Did NVIDIA save the 8K workflow? According to RED Digital Cinema, the answer is YES. This joint venture is like a business love story. NVIDIA’s GPUs allow the powerful way to work with RED’s 8K for PC users. Would Apple join the party?

If you are following NVIDIA blog REDuser forum, you already know that there is a strong synergy between those companies. NVIDIA, the company which designs graphics processing units (GPUs) for the gaming and professional markets, has partnered with Red in the goal of making 8K editing faster and smoother.

NVIDIA saves 8K editing

Generally speaking, you have two options to edit 8K:

Purchase (or custom-built) an ultra expensive PC that armed with a massive CPU. Invest in a powerful GPU.

Moving more resources to the GPU will liberate CPU resources that constitute a bottleneck in the workflow process

To make the story short, the second option is going to be cheaper and smarter. Why? Because the CPU is supposed to handle only the encoding, and the GPU, which mainly responsible for the image processing, supposed to handle the decompression as well. It means that moving more resources to the GPU will liberate CPU resources that constitute a bottleneck in the workflow process.

REDCODE RAW compression: 8K effortless

R3D files are heavily compressed, but it’s not compression like 264 but a much more advanced method. What’s so beautiful (literally speaking) about the REDCODE, is the sophisticated compression. It’s a RAW but smartly compressed so you can get stunning images combined with low data rates. Uncompressed 24 fps 8K RAW is about 5000 MB/s (300 GB/m) which is an enormous amount of data, compared to a REDCODE compression which is about 160 MB/s (9.5 GB/m) (in 8:1 compression rate). However, due to the compression, it requires a proper CPU power in order to unpack those files.

Uncompressed 24 fps 8K RAW is about 5000 MB/s (300 GB/m) which is an enormous amount of data, compared to a REDCODE compression which is about 160 MB/s (9.5 GB/m) (in 8:1 compression rate)

Shooting is easy. Editing is the challenge

Shooting high resolution was always easy for RED. However, when inserting the RED MINI-MAG into a computer, the heavy compressed R3Ds were tough to edit. Side effects like dropping frames, long timeline buffering and more were common. Getting real-time playback was always a struggle which resulted on impaired workflow.

We made a stupid thing called the RED ROCKET, which… I’m sorry… a lot of you bought them Jarred Land

RED tried to solve that by making the “stupid RED ROCKET” (As stated by Jarred Land – watch the video at the end of the article). RED’s engineers’ calculation showed that the main bottleneck was the CPU, so they tried to focus their effort on the GPU phase. RED knew that the right pathway is via improving the GPU.

CPU beyond 100%

Before NVIDIA, the CPU was responsible for the decompression, and the GPU was dedicated for image processing (debayering). When the decompression process relies only on CPU 100% resources it can lead to endless buffering time and slow playback. In that case, even powerful machines struggle to playback the 8K REDCODE. When the decompression process shifts to the GPU, then the CPU is more available for other tasks.

Before: CPU was responsible for decompression and encoding, and GPU for debayering. Now, the decompression moves to the GPU and the CPU needs to handle only encoding tasks. The results are much faster transcoding (3-5 times faster).

NVIDIA: The path to native 8K editing

Of course, there is always the proxy solution. You can edit proxies or lower resolution, but it’s not the same as edit natively. RED wants you to edit a pure 8K, without making proxies and with no compromises on visuality.

Then NVIDIA came in. Seems that NVIDIA was the first GPU company to solve the challenge of the heavily compressed REDCODE RAW playback issues.

NVIDIA allows RAW 8K 24+ frames per second to be played back, edited and color-graded on a system with an average workstation. NVIDIA GPUs are the only solutions capable of playing RED MONSTRO’s 8192×4320 frames at 24 FPS with no pre-caching or proxy generation. The GPU is processing every frame as it needs it, so jumping around the timeline is quick and responsive, and scrubbing is smooth.

NVIDIA GPUs are the only solutions capable of playing RED MONSTRO’s 8192×4320 frames at 24 FPS with no pre-caching or proxy generation.

That’s the reason why Jarred is so pleased. Finally, there is a way to edit that 8K compressed RAW files natively.

What about Apple?

Since NVIDIA is relevant for PC users only. The question remains, what about Apple?

Till now, Apple hasn’t called RED yet. We’ll have to wait and see if there is a chance that the future Mac Pro will be able to do what NVIDIA did to the REDCODE 8K RAW.

Have you got the chance to work with 8K REDCODE RAW in post-production? Let’s know your insights.