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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 :)

Final Cut to DPX output

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Sean Sweeney

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Hi everyone,

It's been a while since I've touched post with the RED - last time I used it Crimson was a big part of the workflow. We have a project that's had all of the footage ingested into Apple ProRes 422 HQ through the log and transfer application and is being cut.

The final grading will be done elsewhere - what would be the best way to generate a DPX output? Can we conform back to the RAW in Color and then output a DPX sequence from there to bring to the post house?

Once the grading is finished the material would come back to FCP to have the titles added in - I'm wondering what format would be best to work in for the titles - is re-ingesting DPX into Final Cut feasible?

I'm a bit of a novice with the post-production stuff so any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
You could use clipfinder to re-conform to the RAW files, but you|re dependent on strict naming of the log and transfered files.

A good thing would be if one had had the option to "re-l&t" to another format.

This thread is a good tip for the color thingy:
http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=23606

To get DPXs into FCP, you need Gluetools. But there|s a couple of gotchas with that. Gletools is very smart, but sometimes a bit too much... When exporting grayscale charts through compressor from DPXs, it seems gluetools adds gradients around hard edges in luma shift. Not too good :)
 
I believe the Final Cut Studio Plugin whitepaper outlines how to go from Pro-res footage back to Native to send to Color as RAW, then you could export those clips as DPX for grading, they're probably going to want the gamma settings at CAMERA RGB and PDLOG.
 
Sean Sweeney said:
Hi everyone,
The final grading will be done elsewhere - what would be the best way to generate a DPX output? Can we conform back to the RAW in Color and then output a DPX sequence from there to bring to the post house?
Click to expand...

We've just added a feature to Monkey Extract, you can now load a final cut xml and use it to export DPX.
 
Sean Sweeney said:
Hi everyone,
The final grading will be done elsewhere - what would be the best way to generate a DPX output? Can we conform back to the RAW in Color and then output a DPX sequence from there to bring to the post house?
Click to expand...

We just added DPX output to ReMaster.
 
Thanks for all the responses guys! Nigel, I'm going to give Monkey extract a shot, curious to see how it works.
 
Sean Sweeney said:
The final grading will be done elsewhere - what would be the best way to generate a DPX output?
Click to expand...

If the final grading is to be done by a facility, I would check with the facility and see if they need or want DPX files in the first place.
 
mmost said:
If the final grading is to be done by a facility, I would check with the facility and see if they need or want DPX files in the first place.
Click to expand...

No we know the post-house wants DPX - the main issue will be conforming our edited Final Cut project to the R3D files to tweak some contrast and exposure before exporting a DPX sequence. Can we do this in Color? Can we import the EDL or XML and see the timeline and adjust the RAW values before exporting a DPX sequence?
 
Sean Sweeney said:
No we know the post-house wants DPX - the main issue will be conforming our edited Final Cut project to the R3D files to tweak some contrast and exposure before exporting a DPX sequence. Can we do this in Color? Can we import the EDL or XML and see the timeline and adjust the RAW values before exporting a DPX sequence?
Click to expand...

Hi Sean, personally I would check whether the contrast and exposure tweaks are wanted or necessary. The post house color grading system is probably the best place for this work to be done. Baking in changes before the colorist gets the footage might not be his / her preference.

We recommend rendering everything out at 320 iso and if there are shots that are very under or over exposed, rendering those in a 2nd pass with different settings.

At it's simplest, you should just be able to hand them a drive with DPX and an EDL. Even that can be a fair amount of work, adding other steps to the process should be considered carefully.
 
Nigel Stanford said:
Hi Sean, personally I would check whether the contrast and exposure tweaks are wanted or necessary. The post house color grading system is probably the best place for this work to be done. Baking in changes before the colorist gets the footage might not be his / her preference.

We recommend rendering everything out at 320 iso and if there are shots that are very under or over exposed, rendering those in a 2nd pass with different settings.

At it's simplest, you should just be able to hand them a drive with DPX and an EDL. Even that can be a fair amount of work, adding other steps to the process should be considered carefully.
Click to expand...

It's entirely possible that no tweaking will be done with the footage at all. Let's say that the R3D's will not be touched - can we simply import our timeline into Color from Final Cut and do a DPX render? Has anyone done this with some success?
 
Sean Sweeney said:
It's entirely possible that no tweaking will be done with the footage at all. Let's say that the R3D's will not be touched - can we simply import our timeline into Color from Final Cut and do a DPX render? Has anyone done this with some success?
Click to expand...

Ah I gotcha now. You can probably do it but you'll have problems with dissolves. You want DPX frames for both the outgoing and incoming clip for the entire length of the dissolve, which I don't think you're going to be able to export from color. I'd imagine color would export the actual merged frames but I haven't personally tested that.

Monkey Extract will render DPX for both clips across the entire dissolve... :)
 
Rendering DPX dissolves in Color seems to have been fixed in 1.0.3 .
 
Nigel Stanford said:
Color can render dissolves, but in this case he wants to render DPX to take elsewhere to grade so doesn't want dissolves rendered.
Click to expand...

I just got word from the editor, no dissolves. So FCP to Color should be okay - I think we're in the clear. Now it's just a matter of doing a couple of test workflows to see how the ProRes 422 project lines back up with the original R3D material.
 
Cyclotron said:
If you edit your dissolves in FCP as opacity transitions on different layers then Color retains the full length required as seperate clips for your dpx output.


www.belladonnathemovie.com
Click to expand...

very interesting - do you mean adjusting the opacity curve with the pen and nodes?
 
Hello. I have a DPX sequence in timelime of the Final Cut. Work with gluetools and one blackmagic ecplipse. When I place dissolves or animation into the opacity to create /fade in/ and /fade out/ in a edition's segment, when i export in DPX, the zones where it was the animated opacity or dissolves takes a darker color and the image takes a little size. And the rest of the DPX sequence that have not been touched by any disolvence or opacity animation, have the original color and size. in other words, the parts that i make changes with disolvence or opacity animation turn weird, but not the rest… someone...help me pleaseeee!!!


pd: sorry for the english...im peruvian...

Ronald
Lima Peru
Editor
Dolphin Films Sac
 
Ronald,

I have the similar setting, FCP/GlueTools/Multibridge Pro.

The rendering setting in the timeline has to match. With Blackmagicdesign, you would choose Blackmagic 10-bit 4:4:4 RGB as compressor, then it forces to work with that codec, there might be gamma shift, but at least it will be consistent even with the certain effects.
 
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