4k HFR Playback capabilities

I wanted to know what kind of hardware would be required for Sony F55, 4K RAW HFR(60FPS)smooth playback capabilities. Is somebody already using it? And if so are there any challenges?

Thanks in advance

With the Sony Raw viewer you can play F55 RAW on any decent hardware, even on a new MacBookPro.

No-one in his right mind really edits with full RAW unless you set your NLE to quarter or half debayer quality, just like you do with R3D footage. In FCP X you can work with the 4K XAVC files that are recorded in the F55 at the same time as the RAW media, you export an XML and you conform your edit to the RAW media either in Smoke or in Resolve for finishing and final delivery. You can do this on any new MacPro.

Since the latest FCP X update our new workflow is to convert the RAW media to 4K ProRes 4444 XQ. This gives you extremely high quality files that play smoothly in FCP X on any decent new MacPro with a Thunderbolt RAID, while still allowing very deep color correction at full viewing quality. Much better than working with RAW.

- Ronny

Thank you very much Ronny. Appreciate your help

"No-one in his right mind really edits with full RAW..."

I have to disagree. We, and several other editors we work with locally, edit REDCODE RAW natively all the time. Can't live without access to the RAW adjustments inside of FCPX. On my old 2008 Mac Pro, and the new Mac Pro tube, it played back just fine. But I'd never attempt it on my laptop.

Although I know one guy with a SSD T'bolt portable drive who is editing native REDCODE RAW on a brand new MBP on set, and likes it. I don't see it for anything more than basic cuts, though...

That's why I specifically said "full raw", which means full debayer and which corresponds with "Best Quality" playback setting in FCP X. Even the new MacPro cannot play one single stream of full Red Raw at Best Quality without dropping frames (unless you use a RedRocket), as has been confirmed by tests published on fcp.co.

OTOH when you set FCP X to "Better Performance", which adaptively debayers Red Raw, you can play 4 streams of RedRaw at quarter resolution without too many problems as has been shown in this test: www.philiphodgetts.com/2014/01/mac-pro-f...reams-of-native-r3d/

RedRaw is compressed 3:1 and only at full debayer do you get all the color information. If you do your first light corrections (first color pass) in RedCine and you export the raw media to ProRes 4444 XQ for editing you will get the best of both worlds: quick and easy primary correction on full quality raw in RedCine and smooth playback of multiple streams at full quality while preserving full 12-bit secondary color correction capabilities inside FCP X.

- Ronny

I have different results...