Best REDCINE-X Debayer Settings for "Online Edit"

[Jason Payne]

Hey Everyone,

I'm about to start a new feature and we're most likely doing an HD only finish. With this in mind, we'll be editing in FCP using ProRes HQ media to save us the hassle of an online after picture lock. We currently do all our transcodes in REDCINE-X (Build 262) using 1/2 Good Debayer. Would we be better off doing a 1/2 Premium debayer in this case? What about any other debayer settings. We ARE NOT using a RED Rocket and I realize that transcode time increases with each change in debayer quality. I'm going to do transcode tests but wanted to see if anyone had an opinion based on previous experience.

Thanks,
Jason Payne

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Go for ProRes 4x4, especially if you will be running through Color or other grading software. FULL debayer is best and obviously takes the longest. You will be fine with 1080p ProRes output I think if you're going to HD, but I would recommend 1/2 premium. FULL debayer if you can spare the transcode time. Break it up onto a couple systems running over night or so. The FULL will be noticeably better.

 

[Jason Payne]

Thanks Jeff. I'm running some tests now...

Jason

 

[Stephen Strangways]

The improvement of using full debayer is most noticeable if you are shooting in low light/at high ISO as the noise seems a lot cleaner. If your shoot is all well-lit, you might get away with half debayer for plenty of subject matter, but don't even consider it if you have low light footage.

However, keep in mind that a simple offline/online workflow can be dead simple. Transcode everything 1/4 res to ProRes Proxy, and edit with that. When the edit is locked, get just the clips that were used into REDCINE-X, which you can do with Clipfinder, TP2, or even just manually by looking at file names. Transcode those clips entirely in full res debayer to ProRes 4444, load your project back up in FCP and re-link it to the full res 4444 files, then send it to Color.

If you have many instances of short segments being used from really long clips and want to save even more time on a full res transcode, TP2 has some slightly fancier ways of working with subclips with handles, or only the actual frames used in an edit, and re-conforming an XML file, that can be quite beneficial but require a bit more thought... and a confidently locked edit!

And let me add another hearty recommendation for ProRes 4444 in Color, the difference over 422 can, at times, be quite stunning, especially when qualifying a secondary based primarily on chroma.

 

[Antonio Ribeiro]

The improvement of using full debayer is most noticeable if you are shooting in low light/at high ISO as the noise seems a lot cleaner. If your shoot is all well-lit, you might get away with half debayer for plenty of subject matter, but don't even consider it if you have low light footage.

However, keep in mind that a simple offline/online workflow can be dead simple. Transcode everything 1/4 res to ProRes Proxy, and edit with that. When the edit is locked, get just the clips that were used into REDCINE-X, which you can do with Clipfinder, TP2, or even just manually by looking at file names. Transcode those clips entirely in full res debayer to ProRes 4444, load your project back up in FCP and re-link it to the full res 4444 files, then send it to Color.

If you have many instances of short segments being used from really long clips and want to save even more time on a full res transcode, TP2 has some slightly fancier ways of working with subclips with handles, or only the actual frames used in an edit, and re-conforming an XML file, that can be quite beneficial but require a bit more thought... and a confidently locked edit!

And let me add another hearty recommendation for ProRes 4444 in Color, the difference over 422 can, at times, be quite stunning, especially when qualifying a secondary based primarily on chroma.

This is really useful info, as I'm exactly in the same position with a feature, so thanks for that guys.

 

[Stephen Strangways]

These days my workflow is to edit with ProRes Proxy files created in REDCINE-X, then when the edit is done, generate Quicktime Wrappers and use Clipfinder to conform the FCP XML from looking at the ProRes Proxy files to looking at the _H proxies, load that up in Final Cut, and send it to Resolve. That way, I'm grading the R3Ds. That technique also works for Color, but I found Color to be so slow with R3Ds that it was utterly useless.

 

[Antonio Ribeiro]

These days my workflow is to edit with ProRes Proxy files created in REDCINE-X, then when the edit is done, generate Quicktime Wrappers and use Clipfinder to conform the FCP XML from looking at the ProRes Proxy files to looking at the _H proxies, load that up in Final Cut, and send it to Resolve. That way, I'm grading the R3Ds. That technique also works for Color, but I found Color to be so slow with R3Ds that it was utterly useless.

Hey Stephen,

Just so I understand your step-by-step approach:

ProRes Proxy - With this new feature I'm working on, I started off outputting from Redcine as ProRes422(HQ), found it too slow then changed to the settings to 1/4 and I am now trying 1/8 debayer. Can you combine them in FCP in the same timeline without having to render?

The part when you finish the edit (that's the bit I didn't understand), how do you generate the wrappers and is the clipfinder within the Redcine Pro program? Sorry, a bit new with Redcine and before I use to relink media on FCP and then chose 'F', 'H' from the original R3D files to send on an XML to a studio for grading.

Thanks,
Antonio

 

[Jaakko Rinne]

These days my workflow is to edit with ProRes Proxy files created in REDCINE-X, then when the edit is done, generate Quicktime Wrappers and use Clipfinder to conform the FCP XML from looking at the ProRes Proxy files to looking at the _H proxies, load that up in Final Cut, and send it to Resolve. That way, I'm grading the R3Ds. That technique also works for Color, but I found Color to be so slow with R3Ds that it was utterly useless.

Why not just conform the FCP XML to the R3Ds in Resolve? I did a quick test today to create 720p ProRes LT proxies in Redcine-X Pro, offline in FCP. Populate media pool in Resolve with the directory I copied the original R3Ds into and import the XML. Voilá, worked like a charm.

 

[Stephen Strangways]

Antonio: FCP can happily mix all versions of ProRes on a timeline, and it doesn't matter to FCP what resolution you debayered at.

While I would love to finish my workflow as Jaakko has said, for whatever reason, that has never worked properly for me, especially when I'm working on a 44-minute edit which includes non-RED footage and is spread over 3-4 source drives of raw footage, thus making it difficult to selectively populate the media pool... And I don't want to dump 40-60 hours of footage into the media pool! So what I do instead is...
Output XML from FCP that is pointing to the ProRes files.
If Quicktime Wrappers were not generated in-camera, I use REDCINE-X's Quicktime Wrappers export function to create them. This gives me _H _M _F _P.mov Quicktime wrappers.
Use Clipfinder (a 3rd-party program) to conform the FCP XML from the ProRes MOV files (stored on one drive) to the _H.mov wrappers which point to the R3D files (stored on several other drives.)
For some reason, Resolve doesn't like the XML from Clipfinder, so I load it back up in FCP, reconnect anything that needs it (to the _H.mov files, and I have the RED Final Cut Studio 3 plugin installed so I can check it all over.
I then export another XML from Final Cut (my third in the process) which Resolve is happy with, and because it's pointing to _H wrappers in all the proper directories, it can automatically populate the media pool with just the files needed in the edit. In my case, that's act-by-act as I never try to do an entire project all in one go.

That's certainly not the only way to do things, nor is it the easiest, but it's what works for my particular situation and may help you with yours.

 

[Jaakko Rinne]

Stephen: Going a bit off-topic here, but would you happen to know why exactly conforming in Resolve hasn't worked for you? Is it the different source drives or doesn't Resolve just handle a lot of media in the media pool well or something else? I'm asking to make sure I don't run into the same problems later on.

 

[Antonio Ribeiro]

Antonio: FCP can happily mix all versions of ProRes on a timeline, and it doesn't matter to FCP what resolution you debayered at.

While I would love to finish my workflow as Jaakko has said, for whatever reason, that has never worked properly for me, especially when I'm working on a 44-minute edit which includes non-RED footage and is spread over 3-4 source drives of raw footage, thus making it difficult to selectively populate the media pool... And I don't want to dump 40-60 hours of footage into the media pool! So what I do instead is...
Output XML from FCP that is pointing to the ProRes files.
If Quicktime Wrappers were not generated in-camera, I use REDCINE-X's Quicktime Wrappers export function to create them. This gives me _H _M _F _P.mov Quicktime wrappers.
Use Clipfinder (a 3rd-party program) to conform the FCP XML from the ProRes MOV files (stored on one drive) to the _H.mov wrappers which point to the R3D files (stored on several other drives.)
For some reason, Resolve doesn't like the XML from Clipfinder, so I load it back up in FCP, reconnect anything that needs it (to the _H.mov files, and I have the RED Final Cut Studio 3 plugin installed so I can check it all over.
I then export another XML from Final Cut (my third in the process) which Resolve is happy with, and because it's pointing to _H wrappers in all the proper directories, it can automatically populate the media pool with just the files needed in the edit. In my case, that's act-by-act as I never try to do an entire project all in one go.

That's certainly not the only way to do things, nor is it the easiest, but it's what works for my particular situation and may help you with yours.

Steve: I understand now how it works, this is really useful info. That is exactly my case, whilst I am happy to work with the generated ProRes files from my RAID the client has the R3d files spread over 5 different esata drives. So I will have a go at trying your suggestion out.

Big, big thank you for taking the time to reply.

Antonio

 

[Stephen Strangways]

Jaakko: Resolve might be able to handle lots of media in the media pool, but I don't think it's a very good idea. The main problem I was having was no matter what combination of configuration settings I used, I kept getting "timecode extents doesn't match" errors connecting to footage. I believed this to be more FCP's fault in the XMLs it exported than Resolve's, as exporting an XML from FCP, conforming it with Clipfinder, and loading that into Resolve also lead to "time code extents doesn't match" errors. However, loading that Clipfinder XML back into FCP, reconnecting media (sometimes with a problem clip or two that needed fixing) and then exporting it right back out solved all of my problems.

Why? Darned if I know for certain. But so far this method has worked perfectly for me and my workflow, ingesting over 50 different sequences to date.