Redcine - Long output times

[Rick Darge]

I am using a 2.33 ghz dual 2 core Macbook Pro w/ 3 GB of RAM..


Using Leopard.

My render times for Jims R3D file are all taking 20 minutes, whether or not I make color adjustments or output at a higher or lower quality.

What kinds of times are you guys getting?

[jbeale]

My understanding is that with Redcine, your CPU is not important. It is the graphics card that makes the difference because the rendering is done by the GPU. (correct me if I'm wrong, anyone) In other words, high speed output requires a high-end graphics card.

[Billy Summers]

My understanding is that with Redcine, your CPU is not important. It is the graphics card that makes the difference because the rendering is done by the GPU. (correct me if I'm wrong, anyone) In other words, high speed output requires a high-end graphics card.

WURD...and a little bit of RAM:biggrin:

[Rick Darge]

Why is it then that when I load the R3D file into RedAlert, I can ouput a draft quality quicktime in 2 seconds? Do we have that same option in Redcine?

Redcine is kinda scaring me. These output times are insane.. I can't imagine shooting an hours worth of footage only to have it take 20 hours to output it.

[Cüneyt Kaya]

red alert is not GPU based...

[SalaTar]

jpeg2k

[Rick Darge]

Hmm. So besides the awesome GUI, the enhanced CC options, the easier workflow.. why couldn't they make it easier just to output a draft quicktime?

For time sake, I don't see the point in using RedCine if its going to take 20+ minutes to render out less than 300 frames.. I mean, I could drop $5K on a Mac Pro... but that's still $5K..

Maybe this will get better over time?

[Greg M]

Why is it then that when I load the R3D file into RedAlert, I can ouput a draft quality quicktime in 2 seconds? Do we have that same option in Redcine?

Redcine is kinda scaring me. These output times are insane.. I can't imagine shooting an hours worth of footage only to have it take 20 hours to output it.

Because that is just a proxy of the actual raw file. Red Cine will add this feature soon....for now you are rendering standalone clips which take time from a 4K original.

[Rick Darge]

Ah.. yes.

What kinds of times are you guys getting and what are your machine specs?

[Greg M]

On the mac side its slow...I have a MB Pro, 2.4, 4gb ram that we bought for the camera. I am waiting for the new Macs in Jan to get the 8 core system for the studio.

On the PC side we have 8 core machines...I'll do some tests tomorrow and compare.

[smelni]

I am getting 10 minutes on a PC - 2.3 dual core with 4 gigs

[Rob Lohman]

You don't want to be running nvidia cards on OS X with REDCINE. At 4K resolution this will be extremely slow (while the same card works fine under Windows), it's an issue with Apple's graphics drivers.

So for Mac we advice to go with the ATI options and for Windows get a good NVidia one

[Rob Lohman]

My understanding is that with Redcine, your CPU is not important. It is the graphics card that makes the difference because the rendering is done by the GPU. (correct me if I'm wrong, anyone) In other words, high speed output requires a high-end graphics card.

This is partially true. All the decompression and some other stuff is still done on the CPU and say an 8-core helps a lot here actually. The GPU stuff is doing the image processing so you can change parameters in real-time while the movie is playing, etc.

[Craig Bowman]

I'm getting render times of about 8.3 minutes with Jim's clip.

[Joel Kaye]

You don't want to be running nvidia cards on OS X with REDCINE. At 4K resolution this will be extremely slow (while the same card works fine under Windows), it's an issue with Apple's graphics drivers.

So for Mac we advice to go with the ATI options and for Windows get a good NVidia one

This almost makes me think building an 8-Core PC with a good nVidia card might be the best way to use RedCine. I guess we'll have to compare the fastest Macs to the fastest PC and see what people think. Have you guys tried that there?

[Mike]

The rendering time maybe a problem especially when working on tv series which for us, needs to be completed quickly.

If it takes too much time to render all the footages to the format we want, it may not be feasible.

Any idea on the render times for an hour of footage, let's say on a decent Core 2 Duo processor with decent memories and good video card?

[Kenn Michael]

I have a quad-core Mac Pro with the ATI card 8GB RAM and a fast RAIDed disk array....

According to calculations I did today, it would take a full 24 hours to render an hour's worth of 4K to 1080 ProRes at full debayer quality.

Hopefully I'm doing something wrong, or these transcode times will come down with more optimizations in the program....

Or maybe I just have to buy an 8-core.

[Floris Liesker]

My Mac Pro 8-core 16GB rendered Jim's 4K clip to HD1080 prores in 3 min 40 sec.
That means 22.3 hours of rendering for an hour's worth of 4K.
Not much improvement for an 8-core vs 4-core.

A 'make quicktime' option like in RedAlert would be nice.

[Mike]

Yes, we definitely need faster options.

[Kenn Michael]

Okay, my calculations were wrong due to the fact that I had Jim's 2K clip mixed in with the 4K clip. Sorry about that....

New Calculations:

Mac Pro - 2.66GHz Quad

4K to 1080P Full Process 35 frames per minute. It took 6:44 to process Jim's clip. It would take my machine 41 hours to process 1 hour of 4K.

In Draft mode, my machine cranked out 100 frames per minute. Processing 1 hour of 4K in draft mode would take 14.4 hours.

[Fredrik Harreschou]

The GPU stuff is doing the image processing so you can change parameters in real-time while the movie is playing, etc.

Wow. Hadn't thought of trying that. Nice feature.

[Justin Kirchhoff]

i've got a MBP 2.4ghz 4gigs of Ram and a 8-core Mac Pro, 5 gigs of ram and I'm rendering out some fast stuff, no biggie. radeon x1900 XT

[Dave French]

I've got an 8-core mac with 5GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon X1900 XT graphics card. Tried rendering out DPX files in both RedCine and Red Alert. Took 20 minutes to render out a 2K DPX sequence from a 1 minute R3D clip. Both Red Alert and Red Cine took the same amount of time. To render out a 4K DPX sequence from Red Alert took me 60 minutes.

Long render time indeed. Can either of these programs make use of a render farm?

Dave

[Justin Kirchhoff]

draft settings to quicktimes with prores422 are 7 minutes for MBP, not even 5 with mac pro.

[Dave French]

Would you be able to online from those quicktimes?

[Brian Broz]

Am I the only one shocked at these render times? After all the reading on this forum I must have missed something in regards to this timely step in the production chain. So it will take 20 or so hours to process an hour of footage?! Wow!
I suppose we won't all be handing drives over to clients at the end of a shoot, especially if shooting a few hours of footage a day, or with multiple cameras.

[Jay A. Kelley]

Wow.. Is it just me, or are we seeing the weak link here in regards to REDCine? I can handle a 3-5:1 render time (3min to 5 min for every 1 min 4k) but these speeds make the work just too slow to deal with in most situations that are paid.

So the question here is: How much of this is due to REDCine being in BETA? What kind of speed improvments can we expect over the next 2 months?

Jay

[Simon Blackledge]

look how long it take to debayer a raw photo from say a 1dsmk2 in bridge..load >open..

This is 1st release and it's not that bad considering.. were debayering 4k and rescaling and encoding!

s

[Jay A. Kelley]

As I said.. I am not complaining to complain. But I am purchasing RED with the idea of working in many different fields.

That said, time matters. I am cool with the output times being slow for projects that require it.. BUT there are EFP times when we need to be able to output an hour's worth of material in 2-3 hours at LEAST.. It's also reasonable to assume that these may be more inline with 2k source files rather than 4k.. But time matters.. A lot.

I am surprise that with 100+ cameras out there, no one has mentioned this with REDAlert. What's the deal? Is that software that much different?

Jay

[Finner]

Sending film to the lab having it processed and then transfered to digital takes a day or more. IMO this render time is fast for a cine camera.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I don't see what the complaint is... I can't say how fast it would be on a current workstation or upcoming 8-core Penryn Mac/PC. I'm only running on a Macbook pro. I tried to load it up on an AMD dual-core system, but it crashed on me. I'll have to test and see if it is a REDCINE issue or just this flakey PC.

Anyway, times are not bad. Compared to processing film it's fast. It seems like on a decent workstation it would be faster than a log and transfer of DV or HDV.

The only situations where I see transcode time being a factor is for those jobs where you typically hand over what you shoot immediately after you shoot it. But even in those situations with legacy formats, someone in the production pipeline still must deal with log and transfer, transcoding, etc.. With RED as it becomes more established, you can still work with this approach. You hand them the RED DRIVE, RED RAM, CF, whatever and they process it themselves.

At this stage in the game there could be a little bit of a trade-off in delivery time compared to shooting DV/HDV or even DVCPROHD. But I don't see this as a problem if the client knows this going into it. You're selling them a different product. Sell them on better image quality at little more than the cost of shooting with an HVX. If they can't deal with the having to wait a bit longer for a deliverable, then help them out with that. Offer to deliver immediately and then offer your consulting services to bring their editor or post people up to speed on how to deal with RED footage. This is an opportunity to upsell and offer more services. Not an "oh, my producer is going to flip if he has to wait an extra 10 minutes to convert footage" situation.

This exact same argument came about with the HVX200 and how to deliver what was shot on P2 in different formats or on different media instead of $1200 P2 cards. People survived and it's now a widely accepted workflow.

[Rob Lohman]

I've got an 8-core mac with 5GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon X1900 XT graphics card. Tried rendering out DPX files in both RedCine and Red Alert. Took 20 minutes to render out a 2K DPX sequence from a 1 minute R3D clip. Both Red Alert and Red Cine took the same amount of time. To render out a 4K DPX sequence from Red Alert took me 60 minutes.

Long render time indeed. Can either of these programs make use of a render farm?

Dave

This rendering should not be that long. HOWEVER, keep in mind that DPX are MASSIVE files. It sounds like you're hitting an I/O limit here on your harddisk.

For Mac OS X users you can see a dramatic slow down when you have an Nvidia graphics card. That's why we advice ATI for that platform.

[David Cox]

Is there anyone out there with sheer video codec that could try a render. I would be curious to find out the results. Lots of options with sheer.

They have a 20 day tryout:

Sheer Video Tryout (https://www.bitjazz.com/en/shop/sheervideo/)

[Rick Darge]

As I said.. I am not complaining to complain. But I am purchasing RED with the idea of working in many different fields.

That said, time matters. I am cool with the output times being slow for projects that require it.. BUT there are EFP times when we need to be able to output an hour's worth of material in 2-3 hours at LEAST.. It's also reasonable to assume that these may be more inline with 2k source files rather than 4k.. But time matters.. A lot.

I am surprise that with 100+ cameras out there, no one has mentioned this with REDAlert. What's the deal? Is that software that much different?

Jay


I wonder if this will be solved when Red implements 1080/720 RGB on camera..

[Greg M]

For Mac OS X users you can see a dramatic slow down when you have an Nvidia graphics card. That's why we advice ATI for that platform.

Unfortunately, all the latest MacBook Pros use the Nvidia card only...and I can confirm it is very very slow.

[Rick Darge]

How slow digitalfx? Because I'm using the last version of MB Pro and it has an ATI x1600 Radeon w/ 256 MB ram and it's damn slow as well...

[P Andersson]

macbook pro and qt wrapper
http://www.agwah.com/view/red/dragster_small.mov

[Greg M]

How slow digitalfx? Because I'm using the last version of MB Pro and it has an ATI x1600 Radeon w/ 256 MB ram and it's damn slow as well...

The latest all come with NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB SDRAM

I am running speed tests now.

[Mike Prevette]

Right now I'd recommend everyone use the QT wrappers (instant) to edit from, and then conform via > redcine > AE. It's much less footage to render if you only do it for your online.

_mike

[Rick Darge]

_Mike,

Can you explain more?

[Rick Darge]

macbook pro and qt wrapper
http://www.agwah.com/view/red/dragster_small.mov

haha, sick

[Mike Prevette]

1)cut realtime via th QT wrappers (created by redalert) in FCP, or transcode the wrapper files to a off line codec in quicktime or FCP MUCH faster than doing it in REDCINE.

2)then export a XML via FCP,

3) Import that into AE (via fcptoAE from: here (http://www.creative-workflow-hacks.com/2007/04/15/final-cut-pro-to-after-effects-scripting-without-the-hassle/))

4)Then manually go into RedCine and create a pull list of my edit

5) render from redcine at 4k

6)import those clips into AE

7) replace the existing LQ clips in the AE project, change project settings to 4k etc.

8) drink beer

Most of this workflow could be automated with a little applescript/perl/tktcl/cobalt/whateverscriptyouwant. The only thing that holds this back is REdCine's understanding of a pull list.

This can be worked around by making a small program that would refrance the r3d files listed in the EDL/XML then 1) set the metadata of the r3d to the in/out listed in the EDL/XML then 2) move them into a directory by themselves. That way RedCine could jut import the directory.

_mike

[Greg M]

Speed Tests:

NOTE: For both systems the test .r3d file was located on our local RAID- via gigabit connection

Test File: Jim's 4K Dragster footage (236 frames)
Output: 1080P 10 bit DPX files
Write files to desktop

System 1-
Windows XP
2 x QuadCore Intel Xeon X5355 @2.67Ghz
4GB RAM
Quadro FX 4500 (latest drivers, Oct 4th release)
Close to realtime playback at "1/2 HIGH"

RENDER TIME: 2:43


System 2-
17" MacBook Pro
2.4ghz
4gb ram
Nvidia GeForce 8600M 256MB highres screen
Close to realtime playback at "1/4 HIGH"

RENDER TIME: 12:40

Here are the RedCine settings if you want to compare:
slight s-curve
contrast 1.1
exposure .46
Color ]
5.781
0.000
-2.522
Kelvin- 6700
saturation 1.1
10-bit DPX 1080P

[Rick Darge]

Great, thanks for that comparison! Sounds like most users are going to need a dedicated computer that handles all things render within RedCine. Luckily PCs are relatively cheap to assemble so that shouldn't be a big problem.

Thanks Mike for the rundown.. I'm going to play with this..

[Rob Lohman]

A macbook pro will always be slow when processing 4K footage, sorry. It will get better when we optimize things, but it's a lot of data to push around. If the new macbook's are nvidia indeed and the Apple driver has not been "fixed" then I have to advice to not use it for 4K rendering in REDCINE (which you probably want to do on an 8-core with a proper raid system anyway).

2K and lower should be fine (but keep in mind that REDCINE will do a full 4K decode and then downsample that to 2K when you're outputting high quality, so it will still have problems with the nvidia slow down on OS X)

[Greg M]

I never expected the MBP to be fast...actually I am very impressed with the performance overall. The 8 core system is pretty respectable.

[Cüneyt Kaya]

1)cut realtime via th QT wrappers (created by redalert) in FCP, or transcode the wrapper files to a off line codec in quicktime or FCP MUCH faster than doing it in REDCINE.

2)then export a XML via FCP,

3) Import that into AE (via fcptoAE from: here (http://www.creative-workflow-hacks.com/2007/04/15/final-cut-pro-to-after-effects-scripting-without-the-hassle/))

4)Then manually go into RedCine and create a pull list of my edit

5) render from redcine at 4k

6)import those clips into AE

7) replace the existing LQ clips in the AE project, change project settings to 4k etc.

8) drink beer

Most of this workflow could be automated with a little applescript/perl/tktcl/cobalt/whateverscriptyouwant. The only thing that holds this back is REdCine's understanding of a pull list.

This can be worked around by making a small program that would refrance the r3d files listed in the EDL/XML then 1) set the metadata of the r3d to the in/out listed in the EDL/XML then 2) move them into a directory by themselves. That way RedCine could jut import the directory.

_mike

what about automtic duck? do you see any use for it?

[Mike Prevette]

AD Is a great program, I've worked with Wes Plate the creator of it a few times here in Seattle. In this instance it wouldn't be doing anything RED specific, it would just be doing what a free script can already do in number 3 of the list above. Since this is an offline edit at that point the complex conversions that AD do wouldn't be utilized. AD is a GREAT product and i highly recommend it, but in this case it wouldn't be helping you out to much.

[Jay A. Kelley]

My goal is to be able to take a 2k REDCode file, then output/downconvert it to 1080i or 720p or 480i.

As I understand it, only quicktime is available.. But I would sure love some windows formats in this (Like uncompressed AVI for SD).

I will have my fun, but this is what I will need to make money

Jay

[Miguel "Macgregor" De Olaso]

Speed Tests:



RENDER TIME: 2:43

RENDER TIME: 12:40



is that 2 hours and 43 minutes or 2 minutes and 43 seconds?

[Mike Prevette]

minutes, that would jive with what I'm getting.

[Jay A. Kelley]

Digital... Can we please get the same tests on a 2k file? I would be so grateful.. On pins and needles over here.

Jay

[Kenn Michael]

It's MUCH faster if you take the 2K QT proxy that the camera and REDAlert builds and export that to ProRes.

on my 2.66 Quad Mac Pro
6:1 using FCP and 2K QT proxy exported to ProRes 1080 HQ
44:1 using RedCine

Like Rob said on another thread, the quality using the 2K proxy is high enough for most purposes. I agree. If you need the extra oomph, then off to conform-land. :)

[Greg M]

is that 2 hours and 43 minutes or 2 minutes and 43 seconds?
2 min 43 sec

[Greg M]

It's MUCH faster if you take the 2K QT proxy that the camera and REDAlert builds and export that to ProRes.

on my 2.66 Quad Mac Pro
6:1 using FCP and 2K QT proxy exported to ProRes 1080 HQ
44:1 using RedCine

Like Rob said on another thread, the quality using the 2K proxy is high enough for most purposes. I agree. If you need the extra oomph, then off to conform-land. :)

Yes, but being the anal type...I am a freak for the highest quality possible. Prefer to take the long road and enjoy the view.

[Kenn Michael]

Yes, but being the anal type...I am a freak for the highest quality possible. Prefer to take the long road and enjoy the view.

I hear ya!

[Lucas Wilson]

Hey guys,

A couple of really, really important things to keep in mind when rendering:

1) If you're rendering Quicktimes and rescaling, do the rescaling in the Shot part of REDCINE as opposed to setting the resolution in Output. Rescaling via Project and Shot settings in REDCINE is done by the GPU and REDCINE code. Leaving your project at 4K 2:1 (or whatever) and setting a different resolution in output assigns the resize to Quicktime, which is really, really sloooooooow.

2) I'm pretty sure this is in the tutorial videos, but there is the "Full," "Standard," and "Draft" options. Full pulls from the Wavelet at 4K/High. Standard pulls from 2K/High, and Draft pulls from 1K/High.

There is a *huge* gap in rendering between Full and Standard. Do your own tests and decide what is good enough in quality for what you need. If you can at all get away with rendering at Standard, do that. Render times will be much, much better.

3) NVidia drivers on OSX are not great. That is what it is. There are specific problems rendering "Full" with NVidia on OSX. It will be an unbearably slow render. This will get better as Apple improves the drivers (Apple writes their own drivers,) but until they do, this will continue to be an issue and not a whole lot can be done about it.

4) When rendering, set your Viewer resolution at 1/4 Medium. That is just the viewing resolution and does not affect output settings. But, the image is refreshed in the viewer every time a frame renders. If you have Output settings at Draft, and the view at Full/High, it will take a really long time - not because of the render, but because the Viewer is updating every rendered frame with a full 4K/High debayer.

5) Common sense, but close any other apps when rendering. Rendering out of REDCINE is a very CPU and GPU-intensive process. If other programs are open and claiming their own chunk of memory and resources, it will only hurt the render time.

6) When rendering to DPX, TIFF, or other high-bandwidth formats - storage is a big factor. The faster the pipe, the faster the render.

----

Bottom line - rendering is ALL about figuring out where the bottlenecks are and doing what you can to minimize those bottlenecks.

Lucas
------
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

Currently drinking: Full Sail IPA

[Greg M]

A couple of really, really important things to keep in mind when rendering:

1)

If you're rendering Quicktimes and rescaling, do the rescaling in the Shot part of REDCINE as opposed to setting the resolution in Output. Rescaling via Project and Shot settings in REDCINE is done by the GPU and REDCINE code. Leaving your project at 4K 2:1 (or whatever) and setting a different resolution in output assigns the resize to Quicktime, which is really, really sloooooooow.



This seems counter intuitive.

For my render tests I scaled in SHOT to 1080P, and then set the same setting (1080P) in output, as I assumed since I was outputting I needed to tell it what I wanted.

So, how was the resize done in my case?

[Lucas Wilson]

So, how was the resize done in my case?

By REDCINE.

Lucas

[Fergus Meiklejohn]

thanks lucas :-)

[Mike Prevette]

Lucas that should make it's way into the TXT file that ships with Redcine, and be a sticky on here. VERY useful info!

_mike

[Anders Holck]

Isnt there a shortcut to disable viewer updates?
(In Aftereffects and FCP you can press caps-lock to disable screenupdates.)

Would be nice if you cold leave the viewer res at highest resolution and just enable viewer updating when needed.

[Rick Darge]

Yea Lucas, Thanks so much for that useful info ! Very helpful!

[Harry Clark]

I'll say it again; I think that being able to shoot 1080 SCALED from the 4K sensor would be a very desireable feature. One of the coolest things about this camera when it was in development was the scalability; 4K, 2K, 1080, 720 IN CAMERA. That seems to have been dropped now.
For loads of commercials, music videos, and corporate work, intolerably long export times will make my camera a nonstarter with some clients... it's disappointing, but I have trouble with some editors who use Avids and can't get it together with P2 files!!! What do you think these guys will say about the 43 hour export of each day's Red One footage?
I'm sure it will all work out, but it sounds as if people are looking to cut and finish in 1080, and the software-based render of the large camera RAW files is not at the moment an acceptable solution.
Whatever happened to the idea of "flashing" the FPGA into whatever configuration best suited your current project? Now, THAT would be a revolution! :)
Cheers,
Harry

[Jay A. Kelley]

I COMPLETELY agree Harry...
Jay

[R. Gonzales]

Not an "oh, my producer is going to flip if he has to wait an extra 10 minutes to convert footage" situation.


Mr. Kilgore,
maybe it's more that the producer won't pay for the extra time it takes to transcode. But with that being said I agree with your philosophy in principal.

cheers

Method

[R. Gonzales]

I'll say it again; I think that being able to shoot 1080 SCALED from the 4K sensor would be a very desireable feature. One of the coolest things about this camera when it was in development was the scalability; 4K, 2K, 1080, 720 IN CAMERA. That seems to have been dropped now.
For loads of commercials, music videos, and corporate work, intolerably long export times will make my camera a nonstarter with some clients... it's disappointing, but I have trouble with some editors who use Avids and can't get it together with P2 files!!! What do you think these guys will say about the 43 hour export of each day's Red One footage?
I'm sure it will all work out, but it sounds as if people are looking to cut and finish in 1080, and the software-based render of the large camera RAW files is not at the moment an acceptable solution.
Whatever happened to the idea of "flashing" the FPGA into whatever configuration best suited your current project? Now, THAT would be a revolution! :)
Cheers,
Harry

Harry,

Well said, Jim did post a reply to the 1080 issue:

"Firmware updates will be done for 1080P and 720P (not 1080i). They will be Special firmware builds (separate from 4K and 2K) won't be done until sometime in 2008.

Not sure why you would ever want these... but we will do them.

Jim"

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5803&highlight=jannard

Hopefully, 1080 high frame rates scaled from 4k will be in the 2008 firmware build 2.

Method

[Jay A. Kelley]

Well now that we know the render times in REDcine.. We are looking for two options:

1. A massive speed improvement in rendering from 2k to 1080p/i, 720p. or 480
2. Jim's 2nd firmware concept that will allow bypass of render or a different format that will allow REDCine to render in a completely different speed.

Bottom line: The camera is great, and I am NOT asking for "real time" work at 4k.. For that I understand time will be needed.. I'm cool.. But for me, 2k should be a must faster delivery format.

My 2 cents

Jay

[David Battistella]

Rob mentioned this in an earlier post but the rate at which the data gets written is also a huge factor here. You've got to write 2K and 4K files to hard disk and if you are using FW 400 that will be slower than, FW 800, which will be slower than, SATA which will be slower than fiber.

Does anyone have some results when writing to a very fast arry via FIber Channel, SAS, or eSATA. That might have as much to do with this as machine speed and GFX cards.

Windows vs. MAC comparisons will be interesting too if one is building a RED transfer station.

David

[JohnF]

Cripes Guy's!

What did you expect with 4k RAW footage? Of course this will be a slow process compared with HD video (just look at how much bigger a 4k image is compared to 1080). The processing times available to us now compare favourably with getting dailies for a 35mm shoot which is appropriate for such high quality footage.

There will be a solution to those, me included, who require faster processing times for a broadcast 1080 environment. It'll probably consist of a HD-SDI transfer from the camera - or record to a 1080 format deck/computer during the shoot. One would get the benefit of a 35mm DOF+FOV but the working times for 1080 plus having a 4k REDCODE raw digital negative!

I for one have been planning my 4k workflow with at least two computers. One for processing the 4k REDCODE raw files the other for the actual editing process. The most important thing that concerns me is that the computer and the software processing the 4k footage is that it will be stable, not prone to crashing so I can safely leave it to work overnight... I imagine having a computer running only the OS (I'd prefer the stability of Win 2k for that but heh-ho) and REDCINE that's it, no internet connection and a UPS power supply!

I am also aware of the "impatient & technically ignorant producer" scenario and was initially quite worried about it but with a little bit of planning and marketing the camera properley (savings on film stock, processing etc, ultra high quality pictures) I think we can smooth the furrowed brows of producers especially as the business gets used to 4k shooting and workflows. The industry did it before when most exterior TV shoots were done on 16/S16/35mm film.

And remember it is they, the broadcast/film industry, who are asking for high quality pictures. The phrase "good things come to those who wait" comes to mind regarding this issue.

JohnF

[Jannard]

Currently, the fastest way to export REDCODE RAW footage is from RED Alert! REDCINE needs some optimization to catch up in render times.

BTW, the camera now boots in 60 seconds instead of over 90 seconds. We still have a way to go, but we are making progress on all fronts.

Jim

[David Battistella]

Jim,

Thanks for the continued commitment to making an already good products even better.

It inspires confidence.

David

[zak forrest]

love the updates =]

[Steve Sherrick]

Disapointing about the NVidia problem on the mac. So much for getting the MB Pro, although it has worked out for other jobs. Hopefully they take care of that problem eventually.

I see using the camera's HD-SDI ports to a recorder as a possible solution to these long render times. Just need to get a camera to try everything out and see what the quality is like all around. I'm sure all of these things will improve as time goes on and we get more powerful computers. We're living on the bleeding edge and sometimes it hurts.

Steve

[Thomas Mathai]

Well now that we know the render times in REDcine.. We are looking for two options:

1. A massive speed improvement in rendering from 2k to 1080p/i, 720p. or 480
2. Jim's 2nd firmware concept that will allow bypass of render or a different format that will allow REDCine to render in a completely different speed.

Bottom line: The camera is great, and I am NOT asking for "real time" work at 4k.. For that I understand time will be needed.. I'm cool.. But for me, 2k should be a must faster delivery format.

My 2 cents

Jay

Do you plan to deliver in 2k, then 2k what? Or do you mean process to 1080 from 2k.

In the end, it's up to you to figure out how to optimize your own system.

This is why a lot of high end post houses can do fast turnarounds. They put in the bundled Gigbit networks, use Infiniband connected SAN systems, run customized renderfarms, and are open pretty much 24/7.

It seems to make sense to use Macs with FCP for the editing and a bunch of optimized PCs for the Redcine processing from 4k/2k to dpx.