Error importing Red Epic files in Avid Media Composer 6

[Brian Merlen]

It should be noted I am new to Avid entirely and a non epic owner, so please have some patience with my ignorance, I am a total newb on the NLE.

I made a new sequence/project, went to my bin, right clicked import and I got the following error message when trying to import "the file format of (file name) is not supported for import"

So then I decided "well I'll try it using AMA"

Right click, link to AMA, and it says "There were errors linking AMA files, see console for details".

The console says:

" p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; }
------ AMA Link To File(s) ------

Trying to open a RED file with the QuickTime AMA plug-in failed. [ Plugin Name = QuickTime Plug-In Avid Technology, Inc. Version = 1.2 ] does not support /Volumes/Seagate 500GB HD/r3d files/A001_C003_0929N5_001.R3D"


It should be noted that I am using a core 2 duo Mac, 8gbs ram, with my media and project file on an external and that the files I have are r3ds that no longer have the file structure of the mag intact. meaning I downloaded them from the Reducation class I took via Reds site and they are only R3d files without the file structure of the mag formatting in place (quicktime ref files like on the red one if i remember right, its been a while since May when i took the class? i dont have a mag or epic and cant remember what those little files are in the mag structure, but you know what i mean, the non .r3d stuff in the mag? or maybe i am thinking of the red one mag structure not sure about this entirely).



I am really not sure where exactly my trouble is coming from, whether I am missing a plug in, or my HDD's are too slow (that is what my guess is), or that my external drive is USB2 only so the port is too slow? I know my HDD's/USB 2 port could very well be the problem, simply too slow perhaps? I am going to try using a faster external with firewire and see if the error still happens, but any helpful advice would be appreciated! Like I said I am a total newb to Avid and I totally understand my system is barely passing the minimum specs. Its not like I am looking for real time performance here, I was just trying to play around with some footage and see how it performed on my ancient mac while dabbling on an NLE I am not entirely familiar with quite yet. The problem could also be the NLE needs the file structure of the mag in place and since I don't have that, its causing a problem? I am not really sure which is causing this though, definitively speaking and would highly appreciate any advice you can spare? Thanks in advance guys!

PS I understand I can use Redcine X Pro to convert to proxy files to edit in MC6, but I was attempting to check out how poorly my set up would run natively with r3d files being imported and cut in MC6...I am going to load the files in RedCine X Pro just to make sure they aren't corrupted, I am downloading the newest version now

[Stephen Williams]

Your quite sure it's the very latest version? Epic support is from 15 November, so if it's more than a week old that could be your problem.

It should be noted I am new to Avid entirely and a non epic owner, so please have some patience with my ignorance, I am a total newb on the NLE.

I made a new sequence/project, went to my bin, right clicked import and I got the following error message when trying to import "the file format of (file name) is not supported for import"

So then I decided "well I'll try it using AMA"

Right click, link to AMA, and it says "There were errors linking AMA files, see console for details".

The console says:

" p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; }
------ AMA Link To File(s) ------

Trying to open a RED file with the QuickTime AMA plug-in failed. [ Plugin Name = QuickTime Plug-In Avid Technology, Inc. Version = 1.2 ] does not support /Volumes/Seagate 500GB HD/r3d files/A001_C003_0929N5_001.R3D"


It should be noted that I am using a core 2 duo Mac, 8gbs ram, with my media and project file on an external and that the files I have are r3ds that no longer have the file structure of the mag intact. meaning I downloaded them from the Reducation class I took via Reds site and they are only R3d files without the file structure of the mag formatting in place (quicktime ref files like on the red one if i remember right, its been a while since May when i took the class? i dont have a mag or epic and cant remember what those little files are in the mag structure, but you know what i mean, the non .r3d stuff in the mag? or maybe i am thinking of the red one mag structure not sure about this entirely).



I am really not sure where exactly my trouble is coming from, whether I am missing a plug in, or my HDD's are too slow (that is what my guess is), or that my external drive is USB2 only so the port is too slow? I know my HDD's/USB 2 port could very well be the problem, simply too slow perhaps? I am going to try using a faster external with firewire and see if the error still happens, but any helpful advice would be appreciated! Like I said I am a total newb to Avid and I totally understand my system is barely passing the minimum specs. Its not like I am looking for real time performance here, I was just trying to play around with some footage and see how it performed on my ancient mac while dabbling on an NLE I am not entirely familiar with quite yet. The problem could also be the NLE needs the file structure of the mag in place and since I don't have that, its causing a problem? I am not really sure which is causing this though, definitively speaking and would highly appreciate any advice you can spare? Thanks in advance guys!

[Kevin Wild]

I only did a very quick test and was unable to access my 4k HD files using AMA using the new Media Composer 6.0 on an iMac. Not sure what the deal is. More testing later.

[jake blackstone]

Same error here

[Job ter Burg]

Everyone, you need to install the latest AMA R3D plugin for this with MC6, AFAIK. www.avid.com/ama. This is NOT installed by default.

[Brian Merlen]

Everyone, you need to install the latest AMA R3D plugin for this with MC6, AFAIK. www.avid.com/ama. This is NOT installed by default.

Thanks, will try this out and report the results once I am home in front of my NLE machine again in a few hours. I am positive I am using MC 6, but I didn't download that plugin so that is probably my issue. Much appreciated guys!

[Jeremy Torrie]

Definitely have to have the latest Red AMA plugin. And you can check your console to make sure it's installed.

[Brian Merlen]

I downloaded the plug in and was able to import most of my r3d files successfully. Some of them didn't import, I suspect because they were cut down in Redcine Pro X and weren't the complete r3d files, and from what I skimmed over in the pdf about the Red AMA plug in you can't cut the files down in RedCine X Pro and then try to import them. It could even be the extensions of those files, they ended with the word "r3d.part" not ".r3d" and since I downloaded them off the Reducation link I suspect they were cut down already and that is why it says part at the end of the r3d extensions. It might work if I remove that word, I will try that later...

Upon playback of the clips that I was able to import successfully there was quite a bit of flickering in both the left window viewer or the right window timeline, I suspect this is a render or playback setting issue. All I did was grab the files that imported and throw them in the timeline with no cuts or effects. It flickers on playback and then gives me an error message saying the following when I try to play them in the timeline (it doesn't give me this error when I play them in the left window viewer):

p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; } @ Tue Nov 22 23:43:51 2011
• Exception: ADM_COREAUDIO_UNDERRUN


Not really sure what that means, but at least I am slowly progressing here! I have no idea what resolution (pretty sure they are all 5k) or frame rates these were shot at, they are files I grabbed offline after all my own r3d files were lost when one of my drives went down. I will try messing with settings and reading up on what this new error message is, but if someone wants to give me some more tips I would greatly appreciate it. I am a total Avid newb so I am just trying to figure this out as I go along. I am probably making errors on a consistent basis, but hey at least I am slowly learning a new NLE! Thanks guys, much appreciated!

PS my timeline is all light green with dark green dots on it, so I am rendering now to see if that gets rid of the play back flickering and error message, will update you guys if this fixes everything for me.

UPDATE

same error still when playing the timeline and same flicker in both the previewer and timeline. The clips are still all light green with dark green dots on them after rendering. when i scrub the timeline without playback going all of them show me the frame besides one or two that say "fatal error" and are black with no frame showing during the scrub. its possible those one or two clips could be corrupted, perhaps. I will try those same clips in RedCine X Pro and see if they work there.

UPDATE 2

Apparently I am not the only one with this issue, and its not limited to only r3d files either...

http://cstest.avid.com/forums/t/102761.aspx?PageIndex=5

[Job ter Burg]

Audio Underrun errors mean that media is not coming through the system fast enough (audio not necessarily being the culprit).

The green dots mean that your files are a different frame rate than your project/sequence. Avid will auto-apply a motion adapter, basically doing a frame rate conversion.

Click on the bin, choose Bin->Choose Columns, and select the FPS column. It will tell you the frame rate of the clips. Make sure you then create a project with the appropriate frame rate.

You mentioned a Core 2 Duo machine. Avid won't guarantee any RT playback of R3D on such systems. They explicitly mention that R3D needs a LOT of horsepower. More like 12-core Macs and z800's, like they qualify.

External USB2 drives won't help you much either. You need faster CPU's and RAID drives to pull off smoother R3D performance.

That said, you can try to lower the strain on your system by clicking the yellow/green button to the lower left of the Avid timeline. In yellow/yellow mode, it will decrease Debayer to 1/16th or so. Yellow/Green is something like 1/4, green/green is like 1/2.

[Jeremy Torrie]

I have had the Fatal Error Reports also, though mostly when native Red AMA files are stacked on top of each other -i.e. on V1 and V2. But I have had this audio underrun and I've got a top spec'd Mac Pro with Atto R380 and 12GB Ram...they know it's an issue and a patch should be coming.

Play with your RCXPro export settings -I did have some crazy flicker on one clip out of perhaps 100 when I used a different export setting. When I use my default the clip came into Avid fine.