Rockett Speed

[Kevin Lang]

Just got the rocket today....cool looking box! Unfortunately thats all I can say for it right now.

I have a Macpro Tower 2.66 dual core
5gigs of ram
I have it in the 8xpci lane
3 tb in raid config.

right now its taking like 3min to render out a 40sec clip in Prores 444.

What do I need to speed this thing up? I know its user error!
Thanks

[jimhare]

You didn't say what software you are using. The Rocket only works with Red Cine X and Rocket Cine X, and you need to make sure you select the Rocket icon and it's glowing.

Also, you didn't say what resolution you are transcoding to.

Let us know what's happening and we can help. You should be getting 1:1 or at worst 1:1.5, but 1:4 sounds like there is no Rocket at all.

[Kevin Lang]

You didn't say what software you are using. The Rocket only works with Red Cine X and Rocket Cine X, and you need to make sure you select the Rocket icon and it's glowing.

Also, you didn't say what resolution you are transcoding to.

Let us know what's happening and we can help. You should be getting 1:1 or at worst 1:1.5, but 1:4 sounds like there is no Rocket at all.

Sorry I am using Red Cine X 221 I think the most recent. Full Debayer Prores 444. I can see the rocket icon glowing.

[jimhare]

What resolution are you transcoding to? Makes a big difference in transcode time.

Also, do you get realtime playback of your R3Ds? This is the big test.

[Johnny Friday]

Also, is your rocket installed in slot 2? I recall a lot of discussion on what slot and therefore i placed mine in 2nd slot.

I do transcodes pretty regular from R3D to prores 4444 and get about 1:1.5 speed....BUT at 1920 x 1080. This will make a difference if you set your size higher.

[Kevin Lang]

Im going to 1920x1080 and at full res the r3d's choke a little bit.

[Johnny Friday]

what slot is your card in?
sounds strange since i can get smoking speeds with this setup. I think you should also up your ram to 8gig to 16gig. Mine is an older 2.2ghz machine with 32gig ram, but i think i'm only utilizing 16gig.
But slot two is best place and there have been all kinds of reported problems if using anything else.

[Brian Timmons]

Im going to 1920x1080 and at full res the r3d's choke a little bit.

How does your performance in RedCineX b221 compare to RocketCineX b1740?

I do notice that transcodes seem to be a bit faster under RocketCineX compared to RedCineX though playback performance is about the same.

I wonder if this is due to the Quicktime encoding part of the transcode as RocketCineX seems to make better use of more CPU cores compared to RedCineX.
I imagine this is due to RedCineX not being fully optimized in Beta.

My card happens to be in slot 2.

Brian Timmons
britim media

[Kevin Lang]

Ok, Rocket Cine is way faster a clip that is 30 sec took 1:15 in redcine took only 35 sec. in Rocket cine!!! Oh yeah im in slot 2!!

[Brian Timmons]

Ok, Rocket Cine is way faster a clip that is 30 sec took 1:15 in redcine took only 35 sec. in Rocket cine!!! Oh yeah im in slot 2!!

Yeah, I think when RedCineX is fully optimized it should be similar to RocketCine X in speed.

I still like what's going on in RedCine X developments
and have been using it for the past week to "pre-grade" a film. It's really grown and it's quite stable.

Enjoy your RedRocket!

Brian Timmons
britim media

[Deanan]

Ok, Rocket Cine is way faster a clip that is 30 sec took 1:15 in redcine took only 35 sec. in Rocket cine!!! Oh yeah im in slot 2!!

Can you send us the logs for both?

We're testing redcinex to be faster than rocketcine for most things.

Please email to redcinex@red dot com

[roryhinds]

Hey Deanan, why can't RedCineX be the same if not faster and better than the "not being developed" RocketCineX?

[Deanan]

Hey Deanan, why can't RedCineX be the same if not faster and better than the "not being developed" RocketCineX?

It is faster or the same depending on the format being output. At least according to our internal testing. If someone is seeing something different, it could be related to disk/cpu/os differences but we'd need to replicate to find out why.

Redcinex now uses a separate exporter thread for dnx and quicktime so it's also more stable because quicktime used to hog all the memory.

[Mike Nichols]

What the heck am I doing wrong? I was pretty used to 1-1.5x realtime speeds going to to Pro Res, but I am getting non RR speeds today of 20-25x realtime with some 2K/3K footage going to 1080 Pro Res. Build 1740 in my mac pro 8 core 2.93 in slot 2.

[Rich Schaefer]

I am having the same issue. I am cooking 4hr 18min of footage, I am curently 6 hours in to it and it has done only one third of it. It was shot 4kHD, 29.97 transcoding to ProRes HQ 29.97 with RCX221. It is cooking in a basic color correction. It is not stalled or hung up it is constantly progressing.

It seems long to me. Dose this sound right to you guys?

Any Tips? Restart it?

Thx,
Rich

[Mike Nichols]

I solved the issue with my footage but it doesn't apply to your situation. My footage was 2K 2:1 which is 2048x1024 and I was trying transcode to 1920x1080. The jump from 1024 height to 1080 height is technically upscaling and that cannot use the rocket, so my speeds were processor.

[Eric Haase]

It is faster or the same depending on the format being output. At least according to our internal testing. If someone is seeing something different, it could be related to disk/cpu/os differences but we'd need to replicate to find out why.

Redcinex now uses a separate exporter thread for dnx and quicktime so it's also more stable because quicktime used to hog all the memory.

On all my shoots where the DIT has a rocket ,redcinex performs at 2x to 3x realtime, whereas rocketcine is almost 1x realtime. This is several dits with rockets on different systems. Transcoding 4khd to 1920x1080 prores422 or dnxhd175 23.98. Ive NEVER experienced redcinex transocde at realtime. Such a bummer.

[Rich Schaefer]

a rocket ,redcinex performs at 2x to 3x realtime, Ive NEVER experienced redcinex transocde at realtime. Such a bummer.

Thats basically what I am experiencing.

Thanks,
Rich

[Chris Ratledge]

I benchmarked a little slower than 1.5x via RocketCine, but this was before I upgraded my RAM from 6G to 12G, and before I RAIDed my 4 internal drives. Also, source footage location was from a 5400 rpm LaCie rugged drive over FW800.

I've got some more testing to do obviously, and I can't recall in which slot I've got the rocket installed, but will look into that too ~ I was unaware of any performance issues with slot selection.

[Dustin Cross]

I just installed my Rocket and I am seeing 3x realtime speed.

Sounds like I need to downgrade firmware and get Rocketcine and double my speed!!!!


Dusty

[Rich Schaefer]

I just transcoded 2 hours of footage and it took 8 hours = 4:1???? again

I have the updated driver, firmware, RCX 252.

It was 4kHD to 1080x1920 ProRes HQ, both at 29.97

I have only 3gigs or RAM on my loaner machine, is this the reason?

Any thoughts?

[Dustin Cross]

Is anyone getting good performance out of RCX 252 renders with Rocket? I mean better than Rocketcine?

On my first gen Mac Pro I am getting about 2:1 with Rocketcine and 3:1 with RCX 252.


Dusty

[Ian Laurie]

Rocketcine was always much faster for me.... Watching my cores between the two programs was night and day. Redcinex at best uses my cpu cores to about half their potential...at best, and rarely at the same time... Rocketcine, tends to push all eight cores right to the peak of their performance. This is according to my activity monitor. After doing a job the other day that took way too long, i think i am going to revert back to the last firmware so i can keep using rocketcine.

[Rich Schaefer]

Redcinex at best uses my cpu cores to about half their potential...at best, and rarely at the same time... Rocketcine, tends to push all eight cores right to the peak of their performance. This is according to my activity monitor.

Good Point! I am seeing the same here.

[Dustin Cross]

Deanan,

How are you guys getting faster or equal speed with RCX when everyone else is seeing Rocketcine being much faster?


Dusty

[Deanan]

Deanan,

How are you guys getting faster or equal speed with RCX when everyone else is seeing Rocketcine being much faster?


Dusty

I should have been more specific... DPX/TIff is faster or the same depending on the setup/formats/etc.
QT/DNX are highly dependent on many more factors (codec settings, cpu, ram speed, disk speed, source format, crop, etc) so performance varies much more at the moment.

The main reason is RCX currently uses an external exporter which increases stability alot because Quicktime tends to randomly grab loads of memory and cause problems. This will also let us go to 64bit for RCX. For now this can cause the QT and DnX exports to slow down and be more sensitive to the system environment.

However, we have some significant improvements for RCX working in our internal versions that will speed up the exports.

[Ian Laurie]

Thanks Deanan,
question though... will going to 64bit do anything if we are using an external exporter? doesn't the external Exporter also need to make the conversion in order for that too work?

EDIT: Glad to hear about improvements though!

[Deanan]

Thanks Deanan,
question though... will going to 64bit do anything if we are using an external exporter? doesn't the external Exporter also need to make the conversion in order for that too work?

EDIT: Glad to hear about improvements though!

The external converter has to stay 32bit bit QT-X is not yet usable.

[Lonny Danler]

I should have been more specific... DPX/TIff is faster or the same depending on the setup/formats/etc.
QT/DNX are highly dependent on many more factors (codec settings, cpu, ram speed, disk speed, source format, crop, etc) so performance varies much more at the moment.

The main reason is RCX currently uses an external exporter which increases stability alot because Quicktime tends to randomly grab loads of memory and cause problems. This will also let us go to 64bit for RCX. For now this can cause the QT and DnX exports to slow down and be more sensitive to the system environment.

However, we have some significant improvements for RCX working in our internal versions that will speed up the exports.

Deanan,

Great news on RCX and where it's going. It's getting very feature rich and by far been the best of the bunch for a walk away render with even hours and hours of footage. Wondering, could you elaborate on those variable/factors?

I have been getting about 10 fps on my 4,1 MBP 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo 15" w/ 4BG of 667 MHz ram hooked up to an istoragepro Express3 with 8 2.5" drives on a RAID 5. That's reading and writing to the same RAID. Surprisingly I'm getting about the same off my quad core tower. With Rocketcine-x I was getting closer to 19 fps. This was all with Prores 422HQ 1080 btw.

Thanks for any input.

[Deanan]

Deanan,

Great news on RCX and where it's going. It's getting very feature rich and by far been the best of the bunch for a walk away render with even hours and hours of footage. Wondering, could you elaborate on those variable/factors?

I have been getting about 10 fps on my 4,1 MBP 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo 15" w/ 4BG of 667 MHz ram hooked up to an istoragepro Express3 with 8 2.5" drives on a RAID 5. That's reading and writing to the same RAID. Surprisingly I'm getting about the same off my quad core tower. With Rocketcine-x I was getting closer to 19 fps. This was all with Prores 422HQ 1080 btw.

Thanks for any input.

We see double that or more here on our systems. Even rocketcine normally runs much faster than 19fps but processing speed is dependent on system speed/throughput/stability (some towers we've run into with bad ram or other pci-e cards that cause slowdowns)

[CJ Roy]

Deanan-

Looks like everyone still has the same issue that we've said for months now, RedCineX is much slower than RocketCinex. Most dailies & transcodes will be going to QT's or MXF's.

So when can we expect a fix?

[Deanan]

Deanan-

Looks like everyone still has the same issue that we've said for months now, RedCineX is much slower than RocketCinex. Most dailies & transcodes will be going to QT's or MXF's.

So when can we expect a fix?

See my previous post about speed.

[Lonny Danler]

We see double that or more here on our systems. Even rocketcine normally runs much faster than 19fps but processing speed is dependent on system speed/throughput/stability (some towers we've run into with bad ram or other pci-e cards that cause slowdowns)

Double that or more would be awesome! but every DIT I've talked to seems to run into similar figures based on those specs (give or take a few fps). What are you guys doing different? Could you do an item breakdown of what's under the hood to compare?

Could you also elaborate about the bad ram and/or pci-e cards? What configurations, models should we watch out for?

[Deanan]

Double that or more would be awesome! but every DIT I've talked to seems to run into similar figures based on those specs (give or take a few fps). What are you guys doing different? Could you do an item breakdown of what's under the hood to compare?

Could you also elaborate about the bad ram and/or pci-e cards? What configurations, models should we watch out for?

Email the log files and system profile to redcinex@red and we can see what might be different.

Lots of interrupts on the pci-e can cause slowdowns. We don't have enough info on what other cards cause this but we do know that older towers (gen1 and 2) definitely have pci-e issues.

[Alexander Alexandrov]

Is there a direct way to easily see the transcode speed?

[Lonny Danler]

Email the log files and system profile to redcinex@red and we can see what might be different.

Lots of interrupts on the pci-e can cause slowdowns. We don't have enough info on what other cards cause this but we do know that older towers (gen1 and 2) definitely have pci-e issues.

Will do. Carts on a job right now but will save to a usb stick and email as soon as I can. Thanks

[CJ Roy]

Deanan-

What is your system configuration on the machines that you're getting realtime transcode speeds? I have 3 machines in front of me getting 6-12 frames per second for MXF, ProRes, etc.

2 of these machines were realtime with RocketCine. But now the speed is crippled with RedCine-X. All versions.

Thanks.

[Alexander Alexandrov]

same here on the crippling speed redcine vs rocket cine
what is the software issue causing this? and is it going to be adjusted to rocketcineX speeds?

[Dustin Cross]

Deanan,

What kind of speed are you getting transcoding to quicktimes from RCX with rocket? You said you are getting good speed to DPX, but most of us render to Quicktime. We really need render to QT to be what is was in rocketcine.


Dusty

[CJ Roy]

Is anyone actually getting realtime? Or know of anyone who is?

Should someone start a poll to find out what configuration is the best?

Thanks.

[Dustin Cross]

1st Gen quad 2.0Ghz mac Pro with 8GB ram, ATI 3870 (x8), Rocket (x8), Decklink HD (x4), Rocketraid (x4).

Rocketcine 1.9x realtime
Redcine X 3.2x realtime

Rocketcine to Quicktime Prores is almost twice as fast as RedcineX on the same system to the same Quicktime Prores.

It is an older slower system, so I don't expect to get realtime, but I would like to get the same I was getting with Rocketcine.


Dusty

[Andrew T Foster]

Hello,

I received my Red Rocket card today (woo hoo!) and it RAWKS! They should have called it the "RAWK'ED Card!" .. etc..

My initial transcode was for a 57 minute clip shot at 4k, 23.976, RED Code 36, 16:9.

I started the transcode at 5:02 p.m. and it was finished by 6:41 p.m.

The clip originated on my 8 terrabyte CalDigit HDOne (RAID 6) and exported to an internal Seagate ST3570640AS 750 GB, 7200 rpm, 32mb Cache HD.

Ohhh that is so nice coming from single thread RedCine-X.

Transcode Settings:

Quicktime ProRES 4444
1920x1080 resolution
Full Debayer
Audio All Channels
No Denoise
No Sharpening
Curve modifications

Hardware Setup

Mac Pro 3,1 (early 2008) - Octo (Two Quad-Core 2.8GHz processors)
16 GB of DDR2- FB-DIMM/800 MHz Memory from OWComputing (www.owcomputing.com)

Slot 1 @ 16x - ATI 3870 - 512mb - (Retail Edition)
Slot 2 @ 8x - Red Rocket
Slot 3 @ 4x - CalDigit HDOne PCIe bridge card to 8 TB array/ RAID 6 (www.caldigit.com)
Slot 4 @ 4x - LSI SAS3442E - SAS card for Quantum LTO-4 tape backup

Software

Snow Leopard - 10.6.4
RedCine-X - 2.58
Red Rocket Driver - 1.3.2.2
Red Rocket Firmware - 1.1.8.6


Hope this helps in diagnostics!

ATF

[Tony Lorentzen]

I just converted a 5 minute 4K clip into 1080p ProResHQ in 6 minutes.

[CJ Roy]

Tony-

That's great, what's your system specs? That's the closest to realtime I've heard of yet.

Thanks.

[Lonny Danler]

Is there a direct way to easily see the transcode speed?

I found that if you go to user>Library>Application Support>Red>RedcineX>Logs and open one of the logs it will give you a frame total and an "total elapsed export time" It's simple division from there (fps).

That seems to be the most accurate way to me. I've also stop-watched it.

EX--
A002_C011_0708NL : 1249
redexport: frame: 1249
redexport: stop msg received.
[22:34:50:361] Avid Exporter::exportAudio - Samples Read: 2500498 Samples Written: 2500498 /NumAudioChan = 625124 Expected Samples: 2500498
redexport: total elapsed export time: 00:02:00.305
redexport: maximum frame processing time: 1354 ms
redexport: minimum frame processing time: 71 ms

[Lonny Danler]

Still getting 6-12 frames similar to CJ on my machine for most prores and dnxhd exports. I sent redcinex@red my system profiler and some logs to check to see where the problem might be.

[Tony Lorentzen]

Tony- That's great, what's your system specs? That's the closest to realtime I've heard of yet.

Early 2009 Mac Pro w/ 2 x 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (Nehalem) and 16 Gb RAM. Source material was on a Caldigit VR (running at around 200 MB/sec) to an internal 7200 SATA disk. This was Redcine-X Build 258.

[CK Olsen]

It appears that many users are experiencing highly individualized results based off of their various specific project needs... and there is not always one easy way to meaningfully compare test specs.

Having one uniform "system test" (with very specific testing instructions) could assist users in benchmarking their individual setup, enable them to tweak things out for better performance, and give you something much easier to troubleshoot if the tests do not provide optimal results.

My thoughts are for RED to provide a standardized 30-60 second 4K 2:1 R3D Clip, as well as step by step RCX settings instructions for output to TIFF, DPX, or whatever, perhaps at 2-3 common output resolutions. Including your internal baseline Mac and PC system specs and their results for the various tests would give eveyone a great reference point as well...

Anyhoo, just a thought...
-CK

[Jody Neckles]

My thoughts are for RED to provide a standardized 30-60 second 4K 2:1 R3D Clip, as well as step by step RCX settings instructions for output to TIFF, DPX, or whatever, perhaps at 2-3 common output resolutions. Including your internal baseline Mac and PC system specs and their results for the various tests would give eveyone a great reference point as well...

Anyhoo, just a thought...
-CK

I totally agree with this comment. Would be great to have a standard test or at least published benchmarks from RED based on a recommended configuration.....

[chris layhe]

A "true" test sequence like this really would be an amazing thing to have - I still find the aja speed test software one of the most useful check tools available for our hard drive arrays, but we really have nothing to see if the Rocket system is performing correctly and allow targeted system tweaking... what about it guys, do you have anything that you use internally which we could be let in on?

Chris


It appears that many users are experiencing highly individualized results based off of their various specific project needs... and there is not always one easy way to meaningfully compare test specs.

Having one uniform "system test" (with very specific testing instructions) could assist users in benchmarking their individual setup, enable them to tweak things out for better performance, and give you something much easier to troubleshoot if the tests do not provide optimal results.

My thoughts are for RED to provide a standardized 30-60 second 4K 2:1 R3D Clip, as well as step by step RCX settings instructions for output to TIFF, DPX, or whatever, perhaps at 2-3 common output resolutions. Including your internal baseline Mac and PC system specs and their results for the various tests would give eveyone a great reference point as well...

Anyhoo, just a thought...
-CK

[C.H.Haskell]

Sorry for the random question but does the RED ROCKET have an HD-SDI output solution without having to buy a 1200 dollar breakout unit? Very little information about what I can do with the card alone. I notice the store says

"Plays full quality 2K/1080P scaled from 4K footage out the Dual Link HD-SDI from RED Rocket card" So there are cables included for this? I am basically trying to connect to a panasonic HD monitor via SDI.

Thanks for the info in advance.

[Dustin Cross]

Yes, there is HD-SDI out of the Rocket without breakout box. Two small little cables provide this from teh card.


Dusty

[C.H.Haskell]

Great! I can come out the back of my MacPro with those?

[Dustin Cross]

Yes. It takes an extra slot or you can drill two small holes to mount the BNC adapters like some of us have done.

There are pics here somewhere.


Dusty

[C.H.Haskell]

Thanks for the info Dustin!

[Blair S. Paulsen]

The issue for a lot of people has been the lack of open slots on their towers. Since the Breakout Box connects directly to the Rocket then the only slot you burn is the Rocket slot. Some people have actually drilled holes on their towers to feed out the little cables to the bracket with the SDI spigots rather than install the bracket in a precious PCI slot, of course that likely voids the warranty on the tower :scared:.

$1,200 to save a slot/warranty. Hard to swallow, but not RED's fault.

I got the BOB to do 4K playback over 8 lanes of SDI, but not too many people are doing that AFAIK.

Another option is to get an expansion chassis so the slot count is no longer a problem. JMR makes a terrific one with 16 drive bays but that may or may not fit your cart or budget. (Disclosure: I do some work with JMR). There is also the Magma, etc - Dusty posted about the options on another thread, can't remember which one.

Cheers - #19

[Dustin Cross]

Here are the threads Blair is talking about:

http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=48127

http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?p=605296#post605296

[Frank Cueto]

The issue for a lot of people has been the lack of open slots on their towers. Since the Breakout Box connects directly to the Rocket then the only slot you burn is the Rocket slot. Some people have actually drilled holes on their towers to feed out the little cables to the bracket with the SDI spigots rather than install the bracket in a precious PCI slot, of course that likely voids the warranty on the tower :scared:.

$1,200 to save a slot/warranty. Hard to swallow, but not RED's fault.

I got the BOB to do 4K playback over 8 lanes of SDI, but not too many people are doing that AFAIK.

Another option is to get an expansion chassis so the slot count is no longer a problem. JMR makes a terrific one with 16 drive bays but that may or may not fit your cart or budget. (Disclosure: I do some work with JMR). There is also the Magma, etc - Dusty posted about the options on another thread, can't remember which one.

Cheers - #19


You could always drill the holes on the removable lid, and if push comes to shove, swap the lid with someone...

[Blair S. Paulsen]

You could always drill the holes on the removable lid, and if push comes to shove, swap the lid with someone...

There's an eBay item I'd love to see. MacPro side panel undrilled - will swap for drilled panel for "X" dollars. Hilarious.

Cheers - #19

[C.H.Haskell]

I dont have anything else in my station other then the graphics card it comes with and I will probably stick some eSata pots in one of the slots. ANything I should know before I install the REDrocket...like some particular lane? THanks guys.

[Curran Giddens]

There's an eBay item I'd love to see. MacPro side panel undrilled - will swap for drilled panel for "X" dollars. Hilarious.

Cheers - #19

I sold my broken G5 on eBay without the side panel since I noticed it fit perfectly in my Mac Pro. But then I went ahead and got the Red Rocket BOB anyway. oh well...