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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

RedCine -> ProRes problems

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sixswitch

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Hi all,

I'm editing a short dance film shot on the RED One last weekend. After reading through this forum as extensively as I could before the shoot, I had a pretty good sense of what my workflow would be: the film was shot in 2K 2:1; I planned to transcode to ProRes 422 HQ at 1080p with RedCine (with a conservative pass at exposure/white balance), edit in FCP, and grade in Color. Final target is broadcast and festivals; I figured this would buy us a solid HD master at 1080p and if we needed to go back and master at 2K we could.

RedCine settings I've been trying: project HD 1080p, shots Fit To Width, output HD 1080p to Quicktime ProRes 422 HQ at Maximum Quality, with Full Quality Debayer.

RedCine -> ProRes has been a nightmare so far. I experienced freeze frames on all clips but the first; then freeze frames on all clips; and now I'm getting hard crashes of RedCine after X frames of rendering, where X has been 16, 30, and 45.

My system: new eight-core Mac Pro, Nvidia 8800, 6GB RAM, OS X 10.5.2, QT 7.4.1.

I'm still working to test out all the possibilities, and I've tried everything I've found on this forum (resetting manually and with Red Reset, trashing the app and reinstalling, trying one or two clips at a time). I'm not mixing clip types or framerates in the timeline. I still plan to try downgrading to QT 7.3, although I've heard that can cause system troubles. I had held off on the upgrade to 7.4.5 -- should I try upgrading to it?

Two questions:

1) Anything else I should add to my list of things to try? Having NR on or off doesn't seem to matter...and my most recent efforts, I haven't altered any of the shot settings from the metadata. I didn't pull the log files before trashing the RedCine Library folder, so I could only provide one for the most recent crash; let me know if that would help.

2) Can anyone suggest an alternate workflow that would allow me to edit online, if I can't get ProRes Export working? I'm on deadline and would rather take a slight hit to the quality than edit offline and then go back to RedCine. I just want my footage out of RedCine and in a usable online form as soon as possible at this point, ideally at 1080p. DVCPRO HD? Export to an image sequence and assemble in QT? I would really appreciate some perspective on the various tradeoffs. It seems to be a consensus that editing with the actual QT proxies (or transcoding them for editing) is a bad idea; is this true?

Please let me know if there's any other information that would be useful, and thanks in advance for your help.
 
Did you already try another codec? If ProRes is the culprit and you have enough space, uncompressed 10 bit would be an alternative.

Or maybe it's the scaling in RedCine, try to output in native resolution and do the scaling/cropping in FCP.

If you can make DPX sequences work, you could use GlueTools.

Hope one of these helps,

Uli
 
Thanks to those who responded so quickly.

I just tried a render to ProRes HQ without cropping/scaling (at 2048x1024), and RedCine froze again, this time after 60 frames. I've uploaded the log file FWIW...Russ, thanks for the suggestion; I did see that on here and have been outputting to separate folders throughout.

Incidental question: does anyone know a way to get out of RedCine if it freezes, other than a hard reset?

nomad, I'm just about to try going to Uncompressed 10 bit. I could probably get away with editing it but it will be a bit sluggish from what I've read from people with similar systems; how much would it degrade the footage to go RedCine->Uncomp. 10 Bit and then use QT or Compressor to go Uncomp. 10 Bit -> ProRes?

Shawn, I had thought that 7.4.1 was the latest stable QT with Red...is 7.4.5 working better? I'm using the latest build of RedCine (build 90); should I try older builds?
 
when you render out is your mac connected to the internet?
---i had similar issues, only with pro res codec or exporting to 720p but following steps helped

disconnect the internet
close all other programs
no background action
 
Six,

We have found that once you get the bug in a rendered project, it will keep getting the bug until you get a clean install. The trick is not letting the bug into the project--just trying it again with fewer clips won't fix it.

After a clean Redcine install, pull in your project, delete all clips except the one you want to render, then render that clip. Then re-load and render the next clip in the same fashion, ad seriatum until all your timeline is done. (You could just start a new project and get each clip in at a time and one-light them, but that is a lot of extra work.)

This is what has worked for us, anyway. I hope build 16's release of Redcine will fix this, but this is workable (though it the rendering needs nanny).

-Chris
 
If all you are doing is transcoding to ProRes, have you tried transcoding out of RedAlert instead of RedCine...it can be a little more stable and less glitchy.
 
Thanks all...Chris, I managed to get your process working with a couple of interesting additions. Here's the current successful (so far) workflow:

Install RC -> Reboot -> create project, load clips, save, and quit -> trash RC prefs, uninstall RC -> reboot -> reinstall RC, load project, delete all but one clip -> render -> repeat from step 4.

Taking out any of those steps? RC freezes. Whee! And this is without cropping and scaling in RC, so I'm just testing Compressor on that now...

Meryem, I didn't know RedAlert could transcode to ProRes...can it?
 
Thanks Chris, with the addition of a couple steps (trash prefs and uninstall RC, reboot, reinstall RC) between clips I've gotten your process working. Phew.

Can Red Alert do batch processing? I'd pretty much given up on doing any CC in RC anyways...
 
Haha good score Kaya ;) Does it do batch proc'ing without going to the command line?
 
Glad it works!

I've only needed to re-install once, though. Have you tried saving the project once as a "clean" project, then after each clip is rendered, re-loading the clean project again and deleting all but the second clip . . . ? It seems cumbersome to have to reinstall for each render.

-Chris
 
No kidding, Chris ;)

But yeah, if I skip the reboot+reinstall it freezes.

Red Alert seems to be working okay, so I may just do it shot-by-shot on there.
 
Could it be connected with the amount of RAM (some kind of memory leak)?

Some suggest 2 GB RAM per core, so our machine has 16 GB…

ProRes is 10 bit, so uncompressed 10 bit shouldn't make anything worse (only better).

Regards,

Uli
 
sixswitch said:
No kidding, Chris ;)

But yeah, if I skip the reboot+reinstall it freezes.

Red Alert seems to be working okay, so I may just do it shot-by-shot on there.
Click to expand...

Hmmm. Sounds like Red Alert is the way to go then.
 
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