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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 do I need to handle the scarlet in post

Jeff Kilgroe said:
Which CalDigit solution are you looking at? Just consider the limitations of the CalDigit RAID card and being locked into the HDElement RAID boxes before you buy into it. If you don't mind being locked into only using their RAID units, it's not bad. I own one -- Fine hardware, but I have actually disconnected it and tried to sell it last month, I'll have to re-list it. It can be too restrictive and it is not fully compatible with Nehalem Mac systems, otherwise it's a great RAID card and overall solution for affordable and reliable RAID. I'm selling because my Nehalem system can't make proper use of the RAID card and with the SAS LTO-4 attached to the other Mac Pro, there's not enough slots with the other stuff in that system. We only have 4 very precious slots in a Mac Pro, so it's best to install peripherals that will give us the most options. If you want to use LTO for a backup solution, you will want a proper SAS HBA. This will allow connectivity of both SAS and SATA devices onto the same host controller. Controllers can be had with or without onboard RAID functionality.

The CalDigit HDPro RAIDs are excellent, however they have their own proprietary interface. Depending on your overall storage needs, these can could be a really good choice.

The HDOne is similar, but on a smaller scale. Once again it uses a proprietary interface.

Which controller solution and storage options you go with will depend on your needs and budget. It's really hard to recommend here without knowing more. Do you want a bootable storage solution? How do you want to factor in the internal HDD bays? For certain situations, the CalDigit RAID card is actually the best option. It's just very specific in purpose.

I don't have any retailier info for the UK. But if you tell me more about your thoughts on what you would like the system to do, I can probably offer some different suggestions about hardware.
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Yeah I have an HDOne and I just upgraded it to 1 TB drives, so 7 TB useable in RAID 5 now. I love it! Their support is absolutely top notch, they are a great company. Any issues or problems, they will get back to you immediately and make sure you are up and running. It's a total difference between a PRO company and a regular consumer company. I can't recommend them highly enough.

I also picked up a separate storage solution, a DroboPro, loaded with 2 TB drives, so 16 TB total, but basically in RAID 6 (though technically they call it BeyondRAID technology). It's obviously slower than a PCI-e connection like the HDOne has, so I don't use it for editing, but it makes an excellent backup solution for all projects.

I was debating what to do for emergency backups, and I've decided to go with a Blu-ray burner and just put the discs in a lock box in storage. 25 gigs per disc for one-sided (more affordable) discs is quite enough to break up your footage and store projects effectively. A lot more difficult if you were shooting a feature, needless to say, but for small corporate videos it's very practical and you'd be able to fit an entire project on several discs. That gives me a "different" way to store the data that will be in another physical location.

I'm happy with my workflow and my storage options now, but the HDOne makes editing a lot better because it's just so fast that we edit right from that and it makes everything smoother.
 
So how does the workflow look on the PC/Premiere pro CS4 side?

I read that PP is the only app accepting R3D files nativelly without transcoding. So this means what exactly? You can use RedRocket directly in PP to accelerate realtime playback and rendering? Colorgrade with PP tools just as good as RedCine?
 
I'm PC / Avid so I suppose Metefuze is the way to go, but I'll be building a basic i7 set up with perhaps 6 gig ram, as I'm on a shoe-string budget.
Sorry can't afford dual quad xeons or big raid arrays, I'm likely to be running off perhaps a raid 1 set up, if at all.
Over here computer hardware comes in a good (Or perhaps bad) twice as expensive as in the States.
David
 
Vegas also accepts R3D files without transcoding.

This just means that you can drop R3D files right into your bin or onto your timeline. None of these apps support RED Rocket yet.

Premiere works really good, but with a few issues. Build 21 footage is not properly supported, same with 4.5K resolution and the new Color Science. Actually, the previous Color Science is not supported, it's now two generations behind. Obin Olson has a video available at DigitalCinemaLessons.com that's a good quick-start to Adobe workflow with RED.

Adobe CS5 will support all this stuff and it has a superior playback engine in Premiere. Hopefully it will be released within the next 4 to 5 months, but it's still in beta right now.

Unfortunately, Adobe seems to have written off CS4 and is putting all their resources into CS5.
 
I'm a student looking to buy a 2/3 fixed, and I have a 3.06 MBP w/ 4GB Ram and FCS3. If I shoot in 720p and maybe a little 1080, should I be ok? I don't really have any interest in 2k or 3k and I know it would be entirely too slow for that anyway. Oh and I have a 9600M GT and snow leopard if that matters. Thanks
 
i'm thinking along the same lines ethan, however i plan on shooting 3k and editing in a 1080p timeline most of the time. I believe that would be the ideal way to work, to my understanding the 2/3" overcrank only in 3k.
Wondering what it's going to take just to import and grade my 3k files. I'm currently working on a quad core mac pro with 4gb of ram and fcs3, i'm hoping that will be enough power.
 
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RED Rocket is a PCI-E 8X card. It seems to work just fine in a 4X slot too. And obviously works great in a 16X slot. It can operate in a 1X slot, but you would be sacrificing bandwidth and would have a tough time doing anywhere near real-time decodes/transcodes back to the system bus (anything other than playback out to a monitor) due to the bandwidth restriction.

The mobile Rocket solutions out there that connect to a laptop via ExpressCard34 to a PCI-E expander box which hosts the card, are a possibility. Once again there is a severe bandwidth bottleneck as this is essentially limited to PCI-E 1X. So far, it seems to be a bit buggy and not 100% reliable, but I have not personally run a mobile Rocket through any serious testing. And given the cost of the mobile enclosure and restrictions and that it still needs external power, etc.. I would rather lug a Mac tower or build a compact PC to tote around with me so I could reap greater benefits.
 
this is what im looking at buying for a computer:

mac pro

(2) 2.26GHz quad core intel
16GB of ram
mac pro raid card
(4) 2TB 7200 rpm serial ATA 3GB/s
ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Do I really need all this?

Please leave advice as to how I could cut this down based on the fact that i want the scarlet cinema.

Thanks.
 
Depends on what you hope to get out of your Scarlet experience. All things considered, that really isn't that much of a computer. Also, I would expect the 6-core Intel chips to be shipping in new Macs and PCs by the time Scarlet is out. Actually I'm quite certain of it as the 6-Core chips should be shipping by the end of April.

You don't want the Mac Pro RAID card. It sucks. Poor performance, no management tools, bad design, no external connectivity, expensive. Buy an Areca or ATTO card, you'll be glad you did. The catch is that it's a pain to incorporate your internal HDDs into a RAID set in the current '09 Mac Pro systems. Since the SATA connections are all hard-wired, you have to buy after-market drive sleds or modify the included ones so you can flip the drives around and run your own SATA to SAS fan-out cable to the RAID card.
 
Ethan Lane said:
I'm a student looking to buy a 2/3 fixed, and I have a 3.06 MBP w/ 4GB Ram and FCS3.
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I'm basically in the same position, but I think I'll be doing a fair bit of 3K shooting.

Anyone know if I were to pickup a brand new Macbook Pro (15", 2.8GHz, 4GB RAM) if it would handle 3K rendering? Looking for a portable powerhouse.

EDIT: Mostly planning on running bootcamp and using Premiere (can't stand Mac OS) but if anyone has any suggestions for other brands/setups (Dell/Alienware) then I'm all ears.
 
Jeff, since you seem to be quite knowledgeable do you mind taking a look at my question? It'd be a big help. Thanks
 
Aaron Power said:
I'm basically in the same position, but I think I'll be doing a fair bit of 3K shooting.

Anyone know if I were to pickup a brand new Macbook Pro (15", 2.8GHz, 4GB RAM) if it would handle 3K rendering? Looking for a portable powerhouse.

EDIT: Mostly planning on running bootcamp and using Premiere (can't stand Mac OS) but if anyone has any suggestions for other brands/setups (Dell/Alienware) then I'm all ears.
Click to expand...

you can try it yourself. just download redcineX, find some r3d files (I put a link on one of the recon feedback threads) and see if the MBP can handle it. My 2 year old MBP takes about a half hour to render each minute of 4K R3D. 3K scarlet footage will be different but we cannot test that yet.
 
Ethan Lane said:
I'm a student looking to buy a 2/3 fixed, and I have a 3.06 MBP w/ 4GB Ram and FCS3. If I shoot in 720p and maybe a little 1080, should I be ok? I don't really have any interest in 2k or 3k and I know it would be entirely too slow for that anyway. Oh and I have a 9600M GT and snow leopard if that matters. Thanks
Click to expand...

That system will work. My Macbook Pro is essentially the same -- 3.06GHz, 4GB RAM... I've only owned that MBP since mid-October. My previous MBP was a 15" 2.33GHz w/2GB RAM from Late 2006. I cut a number of projects on that old 15" -- stuff shot on the RED in 4K! People often over-estimate what is needed for certain tasks. It was entirely possible to cut two short films, shot with build 16 & 18 on that system and several small commercials and corporate spots. All with Final Cut Studio 2 and Adobe CS4. Granted, it went slow and render speed was often a pain, but it did work.

To seriously work off a MBP, you will want a good eSATA RAID. If you have a 15" model without ExpressCard slot, then you're in for a bit of hurt, but it's still do-able.

Currently, RED support in FCS3 and Adobe software is behind in terms of supporting Build 21, new color science revisions, etc.. This should all improve greatly by the time Scarlet ships. By then we should have software updates that make better use of the new REDCODE specs and we should see much better performance.
 
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