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OkiRun

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Oct 25, 2019
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True 4K+ ProRes RAW internally is one camera currently. Others do external or via Atmos.

The majority of people will not use Afterburner immediately, unless it can accelerate other codecs like Blackmagic RAW, Cinema DNG, etc.

Exactly. It's amazing that essentially, you use the Atomos or you don't shoot ProRes - and then what is the point of Afterburner. It's a slave to Atomos. Will there be a wave of new cameras hosting ProRes codec in 2020? In order for Afterburner to make sense as a purchase, there has to be...
 
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bsbeamer

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Wait until NAB 2020. There will likely be more cameras but I’m not sure you’ll like their prices. With the latest shakeups at RED it puts everyone in position to make better deals.

Atomos just bought Timecode Systems, so they may become de facto “standard” for multi cam in some fashion within next year.

Their work with Nikon for ProResRAW via HDMI should make Sony and Panasonic mirrorless compatible at some point. Unsure what Canon has up their sleeve but way too many recent patents to just sit on them for 2+ years. ARRI will support if industry demands it. They already shoot high quality ProRes.
 
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OkiRun

macrumors 65816
Oct 25, 2019
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Wait until NAB 2020. There will likely be more cameras but I’m not sure you’ll like their prices. With the latest shakeups at RED it puts everyone in position to make better deals.

Atomos just bought Timecode Systems, so they may become de facto “standard” for multi cam in some fashion within next year.

Their work with Nikon for ProResRAW via HDMI should make Sony and Panasonic mirrorless compatible at some point. Unsure what Canon has up their sleeve but way too many recent patents to just sit on them for 2+ years. ARRI will support if industry demands it. They already shoot high quality ProRes.

Is one of your points that next year we will see more mid-level cameras (~10k range) compatible with Atomos but also more high-level cameras (~30k to ~45k) that record ProRes internally without the need for an Atomos?
 

chfilm

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Nov 15, 2012
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Do you mind telling us the camera set up you are using to film in ProRes? There seems to be only one camera available at the moment that can do it internally.
Well every Alexa ? Even the red can record Prores Now AFAIK. So that already covers most Professional shoots...
 
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bsbeamer

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If you’re looking at purchasing $45K cameras, you’re the market buying Afterburner regardless if it accelerates your workflow. You also have a team of people and hopefully they’ve consulted post-production specialists along the way. So much more goes into image quality than ProRes/ProResRAW codec or support. ProResRAW is in its infancy, needs time to mature and gain adoption if it’s going to succeed as a standard acquisition format.

Buy the tools that work for your needs and budget. Work within those parameters.
 
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mmomega

macrumors demi-god
Dec 30, 2009
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Just in here stalking this thread as it is just a fun subject for me to read. I am just not in a place where it makes any sense to purchase a new Mac Pro when I have an 18Core iMac Pro V64.
This should carry my workloads still for quite sometime but I am still fascinated in those that will be purchasing these machines.
Carry on fellas, you just have a fan paying attention.
 
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bsbeamer

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Pretty sure Blackmagic and Red will be offering support for it.

For Afterburner? Have you seen that published and in what capacity? All support documents I've seen mention ProRes ONLY.

Have not seen BlackmagicRAW or REDCODE RAW linked to Afterburner at this time. Blackmagic "supporting" with Resolve for ProRes would make sense. Same can be said for Avid and Adobe.

Especially for RED, it would make sense to offer programming/install for R3D compatibility with Afterburner. The card they sell currently has been discontinued with no further support being offered. B&H is one of the few retailers still selling it at nearly $7K:

 
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OkiRun

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For Afterburner? Have you seen that published and in what capacity? All support documents I've seen mention ProRes ONLY.

Have not seen BlackmagicRAW or REDCODE RAW linked to Afterburner at this time. Blackmagic "supporting" with Resolve for ProRes would make sense. Same can be said for Avid and Adobe.

Especially for RED, it would make sense to offer programming/install for R3D compatibility with Afterburner. The card they sell currently has been discontinued with no further support being offered. B&H is one of the few retailers still selling it at nearly $7K:


This link discusses this topic.

 

bsbeamer

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Sep 19, 2012
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This link discusses this topic.


Even that "article" states:
"Three streams ProRes 8K RAW, or 12 streams ProRes 4K RAW"

The mentions for RED are Metal-accelerated versions of R3D, which are GPU-based workflow improvements.

The Afterburner card is for ProRes workflows.
 
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OkiRun

macrumors 65816
Oct 25, 2019
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Even that "article" states:
"Three streams ProRes 8K RAW, or 12 streams ProRes 4K RAW"

The mentions for RED are Metal-accelerated versions of R3D, which are GPU-based workflow improvements.

The Afterburner card is for ProRes workflows.

Yet the Afterburner card is advertised as 'programable'. The 'hints' are there that the ability to use Red Raw with the card is coming, although yes ~ you are quire right ~ it has not been confirmed.
 
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bsbeamer

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"Introducing Apple Afterburner. Blaze through 8K video. Created to transform the workflow for film and video professionals, Afterburner allows you to go straight from camera to timeline and work natively with 4K and even 8K files from the start. No more time-consuming transcoding, storage overhead, or errors during output. Proxy workflows, RIP."

"Afterburner is a hardware accelerator card built with an FPGA, or programmable ASIC. With over a million logic cells, it can process up to 6.3 billion pixels per second and is capable of handling up to three streams of 8K ProRes RAW or 12 streams of 4K ProRes RAW. This means you can free up your cores to enable even more creative effects and processing."

"Up to 3 streams of 8K ProRes RAW video at 30 fps. Up to 12 streams of 4K ProRes RAW video at 30 fps. Up to 16 streams of 4K ProRes 422 video at 30 fps."

That is the information published from Apple.

Their release notes from R3D SDK on 4/23/2019 state:
  • Added Metal accelerated image processing through new REDMetal class:
    • -Use with AsyncDecoder class. Cannot be used with GpuDecoder class
    • -R3DDecoder class not yet supported
RED's quote in the MP7,1 press release states:

“Apple’s new hardware will bring a mind-blowing level of performance to Metal-accelerated, proxy-free R3D workflows in Final Cut Pro X that editors truly have never seen before. We are very excited to bring a Metal-optimized version of R3D in September.” — Jarred Land, president, Red Digital Cinema

RED isn't mentioning Afterburner. RED is mentioning Metal-accelerated workflows on macOS, that's it.

It'd be fantastic if Apple released an SDK for Afterburner for companies like RED to take advantage of, but there is no evidence that is going to happen.

No demos at Adobe MAX using MP7,1 or XDR display today either. Lots of iPad/iOS "stuff" when using Apple products. Tomorrow's agenda is generally more of the creative inspiration session than anything technical, so unlikely to see much there.
 
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deconstruct60

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Mar 10, 2009
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"Introducing Apple Afterburner. Blaze through 8K video. Created to transform the workflow for film and video professionals, Afterburner allows you to go straight from camera to timeline and work natively with 4K and even 8K files from the start. No more time-consuming transcoding, storage overhead, or errors during output. Proxy workflows, RIP."

......
RED's quote in the MP7,1 press release states:

“Apple’s new hardware will bring a mind-blowing level of performance to Metal-accelerated, proxy-free R3D workflows in Final Cut Pro X that editors truly have never seen before. We are very excited to bring a Metal-optimized version of R3D in September.” — Jarred Land, president, Red Digital Cinema

RED isn't mentioning Afterburner. RED is mentioning Metal-accelerated workflows on macOS, that's it.

The both are mentioning proxy-free workflows. Most of the focus of this Afterburner discussion has been on decoded the RAW. It has been vague so far but encoding into ProRes RAW could be something that Afterburner also does well. While I suppose you could label going from one RAW format to another RAW format as some kind of Proxy creation., I think that is a stretch.

Apple has built a ProRes RAW "decompressor" so it wouldn't be hard for them to also do a FPGA accelerated "compressor" also (so good at encoding too). if Apple's compression is better than RED's (space for quality wise) then as long as have place to stuff the metadata it isn't as much a proxy as the same RAW data with a different format.

The source of ProRes RAW isn't required to only as a directly readout from the camera sensor. ( similar to camera RAW to DNG for stills.


It'd be fantastic if Apple released an SDK for Afterburner for companies like RED to take advantage of, but there is no evidence that is going to happen.

May not need a SDK as much as joint licensing project. I doubt Apple is going to come up with a direct way to "program" the FPGA. Otherwise they'd be in the generic FPGA card selling business; which is probably not a goal at all.

The big speed ups will probably come from putting the debayering computation directly into the silicon. Otherwise, if just need a computation engine the GPGPUs already cover this via Metal.
 

vir2l2k

macrumors member
Apr 2, 2019
60
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wait for the benchmarks before u buy into a 4k usd gpu option. for most pros the duo will be overkill. a middle ground like a vega vii would be a better option even for demanding tasks. then again, the mac pro is for the top 0.1% and not for the top 1-5% as it should have been.
 
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