RED ROCKET - Now That's FAST!

Check out this video of the RED ROCKET in action as it transcodes 20 seconds worth of 4k frames in just 19 seconds! (In other words, faster than real time.)

Red Rocket from Ted Schilowitz on Vimeo.

The ROCKET is RED's new accelerator board for decoding, transcoding, de-Bayering and playback of files shot with the RED ONE camera. What is "de-Bayering?" I'm glad you asked!

The simple explanation is that digital video camcorders and digital cinema cameras such as the RED ONE employ a Bayer filter to optimize image capture and compression and emulate the way the human eye perceives chrominance and luminance. The result is that images shot using this filtering process end up with twice as many green pixels as blue or red pixels, and a "de-Bayer" process is required to ensure proper color balance on playback. What's noteworthy about the RED ROCKET is that it does all of that (and more) at breakneck speeds, for not a lot of money. This bodes well for 4K-capable desktop editing machines at even high performance benchmarks with lower costs in the near future.