Every system has one or more bottlenecks - the factors that limit all other operations or functions and controls the maximum speed things can happen. This is true in every aspect of life, whether we’re talking chemistry, physics, biology, human resources, a film set, or editing and grading footage in post-production.
We’re not going to get into the bottlenecks in film production here since they tend to have a variety of causes and are often unique the type of production you’re working on or the companies or individuals involved.
Instead we want to look at finding bottlenecks in Post-Production, understanding how each one can limit the speed at which you can work, and when it can be simple or inexpensive fixes that can increase the level of productivity.
Broadly speaking, all bottlenecks in post fall into the following categories: storage device speed, storage transfer speeds, peripheral transfer speeds, processing power (CPU and GPU), software architecture, and workflow.
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It’s no secret among those we work with that we love RED. And yet, with all of our camera purchases here at Mystery Box, we’ve never bought our own REDROCKET or REDROCKET-X. On occasion we’ve borrowed a REDROCKET for projects here or there and we regularly discuss whether we should get one or not. But we haven’t. Even after the upgraded REDROCKET-X was released in 2013, we were still on the fence as to whether it would actually accelerate our workflows.
But instead of arguing about what-ifs and maybes, we decided to use a couple of days near the end of last year to really put it to the test. We borrowed a friend’s REDROCKET-X and two full days of testing later, we had our results.
The TL;DR version of our results is that the the value of a REDROCKET-X depends significantly on your workflow. For some it’s definitely worth it, while for others (including us) it’s far less so.
Specifically, you should consider a REDROCKET-X when your workflow demands 1. Real-time or faster R3D decoding and 2. The bottleneck / choking point is the actual decoding process, and not another point in the workflow.
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