more transcoding than with a purely proxy-based workflow. But there are several distinct advantages.

First, the footage you're working from is a lot smaller. Standard quality 720p24 ProRes is about 7.4 MB/s. That means unless you had a very high shooting ratio, you can fit all the footage for an entire feature on a 1 TB FireWire drive, throw it in a bag with your laptop, and cut anywhere. For smaller projects, you can probably fit the footage on your laptop's internal drive, which is more than fast enough, and edit your movie on the train or whatever.

Second, everything is just a lot more responsive, which is particularly nice when you're editing with a client. Makes a much better impression.

Third, the proxy workflow doesn't really work with 4KHD footage, because FCP doesn't currently recognize 960x540 (the resolution of 4KHD M proxies) as a valid real-time resolution. Shooting full 4K for 16:9 deliverables is awkward, because you either have to do a small scale operating on the 2K "half-res high" decoded footage, or just crop it from 2K to 1080p, which Final Cut doesn't provide a convenient way to preview when editing.

Fourth, you can do a quick one-light grade on your footage before you export the ProRes, so the editing is looking at something that looks a bit better than the proxies rendered with whatever internal metadata they happen to have. (I don't know about other people, but I do next to nothing to make Red footage look pretty directly out of the camera; rather, I just try to capture as much range as I can to preserve options in post. This means the proxies often have little relationship to the way a shot is supposed to look.)

Given that a draft-quality transcode to 720p ProRes is basically a real-time operation on our previous-generation Mac Pro, it's generally worth it for us.
 
When is FCS3 gonna come out? And is that really gonna change things?
 
David Ergas said:
When is FCS3 gonna come out? And is that really gonna change things?
Click to expand...

Not in the foreseeable future. There may be a FCS 2.5 in the summer after the new OS comes out.

And don't use the new OS until you're certain FCS and all your plugs will work with it!!!
 
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