Hack Pro for 4K film editing and VFX

[kundica]

Guyyyyys !! ; )
I didn't say I know why it's working, I just say I saw it working...
R3D-4K-HD in a 1080p25 timeline at full rez in Premiere CS6.... and with a laptop !!
Clevo 17" / i7-3920XM 2,9GHz / Nvidia 670M 2Gb / 32Gb RAM.

I'm not sure what you think is working, but what you're seeing isn't a result of the graphics card, it's the processor. Also, playing 4k back at full res in a 1080 timeline(scaled to frame) on a modern processor is nothing special. If you didn't notice, when he dropped a full 4k image in his sequence, it wouldn't play and he had to scale to frame. On my system I can playback 5k in a 1080 timeline at full res if i scale to frame. It taxes the heck out of the cpu, but it'll do it. Which it also did to him at half res when he pulled up the processor window. It's also worth mentioning that when it comes to the playback of RED footage in a CS6 timeline on my system, my GTX 460 gives me the same performance as my 660ti. Where it differs, is when I'm forced to render anything I add to the image.

Look, I'm not trying to tell you that you shouldn't build an 1155 system, but I am here to help educate you how things really work so that you can make the best decision about what you need. If thunderbolt is a deal breaker, then clearly you need to stay clear of 2011. But if building the best system you can to handle 4k footage is your goal, then the more cores you can add the better, unless of course, you can add a Red Rocket. For my needs, thunderbolt is not nearly as important as saving time with transcodes/renders/etc. Perhaps when thunderbolt becomes as common as firewire 800 was as an industry standard with video production, then I'll need to reconsider.

Regarding your question about drives. I use WD Black drives in a raid 0 apple software array, and keep that array backed up to high capacity storage drives. It acts as a media/cache drive so mostly things aren't on it for very long anyway. It's not ideal, but it serves its purpose for now. Hopefully soon, I'll transition my media/cache drive to SSD, perhaps SSD hardware raid 0. I wouldn't run WD Blacks in a hardware array, they weren't designed for it. I'd rather opt for the enterprise drives for that.

 

[Marc_Ridele]

"Kundica" and "Qwerty123", I think there is a misunderstanding between us...
if I'm on this forum, it's because opinions of other persons are important for me,
and I'm really grateful that 2 RED-users who work on hackintosh
reveal me that I will hardly work on quad i7 !!

And about the video, I didn't tried to prove anything about GPU or CPU.
At the beginning, like many, I waited many years the release of a new Mac Pro,
but the time is passing and my budget became very tight...
And when I saw this video I realize that it's possible to work in R3D
with a classic i7, even if I had to do my editing in 1080p.
("Qwerty123" if you look closer to the Premiere bin, you'll see it's 4K-HD footage,
but you're right, we don't know what kind of compression he used)
Smallest possible budget for temporary i7 now, and saving money for a huge XEON later...
and that's also why I need thunderbolt, because I want that each external drive
or output module can be used in the same way with my next workstation.

But, "Kundica", if I buy a Rocket, I'll can use it on this i7, right ?
So in this case, don't you think it will be more logical
to spend 5000$ for a card rather 10000$ for a workstation ?

For now, about the graphic card, you said the GPU won't be used by the R3D playback in Premiere,
(and since I never add effect or color correction directly in Premiere, just cut or fade)
so I can take any lower card than a GTX680, because it will change
absolutely nothing in quality or speed for the playback, or the final rendering, right ?
And about Resolve ? Because, if I remember well, the GPU is used for the rendering....

What I don't understand "Qwerty123" is why an i7-3920XM can playback full rez of 4K-HD in 1080p,
and you can't do the same with your higher CPU... problem of drive speed ?
Or for you it's only possible in 4K but not in 5K ?


QUESTIONS :
About internal HDD, maybe I can take 1x drive for software temp files + 5x Barracuda 3Tb in RAID 0 or 5 with apple software ?
It will give me a temporary storage of almost 70 hours of R3D for working, with at least - I hope - 500Mb/s.
And take an external backup of 2x Deskstar 4Tb in USB3/thunderbolt...
the high speed of the Barracuda and the safety of the Deskstar !

"DBP", I know you was a bit disappointed by those disk, but do you think
(if I can get 9YN166 with CC4H firmware) it will work in RAID 0 or 5 with apple software ?
Or it will be impossible ? Problem with mix between SATA 2 and 3, or Marvel chipset ?
Problem of freeze ? Problem with apple software controller ?
(I can buy a RAID controller card if it's better and not too much expensive,
or buy another drives if there is faster and safer...)

 

[qwerty123]

Keep a good graphics card! Resolve will make good use of it!

I'm also very confused about why I can't get full res playack of 4K (4480x1920) footage in 1080p timeline even scaled to frame if the guy in the video could and Kundica says it's not a big deal! It's very frustrating! I mean, it plays back but there are clearly some lagging that would make it unusable for editing. At 1/2 it's usable....

I'm pretty sure it's not the drive as I'm also using an SSD (a samsung 830 256gb)! Surely, it can't because he's using Windows, right?

 

[Marc_Ridele]

4480x1920.... it's an original 2.35 R3D ??
Wait a minute.... this is a RED1 4.5K footage, am I right ?
Olivier Madar use a Scarlet at 3840x2160, but your frame size
is not really much more than 4K, and your CPU higher than his.
But even if it's the same Mysterium-X sensor shared in those camera,
maybe there is slight change between the compression of a RED1, and new RED DSMC... :/

 

[DBP]

(re the Seagate 3TB drives)

"DBP", I know you was a bit disappointed by those disk, but do you think
(if I can get 9YN166 with CC4H firmware) it will work in RAID 0 or 5 with apple software ?
Or it will be impossible ? Problem with mix between SATA 2 and 3, or Marvel chipset ?
Problem of freeze ? Problem with apple software controller ?
(I can buy a RAID controller card if it's better and not too much expensive,
or buy another drives if there is faster and safer...)

With the CC4H firmware I would even use them behind a hardware RAID controller. Even the version I have should be OK with software RAID, even if it might freeze every now and then.

Whatever drives you get (with hardware or software RAID) I highly recommend initially:

• Connect each of them up to a host SATA port, and fill them up. You could just fill them with files you had lying around. Or `disktester fill-volume` works well. This should get the drive to re-map any initial bad blocks.
• Obviously if you can connect more than one at once you can fill each in parallel.
• If the drives will be on hardware RAID, move them to that controller when done.
• When they've all been filled/initialised, reformat and set them up in RAID.

I try to do this with all new drives, as it can also help detect drives with unacceptable errors rates. And it also gives you an idea of the actual native speed of the drives. disktester even measures the speed across the drive so you can draw pretty graphs if you want.

 

[qwerty123]

4480x1920.... it's an original 2.35 R3D ??
Wait a minute.... this is a RED1 4.5K footage, am I right ?
Olivier Madar use a Scarlet at 3840x2160, but your frame size
is not really much more than 4K, and your CPU higher than his.
But even if it's the same Mysterium-X sensor shared in those camera,
maybe there is slight change between the compression of a RED1, and new RED DSMC... :/

Yes, it's Red1 4.5K footage. I think frame size actually does make some real difference. The 4.5K I think being an additional 600 pixels than the 3K stuff from Olivier. But I dunno! I mean... my system is maxed out playing the 4.5K in premiere 1080p timeline at full rez... after a while it will play smooth but there's some definitely lag there... If you notice on Oliver's machine that his laptop is also maxed out in CPU when playing at full rez. ...I dunno! :-/

 

[kundica]

But, "Kundica", if I buy a Rocket, I'll can use it on this i7, right ?
So in this case, don't you think it will be more logical
to spend 5000$ for a card rather 10000$ for a workstation ?

...so I can take any lower card than a GTX680, because it will change
absolutely nothing in quality or speed for the playback, or the final rendering, right ?
And about Resolve ? Because, if I remember well, the GPU is used for the rendering....

Buying a RED ROCKET is really up to how much work you'll be doing with RED and how much time you'd like to save. It's possible to find used cards for a bit less like 3k or so. I'm not sure why Qwerty is having issues, I can very well be a result of the 4.5k footage where as the guy in the video is at a lower resolution.

While a GTX 680 might not bring great benefit when working with read in CS6, it'll help in Resolve when you start adding grades/power windows, etc. To what extent, I'm not sure.

Apple software raid allows for 0, 1, and JOBD. If you want to run RAID 5, I recommend using a dedicated hardware solution.

 

[kundica]

Yes, it's Red1 4.5K footage. I think frame size actually does make some real difference. The 4.5K I think being an additional 600 pixels than the 3K stuff from Olivier. But I dunno! I mean... my system is maxed out playing the 4.5K in premiere 1080p timeline at full rez... after a while it will play smooth but there's some definitely lag there... If you notice on Oliver's machine that his laptop is also maxed out in CPU when playing at full rez. ...I dunno! :-/

Yeah, 4.5k is quite a bit more resolution. It seems like it's just barely outside of smooth playback for you though.

 

[DBP]

Forgot to mention: with software RAID it doesn't matter if you have the devices spread across different controllers. Obviously if you have SSDs on SATA2 ports that will limit their speed, but apart from that the software RAID function shouldn't care at all. And I'm yet to see an HDD which can go faster than SATA2.

 

[benbumben]

4480x1920.... it's an original 2.35 R3D ??
Wait a minute.... this is a RED1 4.5K footage, am I right ?
Olivier Madar use a Scarlet at 3840x2160, but your frame size
is not really much more than 4K, and your CPU higher than his.
But even if it's the same Mysterium-X sensor shared in those camera,
maybe there is slight change between the compression of a RED1, and new RED DSMC... :/

hey marc,
i did a bit of stuff with the red epic and edited it on my hackitosh natively in premiere cs6. i have a i7 2600k and a gtx 580. i can work on it quite ok (not really punchy but it rolls) when i set the resolution in premiere to 1/4. it´s makes no difference to edit in a 5k timeline or a full hd timeline but it´s not possible to to choose 1/2 or full res for playback cause it will stuck then(cpu explodes). the bottle neck of my system is not the gpu or the harddrive. it´s the cpu. premiere can only use 15% maybe of the gpu and the rest is done by the cpu. that means when i hit play the cpu is up tu 99% usage and the gpu is nearly not used. with other format it´s different but i guess maybe it´s the problem that normal cpus cannot handle 5k. i edited on a normal hdd, a seagate barracuda (no raid but more than 200mbyte/s) and the drive is absolut ok for 5k with 8:1 compression (i never saw any differences with less compression, quality wise). i also edited 5k with a raid (internal 2 x 7200rpm) and it´s no difference---->bottleneck cpu. also while exporting it take reaaaaly long and gpu is not used at all. it´s like 1 min takes one hour (maybe a bit less but it feels as long)...
so i would say. get a fast cpu and maybe overclock it and you will have a bit of headroom while working. i7 3770k is ok but it´s really not too much.