Adobe Premiere Pro with MATROX RTx2 and RED

[Peter John Ross]

Okay, so I just shot a piece in 4K with the RED and I had to upgrade to Adobe CS4 to work with the RED files. Since I don't want to buy an all new system for editing RED natively, plus I wanted to monitor on a full screen HDTV (again without breaking the bank witha ll new hard ware), I ran into some bumps with my setup.

I'm downrezzing all my RED footage to 1280x720P Matrox AVI's for editing as proxies, synching sound as I do. I have a 720P HDTV hooked up to the DVI-out of the Matrox card.

I made a mistake at first, being new to CS4, and I made 4K RED timelines and started to export to Matrox AVI's. It took about 48 minutes per 1 minute of footage. That was a lot, even for my machine. I then discovered that you get Matrox Acceleration if you create a MATROX timeline and "scale to fit timeline", then export. Significant difference in time results. The same 1 minute clip took under 4 minutes to render out. So, for anyone with the Matrox cards - big hint - scale down on a Matrox timeline!

My question is for anyone else creatinv proxies, whether they be DV AVI or any other file type of Proxy to edit with. Do you create an EDL from the proxy timeline then open it in Premiere to re-edit the R3D files? What is the procedure for opening an EDL in Premiere CS4?

 

[Alex Mack]

Why not edit native redcode?
I built a 600$ machine that can do it with ease. You would'nt have to render any proxies, just use the quarter resolution feature to edit easily. Then render out at 4k.

 

[Linda Nelson]

We took out our Matrox card as the drivers just aren't up to speed yet for working with the RED files. We're editing native RED files, no proxies, we just set up a 1080 timeline and set the default to "scale to frame". You can turn this off for a single clip if you want to pan and scan on the 4K version. If you're watching on a 720p monitor, you could even set up your timeline for 720 and watch in full resolution. When you're ready to output, just make a new higher resolution sequence, drop in your 720 sequenceand then use Media Encoder to output the file. No need for any proxies as the timeline just references the RAW RED files directly.

 

[Peter John Ross]

I am not using the graphics card, but the MATROX card to output DVI to HDMI to the 32" screen. I need both screens to edit from the graphics card, so the MATROX allows me to have both and see it that big, in real time. That is my sole reason for not editing directly with R3D files.

 

[Peter John Ross]

FYI - exporting an EDL of my Matrox 720P AVI's, then editing the EDL, using FIND/REPLACE to change the *.AVI to *.R3D, then opening the EDL in Premiere ona 4K RED timeline worked FLAWLESSLY.

It was incredibly easy and worked for me. I wanted to monitor with Matrox real time DVI out to a 720P monitor and for the cutting the proxies worked great and now it conforms to the original 4K for color correction.

- PJR
www.sonnyboo.com