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Playback Resolution

4 REPLIES 4
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Message 1 of 5
Stickboy42
1191 Views, 4 Replies

Playback Resolution

Hey,

So we are having issues with Smoke, and our main one right now is that 5k R3D footage won't play back close to real time (it's around 2fps with no effects applied to a clip). It keeps playing in full resolution, which seems to be the issue, but am I correct in saying you can't change the playback resolution in Smoke 2015 like you can in Premiere?

We have a Red Rocket card on one of the workstations, and that isn't recognized by Smoke at all...the video clips all show with a checkerboard pattern. Our other Smoke workstations don't have red rockets, but are plenty powerful, and still can't playback our footage in real time.

Any help on this issue would be great, as editing is rather impossible when you can't see your footage. Thank you!
4 REPLIES 4
Message 2 of 5
Grant.Kay
in reply to: Stickboy42

Hi,

If you are asking to playback 5K RED in real-time, than the answer is no.

However you can change the debayering options in the MediaHUB prior to importing the media. When you select the R3D file, go to the Format Specific Options Tab.

It will show the options for the selected r3D file.

Change the option from METADATA to DEBAYER. Change the debayer setting to a Quarter.

This will drop the resolution of the R3D file to something that can playback in real-time. This is hardware dependant of course.

You can always change the debayer settings later to 5K if you want to output at full 5K from Smoke.

Hope this helps.

Regards
Grant

Grant Kay
Principal Learning Content Developer

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Official Autodesk Flame Learning Channel
http://www.youtube.com/flamehowtos

The Official Autodesk Smoke Learning Channel
http://www.youtube.com/smokehowtos

Also available as podcasts on iTunes

Follow me on twitter @discreetuk for the latest training updates.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message 3 of 5
Stickboy42
in reply to: Grant.Kay

Hey! Sorry for the slow reply, we had another project to shove out the door before I could go back to Smoke.

 

So I had tried the debayering option before posting this, and it didn't seem to have any affect on playback. It's possible I was doing it wrong, though, because when I would set it to Quarter or lower, it actually shrinks the video within the frame (anchored to the top left, so the video basically shrinks and leaves black bars on the bottom and right portions of the frame). Is this a normal action? I'm worried that any effects I apply to my timeline won't show up in the proper way if I composite them using a partial-frame. Thanks for your reply, Grant! Your tutorials for Smoke 2013 and 2015 have been an amazing resource for learning the program.

Message 4 of 5
Stickboy42
in reply to: Stickboy42

I have a followup questions after trying to change the debayering during the MediaHub import as opposed to changing that through the Format Options on the clip itself:

 

I have a 4800x2700 RED clip, which I imported with a Quarter Resolution debayer. I dropped that clip into a new Sequence in my timeline, dropped an image below it, and did a basic key with Action. Then I go into the Format Options and change the clip debayer from Quarter to Full, and it breaks the key completely. So finally to my question:

 

What's the proper workflow on debayering so I can view my effects and edits in real time, but not have everything break when I set it all back to Full? Thank you!

Message 5 of 5
Grant.Kay
in reply to: Stickboy42

Hi,

 

There are a few questions/issues so I'll explain how I am interpreting what I am reading from your thread.

 

It sounds like to me that you are changing the debayering settings of your media to a quarter however you are still editing the media into a 5K Timeline.  So Smoke is now trying to debayer R3D as well as scale it up to 5K and play that back.   This will not work well.

 

This adds to the reason why you're getting "partial" frames because the resize is defaulting to center-crop.  This means the quarter debayered media is slapped in the middle of a 5K frame in the sequence and that's what you work with.

 

In your last post, you're asking the difference between the mediahub settings and the format settings with respect to debayering.    There is actually no difference because it is affecting the source material in both cases.   Where the big difference comes in is context.  When you import/debayer via the mediahub, you are importing a clip into a folder and telling it what resolution it will be.    When you change the format settings/debayer inside a segment, you are telling the source media what it will be... however it exists in the context of a timeline.   Because of this, the media will be scaled to the resolution of the timeline AFTER it has been debayered.

 

In short you need to be aware of the media resolution as well as the sequence resolution when you undertake working with this type of media.

 

In terms of a recommended workflow to get maxium performance, I have done the following:

 

1. Imported my media into Smoke at a Quarter debayer -- I dont suggest caching if you have lots of media.

2. Conformed the media to the sequence at a quarter debayer resolution.

--- (So my media and my sequence are the same resolution and not additonal resizing is taking place in the sequence - you should be able to get decent performance based on your hardware spec.)

3.  You perform your effects and work to the sequence at Quarter debayer.

 

Once you are ready to go to full resolution, you can do the following:

4. Make a copy of the sequence as a backup (can never have enough backups :))

5. Select the sequence clip and unlink the media from the sequence -- You should now have a sequence with unlinked media

6. Go to the Mediahub and locate your R3D media.

7. Set the debayer settings to whatever you need.

8. Import all the media into a new folder but do not cache the media.

9. Make a complete note of all the resolution settings of the debayered media - resolution, bit-depth, etc.

10. Select your unlinked clip, right-click and choose Reformat.

11. Set the new resolution to exactly the same as the R3D media.

12. Reformat the clip

---  (By doing this, you are scaling all the settings in the sequence to the resolution of the media but without scaling media, just metadata)

13. With the reformated sequence, make sure you select it and open it as a sequence (red icon)

14. Go to the Conform area and you should see all the unlinked events in the event list.

15. Right-click on the folder with all the full debayered media and set as a conform location.

16. If everything lines up, all the events should find a match and you just need to MATCH SELECTED.

--- This operation will reconnect the full debayered media with the sequence at the matching resolution.

 

The final few steps is to take strain of debayering full 5K off the sequence to increase performance as much as possible.

17. Select the all the segments in the relinked sequence

18. Right-click, choose media and consolidate the segments with a few frame handles.

--- (this wont delete any media, it will just make the sequence only look for the media it needs to fill the segments)

19. Select the sequence and cache the source media.

--- (so by consolidating first, you will only cache the media needed by the sequence and not all your footage.  This saves processing time and drive space.)

 

Finally, because you did all your work at quarter debayer, you will probably have to go through each effect/CFX again and verify the finish.  The reason for this is that you did your effects at a low resolution, like the key for example.  However when all the settings and media is scaled up, you might notice things at 5K that you would not have seen at a lower resolution.  So you will have to tweak the effects accordingly.

 

Once you're done, you can export the results 🙂

 

Hope this helps!

 

Regards

Grant

 

 

 


Grant Kay
Principal Learning Content Developer

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Official Autodesk Flame Learning Channel
http://www.youtube.com/flamehowtos

The Official Autodesk Smoke Learning Channel
http://www.youtube.com/smokehowtos

Also available as podcasts on iTunes

Follow me on twitter @discreetuk for the latest training updates.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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