Sonnet Expansion Box for my macbookpro?

[Nigel_Heng]

Hi guys I have a bit of a problem and was just hoping that someone could help me out.

I have a short film that I've been working on that was shot 4K on the RED mx.
Its a sci-fi film (24mins) that has heavy CGI elements (CG head replacement on lead character's head throughout the whole film, composted matte paintings, bg replacement etc)

Now here's the problem.
For some reason (that still escapes me till this day) I thought I could finish this film on my mid 2010 macBOOK pro

This is my current situation:

I have 4K r3d files sitting within a 2K timeline (For creative reasons, a lot of the shots were re cropped)
The Alpha's from the compositor will be arriving soon and I have to find a way to slap on roughly 3 layers of 2K Alphas on top of my timeline
before finding the best way of throwing this entire sequence with Alphas to my colorist to finish in apple color. All. On. My. Laptop.

(btw, since i'm at this point, anyone have any suggestions as to what format the compositor should export his alphas in? He's never worked with such high fidelity formats before, we're kinda both scratching our heads right now)

Question:

would a sonnet expansion box with the relevant PCI/red rocket card/Raid drives help my situation out at all?
If so, what kind stuff should I cram into my sonnet expansion box in order to get myself out of this mess I'm in?

If the answer is no, then I guess I gotta consider forking out $$$ to building a system that can handle my dream r3d workflow which is Premiere--->XML----> DaVinci resolve

(btw, how much $$$ would that roughly take?)

my current specs. (please don't laugh, I'm feeling really silly just typing this out right now.)
Macbook Pro
15 inch Mid 2010

2.53 Intel Core i5
4GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce GT 330 256mb
OS X Lion

FCP7

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Well, there's nothing wrong with your current system, but we have to be realistic here. Beyond editing, it's really not up to the task of finishing out at those resolutions. Sure, you can do it, but you might go insane waiting on your hardware if you're trying to do the comps at 4K.

Being a 15" 2010 model, the biggest issue you have is that there is no way to attach any high-bandwidth components, there is no ExpressCard slot on this model, it was replaced with an SD card reader.

Working in Resolve at 2K+ resolution on your system is going to be a near impossibility. You will have to upgrade your RAM, the maximum in this system is 8GB, which is still a bit small for a 2K Resolve workflow. You also don't have the benefit of secondary graphics or a proper CUDA card to accelerate correction nodes in Resolve. Back to the connectivity issue I mentioned, there is no way to attach an expansion box with a RED Rocket or anything else that can speed up your process.

So, on that note, you will probably have to upgrade to a new system to accomplish what you want. There are ways to make it work with the system you have, if you have enough patience and persistence. I have finished a couple short films, TVC's and assorted corporate pieces myself on a less powerful Macbook Pro, but it was a different model with better connectivity. One of your biggest bottlenecks is going to be your disk performance and you unfortunately don't have an ExpressCard slot where you could add a decently fast eSATA solution. I also wasn't pushing it through Resolve or Apple Color on that system. I don't mind a little self-inflicted pain every now and then, and on those it was painful enough to do some basic corrections and some title work, simple comps, etc.. within After Effects. Mostly CS4 at the time on the system I'm speaking of. Working on 2011 and newer 2012 retina MBP's now, for both the 16GB RAM is barely adequate if we're working with 4K+ footage from Scarlet or Epic. We can at least keep the storage bandwidth up to snuff with Thunderbolt and add other peripherals where we can via an expansion box.

Not sure how you would want to proceed from here, but about all you can do for your current system is to double the RAM.

As for the compositor and which format to give you the alphas for compositing, 2K isn't much different than 1080p, we're only talking an additional 128 horizontal pixels. Lots of formats are acceptable, a lot depends on what you want to work with. DPX are pretty standard, but so are ProRes HQ clips, EXR frames, TIFF frames, even PNG frames are used at times for this sort of thing. I would recommend a format that is going to introduce the least amount of visible compression artifacts. DPX, TIFF, PNG...