deleting R3Ds - danger of corruption? also - organising footage workflow

[Christoph Ferstad]

Hey guys & girls,

I think I may be overthinking this, and I have a feeling this is a pretty silly question!

After importing R3Ds from my SSDs copying the exact file structure, I now need to go through my footage and delete some of the missed takes and waste of space shots. I'm trying to ''shoot like film'' and press the record button only when the shot is fully lined up but the inevitable shit shots still poke their head in. To save space (I'm shooting nearly every day for the next six months so need to be efficient) I need to delete these shots.

My question is - if you delete specific shots through the finder or redcinex is there a danger of the file structure corrupting and redcine-x or premiere having problems finding or reading files? I suppose my question is answered by the simple fact that there is a delete button in redcine-x but I want to make 100% sure before I screw up terrabytes of footage! (I have multiple backups of all but still)

and I guess a more general discussion / question is, what kind of workflow do you guys have in importing footage, going through it, tagging it, deleting clips and overall organising it before the edit?

I'm still deciding whether to go through clips in redcine-x, do a 1 light, delete unecessary clips, then bring them into premiere and tag footage by creating bins / folders. Or perhaps just bringing everything into premiere and organising, deleting files, and doing 1 light through in app also.

Have any of you used the new Prelude?

I'm getting to 4TB of footage and with another 6 months of shooting for our documentary this could quickly turn into a nightmare if I don't get a proper workflow together!

Thanks for any help or enlightenment you can give me on this.

[ericyoung]

If you're deleting the whole RDC folder for a clip, you won't be left with any orphan clip files. In effect an RDC file is a clip. Long takes will have multiple RAW R3D files, which are all part of one clip, in the clip RDC folder.
I usually avoid drag and drop when moving, copying or trashing folders and files in Finder as it's easy to accidentally drop them somewhere random. I much prefer highlighting, then using copy and paste, delete from the menu or keyboard shortcuts.

If the clips are waste of space shots, then you aren't going to be using them in your edits, so there should be no issue with Premiere not finding them.

Always retain the RED camera folder structure in your archives.

[Jaakko Rinne]

I've freely deleted unnecessary clips by removing the .rdc folders containing the clips in Finder and haven't had any problems. Don't really see how there could be a problem unless you try to delete a single .r3d file from a multi-file take (and I don't know if even that would actually cause a problem, never tried it). Also if you want to consolidate just the footage you need to a work drive, you can do a R3D Trim export from RCX.

[Christoph Ferstad]

Thanks a lot guys, that's really helpful. Also the trim export from rcx seems cool, will look into that. Much appreciated!