Premiere to Davinci

[Dana Rice]

I'm on the verge of completing my edit on a feature film shot on the Red MX in 4.5K and edited natively in Adobe Premiere CS5. I was hoping to color correct in Davinci, but just had a few questions. First, I was curious about getting my timeline into Davinci... I've exported an EDL from Premiere and tried to bring it into Apple Color but Color is unable to relink to any of the clips, even if I relink the clips manually Color simply starts the clip from the very beginning and not from where the edit points are. I don't yet own Davinci to test it out, but will Davinci have similar problems, or am I simply doing something wrong?

Secondly, I shot and edited in 4.5K but have blown up several shots all the way to 200% with the intention of a final output at 2240 x 960 my plan was to create a new sequence at 2240 x 960 in Premiere and copy and paste my 4.5K sequence in there and then reduce the scale on all clips by 50% so that no clips go above 100% scale. Is that the proper way to do it or is it better to import the 4.5K sequence into Davinci and do all the rescaling there?

Lastly, does anyone have any recommendations for a color grading monitor in the $2000 price range?

Thanks

[Oliver Peters]

I'm not sure if DaVinci Resolve can import DPX and parse them according to an EDL. I believe it can. Color does. In any case, you can export your edited sequence from Premiere Pro as DPX plus an EDL. Then import that into Resolve. The EDL will parse the long image sequence into individual cut points. You will have to test the DPX export to make sure it works if you are editing with native R3D files. You should probably do the scaling in Resolve. There are no true grading monitors in the $2K range. However, you might find something decent and close to that from Flanders, JVC, Panasonic or TV Logic. But, it will depends on the desired size.

- Oliver

[jake blackstone]

A lot of misleading info here.
First of all, where do DPX come from? Dana was talking about working with R3Ds, so why DPX and all? Second of all, yes, DPX carries the TC info, so it's not a problem to use an EDL and conform using DPX in Resolve or any other proper color grading software. In a sense, Color is not a proper color grading software, because it has no appreciable editing capabilities, other, than an ability to open the timeline from FCP. Just collapse your timeline to a single line, export proper CMX 3600 generic EDL and go to town with Resolve, it's all good...
I regularly use Sony GDM-FW900, 24" CRT, that is over 10 years old. It cost me a whopping $100 on Ebay. It's regularly calibrated and I would take it over my 60" Pro Pana plasma display any day...

[Shane Betts]

Jake's dead right. On all fronts. Export an EDL from PPP, import it into Resolve and relink to the R3ds. Even without a Red Rocket card, with a 12 core Mac and a decent GPU card, you should get very close to real time playback. Why would you use DPX? And, as for grading monitors, the important thing is calibration. I have experts telling me they'd rather trust an uncalibrated "grading monitor" than a properly calibrated high-end domestic projector. Rubbish. Sure, given correct calibration, the better the gear, the better the image but an expensive bit of kit does not cover up a lack of calibration. Buy the best you can and spend the time to calibrate it as well as you can. Get your head around its shortcomings and then trust it within its limitations. You'll be fine.

[Oliver Peters]

The DPX was my suggestion as an alternative approach. The advantage is linking to and parsing a completely edited sequence in context without the need to link to longer raw clips and conform the timeline. This boils to to using Color in conjunction with PPro, if Dana opts not to use Resolve.

It wasn't entirely clear to me whether Dana was talking about grading on the same system or going out of house to another shop with DaVinci. There's nothing wrong with rendering to the DPX files and it is a pretty common approach. If you render from PPro, the embedded TC will be the sequence TC and not the source TC. But if this is going to be done on the same system, then yes I agree, grading from the R3D files would be preferable.

I would question buying a used grading CRT on E-bay, though. Even if it's calibrated, when the tube goes (which could be any time), you won't be able to afford a replacement. Then it's back to finding another E-bay special ;-)

- Oliver

[M Most]

I would question buying a used grading CRT on E-bay, though. Even if it's calibrated, when the tube goes (which could be any time), you won't be able to afford a replacement. Then it's back to finding another E-bay special ;-)

You probably won't be able to FIND a replacement, even if you could afford one. They are no longer being manufactured.

[Michael Lindsay]

You probably won't be able to FIND a replacement, even if you could afford one. They are no longer being manufactured.

Not heavily doubting you ... but we had a tube replaced on a Sony BVM-D not to long ago?

Michael L

[Oliver Peters]

I believe you can still buy "no-name" after-market CRT replacement tubes. These are not original manufactured items, i.e. not Sony.

- Oliver

[jake blackstone]

I would question buying a used grading CRT on E-bay, though. Even if it's calibrated, when the tube goes (which could be any time), you won't be able to afford a replacement. Then it's back to finding another E-bay special ;-)

- Oliver

To quote recent post "you could be hit by a bus" then what? If CRT goes, it goes. I happen to have a spare identical monitor sitting in the back just in case... But if it meets the specs, stable, calibrated and performs as it should, then why worry?
If you can't find a replacement, you could also try the rejuvenation. It works up to a point...

[Marc Wielage]

You probably won't be able to FIND a replacement, even if you could afford one. They are no longer being manufactured.

Very true. There's also the issue of tube CRTs drifting over time, plus the well-known Sony BVM "blue blacks" problem. Lot of issues. In fact, isn't the GDM 1080i only? (It's been a long time since I used one.)

I think the Panasonic TH-50PF20 50" Plasma is quickly becoming the standard broadcast color-correction monitor all over LA, at least at Technicolor, Ascent, Company 3, Post Group, Laser-Pacific, and a half-dozen other firms that are moving away from CRTs. You have to use it with an external LUT box to cheat it into true Rec709 color space, plus there's the issue of feeding it HD-SDI (which can be expensive depending on how you do it), but it actually looks pretty good. I did a project about 18 months ago that started on a Sony BVM-32 and moved to the Panasonic, and both the director and I were surprised to see how well it translated. I doubt that it needed more than a couple of hours to tweak a few dozen shots between the two. Of course, calibration is critical.

As far as workflow goes, my advice would be to avoid trying to do it all yourself and get an experienced post supervisor and/or a colorist who knows specifically how to conform and grade the image. This will save you hours (maybe days) of work and avoid many potential delays and problems.