Setting up a new RED Post Suite... a few Q's

[Travis MacRitchie]

So I'm putting in a new RED Post Production bay... I know it's going to have a RedRocket card, but I'm wondering if that will do all I want it to...

Basically, Mac Pro tower running Final Cut, RedCine, Color, After Effects, and maybe the new CS5 Premiere. Output to 30" Apple Cinema Display, 17" Panasonic LCD (for accurate color) and also a 50" Plasma screen on the wall for client viewing.

In a perfect world I want to be able to play back in real time fully debayered footage on all 3 monitors simultaneously, whether we are editing, doing cc, etc.

I know redrocket allows realtime playback in redcine and helps transcode times, but does it also accelerate r3d footage in Final Cut? What about the new CS5 and a quadro nvidia card, would that do the same thing? Is there a benefit to having both cards? Or should it be one or the other?

Lastly, will it give me enough outputs to get a signal to all 3 monitors?

Sorry if I worded this question awkwardly, I'm just now starting to wrap my head around editing suite terms.

[Brandon Kraemer]

I know redrocket allows realtime playback in redcine and helps transcode times, but does it also accelerate r3d footage in Final Cut?


FCP does not work hand in glove with the Rocket card... you will need to work with proxies, or transcoded files from the .R3D for offline editing.

[Cail Young]

If it's the newer 17" Panasonic you can hook up your FCP (Decklink/Kona) SDI to one input, and the Rocket SDI to the other, then hook the client monitor from the switched SDI output, and just toggle between them as necessary.

Best case I think would be to transcode in Rocket to Prores for editorial - the results look great and don't take too long (30fps generally if you have the CPU for the prores encode)

[James Stone]

How important is it to have Mac book pro on the set.