Anamorphic Workflows

[Harky Jewett]

I was hoping to start a thread where people could post their Anamorphic Workflows. With Build 18 the camera really (as has been said) has a true anamorphic setting which is excellent and I'm very thankful to the Red team for making this possible!

However, there are still some things, personally, I need to wrap my head around. Also right now I'm dealing with a project we shot on both Build 18 and 16 (we're doing an offline: build 18 is easy to handle in Red Rushes, but it is a little trickier to deal with 16 since the footage needs to be cropped).

Here's my understanding of Build 18 4K Ana mode:

The camera records an image that is 2816x2304 pixels squeezed.

Using 2x desqueeze in Red Alert at full quality produces an image with these pixel dimensions 2816x1152 (half of 2304)

This gives you an aspect ratio of slightly larger than 2.40:1 ( actually 2.44444(repeating):1 ). (2760x1150 would be an exact 2.4:1 ratio, but I'm not sure there's any reason to want to crop to this).

If you scale this down to HD, for example, you get an image area of 1920x785.


With Build 16 the camera recorded an image of 4096x2304 squeezed.
Desqueezed 4096x1152 (giving you an aspect ratio of 3.55555:1 uncropped).

At the moment I'm cropping the image from 4096 to 2816, cropping 1280 pixels from the sides. So my settings for a center crop are:

Crop at Full Debayer (it's my understanding that a half debayer setting would just half these numbers, a quarter would divide them by four, etc.)

Width: 2816
Height: 2304
Origin X: 640
Origin Y: 0

640 being half of 1280 (though this seems to throw the image slightly off center in my test, although I could be wrong and I don't think it should).


In any case, the files must be transcoded in order to edit in the proper ratio since the proxies are squeezed.

Right now I'm a little stuck on what to do after the edit. I'd like to do a conform with Crimson back to Redcine (though Red Cine doesn't seem to be working with the Build 18 4K Ana footage yet).

Desqueeze would then be applied to the conformed files and I would online with Red Cine like normal.

That said, I'm hoping that people will post their own workflows here, to start a reference thread since there seems to be a lot of interest in shooting anamorphic with the Red (I definitely want to again).

Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions,

Harky

 

[mikeburton]

Here is an anamorphic workflow I use all the time now and will help you get your project into Color using all the power of 12 bit RAW using this non-documented method I found. (Also, must give credit to Luca for figuring out the proxy method which spawned my idea with the ProRes instead.

1. In RedRushes Transcode all your anamorphic clips using the Fit Width 2x Fit/Stretch. After all your files are transcoded to ProRes, add an _H.mov to the end of the file name of each clip. This will not make your file a proxy file but it will Trick Color later on. If you don't add this extension the following will NOT work.

2. Import into FCP, edit etc. When your finished with your edit, kick everything down in the timeline to Video Track 1 and remove any dissolves, effects etc, and export a standard EDL, default settings from FCP. (Make sure its just the standard ProRes Clips you are exporting in the EDL, no jpgs, etc).

3. Open Color, Create a new project. File import the EDL. The EDL Import Settings dialogue box will appear.
Project Frame Rate - Set ie 23.98 or whatever your project frame rate in FCP
EDL Frame Rate - Set ie 23.98 or whatever your project frame rate in FCP
Source Frame Rate - Set ie 23.98 or whatever your project frame rate in FCP
Project Resolution = Choose Whatever your master file will be up to 2K or below in resolution. Color will import at any of your chosen resolutions up to 2048x1152.
Source Directory - IMPORTANT - Click "Browse" and navigate to the folder where all your original R3D's are for your project. If they are in multiple folders on the drive, just select the drive.

4. After step 3 above, click import. Color will build your FCP timeline and you will have access to the RED Tab using all 12bits of the RAW information like if you did the L&T 'Native' workflow. Also, it bypasses having to go into media manager etc.

This is my favorite new workflow to date. Luca found this workflow with the proxies. I don't like working with the Proxies so I tried it with the ProRes Files and it works great with a few small tweaks.

NOTES:
1. You can have your ProRes offline files on a different drive than your R3D's without any problems. You don't have to replace each file into its respective RDC folder. You are later going to tell Color where to locate the original R3D's that match the name of the offline ProRes clips. MAKE SURE YOU KEEP ALL YOUR R3D's TOGETHER ON ONE DRIVE TO MAKE THE IMPORT INTO COLOR EASIER.
2. Again, you must put a _H.mov at the end of your ProRes clips ie A003_C001_1222N3_H.mov
3. On a large project, break it up into pieces when sending to Color, like 10-15minutes a shot.

If you have any issues send me a pm. I have done this workflow successfully many times now and it works for large and small projects.
Enjoy!