[Eric Lalicata]

Thank you Sascha, Juan and Matthew. I appreciate your advice.

Sascha, I will try that process as soon as this project is over.

Juan, sorry about the incomplete info regarding the system specs. I followed the Blackmagic recommended installation configuration guide when we built the system. The specs are:

MacPro 5,1 12 core
12 GB RAM
Lion 10.7.2
ATI Raedon HD 5770 for GUI in Slot 1
Cubix Expander PCI card in Slot 2
Decklink 3d in Slot 3
eSata HBA in Slot 4

In Cubix 4:
GTX 470 in Slot 1
Red Rocket in Slot 2
GTX 470 in Slot 3
(following the Configuration Guide Recommendations)

To move the Red Rocket Card into the MacPro, I would have to move one of the others to the Cubix. Not sure which to try. What do you think?

I have no problem getting a GTX580 3GB card if that is what it would take to make this work. I have read on this forums that these cards do not need EFI flashing to work, but that flashing may increase performance. I see that MacVidCards has a couple for sale. I’m just wondering if the Cubix has enough power for it.

Matthew, you suggest that the Red Rocket card may be the problem. It was in between two GTX 470s so it was probably a little warm. If I can figure out which card to swap out of the tower, that may be the solution. Or maybe just moving it further away from the GPUs in the expander may help. Can you explain a bit what you mean by the “software debayer” being of better quality? Can we tell Resolve to not render with the Rocket Card? How?

Thanks for all your help, guys. I really appreciate it. I’ve been lurking this forum and reading your posts for about a year now. I have learned so much in that time. Thanks.

Eric Lalicata
Owner
Anarchy Post
1811 Victory Blvd
Glendale, CA 91201
818-334-3300

[Eric Lalicata]

Thank you. But I am not doing 4k renders. I am doing a 1920×1080 output from a half res premium decode of the r3d files. If the system can play 4.5k, at full res premium, while scaling the image to 1080 in real time (24fr/sec) while applying color correction, why can’t it render without glitches?

Anyone else have any ideas?

Eric Lalicata
Owner
Anarchy Post
1811 Victory Blvd
Glendale, CA 91201
818-334-3300

[Eric Lalicata]

Thanks for the replies. Each GTX has 1280 MB.

I’m not sure what you mean by the “cheaper way”.

Granted, I am quickly trying to learn as much about this as I can, so I am no expert here. But it would seem to me, that the GPUs are more for nodes and realtime grading, while rendering is more of a cpu, red rocket card and drive speed function.

So if the system is giving me realtime playback of 4.5k r3d at full res, premium with zooms and grading nodes, why would the GPU’s not be sufficient for rendering when we have selected half res premium and 1920×1080?

I moved the project to a render computer that did not have a red rocket card, nor any GPUs other than the display card, and it rendered out the reel just fine, only much slower (4x slower).

I guess I’m confused why the GPUs would cause glitches at all on render. Why wouldn’t resolve just render slower if it was being over taxed?

Thanks again.

Eric Lalicata
Owner
Anarchy Post
1811 Victory Blvd
Glendale, CA 91201
818-334-3300

[Eric Lalicata]

Thanks to BM email support, it appears that this problem is brought on by having multiple playheads active in the project. Toggling the source and VTR boxes brought the window and color picker back to life.

Thanks for the help.

Eric Lalicata
Owner
Anarchy Post
1811 Victory Blvd
Glendale, CA 91201
818-334-3300

[Eric Lalicata]

I have sent you the project file you requested.

I fixed the system permissions last night as well, and today, the project opened up stuck again. Opening a previous project, enabling a power window, closing that project and then opening the main project “unstuck” the mouse control.

Thanks for your assistance.

Eric Lalicata
Re-Recording Mixer
Supervising Sound Editor
Owner
Anarchy Post
1811 Victory Blvd
Glendale, CA 91201
818-334-3300

[Eric Lalicata]

Thanks guys for the responses. So any thoughts on how I can get these two departments to work out a practical workflow?

Forgive me, as I am not a video pro, I just know enough to be dangerous. Like I said, I’m the sound guy trying to work all this out.

Michael, good to know that the ALE settings over ride the defaults. This makes me think that we need to ask the telecine department to check their settings for the picture editorial departments capture workflow.

However, Gary, you say that the Blackmagic Decklink card may not be doing the 29.97 to 23.98 conversion correctly? So is this workflow even the correct thing for them to be doing? I do not notice and weird frame duplicates or studdering effects in these videos. How should they be doing it based on the video lineage I outlined in my original post?

I know they are cutting at 23.98 because they say the online house requested it as it is easier for them to recapture the HDCAMSR 23.98 tapes using a copy of the FCP project. I always thought that one would capture DVCAM 29.97 tapes at 29.97 and use the reverse telecine option in cinema tools to derive your 23.98 clips that then could be edited on a 23.98 timeline. However, what they are doing is taking the CT generated batch capture list and “control clicking” on it to do a “batch capture at 23.98”. Is this the same thing? What I mean is, is FCP doing the frame removal on capture and the Blackmagic card is just capturing 29.97fps? If so, is this an acceptable procedure to get a 23.98 sequence from 29.97 dvcam tapes?

Thanks again for your assistance. If anyone is interested, I know the production company is prepared to pay an “expert” for a week if they would come in and help straighten all this out.

Eric Lalicata
Re-Recording Mixer
Supervising Sound Editor
Owner
Anarchy Post
1811 Victory Blvd
Glendale, CA 91201
818-334-3300