What users say about redBOXX

Michael Cioni Director of Operations and Chief Knowledge Officer at Plaster City Digital Post (Los Angeles) – A first implementation of redBOXX

Michael Cioni is one of the lucky few that have tested one of the redBOXX prototypes. Here are his impressions:
“We are extremely excited by what the redBOXX solution allows us to do. We implemented it immediately and it has been subjected to heavy use since the beginning. It is a one-of-a-kind-machine. It really hits the sweet spot for digital film production. It loves 4K files and handles them at 24 fps without a a problem.

We did a demo at the recent HD EXPO (March 6, 2008 – Beverly Hills) with the redBOXX. It ran dailies from a Mazda commercial for 7 hours straight without ever dropping a frame.
And it does not just do play-back. We were running ASSIMILATE SCRATCH ™ and doing color grading on-the-fly. People watched as the frame would freeze when the operator used the color wheel and were amazed to see the play-back WITH color-grading resume in real-time the moment he released the mouse button.”

Another great feature is the ability to play video shot at 30 or 60 fps and tell the redBOXX to slomo the footage @ 24 fps without ever having to render. What’s great is that the footage can be mixed with 75, 60, 30, or 24 fps material and the redBOXX will play it seamlessly. It’s excellent for commercials. It allows to process to tape in shooting order.

The way we handle the data is that we use RED DRIVE (RAID) ™ to store the footage which we then download to a pool of Firewire ™ drives. A mirror is made on set. We can plug the drive directly into the redBOXX and we have it in full 4:4:4.

Everyone that sees the material is amazed. All realize that they are seeing something they have never seen before. There was a huge line at out booth at HD EXPO.

Plaster City has a track record of investigating cutting edge technology. One area of interest is : “ How to use desktop tools to compete with $200-300K Quantel ® system. Many people are reluctant to make the leap to a mixed environment that includes both desktop technology and large traditional system. We have already proven that desktop systems do measure up.”
redBOXX out-performs any system out there in its class. We have already used it to show data to clients from actual projects. Actually, we are working on a $30M+ feature film with major stars. The director is very aggressive shooting with the RED ONE ™ camera. The redBOXX was able to process clips from film right in front of the client.

The story gets better. The film was 1 ½ week behind schedule . Nobody had seen any footage yet. The editor wanted to do a test to see if it is OK to go to film. On Friday we get a drive with an Academy Awards-class performance on it. ASSIMILATE SCRATCH conforms the scene in 5 seconds. Not an hour later, we have 4K DPX from the redBOXX and are ready to color correct in Pablo ™. The redBOXX proved it can process-out 4K at 10-15 fps with full debayer. Less than ½ a day later, we are ready for a film print. A week before processing RED data was a 48:1 process. BOXX has really completed the puzzle!”

Mark Pederson
Offhollywood Pictures (New York)

Mark Pederson is co-founder of Offhollywood Pictures (New York)
Offhollywood Pictures is well-know for deploying the latest solutions for film and broadcast production and for leveraging the power of new media for film production companies, advertising agencies, networks and independent producers.

OHP was the first production house to receive RED ONE™ cameras. They have already shot two features films with it.

“We know that digital production is the way of the future. We are very aggressive when it comes to making cutting edge technology work for film production. We have proven that it delivers top-notch quality even for projects done on a budget.”

“Before the redBOXX, we could not view 1920 x 1080 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 in real-time at full quality. We only had QuickTime ™ wrappers and no debayering. Now, not only can we review the 4K data from the RED ONE camera at 2K, at 24 fps without ever dropping a frame, but we can also perform color grading on the fly, and add a vignette to boot! Everyone we have shown the redBOXX to was blown away!”

Here are two posts from Mark L. Pederson on the reduser forum
: “... Right now, TODAY, we can grade 4K RED media in 2K realtime on Scratch on a prototype workstation from BOXX. render out 4K DPX or TIFF… Last edited by Offhollywood : 03-07-2008 at 08:03 PM.”

“…we had both (28 and 36) in the system and everything was over 24 fps - even while swinging the color around and even adding a vignette…”

BOXX customer “With A Twist Studio” produces a blowout ad for the worldwide launch of Nissan’s New GT-R without ever filming a real car – and the result is AMAZING!`

Car advertising is changing fast, and With A Twist Studio is leading the charge. Take the cinematic presentation of Nissan’s new muscle car, the GT-R, and you’ll see the best of what creativity and modern FX technology can come up with.

In the two- minute ad, the GT-R powers through a widely varied and hyper-realistic 3D landscape. The viewer can stop the action at certain points of the ad to thoroughly explore the new vehicle from all angles.

All the details fill the scene with atmosphere to put forward power, sexy design and of course, speed without ever using a real car for the cinematic. The virtual landscape and the detailed car model were created by With A Twist Director David Burton and his team of VFX experts.

With A Twist Studio is no stranger to car commercials having done groundbreaking ads for Pontiac, Chevrolet and Buick. “It is groundbreaking to do full-on motion without shooting any locations,” said Burton. “We wanted to showcase some of the incredible features of the GT-R and highlight its ability to perform in a variety of driving conditions—and create an experience that enthusiasts will find very entertaining.”

The revolutionary aspect of the promotional campaign for the GT-R is that the car itself still has not been released for production. So the ad had to be entirely produced from engineering drawings. A good example of “Simultaneous Marketing”, a way to accelerate time-to-market, reduce costs and get into a leadership position.

Some consideration was given to using real footage of the background, but in the end Burton felt it was better to stick to virtual 3D modeled environments. And 3D models allow to present angles that are impossible or very expensive to pull-off using a real car in the world. In the FX route is faster and cheaper.

The GT-R will launch worldwide, so it was desirable for the commercial’s scenes not to be clearly identifiable with any particular location. A virtual environment allowed to control that aspect of the “look”.

With A Twist had five months to produce 2 minutes of full frame animation with a total of 77 shots, complex  VFX such as rain and snow, and a hyper-realistic 3D model of the car that allowed a detailed tour of every aspect of the design. The project required a substantial scaling of  the studio’s rendering capacity. This is where renderBOXX came in.

The car was still being designed while With A Twist was producing the ad. So all changes had to be reflected in the ad in quasi –real time. “Nissan would inform us that some detail had changed so we had to immediately add those changes to our 3D model,” days Modeling Lead, Paul LaFond. “And each change, had to appear in every scene of the ad.”

Particle effects are some of the hardest aspects of any virtual environment. With A Twist VFX experts inspired themselves from real weather effects to create the weather simulation that looked the best in the ad’s virtual setting.

Because everything is created in 3D, the studio’s rendering requirements grew tremendously. With A Twist invested in 20 renderBOXX high-density modules to scale its render farm; that’s a total of 320 cores of rendering power that fits in only 16Us of rack space.

Brandon Bartlett, CG Supervisor. “This project ended up topping 2 ½ terabytes of data. That’s a lot of data to render!”

With A Twist sees the GT-R project as an introduction to more high-impact storytelling. “It can be applied to games and to transportation products such as aerospace and motorcycles. We see a lot of opportunities to tell this type of story.” The cinematic can be viewed here!

With A Twist Studio has locations at 1713 Lincoln Boulevard, Venice, California 90291 (310)210-4802, and 1773 Star Batt Drive, Rochester Hills, Michigan 48309. For more information, call (248) 844-0044 or visit www.withatwiststudio.com.

Read the redBOXX story on the reduser forum!

It has been impossible to keep the news surrounding BOXX’s dedicated digital film workstation under wraps.
The enthusiasm expressed by the lucky few who had access to what is now called the redBOXX was irrepressible.
Even people who are not digital film specialists immediately grasped that they were looking at something exceptional when they witnessed the impact of 4K material played back at 2K in real-time at full quality.


The reports from Offhollywood Pictures (New York) and Plaster City (Los Angeles) who received the redBOXX’s early test units and ran ASSIMILATE Scratch on it were the same: it’s amazing, it’s a revolution, we are not sending the test units back…

Their enthusiasm for the redBOXX quickly surfaced on the reduser forum.
You can search for “BOXX” on reduser.net and check it out for yourself.