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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Piranha (Linux) & R3D Support

Kyle Mallory

Kyle Mallory

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I decided to start a new thread for this. Any questions about Piranha and REDCODE/R3D, I'd encourage posting here for now.

Just a small update on my progress with native R3D support for Piranha.

Jan 1, 2009: Audio is now functional. Support for ILM/EXR HALF types, RGB (8bit), and SHORT (16bit). Currently, SHORT is recommended for performance reasons. Multi-threaded Multi-frame decoding is now supported. R3D SDK support multi-threading for decoding the current frame. The R3D plugin for Piranha will now additionally decode multiple frames at once when requested by Piranha (this requires A LOT of memory to store multiple 4k frames in the frame buffer). Currently, on my development environment (a dual-core laptop), I am seeing 24fps from 4k media at 1/8 res, and 48fps from 2k media at 1/8 res. I am working together with IFX on the metadata interface, and to improve browsing in the clip-bin (this is requiring feature enhancements to Piranha directly). Next on my list is the UI/interface for changing metadata.

Jan 11, 2009: Added "One-Light" plugin for applying user-specified Image Processing Settings via the RED SDK. It is important to clarify, as there are many plugins that support various color correction techniques, but all are applied AFTER the frame is decoded and debayered, using Piranha or other external techniques. The One-Light essentially overrides the R3D metadata and 'develops' the R3D footage according to the values specified in the plugin, before it enters the video frame enters the Piranha pipeline. Users can still apply Piranha and other 3rd Party color tools further down the chain. Because One-Light is a Piranha VFX plugin is supports all of the standard capabilities of Piranha plugins, including the ability to keyframe values, such as exposure, or white balance. For example, a traveling shot that moves from Tungsten to Daylight, can now be one-lit properly, keyframing the values and letting the REDCODE plugin transition the white balance with the camera move. Additionally, REDCODE One-Light supports Piranha's Effect Sharing. This allows a one-light to be done on all clips in a file by sharing a single One-Light instance across all R3D clips. Changing white balance values in one clip can affect all others.

There are a few significant bugs to iron out, but I hope to have some screen casts showing the plugin functionality with a week or two (nevermind the week-long trip to DC on Wednesday). Around the same time, I hope to have a beta product available to people interested in evaluating it.

Feb 3, 2009: Mostly fine-tuning some stuff, improving memory footprint, and optimizations. The plugin is pretty stable, and usable, but it does exhibit some quirks that will hopefully be addressed in the near future. Development has slowed some, in part because I'm using it, and in part because of other distractions. As promised, below is the first of a series of screencasts. These are very rough, but prove the concept. I am looking for a very high-end machine to benchmark and further optimize development on. I'm hitting the top-end of my workstation's capabilities (4-year-old hardware). If you would are interested, and have a spare octa-core laying around somewhere with a nice NVIDIA card, and want to let me borrow it for a 6-8 weeks, that would be swell.

Screencasts:
http://www.vimeo.com/3074461
 
I got the RED SDK some days ago, but I have not had time to play with it.
Just a basic question. Is it possible to just convert/debayer a R3D file/frame with just the REDLINE tool? ...or do I need tons of extra libs?

..and how would this command look like?
>redline -? -?
 
It's a very good news the r3d support for piranha. Is the plugins avaible to purchase? The multithreading would optimise to work on quad CPU, and/or for next generation of 6 CPU?
 
Mat,

The plugin is still in development, but is suitable for limited testing. There is still a lot of work to be done.

In testing on my dual processor, dual core system, all 4 cores sit at around 80% utilization. I hope to test on an 8 or even 16-core workstation at some point, but I don't know anyone that has one, so until someone lends me one, or I can find the money to build one, I can't really tell you how much it will optimize-- but in theory, yes it should.
 
Hi kyle,

Very good news one more time. I just got a phone with Tom. I'll test pirahna in high-end VFX work in the next mounth. Here is the link to our production compagny www.frenchcancan.ca

we have a smoke system here and I will compare the two system. Exiting time...

Mathieu
 
Just wanted to update... Not much news, other than "its working". I have been putting it through a good solid test, as I have been refinishing an old short that was originally cut on FCP via proxies, on Piranha with the original R3D files. Performance is still a concern. There are also some audio issues, particularly with more than 2 channels enabled in the camera, but otherwise, the plugin is performing solidly.
 
Kyle Mallory said:
Updated status, and linked the first of the screencasts.
Click to expand...

Hi kyle

I'm check some stuff with the SDK on my side. How many CPU are in your system actually? how loaded is their activity? Because having more CPU doesn't mean the sdk will be abble to use them...
 
Certainly would like to see it in action. From what I've heard this seems a very promissing tool for finishing red footage, even in stereo which , according to my source seems to outperform some other systems, but I guess we'll have to see some real evidence for this.
 
Costs/OS?

Costs/OS?

Which Linux will it run under? i.e. will it run under Ubuntu?

What does it cost for a licence to run it on a PC to finish 4K with all features?

What does it cost for a 20 computer licence, and will it distribute the work over many PCs for greater speed?

How long does it take to CC a 4K frame load+CC+save time on a single core CPU with a single harddrive?
 
Mat@imageWork said:
Hi kyle

I'm check some stuff with the SDK on my side. How many CPU are in your system actually? how loaded is their activity? Because having more CPU doesn't mean the sdk will be abble to use them...
Click to expand...

Mat,

My understanding is the SDK is multithread safe, and currently distributes the encoding over multiple threads). That said the plugin will, under certain circumstances kick off multiple threads for decoding complete frames (decoding 3 or 4 frames simultaneously). In my experience with the SDK, on my workstation, a Dual Duo-Core Xeon, the CPU load is evenly distributed amoung all 4 cores. So, in the off chance that the SDK doesn't support multiple CPUs, the plugin itself will, and the SDK has proven very safe under multithreading.

In short, if you have multiple CPUs, the plugin should take full advantage of all of them. Again, my hardware is old, and I'd love to confirm this on a modern 8-core (or higher) machine, but this is all a hobby/non-paying gig for me, so its hard to justify a $10k machine for "testing".

Kyle
 
sven said:
Certainly would like to see it in action. From what I've heard this seems a very promissing tool for finishing red footage, even in stereo which , according to my source seems to outperform some other systems, but I guess we'll have to see some real evidence for this.
Click to expand...

Sven,

For my own work, the reason why I opted to code the plugin in the first place, it is proving to be a very nice toolset for RED. If you want to give it a try, you should call Tom at IFX, and arrange a demo. You can get his number from the IFX website (www.ifx.com). Aside from the relationship I've developed with them through the use of their software, I have no affiliation with IFX.

Kyle
 
Dan Hudgins said:
Which Linux will it run under? i.e. will it run under Ubuntu?

What does it cost for a licence to run it on a PC to finish 4K with all features?

What does it cost for a 20 computer licence, and will it distribute the work over many PCs for greater speed?

How long does it take to CC a 4K frame load+CC+save time on a single core CPU with a single harddrive?
Click to expand...

Dan,

It does run on Ubuntu (I run it on Ubuntu, without incident), though IFX recommends Fedora. You will have to call IFX for pricing. I believe it will distribute over multiple PCs, but I've never used it that way personally. CC is done in real-time through GPU acceleration. Of course, it depends on the amount of CC you are doing (how many operations, layers, etc), but it is fair to say that 95% of the time a single frame takes to go through your flow of load+CC+save, is spent actually decoding the R3D frame... Disk speed is negligible (30-40MB/s), but CPU is intense due to the decoding and debayer.

Kyle
 
Kyle Mallory said:
Mat,

My understanding is the SDK is multithread safe, and currently distributes the encoding over multiple threads). That said the plugin will, under certain circumstances kick off multiple threads for decoding complete frames (decoding 3 or 4 frames simultaneously). In my experience with the SDK, on my workstation, a Dual Duo-Core Xeon, the CPU load is evenly distributed amoung all 4 cores. So, in the off chance that the SDK doesn't support multiple CPUs, the plugin itself will, and the SDK has proven very safe under multithreading.

In short, if you have multiple CPUs, the plugin should take full advantage of all of them. Again, my hardware is old, and I'd love to confirm this on a modern 8-core (or higher) machine, but this is all a hobby/non-paying gig for me, so its hard to justify a $10k machine for "testing".

Kyle
Click to expand...

Ok to our experience with sdk himself on win xp32, recompile to be used in command line, sdk does not scale up to 2 cores. So we develope an mulithread version to act like a render farm and scale up 8 cores. I can't talk sdk under linux, but try to recompile the sdk alone and monitor the cpu activity. if one thread of sdk gives you more than 100% on 2 cores, then I assume linux sdk is different...

so far we have locked our test to scale up to 85% on 8 cores i7. Since the rest of the apz is 100% gpu, we are given a buffer of 15%.

I will glad to look at your linux sdk test, if you have a chance.

Good work BTW, I have maid some test wtih pirahna, it is good and powerfull, but UI design would need the help of a online editor to reshape it, like curve editor. Piranha needs a good user's guide :)
 
Mat@imageWork said:
If one thread of sdk gives you more than 100% on 2 cores, then I assume linux sdk is different...
Click to expand...

I'll give this a try, but in Linux you will very rarely (under normal circumstances) see a 100% CPU load, in part because of how Linux handles multithreading. Again, in my testing so far, Piranha processing is utilising upwards of 75% of the total CPU time, evenly distributed across all 4 cores, with perhaps 5% of that actually dedicated to Piranha.

Mat@imageWork said:
so far we have locked our test to scale up to 85% on 8 cores i7. Since the rest of the apz is 100% gpu, we are given a buffer of 15%.

I will glad to look at your linux sdk test, if you have a chance.

Good work BTW, I have maid some test wtih pirahna, it is good and powerfull, but UI design would need the help of a online editor to reshape it, like curve editor. Piranha needs a good user's guide :)
Click to expand...

Thanks,

I know Tom has been busy working on revising the manual lately, so hopefully that will address some of your documentation needs.

Kyle
 
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