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A "loaded question" regarding RED workflow.

Daniel Christensen

Daniel Christensen

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I've been digging incessantly regarding RED workflow recently, and haven't had much luck. You know how the internet is, can't find anything current or relevant.

Before I start, I should probably give some background as to where I'm coming from. I've only shot on DSLR's. So basically I shoot, dump all the SD cards onto my computer hard drive, then import them into Serif MoviePlus (on my older PC) or iMovie (on my mid-2013 Macbook Air) and start editing away. I've taken to doing some minor color adjustment in iMovie, just to keep my films from looking too much like home movie crap. Once I'm finished with the movie, I transfer all the footage, audio, project files, etc. to an external backup hard drive and forget about it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I won't be able to use that same workflow (i.e. taking the REDmags, sticking them on a hard drive, editing, coloring, exporting as a .mov) with a Scarlet. And here's where they brainless noob questions start.

First, is it at all possible, on, say a full-spec iMac or some iteration of the new Mac Pro be able to edit RED files with the workflow I talked about above? Second, what does the RED Rocket/-X actually do? Can someone give me a simple explanation of what it does? Does it only work within REDCine-X Pro? Or would it work within Premiere Pro CC, or Final Cut Pro X, or Smoke 2013? What does it do within those programs? For a working professional would it be worth it to have the Red Rocket? If I had the Red Rocket, would I need to use a proxy workflow? Or could I stick with a similar workflow to what I outlined above?

I know this is kind of a loaded question, and no one person will be able to answer all of the "sub-questions" but I'm really striving to understand this whole RED workflow process, and any help would be appreciated! Thank you!
 
For your type of workflow you don't need to think about the rocket. MacBook Pro is plenty fast to work with 4k raw. I would start out with the adobe creative cloud suite, since the entire red workflow is integrated with that product (pp, after effects, coloring program and audio). There are a ton of great tutorials with red workflow and creative cloud too. I use nukex,maya,syntheyes workflow with linear openexr ... But I would not recommend that type of workflow starting out unless your taking professional classes.
 
Correct. You might also think about final cut X. It'll work just fine on a new MacBook Pro with scarlet 4k raw. Just depends on which program you prefer, premier or fcpX.
 
Without buying new software, what you could do is take your red files after you dump them into RedCine-X, and then export proress or .mov intermediates at 1080p that you could edit in iMovie just like your DSLR footage. It's only one more step and more or less lets you keep the same workflow you already have. However, I would definitely suggest getting into Premiere of FCP. They'll make your life a little bit easier editing r3ds.
 
A Red Rocket is a computer card with hardware that can turn red raw footage into something displayable on a screen. Sort of the reverse of what the camera is.

Red provides an SDK to third parties like Apple and Adobe that can use a Red Rocket card.

Red also provides an SDK to third parties that can use your computers built-in hardware to make red raw footage displayable, although this is not as fast as using a Red Rocket card.

Red is quickly advancing their software, and third parties like Apple and Adobe are following suit, so it's unlikely that anybody except big edit/color houses will absolutely need a Red Rocket going forward.

It's pretty certain that iMovie will never play back red raw footage, although I suppose you never know. If you want to stick to iMovie, you would need to transcode your footage into ProRes via Red's free Cine-X program, and then import those ProRes files into iMovie.

If you want to edit red raw footage directly, and you are coming from iMovie, Final Cut X is a natural choice because it has a lot of iMovie UI idioms, and it plays back footage natively, it allows you to tweak some basic raw settings, and is probably the cheapest software package out there that will allow you to deal directly with red raw footage.

Adobe Premiere is also a popular option for red footage, although that would be introducing another learning curve to the mix.

A top-of-the-line iMac will not play back 4K footage in realtime, but it is probably fine with down-sampled playback, which is a feature of almost anything that can play red raw footage. There is really no reason to edit on an iMac at full resolution, since you won't have a way to view 4K anyway. Once you finish an edit, you can render out the project into a 1080p h.264 and then show it on any HD TV. Or you could render a 4K video, and then probably not have a way to view it.

People on this forum post links to red raw footage. Download some footage and see what works for you.

Also, google for "red raw workflow" or "red workflow whitepaper". There is lots of in-depth stuff written about this. There is no right answer, and no path is super-simple. Prepare to struggle, and prepare for a setback in overall quality of your projects while you figure all this stuff out.

HTH,
-n
 
Links:

http://www.twitchpost.com/2010/10/a...-cut-studio-red-workflow-whitepaper-released/

http://www.red.com/learn/workflow/page/2

http://images.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/RED_Workflows_with_Final_Cut_Pro_X.pdf

http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Ad.../adobe-premiere-pro-cs6-red-workflowguide.pdf

http://red.cachefly.net/newrdc/website/Workflow/Avid_RED_StepByStep.pdf


There are lots and lots and lots of different potential workflows out there, and I think it's a good idea to get your head around how they work, all hinging on your existing hardware, editing software, and color-correction software. As Michael Cioni says in his Red Workflow classes at Creatasphere, "you have to start at the end of the post production train -- the caboose -- to figure out where you're going to end up, and then work your way back to determine how to start the process."

Don't forgot that audio and visual effects are also an important part of the workflow, and you have to allow for them to take place concurrently with the editing and color correction. There are pros and cons for several different methods. For example, quite a few American network TV shows do the whole thing in Apple ProRes 444 1080HD, and as far as I'm concerned, it looks fine. Some believe 4K is important, and I think it's fine as long as you allow a lot more time and money for the process.

Whichever way you got, test the workflow before you start so that you know it's going to work. I've seen some sad cases where people have gotten to the final mix or the final color-correction and gotten rude surprises because they didn't think to ask questions before the session, and their workflow methods wound up costing additional time and money.

It'd be interesting for somebody to write an entire book on digital workflow, but it's changing so rapidly, I think it'd be obsolete 18 months from now.
 
Neil Cronin said:
A Red Rocket is a computer card with hardware that can turn red raw footage into something displayable on a screen. Sort of the reverse of what the camera is.

Red provides an SDK to third parties like Apple and Adobe that can use a Red Rocket card.

Red also provides an SDK to third parties that can use your computers built-in hardware to make red raw footage displayable, although this is not as fast as using a Red Rocket card.

Red is quickly advancing their software, and third parties like Apple and Adobe are following suit, so it's unlikely that anybody except big edit/color houses will absolutely need a Red Rocket going forward.

It's pretty certain that iMovie will never play back red raw footage, although I suppose you never know. If you want to stick to iMovie, you would need to transcode your footage into ProRes via Red's free Cine-X program, and then import those ProRes files into iMovie.

If you want to edit red raw footage directly, and you are coming from iMovie, Final Cut X is a natural choice because it has a lot of iMovie UI idioms, and it plays back footage natively, it allows you to tweak some basic raw settings, and is probably the cheapest software package out there that will allow you to deal directly with red raw footage.

Adobe Premiere is also a popular option for red footage, although that would be introducing another learning curve to the mix.

A top-of-the-line iMac will not play back 4K footage in realtime, but it is probably fine with down-sampled playback, which is a feature of almost anything that can play red raw footage. There is really no reason to edit on an iMac at full resolution, since you won't have a way to view 4K anyway. Once you finish an edit, you can render out the project into a 1080p h.264 and then show it on any HD TV. Or you could render a 4K video, and then probably not have a way to view it.

People on this forum post links to red raw footage. Download some footage and see what works for you.

Also, google for "red raw workflow" or "red workflow whitepaper". There is lots of in-depth stuff written about this. There is no right answer, and no path is super-simple. Prepare to struggle, and prepare for a setback in overall quality of your projects while you figure all this stuff out.

HTH,
-n
Click to expand...

So I could edit 4/5K at half-res in Premiere on an iMac without a Red Rocket?
 
Daniel Christensen said:
So I could edit 4/5K at half-res in Premiere on an iMac without a Red Rocket?
Click to expand...

I would guess so, but you'd be wise to try it first, or ask someone with a similar setup to tell you how it works. You can go to an Apple store with some footage and install a trial version of Premiere and see what it looks like.

The top-of-the-line iMac has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB. Others would know more about how that card stacks up to my NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 1GB, but I get 1/2 res realtime playback on Epic 5K footage with minimal CPU stress. I get about 90fps at 1/8 debayer, and about 40fps at 1/4 debayer.

I don't use Premiere, but I would assume they are using the Red SDK, so performance should be similar to Cine-X and FCP, give or take some details in how they are using it. It is up to Adobe and Apple and Red itself to use the right/latest version of the SDK, though, so it's possible that Adobe is using an older version of the SDK. In general, it seems like folks generally feel like FCP 10.1 is faster than Premiere on the same hardware, but that could change any day. To my eye, it looks like Final Cut does some sort of adaptive debayering depending upon the viewport geometry, but I've never been bothered to look at the pixels 1:1 to find out for sure. In general, Final Cut just works. Premiere and Cine-X expect you to dial in a specific debayer value, which adds another thing to double check when things don't look right.

There are a ton of other variables though, how fast is your storage? what else is your computer doing? what is your footage's compression ratio and content? how large are your projects? how much audio do you have going on? etc etc.

If you can't get 1/2 res playback on whatever hardware fits your budget, 1/4 or even 1/8 is completely workable for editing. 1/8 debayer viewed at 200% is about 12" diagonal on an imac, and although it exhibits some motion artifacts that might look odd to a bystander, it is completely fine for editing. Then you just render out your project to 4K or UHD or 1080p.

-n
 
Mainly the reason I'm looking at Premiere is because with the CC business model I can get pre-production, ingest and logging, editing, audio, grading, and output, all from the same company, and all of them working together pretty well, and it's $50 a month, which is reasonable for someone that's working in the industry. If I go with Final Cut, I'm gonna have to go to some different places to get everything, with Adobe it's an all-in-one package.
 
I've been on Adobe for about 2 years now (Apple lost me at the FCP X update but I gather it's a LOT better these days). But whether you're on Adobe or FCPX, in my experience these days there is very little need for any kind of proxy or transcoding workflow (ProRes etc), as long as you work with an editing program that supports Red files natively. Then again, I generally manage my projects end-to-end so I don't need to slot into the workflows of external post houses etc.

The Red Rocket card is what you need if you want to play back the 4K+ Red files at full resolution in real time (or regularly need to do a ton of transcoding on a tight schedule). However, unless you actually are finishing in 4K DCP or UHD, and also have a 4K monitor to view your material at 100%, there is really no need for the full-rez 4K playback. 1/2, 1/4 or in a pinch even 1/8 resolution is perfectly workable for editing. It's just a single menu in the Premiere program monitor so switching back and forth is no big deal.

As Neil said, there is no one "Red Workflow" - it all depends on the project, your setup, the final format etc. etc. For example, with color correction, I find myself using a number of different methods: Sometimes I edit in Premiere, take it out to Resolve and export the final deliverables from there; sometimes I stay entirely within Premiere and After Effects; sometimes it's actually more convenient to do the color grade and shot matching up front in Redcine-X BEFORE editing in Premiere (that way the grade is already there when you edit and no further steps, effects or processing power are required). And so on.

Another decision on HD projects is whether to edit in a 4K sequence at the native resolution and export the final materials to HD, or create your sequence at 1080 and just downscale the Red clips to fit. Both methods work fine; both have certain advantages and disadvantages.

So once you get a feel for how the Red file format works, it's really not that different from working with DSLR material. Transfer to hard disk, import to edit program, edit, export. One important thing to understand though is the way the files are saved to the recording media (i.e. when moving footage clips you need to copy the entire folder, not just the R3D raw file(s).

But coming from a DSLR background (as I did) you will find that once you get the taste of 4K raw it's very hard to look back. :) Even when finishing to 1080p, the impact on the image quality is huge, assuming that the material is otherwise well exposed, in focus etc etc.
 
Thanks for the input T! I'm thinking half-rez of 5K will look good on an Apple Thunderbolt display, so I think that'll be my set-up. An iMac with Adobe CC, all the best internal power you can get from Apple, 32 gigs of RAM, and I'm thinking I should be set for HD output, and 4K for when I need to start upgrading everything to the "new standard".
 
Haven't worked on the latest Mac hardware (switched my edit to PC at the same time as to Premiere) but sounds like you'll be just fine... The Red raw material actually has fairly manageable data rates but fast disk storage is also something to consider - I just upgraded my main video workdisk to a 750 GB SSD a couple of weeks ago and it was like the BEST investment ever. :) The price is really dropping on these so they're starting to get very very accessible.
 
Well hopefully I would have 256 or 512 GB SSD as my boot and application drive, and then a mechanical RAID connected via Thunderbolt. I could try to do a Drobo with SSD's, that would be extremely fast.
 
Daniel Christensen said:
Well hopefully I would have 256 or 512 GB SSD as my boot and application drive, and then a mechanical RAID connected via Thunderbolt. I could try to do a Drobo with SSD's, that would be extremely fast.
Click to expand...

Drobos are OK for archiving, and they are nice hardware, but they are maddening to use as attached storage, and poisonous for time machine. Stay away if you can. The way they create fake HFS partitions on top of their actual storage capacity breaks many other-wise safe assumptions about HFS.

-n
 
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