RED Rocket update...

[Andrew T Foster]

Yes, the Rocket requires a power feed cable.

The Y-cable looks like an option, but I wonder if the Mac Pro power supply will be overloaded with a 4870 or other high power consuming video card plus a Red Rocket.

It's a good question, but I can only assume RED has tested the RED Rocket on a Mac Pro with a 3870, 8800, 4870 or GTX285. After all how would they be able to sell it? They must have an internal solution (such as a y cable) as well.

Best,

ATF

[Toby Risk]

The Red Rocket looks like a very nice addition to the RED workflow, but I wonder if it is wrongly positioned for the general post-production workflow, and there is still a gap to be filled.

It seems like it's best use would be for screening 4K dailies, archiving rushes to HDCAM SR and creating offline rushes.

For colour grading it obviously alleviates the pressure on the GPU to do the debayering, but as I assume the GPU/CPU still has to handle the grading, masking, tracking and other computations, the Red Rocket's DVI, SDI outputs become redundant. The monitoring outputs would have to be taken from the existing, AJA, BMD, Nvidia, ATI outputs already present in the system.

Is there any chance of a Rocket Lite ithat is purely a debayer and does not have any outputs for around 2K US.

Cheers
Toby

[Toby Risk]

so will the redrocket make color a realtime app for 4k material? playback? rendering/export time? can anyone (particularly from red) confirm this?

If you look at the Color DPX workflow for 4K. You need a RAID capable of around 800MB/s to 1.2GB/s to play RT 4K depending on your 4K image height.

Think of the Red Rocket in terms of a 1.2GB/s RAID that can deliver 4K files to Color in RT but it only requires a 50MB/s RAID

The bottleneck then happens in the processing of the individual machine. You will need a whopping great GPU to process all those pixels with primary and secondary grades, geometry and tracking info to get anywhere near RT grading.

I haven't tried the new Nvidia 4800 but plan to get it. I am guessing it will come close to rendering RT the 4k files, with at least a primary grade attached.

And of course Color can only output 2K at the moment.

Cheers
Toby

[Justin Anderson]

The Red Rocket looks like a very nice addition to the RED workflow, but I wonder if it is wrongly positioned for the general post-production workflow, and there is still a gap to be filled.

It seems like it's best use would be for screening 4K dailies, archiving rushes to HDCAM SR and creating offline rushes.

For colour grading it obviously alleviates the pressure on the GPU to do the debayering, but as I assume the GPU/CPU still has to handle the grading, masking, tracking and other computations, the Red Rocket's DVI, SDI outputs become redundant. The monitoring outputs would have to be taken from the existing, AJA, BMD, Nvidia, ATI outputs already present in the system.

Is there any chance of a Rocket Lite ithat is purely a debayer and does not have any outputs for around 2K US.

Cheers
Toby

Hm...

Does this make sense? I want to say yes, but my tech knowledge is limited...

[Justin Anderson]

...but as I assume the GPU/CPU still has to handle the grading, masking, tracking and other computations, the Red Rocket's DVI, SDI outputs become redundant. The monitoring outputs would have to be taken from the existing, AJA, BMD, Nvidia, ATI outputs already present in the system.

Is there any chance of a Rocket Lite that is purely a debayer and does not have any outputs for around 2K US.

Cheers
Toby

Well the SDI comes from the breakout box, so no problem there.
I wonder how much the price could be lowered by moving the DVI connections to the breakout box as well. Is that what you're getting at?

My guess would be probably not by much. I'm sure most of that $5K is going towards the de-bayering processors and other speed-ups.

[Toby Risk]

I wonder how much the price could be lowered by moving the DVI connections to the breakout box as well. Is that what you're getting at?

Not exactly no. Pure speculation on my part (as all others) but the way I see it, unless the Rocket can do the additional task of processing grades and the like from the grading software, as well as the debayer, the outputs from the Rocket will only display the debayered/decompressed images before any Colour correcting software treats the image. Therefore you still need the other outputs mentioned previously to view your grade. This leads me to think that there is a market for a hardware accelerator card only with no outputs. I'd buy one for 2K, but I cannot justify almost 5k for my current workflow.

Maybe not a Rocket Lite, how about a 'Red Jet'

Deanan can you confirm that this is the case as far as the workflow goes please.

[Peter Moretti]

... This leads me to think that there is a market for a hardware accelerator card only with no outputs. I'd buy one for 2K, but I cannot justify almost 5k for my current workflow.

Maybe not a Rocket Lite, how about a 'Red Jet'
...

How about the Red Balloon?

[Craig Schober]

If you look at the Color DPX workflow for 4K. You need a RAID capable of around 800MB/s to 1.2GB/s to play RT 4K depending on your 4K image height.

Think of the Red Rocket in terms of a 1.2GB/s RAID that can deliver 4K files to Color in RT but it only requires a 50MB/s RAID

The bottleneck then happens in the processing of the individual machine. You will need a whopping great GPU to process all those pixels with primary and secondary grades, geometry and tracking info to get anywhere near RT grading.

thanks for the explanation toby. i'm still not sure how red rocket would fit into my workflow though. i never work with dpx and never need to output more than 2k. if i'm just pushing around native redcode and exporting out to prores, i shouldn't need a crazy fast raid, right? i think i need to upgrade beyond my stock ati card before adding red rocket...baby steps.

[Andrew Madu]

As both Abobe Premiere/AE CS4 + RED installer 1.7 operate under Vista 64, I take it there will be Vista 64bit driver support for the RED Rocket, correct?

[Jarred Land]

hello