Avid Offline, FCP Online

[person]

Hi
I have both Nitris MC and FCP with AJA. Was wondering if there is a way to us FCP to conform native RED via an offline edit done with Avid MC. Has anyone accomplished this?

 

[Noah Kadner]

Lots of extra work there- why not just do it all one or the other? First you'll be dealing with an EDL ingest into FCP- so your more complex effects done in Avid will disappear. But then you'll also be faced with all kinds of media ingest issues, coming from the Avid you'll be DNxHD, etc- especially if you want to work with your footage say RAW in Color. It's tricky enough to complete a project all in one NLE- I'd suggest you pick the one you like best and do it all there.

Not saying what you want can't be done but unless there's a hugely compelling reason not to complete all work in a single package you're setting yourself up for a whole lot of extra clerical and troubleshooting work on top of the editorial fun stuff.

Noah

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

Hi
I have both Nitris MC and FCP with AJA. Was wondering if there is a way to us FCP to conform native RED via an offline edit done with Avid MC. Has anyone accomplished this?

With Automatic Duck FCP Pro Import, you can take an AAF exported from Avid and bring it into a FCP timeline in one step. It creates clip bins based what is in the timeline, and then you can capture those clips. I have done this many times, it's pretty painless.

However, with all the meta-cheater Avid-esque workarounds with RED, I do not know if this would present issues, but I doubt it. If you have accurate time-code and clip name/reel id information in your Avid offline, relinking to proxies and then sending to Color shouldn't be a big issue. I have never cut Red on an Avid, so I am no expert on that workflow, but moving a project from Avid to FCP is not a big deal, with that Duck plugin.

bk

 

[N_Villers]

I know of a very good solution that handles the problem of going from avid to fcp via xml for raw grading in color that I am in the process of testing. More info coming later.

 

[Eythan Holladay]

I just did this sorta workflow - big PIA (with the Duck I may add) - I eventually ended doing a great deal of work swaping stuff in and out of the XML as well as some nonsense with the .SI files that Color uses to store date for the clips..

@ N_Villers - PM'ing now as I am pretty sure sleep deprivation caused me to break out my Perl skills to edit video..


*Disclaimer - My workflow got weird with how the project landed back in my lap >> I did NOT have the avid media (I had the r3ds), just the BIN to plug into the duck.

 

[Jörgen Persson]

I cut a short film recently and when it was done I moved the Avid offline to Color using an EDL. Before creating the EDL I duplicated the Tape column (with the R3D filename) into the Name column and had comments on for clipnames in the EDL.
In Color I opened the EDL and pointed to the folder with the Red material and it conformed everything properly. I checked the conform by importing a Quicktime of the offline into a layer above. It was just cuts and dissolves but I was still surprised how well it worked.

I can do a step by step guide next week if anyone's interested.

 

[Nook Kim]

Your step by step guide would be very useful for a guy like me. I usually get QT exports or DigiBeta tapes of offline and manually conform to in FCP. It's very time consuming, and my assistant sure does not like it

Thanks,

 

[person]

thanks

thanks

Thanks for the info. Can Color read a 16 character EDL since the source names for each red file is 16 characters long? Basically I want to be able to edit in Avid and conform the raw RED files. Could I then export a r3d file of this conformed sequence from Color? Or do I have to create a DPX sequence?

The intent is to be able to take the sequence into a facility for a colorist or smoke/flame artist without supplying all the original r3d files. I would also supply shots that needed handles for transitional effects.

 

[MichaelP]

As an FYI, I worked with Deanan to tweak the metadata in the ALE generated in ROCKETCINE-X to include the FCP style of R3D file name tracking in addition to the full 16 character tape name (which FCP does not like). That is being tracked in the Camroll column. When generating an EDL, use Camroll as source. The full 16 characters can be easily duplicated to the Comment column and added as a comment if that helps.

Lots of metadata flexibility to get what you need.

Michael

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

As an FYI, I worked with Deanan to tweak the metadata in the ALE generated in ROCKETCINE-X to include the FCP style of R3D file name tracking in addition to the full 16 character tape name (which FCP does not like). That is being tracked in the Camroll column. When generating an EDL, use Camroll as source. The full 16 characters can be easily duplicated to the Comment column and added as a comment if that helps.

Lots of metadata flexibility to get what you need.

Michael

hi, will avid support r3d files native in MC in the next 6 months?

 

[MichaelP]

hi, will avid support r3d files native in MC in the next 6 months?

Being a public company, I cannot soeak beyond the quarter boundary.

Michael

 

[person]

As an FYI, I worked with Deanan to tweak the metadata in the ALE generated in ROCKETCINE-X to include the FCP style of R3D file name tracking in addition to the full 16 character tape name (which FCP does not like). That is being tracked in the Camroll column. When generating an EDL, use Camroll as source. The full 16 characters can be easily duplicated to the Comment column and added as a comment if that helps.

Lots of metadata flexibility to get what you need.

Michael

Thanks Michael. I use Red Rushes to transcode and create the ALE. So does Color not read a 16 character EDL?

 

[N_Villers]

No color will not read the 16 character edl - it compresses the name to 8 characters ie. A001C001. I have tried many different ways to get the edl to work without much luck. However, a great solution is in the works. Stay tuned.

 

[MichaelP]

It's too bad it cannot read the 16 character EDL. So easy to do and so much more accurate in file identification.

Michael

 

[Peter Moretti]

Michael,

Can you PLEASE knock some heads together (figuratively speaking of course ) over there at Tewksbury and tell them that the very need for an Avid to Color workflow is killing Avid and should be seen as embarrassment. (I know the advantages of MC's tools being native, I've sat in front of Symphonies and I've used Color... and I've read Avid's boilerplate responses.)

Come on, cutting in MC and finishing in Color will soon become cutting in FCP and finishing in Color for a lot of people. I don't see how Avid doesn't see this.

 

[person]

A simple Avid edit third party RED conform solution would be sweet. And without having to spend $$. But is Monkey Extract the best solution out there for being able to read a 16 character EDL? Would hate the spend the $ and next week a freeware thing comes out.

 

[MichaelP]

Can you PLEASE knock some heads together (figuratively speaking of course ) over there at Tewksbury and tell them that the very need for an Avid to Color workflow is killing Avid and should be seen as embarrassment. (I know the advantages of MC's tools being native, I've sat in front of Symphonies and I've used Color... and I've read Avid's boilerplate responses.)

Come on, cutting in MC and finishing in Color will soon become cutting in FCP and finishing in Color for a lot of people. I don't see how Avid doesn't see this.

Peter - I am not arguing the need to do this, and as I mentioned already, metadata coming from ROCKETCINE-X today already handles FCP more limited representation of the file name in the Camroll column. It is also a very easy change for Apple to do in their EDL generation to create a 16Char template like we did and is supported by all other third party conform apps today. It would also be just as easy for Color to import a 16Char EDL that references the full file name as SOURCE and not as a comment.

Whenever there is a workflow gap, people will always look to Avid to fix it and not the receiving application. Every other vendor in the DI file base market supports the 16Char EDL. Again - VERY EASY change on Apple's part to be more flexible on its end.

That being said, a simple EDL to EDL converter like Autodesk did would work here as well. Looking into it.

Michael

 

[jamie parry]

anything i can help with Michael? i think i've done stuff like this before for premiere EDL people.
just tell me what needs to be done and i'm pretty sure i can do it...
AVID16EDL to FCP 8CharEDL type thing yes?
jamie
occasional jamfuze person
bit bored at the moment as can't get into an SR Deck. tapeless shmapeless.

 

[Jörgen Persson]

Look here guys

 

[MichaelP]

anything i can help with Michael? i think i've done stuff like this before for premiere EDL people.
just tell me what needs to be done and i'm pretty sure i can do it...
AVID16EDL to FCP 8CharEDL type thing yes?
jamie
occasional jamfuze person
bit bored at the moment as can't get into an SR Deck. tapeless shmapeless.

Thanks Jamie and Jorgen!

And yes, basically taking a 16Char EDL and doing the following:

1. Take first 9 characters of existing source name and remove the underscore to be left with 8 characters. So A001_C001_1234QX will become: A001C001

2. Take Existing source name and apply as * comment


Michael