Crimson advantages and disadvantages

[Eugene Lehnert]

What are some of Crimson's shortcomings when dealing with FCP timelines?

How are you dealing with speed ramps, multi-track layering, dissolves and other effects?

[I Bloom]

Hi Eug,

Though I'd like to support all of the things you've mentioned and am making excellent progress towards doing so, I would suggest today that if you intend to finish the project with Final Cut that you roundtrip the project early in the cutting process after you complete an assembly and try to keep all of your cuts on one track. Using this method once you begin adding effects, you are already working with fully rendered footage.

I'll be changing my tune on this in the near future. But for the time being this is what I suggest.

IBloom

[Zach Hilton]

What are some of Crimson's shortcomings when dealing with FCP timelines?

How are you dealing with speed ramps, multi-track layering, dissolves and other effects?

From my experience, a large portion of conform tools have issues with the things you've mentioned. It is wise that when you are going to send anything for any sort of conform, be it Color, Scratch, Iridas, or Crimson (others too) that you'll want to "water down" your sequence. If there's speed effects, extend them. Effects, take them off. Collapse everything if possible to one track. Take out graphics and text overlays as the programs don't really know what to do with those. If you follow those simple steps, it works like a champ. As do the other tools too.

[Alex Carr]

Yep, breakdown the sequences, or have an original and a Online seq. Basically you have to do these things even when working on Tape-ingested footage before pulling in uncompressed for the Online.

[Kaku Ito]

When I'm helping editors with conforming, I let them do it freely, then before we send the xml to Crimson, I go in to the timeline he edited, then copy all of the time changes to the tracks above, then put them back to the original speed for conforming.

[Luca Immesi]

When I'm helping editors with conforming, I let them do it freely, then before we send the xml to Crimson, I go in to the timeline he edited, then copy all of the time changes to the tracks above, then put them back to the original speed for conforming.

It's the same for me. I'm making the color correction of a short film of 18 min and with the last version of Crimson I was able to import in Redcine the whole edited sequence. Also, if there are spaces on the timeline I usually fill the gap with a piece of footage.