Cinema Tools Conforming to Color

[mikeburton]

So, I read over the White paper on conforming using Cinema Tools as a database to read and conform your R3D's utilizing an EDL from FCP being read by Color. I followed it step by step making sure not to miss a single detail in the explanation (even though its pretty simple) and no luck. Every time I try to conform in color this way I get "Aux" blank files in Color. They look like they are the correct length of the clips I cut so it is reading something but not displaying the actual R3D's.
My timeline in FCP7 had 6 clips in it. Just a simple test. All files on V1, no transitions, no effects, using _M proxies to edit with, no dice. I know this is more of a ProRes to Color solution but there is no reason it shouldn't work with the proxies too, right? I'll test with ProRes transcoded files next but i doubt its going to solve anything. Anyone else successful with this new conform method?

 

[Nick Shaw]

The white paper says that L&T uses the name of the .RDM folder as the reel name, which is not the same as the reel name in the proxies. If Cinema tools uses this same reel name it would not match that in an EDL generated from proxies.

It is a bit of a nuisance that there are at least 4 different things that can end up being used as the reel name depending on your work-flow, eg:

A001
A001_0728DH
A001_C001_0728U7
A001C001

Consistency between different apps would certainly be helpful!

 

[mikeburton]

Yes, agreed! However, a straight "send to Color XML' works just fine.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Worked for me using 3 Apple ProRes Proxy test clips. Didn't attempt to use the RED proxies.

Is this conforming feature with RED clips new in Cinema Tools? What was it capable of before FCS 3?

 

[Nick Shaw]

Worked for me using 3 Apple ProRes Proxy test clips. Didn't attempt to use the RED proxies.

Did you generate those ProRes using L&T or Red Rushes.

Is this conforming feature with RED clips new in Cinema Tools? What was it capable of before FCS 3?

New in FCS3. Previously it linked back to the original film from TK logs.

 

[Nicholas Shields]

If you have originally transcoded to prores through Red Alert/Red Rushes, can you still conform in Color (correcting the orginal R3D files?). If not, can you get RR/RA to just bump out 1080 uncompressed from your edl - with handles? Is this something Monkey Extract can do? Clipfinder? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Did you generate those ProRes using L&T or Red Rushes.

Transcoded to ProRes with L&T.

If you have originally transcoded to prores through Red Alert/Red Rushes, can you still conform in Color (correcting the orginal R3D files?). If not, can you get RR/RA to just bump out 1080 uncompressed from your edl - with handles? Is this something Monkey Extract can do? Clipfinder? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If the file structure and names are still preserved... then it should be no problem to conform. Basically the Cinema Tools method relies on the clip names to be the same as the original RAW files. I'll test this out now to see.

Update:

Had no conform luck when using RedRushes to transcode 4 clips in Apple ProRes 422 format to the desktop. The EDL was broken when imported into Color.

 

[Nick Shaw]

L&T assigns a unique identifier number to each clip, and uses a non standard reel name, so it's incompatible with other conform methods as far as I can see.

I'm in the middle of a job though, so I have not updated FCS yet. So I'm speaking from theory not practice.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Can someone please explain in detail why REDrushes is different than L&T for importing. Also any hopes of this issue being fixed so we can transncode faster and use the cinema Tools option to conform later on.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Found the answer to my question in this: http://www.red.com/downloads/6beb05bbf3b4c6193a2f4d4b2585e5295e0d55bb/RED FCS Whitepaper.pdf

Univeral Unique Identifier is actually embedded in the Quicktime media and is not user accessible... that way even if a file name changes it can be relinked.

Tracking Ingested Media to the Original R3D Media
Whether you choose to transcode or ingest RED media, the correspondence between
the source R3D media and the QuickTime files that are created during the Log and
Transfer process is maintained in three ways:

• The name of the top level directory that encloses each set of archived RED media is
used as the reel name of ingested clips.
• The name of each R3D file is used to create the universally unique ID number (UUID)
which is also referred to as the Clip ID for each ingested clip. This ID number, which is
not user-accessible, is used to track the correspondence between ingested clips and
the original source media from which it came. This means you can rename clips as
you ingest them, or afterward, without losing the correspondence between a clip’s
UUID tag and the name of the original R3D file.
• Each ingested clip’s non-drop frame timecode matches that of its corresponding
archived R3D file.