Adobe Workflow Questions

[James McLellan]

I'm looking at moving from FCP7 to PP CS5.5. A few questions to help me sort things out in my head:

1) Does PP use Quicktime as it's player?
2) Assuming one edits in native red are you using the proxies?
3) Is the native r3d editing realistic for indie type work or does one need an aja card or red rocket to have it work smoothly?
4) If you have cut in a small proxies can you re-link easily to the larger proxies for final output?
5) My last step in FCP was to output prores 422 or 444. Does PP output prores?
6) I see this as a space and time saving measure. Not having to transcode really saves space and time. Is this true or am I missing something?
7) Are the colour correction tools in PP as good as colour (FCP7 version)?
8) Can you colour correct using the RC-X Raw controls at any time in PP without prepping and sending it to other programs?

I think that's all for now. Thanks in advance for your time.

 

[David McGavran]

I will do my best to answer each of these questions...

1) Does PP use Quicktime as it's player?

No we have a our on player. It is part of what we call the Mecury Playback Engine. Now that doesn't mean we don't use quicktime. We have full support of QuickTime movies to bring in formats like prores/photo jpeg etc... But we go beyond that. Apples QT is still 32 bit (even in FCP X) and we like 64 bit. So for many .mov files we read them ourselves natively in 64 bit. Things like DV, HDV, QT None, H.264 in a mov (5D) are handled by us natively. Other formats like MXF, R3D and XCDAM (plus a ton more) we read ourselves and do that all in 64 bit. We also have a third party plugin api for partners to add formats to ppro/ae etc...


2) Assuming one edits in native red are you using the proxies?

Nope you take the R3D and drop it in ppro and run... Full control of all the RED meta data directly in PPro and it interacts with Red Cine X. There are tons of posts on that in here.

3) Is the native r3d editing realistic for indie type work or does one need an aja card or red rocket to have it work smoothly?

Red One at 1/4 res display with a decent computer is very realistic. With a rocket you can do 4k full res playback. With Epic we get pretty good performance at 1/8 res and with a rocket 1/2 res. (2 rockets will get you 5k full res)

4) If you have cut in a small proxies can you re-link easily to the larger proxies for final output?

You can do it, but we don't yet have the best workflow here. But you can work in the native version the whole time.

5) My last step in FCP was to output prores 422 or 444. Does PP output prores?

If you have Pro Res installed we will happily export to it. You get it with FCP or the new software update. We can export on the mac. No export on windows as apple doesn't ship a prores codec on windows for export. We can read pro res on windows however.

6) I see this as a space and time saving measure. Not having to transcode really saves space and time. Is this true or am I missing something?

Yes it does save space and time. Plus you don't go through a compression pass. Plus with RED you can tweak the RAW settings at any point in your workflow and not have to retranscode.

7) Are the colour correction tools in PP as good as colour (FCP7 version)?

I am biased... Will let other chime in here. We do have a full set of Color correctors and we have many third parties that deliver color correctors (Colorista as an example)

8) Can you colour correct using the RC-X Raw controls at any time in PP without prepping and sending it to other programs?

Yep, you can do this in PPro, AE and AME. When you send an R3d from say ppro to ae via dynamiclink or copy/paste the settings follow along and then you can work on them in the other app.


We have a fully functional 30 day trial with all formats avail for testing...

Cheers

Dave

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Also on a 12 core Mac Pro you can get realtime playback at 1/2 res without the need for a RED Rocket card. Editing native RED footage is sweet. Also been playing around with Epic HDRx files and the speed and stability is top notch.

 

[Uli Plank]

Same here. Stable on both Mac and PC, but you need to give it room to breathe, at least 2 GB of RAM per core (more doesn't hurt).

 

[James McLellan]

Thanks folks. This sounds promising.