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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 :)

Why do we need a RED Rocket card?

Eric Z

Eric Z

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Hi RED Team,

My following question might seem silly / stupid, but I just gotta ask:

Why do we need a RED Rocket card?
It seems to me that it's nothing more than a specialized graphics card.
For all intents and purposes, RED could have easily utilized the Quadro / FirePro cards that most people here in reduser.net already have in their computers.
I really don't understand why there's a need for another "graphics" card.

Current Quadros and FirePros are very beefy, and people have invested lots of money on their (very powerful) workstations.
Yet those workstations can barely play when working on R3D files without a RED ROCKET, especially when displaying footage at 1:1.

I just wish RED could offer RedCineX / RedCine-X Pro without the need for a RED ROCKET.
 
You can deffinitely run RedCine-X without a Rocket card. But it goes much, much slower. As in "8-12x the time to transcode" slower. I've made the comparison at work with equivalent hardware workstations, only difference being the Red Rocket card.

It takes us 2-6 hours to transcode most 1-day commercial shoots using the Rocket. Which makesi it so we can start transcoding at 8AM and to be working with most or all of our footage after Lunch. We did have one shoot that was shot entirely at 120 fps on our Red One with an MX Sensor, and it took over 24 hours to transcode. So without the Rocket, we would have been looking at over a week.

For reference, our current workstations are 8 core (2.66 GHz) Mac Pros.
 
Think this way:

WITHOUT A REDROCKET: I can edit a 5K project without a REDrocket on CS5.5 in realtime by playing footage back between 1/8 or 1/16 resolution and take maybe 45 minutes to export a 3 minute video

WITH A REDROCKET: I can edit with a REDrocket on CS5.5 in realtime by playing footage back at 1/2 resolution and take about 3 minutes to export a 3 minute video.
 
Guys,
I know RCX works much faster with a RED ROCKET. That's not the point.
The point is - Why do we need to buy a RED ROCKET when RCX could have theoretically perform the same acceleration using the existing graphics card.
 
Eric Z said:
Guys,
I know RCX works much faster with a RED ROCKET. That's not the point.
The point is - Why do we need to buy a RED ROCKET when RCX could have theoretically perform the same acceleration using the existing graphics card.
Click to expand...

Eric,

REDCINE-X already heavily utilizes the existing graphics cards. Hence why you need a graphics card capable of supporting at least OpenGL 2.1.
 
My guess is that the answer lies within the architecture of R3D files. I'm sure nVidia could tweak their cards to work optimally with 5K footage, but there's definitely more going on under the hood as far as debayering and processing than you know.

If you hold off, though, I bet there will be some Thunderbolt/SSD solutions around the corner.
 
Also for Epic footage it's something of a necessity, 5k at 5:1 compression ratio (the "sweet spot" in terms of file size vs quality) is 500 GB's an hour. For features shot on Epic, even if you have the ability to edit with the raw files, you'd need scores of TB's of storage, whereas with DNxHD 36 or ProRes LT transcodes, you're back in single-enclosure G-Raid range. A 30 day, 2 camera Epic shoot, with 1.5 hours of footage per camera per day, = 45 TB's of raw files.
 
Eric Z said:
Guys,
I know RCX works much faster with a RED ROCKET. That's not the point.
The point is - Why do we need to buy a RED ROCKET when RCX could have theoretically perform the same acceleration using the existing graphics card.
Click to expand...

Eric---you don't NEED a Rocket Card if you don't mind waiting for transcodes overnight etc.....I know a few people that are not in the business of transcoding and editing and do not need to get work done by a certain time at end of day....they shoot stock and have time to WAIT 8-12 hours for transcodes.....AND, RCX does not have same acceleration using non rocket card--nor does it theoretically have same speeds....remember some people are getting from 7 to 1 up to 12 to one transcodes times....depending on the machine they have....Simply put your statement is wrong---who said RCX has or theoretically has same speed with your standard graphics card?? It DOES NOT.

So, you know you don't need it to use RCX and transcode, but does the Rocket add value to your workflow at 1:1 possible transcodes? If not, then maybe you have your answer. Personally i cannot wait a full day to begin working with tanscoded footage.
 
Johnny,
You mis-understood me.

Theoretically, the RED software team could have designed RCX to accelerate its performance using the Quadro / FirePro cards.
Yet they've chosen to optimize RCX using a proprietary card - the RED ROCKET.

RED is giving us RCX for free, yet charging a hefty sum on the RED ROCKET.
It's a clever business model - the software is free, but to really make it useful, you'll need to buy a hardware part.
So any serious pro working on a feature film would have to buy the RED ROCKET, as he doesn't have any other choice - which makes (working quickly with) RCX not exactly "free".

All I'm saying is - I wish they would have made RCX accelerate using the standard graphics cards, which all of us already have.
That would make RCX truly free.

But I guess nothing's free in life, especially in the movie-making business.
 
Eric Z said:
So any serious pro working on a feature film would have to buy the RED ROCKET, as he doesn't have any other choice - which makes (working quickly with) RCX not exactly "free".
Click to expand...

Any serious Pro would not rely totally on free tools.

Your assumptions are incorrect, Red didn't build the Red Rocket to up sell from RCX. The JPEG2000 Hardware accelerator was discovered to greatly speed up rendering and Red wisely reached an agreement with the manufacture to market it as a Red product for a substantial discount. I have been using the DVS card that inspired the Red Rocket long before Red started selling the Rocket, and I can assure you it cost far more than Red is asking for the Rocket.
 
All I'm saying is - I wish they would have made RCX accelerate using the standard graphics cards, which all of us already have.
That would make RCX truly free.
Click to expand...

GPUs work well for some video operations and not others. The GPU may not perform nearly as well as the RR processor in terms of debayering. On top of that, do they support CUDA, which has the best tool set and is crossplatform, but is limited to NVIDIA cards. OpenCL, which has a pretty poor toolset, worse performance, and limited crossplatform support. DirectCompute is a lot better than OpenCL, but limited to Windows only.

There are a lot of GPU assisted encoders and the visually quality is MUCH worse than software only. I have some recent tests compaing CUDA to Sandy Bridge to Software only x624. Both CUDA and Sandy Bridge have nasty artifacts that are not present in the software only encode. The small perf gain is not worth the quality hit.

Video Decoding, on GPU, is not actually using the GPU itself. It is using a dedicated piece of hardware that is part of the GPU.
 
Eric Z said:
All I'm saying is - I wish they would have made RCX accelerate using the standard graphics cards, which all of us already have.
That would make RCX truly free.
Click to expand...

Decoding REDcode on a GPU is not very fast. While GPUs are great at some things, they're really
slow at others. We've spent a fair amount of effort on this and it's not viable yet. Maybe the next generation
GPUs that have a CPU built in will be better.
 
Greg,
Are you saying that the RR is more or less a JPEG2000 Hardware accelerator?

Stacey,
I read AnandTech and Tom's HW websites on a regular basis. I'm very tech-savvy when it comes to computer hardware.
I've read the CUDA vs SB vs Software encoding article. So I already know the software encoding is best in terms of quality.
Sandy Bridge is the quickest, and outputs quite decent results, even if slightly worse than the software encode.
With new drivers and new generations of CPUs and GPUs, they will catch up quickly on the quality front.

Anyway, RCX could at least use the GPU to playback 5K footage at Full 1:1 in real-time (the grey bar that fills up when you change a setting).

The encoding part is a different story altogether, and should use the best method in terms of visual quality - currently the slow software encoder.
And now that you mention it - is the RR output comparable to the encoding done in software? interesting...
 
Deanan,

Thanks for the clarification.
I always like to put my trust with someone who actually done the testing.

Now I see why there's a need for the Red Rocket.
 
Deanan said:
Decoding REDcode on a GPU is not very fast. While GPUs are great at some things, they're really
slow at others. We've spent a fair amount of effort on this and it's not viable yet. Maybe the next generation
GPUs that have a CPU built in will be better.
Click to expand...

Denann.
You could make this very simple, if you could confirm, that as part of the Red SDK, GPU debayer is not allowed. It's Red's SDK and Red can attach any conditions it wishes on manufacturers wishing to use it.
So why not just end this discussion right now and clarify Red position?
 
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