Andy Cochrane
Member
After using REDCINE for a few months, I have a few simple tweaks you should consider making to the program. For some background on where these are coming from, it is me comparing REDCINE to the various other pieces of software I have to use daily as a filmmaker and as a VFX artist. These are things that would make REDCINE better and more familiar to the existing film industry.
The fact that it takes over your entire computer (screen and keyboard, OS navigation) is unacceptable. I have never used a single piece of software that does this (outside of a few video games back in the day), and if I ever run into one, I will write a similar note to the people making it. While using REDCINE I want and need to use other programs- Final Cut while checking a conform, the internet while footage is being processed, heck even Color and Quicktime in some odd situations. My guess is that you don't want any other applications running up the CPU, slowing REDCINE down. Please make that my decision. I use software every day that uses 99% of my CPU and almost all of my RAM while it is running, but I still have control over my machine, and if it gets too slow, so be it. Please stop this bad behavior.
The output tab should control the resolution and scaling behavior for the clips, not the shot tab (what if I want to output conformed 1080p clips for color while outputting the same clips to 4k (or a selected subset) for vfx? 2 projects?). having scale settings in the project, shot and output tab, as it is now, is confusing at best. Each raw file has a certain resolution that it was recorded at, and each of my outputs has a set resolution for whatever I want to do with them, so why not have the project be "formatless" and then in the shot tab allow overrides of the output globals (ie if I want one clip to be set to fit horizontally instead of vertically etc I set it for the clip then in the output settings I have a toggle for whether or not REDCINE should obey overrides or not etc.)
The autosave seems broken, when I reopen after closing (as I have to do any time I want to check something in FCP etc...) the project settings will often be changed (resolution, color space, gamma, etc). Using the save is annoying because it is really "save as" and that's not what I want when I am just trying to quickly save and close.
Crimson workflow, as useful as it is, should not exist. I know you are working on it, but an FCP/AVID -> REDCINE link needs to exist. Even if it is somewhat hacky (no layering or transitions or speed changes or something restrictive like that) I would rather open an XML or EDL or some other file directly in REDCINE, have it pull up the raw files of the proxies I edited on (be they RED proxies or ones I made myself in prores or whatever), and get the conform done than spend time in a third program doing a rather convoluted dance that wastes time. This is obviously on your development roadmap... maybe bump it up in priority?
Eventually, with the SDK a lot of our applications will be able to directly access the raw R3D files, which will be great and might honestly eliminate the need for REDCINE almost entirely. One ongoing purpose that I could see for it would be to adjust/alter the QT proxies. Altering that one shot with the wrong white balance, tweaking the exposure in that one shot etc so that they are fixed in the edit and made less distracting would be a nice thing to be able to do.
I think I read somewhere around here that there is a future plan to be able to upload color settings to the camera from REDCINE. I 100% support this idea, it will make a lot of nervous producers, directors and clients a lot calmer. Another idea that might be nice is having a secondary metadata set (even an arbitrary number of them) that we can create and tweak in REDCINE so that as the footage comes in from set we can ignore the camera's settings and create the new baseline metadata for the R3D files as they move through the pipeline (with the option to update the proxies in the process). The original camera metadata should not be discarded, just bypassed with a new set of defaults.
And of course for the new user- a help menu might be a good idea
The fact that it takes over your entire computer (screen and keyboard, OS navigation) is unacceptable. I have never used a single piece of software that does this (outside of a few video games back in the day), and if I ever run into one, I will write a similar note to the people making it. While using REDCINE I want and need to use other programs- Final Cut while checking a conform, the internet while footage is being processed, heck even Color and Quicktime in some odd situations. My guess is that you don't want any other applications running up the CPU, slowing REDCINE down. Please make that my decision. I use software every day that uses 99% of my CPU and almost all of my RAM while it is running, but I still have control over my machine, and if it gets too slow, so be it. Please stop this bad behavior.
The output tab should control the resolution and scaling behavior for the clips, not the shot tab (what if I want to output conformed 1080p clips for color while outputting the same clips to 4k (or a selected subset) for vfx? 2 projects?). having scale settings in the project, shot and output tab, as it is now, is confusing at best. Each raw file has a certain resolution that it was recorded at, and each of my outputs has a set resolution for whatever I want to do with them, so why not have the project be "formatless" and then in the shot tab allow overrides of the output globals (ie if I want one clip to be set to fit horizontally instead of vertically etc I set it for the clip then in the output settings I have a toggle for whether or not REDCINE should obey overrides or not etc.)
The autosave seems broken, when I reopen after closing (as I have to do any time I want to check something in FCP etc...) the project settings will often be changed (resolution, color space, gamma, etc). Using the save is annoying because it is really "save as" and that's not what I want when I am just trying to quickly save and close.
Crimson workflow, as useful as it is, should not exist. I know you are working on it, but an FCP/AVID -> REDCINE link needs to exist. Even if it is somewhat hacky (no layering or transitions or speed changes or something restrictive like that) I would rather open an XML or EDL or some other file directly in REDCINE, have it pull up the raw files of the proxies I edited on (be they RED proxies or ones I made myself in prores or whatever), and get the conform done than spend time in a third program doing a rather convoluted dance that wastes time. This is obviously on your development roadmap... maybe bump it up in priority?
Eventually, with the SDK a lot of our applications will be able to directly access the raw R3D files, which will be great and might honestly eliminate the need for REDCINE almost entirely. One ongoing purpose that I could see for it would be to adjust/alter the QT proxies. Altering that one shot with the wrong white balance, tweaking the exposure in that one shot etc so that they are fixed in the edit and made less distracting would be a nice thing to be able to do.
I think I read somewhere around here that there is a future plan to be able to upload color settings to the camera from REDCINE. I 100% support this idea, it will make a lot of nervous producers, directors and clients a lot calmer. Another idea that might be nice is having a secondary metadata set (even an arbitrary number of them) that we can create and tweak in REDCINE so that as the footage comes in from set we can ignore the camera's settings and create the new baseline metadata for the R3D files as they move through the pipeline (with the option to update the proxies in the process). The original camera metadata should not be discarded, just bypassed with a new set of defaults.
And of course for the new user- a help menu might be a good idea
