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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 :)

Where does Red Rocket help?

Andy Roberts

Andy Roberts

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I hate to ask a newbie question, but where in the workflow does Red Rocket really help?

If I'm working in Premiere with a CUDA graphics card, what is Red Rocket adding and what is the CUDA card doing?

Does having a lightening fast computer make the Rocket less mandatory?

And what effect does it have if I'm only viewing footage on my computer screen and not to an SDI monitor?

I know this is basic, so feel free to point me to where something like this has been answered elsewhere.

It would be great to see some sort of performance chart or something.

-a
 
Rocket helps with transcodes for offline editing. If you're working in premiere then this is no concern to you. However, if you want to do one-lights on set having a Rocket hooked up to a color calibrated monitor like a Flanders Scientific via SDI will give you great monitoring and you'll be able to play back in real-time. A Rocket really depends on your workflow. More and more people are switching to premiere so that can edit natively. It also depends what you're doing after picture-lock, if you're grading in Resolve or whatever. I hope some of this helped.
 
Fred, Thanks a ton for the reply.

I don't anticipate doing on set monitoring.
I only plan on using Premiere. For grading, I'll probably just use Speed Grade once it become part of CS6 Production Premium (if indeed it does).

So I might not need the Rocket if that is my workflow?

-a
 
The Redrocket takes over the workload of de-bayering. So instead of your computers CPU doing it, along with multiple other things at the same time, the redrocket does it. So your playback performance will increase and you wont be limited to 1/4 debayer settings for realtime playback.
 
THAT ^ is only in RCX. Premiere doesn't utilize the RR, I believe. I wish RED would make an SDK or have the RR be open-source so more software could leverage it's amazing power. I also can't wait for some kind of Thunderbolt integration with the mag readers...

Andy, I think that your CUDA card and Premiere will be just fine for you.

What are you mostly shooting? 4k? 5k?

What are you delivering? 1080p? 2k?
 
Rocket Options

Rocket Options

The Red Rocket can decompress, debayer and provide monitor output. In order to drive 1080 monitors it presumably must have the ability to scale the image as well.

What I don't know, and would love to get the scoop on, is to what degree you can select which processes the RR handles. I ask, because I shoot a lot of 5K FF on my Epic which is too much data for real time playback on a single Rocket. If I were only asking the RR to do the decompression, then using CPU/GPU resources for debayering, scaling and monitoring, would the RR be able to decompress 5K FF and hand it off to the bus in real time?

Cheers - #19
 
Fred B said:
THAT ^ is only in RCX. Premiere doesn't utilize the RR, I believe. I wish RED would make an SDK or have the RR be open-source so more software could leverage it's amazing power. I also can't wait for some kind of Thunderbolt integration with the mag readers...

Andy, I think that your CUDA card and Premiere will be just fine for you.

What are you mostly shooting? 4k? 5k?

What are you delivering? 1080p? 2k?
Click to expand...


This is not correct. Both Premiere and After Effects can make use of the Red Rocket. So can Avid and Resolve.
CUDA does not help with the debayer process. In the absence of Red Rocket, that falls to your CPU.
 
Thank you for correcting me D. Now, what use can AE use it for? Just output? Or actually rendering? Same with the other programs, is it purely output monitoring or can you actually leverage the render power in the other apps?
 
You guys are all being really helpful. Thanks. It does seem like there is a certain amount of clarity that would be helpful about RR and various workflows... I have a Rocket but haven't used it yet. I'm trying to decide whether to sell it and buy a better computer or to keep it and buy a cheaper computer. I'm capturing everything in 5K. Playing back on a decent iMac, I can get 1/8 real time, but no more. Adding Alchemy or grain definitely slows it down. My meager understanding that RR doesn't help with Alchemy and the like.

It would be great if there were performance charts... modern CPU with lots of RAM... playback on Premiere with Mercury playback, comparison would should realtime performance running with and without RR.

-a
 
Fred B said:
Thank you for correcting me D. Now, what use can AE use it for? Just output? Or actually rendering? Same with the other programs, is it purely output monitoring or can you actually leverage the render power in the other apps?
Click to expand...

Not just for monitoring out. Your renders are accelerated as well.
This also means that any other processes that would be done by your CPU will be able to move faster, such as creating/wrapping/writing the files that are being rendered (DPX, quicktime, etc....).
 
So would this be correct?
In a Premiere workflow...
RR debayers allowing playback in realtime at what size: 1/4, 1/2 or full size?
CUDA and the Mercury playback engine aids playback of effects
CPU helps render effects too?

And if instead I wanted to render out some ProRes files from RedCineX with a basic color grade, the RR would accelerate that process? By what factor for 5K?

Thanks again guys.

-a
 
Fred B said:
Thank you for correcting me D. Now, what use can AE use it for? Just output? Or actually rendering? Same with the other programs, is it purely output monitoring or can you actually leverage the render power in the other apps?
Click to expand...
Actual rendering. It's not really an output card except in RCX/RCXPro. The RR handles the debayer of the R3D, and I believe the decompression as well. (Although that is just an assumption on my part.) Then it hands it over to AE for the rest of AE's work. How much that helps depends on what else you have AE doing. In a heavily-layered comp, debayer may be a small part of the render process, so you may see only a small speedup. In a simple comp like a noise reduction pass or an uncomplicated chroma-key, on my system (8-core MacPro) it speeds up the render by about 2x.

Andy Roberts said:
You guys are all being really helpful. Thanks. It does seem like there is a certain amount of clarity that would be helpful about RR and various workflows... I have a Rocket but haven't used it yet. I'm trying to decide whether to sell it and buy a better computer or to keep it and buy a cheaper computer. I'm capturing everything in 5K. Playing back on a decent iMac, I can get 1/8 real time, but no more. Adding Alchemy or grain definitely slows it down. My meager understanding that RR doesn't help with Alchemy and the like.

It would be great if there were performance charts... modern CPU with lots of RAM... playback on Premiere with Mercury playback, comparison would should realtime performance running with and without RR.

-a
Click to expand...

I wouldn't want to be without the RR on an 8-core MacPro with 24G RAM and an 8-Gig RAID 0. Take that for what t's worth.

The chart you are talking about would be pretty complicated, given all the variables: CPU, GPU, Software, etc, etc, etc.

Alchemy appears to be all processor, and RCX Pro isn't really optimized for multiple cores yet, so it really slows things down.

Andy Roberts said:
So would this be correct?
In a Premiere workflow...
RR debayers allowing playback in realtime at what size: 1/4, 1/2 or full size?
CUDA and the Mercury playback engine aids playback of effects
CPU helps render effects too?

And if instead I wanted to render out some ProRes files from RedCineX with a basic color grade, the RR would accelerate that process? By what factor for 5K?

Thanks again guys.

-a
Click to expand...
RR debayers allow playback in realtime at full res on a robust system, 1/2 res on most any system. I don't have a monitor that will play back full size, so that's not something I can comment on. (all this depends a lot on the disk speeds)

The rest of your answers really depend on what else is in the system. Especially in Premiere. With a Quadro 4K doing the CUDA chores, most things happen in real time with good resolution and most of the effects you'd use. Most of my work in PPRO is 1080, and everything is real time. Everything.

In RCXPro, I get consistent 5K real-time playback at 1/2 resolution. Except using HDRx, where the two streams tax the system pretty hard. (That's where two rockets would be helpful.) I don't use Alchemy very much. Without it, RCX renders any grade at very close to real time for 5K, better-than-real-time for 4K. HDRx is half that speed or maybe a tic slower. I'm usually rendering to DNxHD, but those speeds hold for ProRes as well. A little slower for H264.

A note: only one program can use the Rocket at a time. If you want to go from PPro to AE, you have to close PPRo first, so it gives up control of the Rocket.
 
Red's monochrome Bayer image is Redcode compressed before recording. In post. or camera monitoring, it has to be decompressed first, before the deBayer algorithm can be used to derive an RGB colour image. Red Rocket must therefore also be decompressing the Red R3Ds.
 
David,
Those are the answers I've been looking for. Thanks much. I owe you one.

Now if Apple would just release a new Mac Pro so I could actually use my RR. It is just sitting there on my shelf not being very Rocket-like. I still may need to sell it to buy the Mac Pro and then buy a RR as soon as I can afford one again.

-a
 
Do I have to do anything in PPro or AE to toggle on the RR acceleration or does it just take care of that for me in the background?

I got the note about closing one before opening another in order to get control of the Rocket, here's my issue:

Today I booted up fresh, never opened RCXP12, went straight to PPro and started pulling selects and even at 1/4 res with a 2009 MP with 10GB RAM, Quadro 4000 and a RR it is still not as responsive as I expected, soooo, I started looking at prefs, etc... no love.

Anybody know the scoop? Just want to make sure my Rocket is in the game ;-)

Cheers - #19
 
Go to your Project Window: top left area....then right click ANY R3d file...and choose Source Settings...go to bottom of that new window and choose Enable Rocket....the Rocket card is then enabled for all the clips and timeline.
 
On a new Mac Pro with RR, can you edit full rez in premier?

D Fuller said:
This is not correct. Both Premiere and After Effects can make use of the Red Rocket. So can Avid and Resolve.
CUDA does not help with the debayer process. In the absence of Red Rocket, that falls to your CPU.
Click to expand...
 
That was helpful, than David for taking the time.

D Fuller said:
Actual rendering. It's not really an output card except in RCX/RCXPro. The RR handles the debayer of the R3D, and I believe the decompression as well. (Although that is just an assumption on my part.) Then it hands it over to AE for the rest of AE's work. How much that helps depends on what else you have AE doing. In a heavily-layered comp, debayer may be a small part of the render process, so you may see only a small speedup. In a simple comp like a noise reduction pass or an uncomplicated chroma-key, on my system (8-core MacPro) it speeds up the render by about 2x.



I wouldn't want to be without the RR on an 8-core MacPro with 24G RAM and an 8-Gig RAID 0. Take that for what t's worth.

The chart you are talking about would be pretty complicated, given all the variables: CPU, GPU, Software, etc, etc, etc.

Alchemy appears to be all processor, and RCX Pro isn't really optimized for multiple cores yet, so it really slows things down.


RR debayers allow playback in realtime at full res on a robust system, 1/2 res on most any system. I don't have a monitor that will play back full size, so that's not something I can comment on. (all this depends a lot on the disk speeds)

The rest of your answers really depend on what else is in the system. Especially in Premiere. With a Quadro 4K doing the CUDA chores, most things happen in real time with good resolution and most of the effects you'd use. Most of my work in PPRO is 1080, and everything is real time. Everything.

In RCXPro, I get consistent 5K real-time playback at 1/2 resolution. Except using HDRx, where the two streams tax the system pretty hard. (That's where two rockets would be helpful.) I don't use Alchemy very much. Without it, RCX renders any grade at very close to real time for 5K, better-than-real-time for 4K. HDRx is half that speed or maybe a tic slower. I'm usually rendering to DNxHD, but those speeds hold for ProRes as well. A little slower for H264.

A note: only one program can use the Rocket at a time. If you want to go from PPro to AE, you have to close PPRo first, so it gives up control of the Rocket.
Click to expand...
 
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