Where does Red Rocket help?

[Andy Roberts]

I hate to ask a newbie question, but where in the workflow does Red Rocket really help?

If I'm working in Premiere with a CUDA graphics card, what is Red Rocket adding and what is the CUDA card doing?

Does having a lightening fast computer make the Rocket less mandatory?

And what effect does it have if I'm only viewing footage on my computer screen and not to an SDI monitor?

I know this is basic, so feel free to point me to where something like this has been answered elsewhere.

It would be great to see some sort of performance chart or something.

-a

[Fred Beahm]

Rocket helps with transcodes for offline editing. If you're working in premiere then this is no concern to you. However, if you want to do one-lights on set having a Rocket hooked up to a color calibrated monitor like a Flanders Scientific via SDI will give you great monitoring and you'll be able to play back in real-time. A Rocket really depends on your workflow. More and more people are switching to premiere so that can edit natively. It also depends what you're doing after picture-lock, if you're grading in Resolve or whatever. I hope some of this helped.

[Andy Roberts]

Fred, Thanks a ton for the reply.

I don't anticipate doing on set monitoring.
I only plan on using Premiere. For grading, I'll probably just use Speed Grade once it become part of CS6 Production Premium (if indeed it does).

So I might not need the Rocket if that is my workflow?

-a

[Paul Sage]

The Redrocket takes over the workload of de-bayering. So instead of your computers CPU doing it, along with multiple other things at the same time, the redrocket does it. So your playback performance will increase and you wont be limited to 1/4 debayer settings for realtime playback.

[Fred Beahm]

THAT ^ is only in RCX. Premiere doesn't utilize the RR, I believe. I wish RED would make an SDK or have the RR be open-source so more software could leverage it's amazing power. I also can't wait for some kind of Thunderbolt integration with the mag readers...

Andy, I think that your CUDA card and Premiere will be just fine for you.

What are you mostly shooting? 4k? 5k?

What are you delivering? 1080p? 2k?

[Blair S. Paulsen]

The Red Rocket can decompress, debayer and provide monitor output. In order to drive 1080 monitors it presumably must have the ability to scale the image as well.

What I don't know, and would love to get the scoop on, is to what degree you can select which processes the RR handles. I ask, because I shoot a lot of 5K FF on my Epic which is too much data for real time playback on a single Rocket. If I were only asking the RR to do the decompression, then using CPU/GPU resources for debayering, scaling and monitoring, would the RR be able to decompress 5K FF and hand it off to the bus in real time?

Cheers - #19

[D Fuller]

THAT ^ is only in RCX. Premiere doesn't utilize the RR, I believe. I wish RED would make an SDK or have the RR be open-source so more software could leverage it's amazing power. I also can't wait for some kind of Thunderbolt integration with the mag readers...

Andy, I think that your CUDA card and Premiere will be just fine for you.

What are you mostly shooting? 4k? 5k?

What are you delivering? 1080p? 2k?

This is not correct. Both Premiere and After Effects can make use of the Red Rocket. So can Avid and Resolve.
CUDA does not help with the debayer process. In the absence of Red Rocket, that falls to your CPU.

[Fred Beahm]

Thank you for correcting me D. Now, what use can AE use it for? Just output? Or actually rendering? Same with the other programs, is it purely output monitoring or can you actually leverage the render power in the other apps?

[Andy Roberts]

You guys are all being really helpful. Thanks. It does seem like there is a certain amount of clarity that would be helpful about RR and various workflows... I have a Rocket but haven't used it yet. I'm trying to decide whether to sell it and buy a better computer or to keep it and buy a cheaper computer. I'm capturing everything in 5K. Playing back on a decent iMac, I can get 1/8 real time, but no more. Adding Alchemy or grain definitely slows it down. My meager understanding that RR doesn't help with Alchemy and the like.

It would be great if there were performance charts... modern CPU with lots of RAM... playback on Premiere with Mercury playback, comparison would should realtime performance running with and without RR.

-a

[Paul Sage]

Thank you for correcting me D. Now, what use can AE use it for? Just output? Or actually rendering? Same with the other programs, is it purely output monitoring or can you actually leverage the render power in the other apps?

Not just for monitoring out. Your renders are accelerated as well.
This also means that any other processes that would be done by your CPU will be able to move faster, such as creating/wrapping/writing the files that are being rendered (DPX, quicktime, etc....).