Developing a DI unit and post production workflow

[Rossi Rice]

Hey everyone,
I've decided to bite the bullet and finally post something here. I've been educating myself on these boards for about a year now and there is no shortage of information, thanks to all!

In addition I've decided to buy a RED SCARLET and begin my RED experience. Anyway, I have filmed with the RED one before and been an AC on few other RED shoots but now I find myself in a predicament of setting up my own system.
I'm going to try and break down the different sections from camera to post and I would really appreciate it if someone can point out if I have gone wrong somewhere or maybe I'm over-budgeting equipment (maybe some suggestions on cheaper equipment) or just forgetting components.

CAMERA
SCARLET-X PRO COLLECTION
• RED MOTE

COMPUTER FOR EDITING AND VFX
1) From store
HP Z820 Workstation

2) Building my own
CPU
2 x Intel Xeon E5620 Westmere 2.4 GHz. 1 in combo with:
ASUS Z8PE-D12 (ASMB4-IKVM) Dual LGA 1366 SSI EEB
ASUS PIKE 1078 8-port SAS HW RAID card
RAM
2 x Crucial 12GB (3 x 4GB) DDR3
Graphics
PNY VCQ4000-PB Quadro 4000 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 Video Card
Storage
2 x Western Digital VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX 600GB 10K RPM (use RAID 1)
3 x Western Digital RE4 WD1503FYYS 1.5TB 7.2K RPM (RAID 5) Case
PSU
Corsair HX Series CMPSU-850HX 850W ATX80 Plus SILVER Certified

Color Grading
Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve

RED ROCKET >> either here or in the Mobile RED ROCKET system...???

DI and DATA MANAGEMENT STATION - for on set workflow

Here is my issue. I don’t know if I should utilize the Computer Setup for this purpose as well or should I invest and get a self-contained DI suite to ingest the footage and do playback.
I would definitely need the RED ROCKET and I think the RED breakout box here, but what other components would I need?
Maybe something like the - Maxx Digital Mobile Rocket w/ Red Rocket (Black), or HP workstations
The 1 Beyond™ Super Wrangler Full Portable, Rugged 24-Processor Power seems like a good all in one field device but I’m afraid of the price :-/
I know that seems ironic given how much I’m spending so far – but I am really looking for the best solution.

I've been scouring these boards but most solutions I have found are MAC based and I am trying to go the PC route. There haven't been too many PC configurations. HP's workstations are a good alternative as well...Should I just scrap the PC idea and go with everything MAC, since what I've been reading is that RED's setup is kinda MAC oriented?

I'm apologize in advance if any of this is covered somewhere where I missed and I greatly appreciate any help on the matter (even linking me to appropriate threads would be appreciated as well)....

Thanks to all and cheers all around.

[Rossi Rice]

Wow that was an stupidly long post...

Sorry...

[Clay Glendenning]

I do not think this is stupidly long at all. If anything, you are putting the time and effort into research that very few people do. It is tough, there is no perfect answer. I spent a good amount of my time at NAB requesting straightforward answers. I'm in the process of building out a lean and efficient studio.

There are a number of different solutions. With the input of fellow redusers, and the massive amount of research I put in, I came to one definitive conclusion. If you are the only one that knows how everything works, you will be wasting hours of your own time better spent elsewhere. The truth is, outside of these forums, very very few people understand or even want to attempt to deal with RED footage properly.

Right now, I think a lot of people are curious about the best end to end post setup. I pressed anyone at NAB with thunderbolt breakout boxes running to get me every morsel of detail. I'm pretty sure I stalled an nVidia interview because I was grilling them hard about the future.

Intel's booth running Adobe CS6, red raw footage, and daisy chained pci-e breakoutboxes - to monitors - to raids showed quite a bit of promise. The guy running that little portion was really pushing it. I said make this thing crash, and he did. In my opinion it held up well to an intense workflow before really slowing down. An unreleased thunderbolt thinkpad was rocking after effects very nicely.

I had a limited amount of time at NAB, and really want to know what anyone else has as input. I want to hold off a few months, but I really need to crank through tons of footage. Thunderbolt really was not on my radar, now it is, thoughts folks?

[Nick Pasquariello]

I had put Thunderbolt out of my mind, until I saw the last minute of this (the part at the GDrive booth): http://vimeo.com/40672852

Holy crap Thunderbolt could be the answer to everything.:scared:


Aside from that, when it comes to an on-set station, you may find that you buy that whole list of things, and then that you only use half of it. Which half is hard to say, depending on the kinds of jobs you do, the kinds of people you work with, and the kinds of things you prefer. Everything you listed is useful and worth the money to SOMEONE. But I don't know that you will find that you need all of it.

Of course, maybe you will. It's really hard to say.

For my day job, I'm at a studio that is part of a much larger, non-media company. We do the majority of that company's broadcast commercials. Everything I DIT is for the same client: Ourselves. Everything we shoot on Red is the same kind of project: a single-day broadcast commercial shoot.

Which means that the expectations for the kind of data that is provided from our sets is ALWAYS the exact same, since the client is ALWAYS the exact same.

Which means that we have, and have very few issues with, a very small, barebones setup: Mac Pro (2010) with Atto H680 Mini-SAS to eSata card, Red Rocket, single monitor, and we write everything (raw data and Transcodes) to 2TB GDrives (which are overkill). We use R3D Data Manager to copy our data over. I've got a copy of CS 5.5, Da Vinci Resolve Lite, and Final Cut all on the Mac Pro, and keep shortcuts to Terminal, Disk Utility, and a few other doodads on the dock.

For us, that's it. No RAID, no Rack Mount, no Cart, no high-end monitor (though it'd be nice). No AJA or BlackMagic card. I'm sure our DIT setup would get laughed at by some, but for us, it's pared down to exactly what we need, no more, no less.

Well, maybe less. We're about to try rolling in a Teradek Cube, and I'm sure we'll be trying LightIron's TODAILIES App. But these things evolve from needs and wants.

[Marc Wielage]

I'm going to try and break down the different sections from camera to post and I would really appreciate it if someone can point out if I have gone wrong somewhere or maybe I'm over-budgeting equipment (maybe some suggestions on cheaper equipment) or just forgetting components.
I don't see a monitor listed on that set up. Don't short yourself on the importance of seeing a good picture on the set, during editing, and in final color correction.

You may want to hire a consultant to advise you how to best spend the money, particularly for high-speed storage, image output, and delivery. The computers might be the simplest and most straightforward part of it. To me, it's the pipeline that's hard.

BTW: don't forget the need for a control surface for Resolve. And somebody who's experienced enough to know how to create the pictures you want to see. And don't forget sound, either; I assume your projects still need soundtracks and need effects, music, and dialog, along with decent speakers and a good room.

Post production is not simple, cheap, or easy.

[Rossi Rice]

Thanks for all your replies so far...

All are completely correct and I agree wholeheartedly with what you say. Clay and Nick, I hadn't thought about thunderbolt either until you had mentioned it. I will keep up to date on what new hardware is utilizing thunderbolt and rationalize.
I should point out that I'm moving away form shooting film primarily and now settling on getting my own RED. I have used other people's workflows but never really established one of my own....and film dailies and playback for film is different to the RED's setup. The shoots where I am are small and of course, everyone's favourite word, "low budget." Many clients don't even have a field monitor to look in, much less playback. I'm hoping get enough of a small setup to facilitate that - nothing to extravagant.

Oh and Marc, I'm getting the Tangent Devices wave panel kit to go with the Resolve. Yeah the pipeline is the hardest part to take care of it. A good firend of mine is an IT specialist and is helping build up the pipeline as best as we could, but I'm just trying to give him the best, most informed information I can so we don't botch anything. A consultant would be ideal, but where i am in the world, it's not feasible at all (there's alot of things to be considered on site before a consultant can make suggestions).

As for the monitor I have FSI's LM-2340W....it's a great in the field monitor.
For colour correction I may go with the HP dreamcolor LP2480zx.

Nick that's exactly what I looking for , or at least along the lines of people's similar setups - but barebones. Because you're right, it depends on the scale of the shoot, the clients involved, etc etc....and for me since many of my shoots before hardly had playback, and just a signal into a monitor, I wanted to go one step further and provide playback. The HP workstations look like a good idea for a small field setup, don't you think?

Also Nick I was going PC and nearly everything I've read on these message boards or worked on in the field was Mac based...hence some of my confusion when trying to convert the hardware. But thanks though, that gives me a good starting point.

Has anyone used a RED breakout box? Anyone think it's necessary? ---again, clients never even had playback and stuff before, we're super backward here, so anything I do from here is an upgrade.

[Paul S.]

I had put Thunderbolt out of my mind, until I saw the last minute of this (the part at the GDrive booth): http://vimeo.com/40672852

Holy crap Thunderbolt could be the answer to everything.:scared:

I hope thunderbolt gets some traction. Incidentally though, GDrive might take on a new meaning very soon.

[Rossi Rice]

Also it wasn't until Marc said something that it dawned on me what I'm doing...

I was at a lecture a while ago by a few ASC cinematographers and Vilmos Zsigmond was describing how he lit certain scenes and what type of film stock he used, post-processing and so forth. Some know it all, young kid in the crowd kept asking the same question to all the ASC members "What kind of camera did you use?" and they all were pissed at him. Hell, I was pissed too (in retrospect, maybe someone should have taken the mic away from him)...because I know for fact, it's not the camera that makes the picture better: it's the lighting, lenses, film stock, processing, DI, and variables like that. But to ask about what kind of camera was used (and also commenting that he couldn't tell the difference between the Arri D-21 and film didn't help his case either) shows a complete lack of understanding of how the process worked.

...So that long winded story beings me back to my previous point, I get now what I'm doing. I'm asking people, albeit innocently, about their advice on an ideal workflow but the reality is that there are a multitude of variables which are hard to advise without having more information. Anyway, I mean to tread on toes or anything, nor am I a know it all, I am simply just looking to see if I'm making an ill-advised decision or not....not really trying to copy what people are doing.

Thanks for the help.

P.S. about that kid - I know he was an arrogant numbskull because I was speaking with him before and after the lecture and he had an agenda to prove ASC cinematographers wrong about digital vs film. The Arri D-21 was a bad choice to start an argument of that caliber...

[Nick Pasquariello]

There's nothing wrong with asking opinions about workflow. But it's tricky to give an answer when the question is "Hey, I haven't worked with Red much. What's the BEST SETUP I CAN GET?" Because anyone that knows what they're talking about will only be able to say "Well, uh, it depends."

But that's not bad! When I tell everyone about my Scarlet, and all the stuff I have to get in order to make it useable, how it doesn't come with an eye-piece or a monitor. It doesn't come with a place for a battery or a place for media. It doesn't come with a lens or a handle or a way to control it. They always go "...you paid HOW MUCH for a thing that can't shoot?!?!" But they fail to see the beauty of it. For the price of a C300, I get to tailor make a camera that works best FOR ME. I get my preferred way to power it, my preferred way to hold it, my preferred way to control it.

The post workflow is becoming similar. There are some great postulates and "rules" on workflow, but almost everything has an exception.


Also, while I've only worked on Macs for the past few years (since the middle of College, really), that doesn't mean that Windows or Linux are no good, or unusable. Hell, right now, you can get a way cheaper PC that works better than a Mac, since the Macs haven't been updated in so long. That may not be the typical case, but it's certainly the case right this moment. RecCine-X, Premiere, Resolve, and the Atto H680 card are all cross compatible. If you would rather use PC, use PC. With so many common components being cross compatible, you're not shoehorning yourself out of any knowledge bases or resources.

[Clay Glendenning]

With so many common components being cross compatible, you're not shoehorning yourself out of any knowledge bases or resources.

This is very helpful advice if it had not dawned on you. I've been modestly upgrading my company's immediate needs by avoiding any walled gardens. I have a 2008 Mac Pro tower that has been modified or upgraded at least once a month, affordably, and works under win/mac. Right now Mac is the OS myself and those in my company work with, and I have been keeping an eye on an appropriate time for a move to PC. It is a tough call, but I think when CS6 is released I will make that move, and any MacBooks in the field or office should be fine, they are not where we do serious work, and they run windows decently.

Rossi I think you and I are working with similar budgets. I have more capital that I am more than willing to put down on solid products, but the cost vs. future always has me on my heels. Right now, we are looking at new office space. I'm concerned primarily with proper infrastructure and a reliable in house monitoring platform. I would be on board with hiring a consultant, and I think that is great advice. Consultation would need to come highly recommended at a cost appropriate for a small production company. It is hard to place trust in others when it comes down to current and future workflows. That being said, I need to pull these triggers soon.

[Marc Wielage]

For colour correction I may go with the HP dreamcolor LP2480zx.
Note that this is not a great choice when more than two people need to look at the monitor. And it's not very big. Many, many, many facilities in LA and NY are going with the 30-series or 300-series Panasonic plasmas, which can be calibrated to Rec709 (and some other color spaces) with the right measurement gear.

[Carter Cammack]

You're on the right track, I think. I don't cut a lot of RED stuff YET, but for the animation and graphics biz, we normally look at the software we are running first to determine the card we need, and build the workstation around the card, with the I/Os and storage we plan to use. Don't guess on the graphics card. It's at least 75% of the equasion.