RED Digital Cinema, makers of digital cinema cameras and associated workflow software, has told Apple it is no longer waiting on upgrades to the Macintosh Pro and has teamed with Hewlett-Packard and Adobe to create a new editing workstation optimized for those who shoot high-resolution (2K, 4K) raw data with RED cameras.
HP’s Z820 RED Edition (with Adobe's CS6 inside) is the new editing system for RED users. It comes with Adobe CS6 Production Premium preinstalled and is tailored to RED-centric workflows.
Jarred Land, Red’s “Fire Chief,” posted the news on Reduser.net last week: “We have teamed up with HP, Nvideo and Adobe and are releasing some liquid-cooled HP RED Z820 workstations next month. HP has built custom dual RED MAG card readers into the front with internal RED ROCKET acceleration card (s) plus tuned Adobe CS6 suite installations. These things scream.”
Land said the computers would be sold through HP professional resellers such as ProMax and Tekserver, starting in July. “There will be a builder to add whatever you want,” he said. “RED ROCKET, CS6 and all drivers etc. are pre-installed, starting around $10,000.”
Adobe’s Dave Hemly said the idea “is to have everything you need to get started right out of the box editing RED footage at full speed.”
Depending on the user’s budget, the HP systems start at about $10,000 and can scale up to Nvidia’s Maximus option and a Tesla C2075 board for even more acceleration.
Although the HP computer obviously fills a void in production and post left by Apple, RED executives said the new editing computer in no way signals RED’s departure from the Apple platform.
