Another Music Vid - Frazier Lens

[Dylan Reeve]

If I'd known you and Luke were going to do THAT with my Camera.....

Cheers

Michael

Hey, don't blame me, I just copied the CF cards (and helped rig the mounts, and schlepped cases, and directed a shot)...

And besides, there was at least three pieces of gaffer tape, two cable ties, and on of those little wire safety thingys from the LX truck holding as a backup safety at all times

 

[Dylan Reeve]

Does your Fraizer comes with a PL mount at the camera side? Does it have a PL mount on its other end or does it have its own lenses?

The Frazier we had (from Panavision in Auckland) came in two really heavy case (I think I pulled a muscle in my back trying to carry both at once).

The main lens unit (everything from the camera to the end of the double-axis tilty bit) is one part.

Then there are the 'Taking lenses' which I believe are a proprietary mount. They mount in the end of the main lens unit and are the part of the system that defines the focal length.

I had nothing to do with operating the camera (although I did mount and unmount the lens a few times) so I can't tell you too much about the specifics of it. But suffice to say it is unlike any lens I have ever seen before (although more reading about it since suggests that it might not be quite as unique as it first seems).

I believe it is exclusively a Panavision lens, so you can't buy it... And while it was pretty pricey as a rental, given that it comes with a whole set of taking lenses, it's kind of like renting a set of primes in a way. Albeit really really big and awkward ones, with somewhat unusual optical characteristics.

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

You'd think so... But who knows what'll it all turn out like... In the end weather delays meant that two whole locations were dropped, and an entirely new part was shot. Also a variety of angle were never able to happen...

That said, what I saw in the edit suite today (on Avid, I love Avid... Still not at all convinced by FCP) looked great and seemed like it would still pan out pretty well.

Stupid Avid... makes it damn hard to get Final Cut work in Auckland

 

[Dylan Reeve]

Well, there's aren't many good FCP operators, so you've got that going for you. Most of us spend our time on FCP cursing about keys not being where we expect them to be, and getting confused.

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

Oh to be young and skilled with FCP...
In any case I look forward to a day when I can shoot some red footage.

 

[Chris Parker]

so since it is a while until your own box is out, what is your current on-set data management setup and functionality?

you do much CC on set with REDAlert or REDCine?

 

[Dylan Reeve]

My on-set workflow is generally pretty simplistic at the moment.

I use RsyncX to duplicate data from cards to hard drive (and then again from drive 1 to a second one).

I have REDAlert and REDCINE available, but we're not doing a lot with it. Typically the people who'd care are busy with other things anyway, so not much call for using it. But if the need arises we'll pull up shots in RC or RA to have a quick fiddle with (see how much detail we can pull out of a blown sky for example).

When we get it back to the office, I'm using the Proxy files and Metacheater to pull it all into Avid straight away, so still not RC or RA pass there (unless we specifically need it).

Our prototype SolidStore units will hopefully be ready for our testing soon (there's only a few)... They'll be 'dumb' in the sense that there's no options for RC or RA on them, but a GigE connection to a laptop will provide that if required. Even my crappy old Toshiba Satellite seems to be able to run RC well enough for me to do basic look tests (can't render on it though).

 

[Chris Parker]

thanks dylan. i have a client who wants to do a test with their AVIDs to see if the workflow is 'there enough' for them to shoot RED.

If you could elaborate a little on the process of getting it into an AVID with MetaCheater, that would be fantastic. If not, no worries, I'll snoop around a little.

 

[Dylan Reeve]

I was going to PM ya, but information wants to be free, and it's my thread, so I'll go tangental...

Getting it into Avid is fairly easy. It needs to happen on a Mac (because the QT component is required) but after that you can move the Avid media to any Avid.

Basically I build new QT ref files in a single directory (I have a very simple REDline script to do this) - which makes is easier for the import and link.

Then I open up MetaCheater, alter any settings I need to (I'm working at PAL res, not 1080, so I have to change that default) and select all the QT files and build the ALE.

Then I make a new Avid project (25p) and import my ALE into it.

Select all the new offline clips and go to 'Bin -> Batch Import'. Select all the clips in the list, go to Locate Files (I think that's what it's called) and find the first file it's looking for. All the others will automatically be located relative to that one.

Then clip import and wait.

It pays to do a test import on the shortest clip first, just to check the import settings. With 2:1 material, I tell Avid it's 601-style pixel and it makes a 16:9 anamorphic image, which is close enough for editorial (I can add a little more squeeze with a resize on the timeline later).

However... And it's a big however... I don't have a way out of Avid yet. I know Michael at Avid has been working on some stuff, and it shouldn't be too far away. One thing about the Metacheater workflow is it assigns clips the full clipname as the Avid Tape name (so 'A001_C001_080314' for example) which is no good for an EDL. Instead it might be better to make it just the Reel ID ('A001') which will survive an EDL. I'm not sure if this is an option in Metacheater right now.

Michael from C4Camera here in Auckland has written his own little in house program, I believe, that takes the information from the REDCINE XML and combines it with the EDL to generate a new XML for REDCINE as a pull list.

Overall, getting it into Avid to edit, easy (and pretty quick)... The later stage of pull list and high-res conform, not so easy just yet.

 

[Chris Parker]

awesome. thanks for the info. dylan. much appreciated.