Red PowerPC workflow questions

[pmcdonald]

Greetings all,

It's my first post here so hello everyone and thanks for the wealth of advice in the past posts I've been trawling. I work at a small post production house. In the edit department we're set up exclusively with PowerPC Macs that double as cheaper online suites. There is also a Flame for finishing, and 3D use Windows XP machines. We typically only work in SD but the Macs can comfortably handle HD if required so there's no need for us to upgrade to Intel Macs. Or so I thought..

Today I'm trying to get my head around the Red workflow as we have a TVC job coming in over the next few weeks. The process is a little more complicated that I originally assumed, having based my expectations on a previous Panasonic P2 job we did.

From my limited understanding I will need to :

- Load raw Red clips in RedCine on one of the Windows machines
- Export everything at a lower resolution with timecode for offlining
- Edit as normal on FCP
- Bit hazy as to how to proceed from here

So I'll just fire away with the questions that have had me scratching my head:

1) How do I batch export from RedCine? I'll need to transfer absolutely everything for the offline at SD res.

2) Is there a distributed render option for exporting via a render farm?

3) After the offline is approved, how do I re-export JUST the portions of takes I've used in my edit based on an EDL, remembering that I ONLY have access to Windows PC's and PowerPC Macs. I'll probably finish at 1080p using Blackmagic 10bit, so I really want to avoid exporting unnecessary data (20 seconds at this codec is 3 GB, so 90 minutes of raw shoot is around 800 GB).

4) Everytime I export DV-PAL quicktimes from RedCine, RedCine crashes. Anyone else experience this problem or know of any workarounds? Anyone recommend any other suitable codecs for offlining available on a PC?

5) And while I think of it, is it worth investing in R3DData to verify the shot footage on set? Are there many issues with the Red camera shooting/writing blanks?

Thanks for reading,
Paul

 

[Ross Birkbeck]

err - you do know that no Red stuff works on PowerPC macs right...??

 

[Yannick Sadler]

First, you can look at the workflow page on the RED website. There are 4 type of workflows illustrated.

In your case, you'll need at least one Intel Mac. PPC Quicktime addons and applications are not available.

1. Ingest and transcode the material to HD (to Apple ProRes) with RedCine, RedAlert or RedLine (RedLine is a command line utility, so, yes, you can batch the exports).
2. Edit
3. Done, unless you realy need to have a 4K master at the end to print to film. If this is the case, there no free ride. Export the FCP EDL back to the Intel Mac and buy and use Assimilate Scratch.

The final part will have expanded options in the future with the release of the SDK that will allow third parties to write more tools.

Hope it help a bit.

 

[pmcdonald]

Thank you for your replies gentlemen.

In your case, you'll need at least one Intel Mac. PPC Quicktime addons and applications are not available.

And if this wasn't an option? Its a spec job, so there is no room whatsoever in the budget for any purchases. I have PC's and I have PowerPC Mac's - surely this isn't unique or uncommon.

Based on everything I've read I'm leaning towards recommending we shoot 1080 and finishing at SD, then manually going back and re-transcoding any shots we need to do a blow up on. So, my proposed workflow seems to be:

0) Use the r3ddata tool onset to check footage.
1) On one of the PC machines: export EVERYTHING at SD Blackmagic 10bit.
2) Convert these files to DV-PAL for the offline.
3) Cut as normal.
4) Reconnect final cut back to the 10bit quicktimes.
5) Re-transcode any necessary material manually at HD matching timcode from printed EDL.
6) Reconnect selected HD shots.

Yikes - maybe I should just get the Red material transfered to digibeta the old school way..

 

[Ross Birkbeck]

There is no old school with Red!

But your plan will work. (And now Redcine works with Build 16 you can shoot with that too)
Once you've done the transcode it's just like a regular workflow.

Note that you can't actually shoot 1080 - so you're probably looking at 2k.
Except of course if you want all the wonderful 35mm image characteristics of the Red - half the point really - and are not doing high speed, you should/could shoot 4k and transcode that to the SD 10bit...
Slower transcodes, but nicer.
3k could be a good compromise...

 

[pmcdonald]

Thank you for your reply Ross. Its a big mindset change that I'm only getting around to understanding - I was coming at it from a video camera perspective, hence the frustration at the limited Mac support and killer transcodes. Thinking of it as more of a film replacement puts things into much better perspective for me.

Does anyone have any rough transcode times for a Dual Xeon 3.2, converting 4k footage to SD? I'm assuming a hour of footage will take around 30 hours to transcode based on my tests so far.