relinking R3D files / HELP / moving R3D out of RDC folders

[MikeHedge]

ok. premiere CS5.

In 2008 I took 20 filmmakers to the desert to shoot a documentary at Burning Man. we took 20 cameras including 3 RED ONEs, a bunch of small point and shoot cameras shooting 720p and some others....

after we shot, all the media from all the cameras was renamed (not the RED files though) after everything was renamed (so our files names had the timestamp and person who shot the footage in the file name) we exported tiny low resolution quicktime files of everything using Apple compressor. RED files were all converted using RED rushes beta

so if my master file was "2008-08-24-025634-TX1-ISIS-ATDS.AVI"
then I ended up with a tiny quicktime file called "2008-08-24-025634-TX1-ISIS-ATDS.mov"

same thing for all the RED files.

so I am finally done with the editing of this film.

I am now relinking to all the master files...

all my low res footage were all .mov files. and now relinking to the AVI files or the R3D files does not work (because the extensions don't match)

I have edited the premiere project file in notepad and changed all the extensions to their master file extension. So the AVI files now end with .AVI. and all the RED files now end with .R3D.

my problem is that it seems that I have no master RED files that just end with .R3D they instead are all _001.R3D so premiere doesn't see it because the file name doesn't match. So in premiere I have A002_C008_0827C3.R3D but when I look in that folder for A002, I find A002_C008_0827C3_001.R3D

what I want to do is go back in to notepad and rename all the RED files with a _001.R3D at the end. That way in premiere it will relink to them because the file names will match. Any reason not to?

Also the relinking in premiere is great if everything is in one folder. So I would like to move all the R3D files that are in the 300-400 RDC folders I have, and move them all into one single folder. this way premiere will instantly relink to them all.

Can someone explain why I should not move the R3D files out of their RDC folders?

Mike

[ericyoung]

First of all the _001.R3D file naming is to accommodate the fact that Red media (like most digital camera media) has a FAT32 formatting which only supports up to 4GB file sizes. This means Red cameras needs to record multiple file chunks for a clip beyond a certain length/filesize (Red One records 2GB chunks, Epic records 4GB chunks). To make sure all the file chunks have unique names while retaining the clip name, they need the extra "_xxx" before the ".RDC". The "_xxx" counts up from _001, _002, _003, ... and so on, as required.

Not sure about CS5, but if it supports Red footage natively, then it should just see the filename without the "_xxx" because it knows that multiple chunks should be treated as one clip with the root clip name.

If any of your clips is a multiple chunk clip, then obviously renaming all the RED files in the Premiere project in Notepad to end "_001.R3D" may not work, as it may only see the first of the multiple chunks and so truncate your file.

If you never ever intend to use those original Red files with any other application, or third party post facility, then it maybe doesn't matter if you move them out of the RDC folders. However, if that's at all a possibility, now or in the future, then moving R3D files out of the Red camera folder structure is a bad idea as that may well break how other applications/post facilities find and process Red footage.

However, I'm sure a Premiere expert will be able to advise a better way of relinking/conforming back to Red footage files after an offline edit than what you are using! You may have to upgrade to CS5.5/6 as well.

[MikeHedge]

I appreciate your effort to help.

[Julien Deka]

I suggest you try your relinks in After Effects... Because the software is used to deal with proxies since many versions, you can relink files that have not the same extension.

I remember for a video the director editor gave me an XML from an offline Final Cut project, I opened it in Premiere and of course there were no way to relink to the original R3D files (since he edited on pro res). So I open this new un-linked Premiere Project in AE and did the relink there. Everything was fine, no mistake with the 001 protocol...

But my goal was to go into AE anyway...

If your goal is to go into Premiere, then I don't know how you can do that, but I'm sure there is a solution. Maybe copy and past from AE to Premiere would make the job?

[MikeHedge]

much appreciated.
I ended up opening the premiere project in notpad, and renamed all the mov files to R3D files.

cheers