Capturing and working with RED

[Todd Groves]

I have a meeting this week with a client who may use the RED camera for a shoot in June. They want to meet to discuss the pros and cons of shooting in RED as compared to other formats.

I'm new to RED and my original interest was in getting RED Scarlet for my own projects. I have downloaded and installed the RED codecs for After Effects and Final Cut.

1. Is the RED codec needed to capture the footage to a hard drive, or do you need it mainly to be able to work with it in VFX work or editing?

2. Do you need a special capture card for RED footage, or can you use firewire and the codec?

Thanks.

 

[Ben Holmes]

I have a meeting this week with a client who may use the RED camera for a shoot in June. They want to meet to discuss the pros and cons of shooting in RED as compared to other formats.

I'm new to RED and my original interest was in getting RED Scarlet for my own projects. I have downloaded and installed the RED codecs for After Effects and Final Cut.

1. Is the RED codec needed to capture the footage to a hard drive, or do you need it mainly to be able to work with it in VFX work or editing?

2. Do you need a special capture card for RED footage, or can you use firewire and the codec?

Thanks.

Your questions betray a basic lack of understanding of the RED workflow. I recommend searching for RED workflows here, as well as reading the RED FCP white paper that comes with the FCP RED installer on the RED support.

Footage is recorded in R3D files on camera either to CF cards, or to a RED drive (note, this is not a standard FW drive). You will need to backup and transfer the data on site for safety and onwards to post. IF you are not familiar with this, I don't recommend you oversee a RED shoot - contact someone with experience of this.

You cannot capture R3D footage using a capture card - you can use REDCine or REDAlert, or REDRushes to convert it to an edit codec, or you can edit proxy files and reconnect the media to grade natively using R3D files in color or AE.

Confused? It's a different, but not complicated and very rewarding workflow, that gives amazing results. My advice is follow proper procedures on set for backup/transfer, and keep it simple by using a FCP workflow as detailed in the white paper.

Ben

 

[Todd Groves]

Thanks, Ben. That's exactly what I needed to hear. I'll check out the FCP white paper to start.

 

[Todd Groves]

Please don't shoot me for asking, but according to the FCS white paper its best to capture RED into ProRes422 (HQ) Quicktimes to edit in FCP and work with in Color. Is this the format that users can work with for visual effects?

I ask for my own needs, as I think the white paper answers my client's needs, but in case I'm asked to do the visual effects for this project I need to know.

Thanks.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The whitepaper is a bit dated, but that is still a valid workflow for some projects. FCP and color now have native support for R3D files and will give you access to the RAW color data. However, it is still beta and buggy. No support in FCP / Color for 3K resolutions yet. ProRes can be used for FX work, but it is limiting in that it has already severely truncated color information compared to the R3D RAW files and has introduced further compression.

There are other applications with native R3D support now. Adobe Premiere and After Effects CS4 both have native support. Also with some shortcomings. Adobe has announced an update with fixes and new features to be released sometime this month. Vegas 9 will have native RED support. We're also seeing a lot of native support with the more expensive higher-end applications from Iridas, Quantel, Autodesk and others. Also don't forget SCRATCH. It's priced a lot cheaper than those big guys and it does a lot of things that Apple Color does not do.

As Ben posted above, camera files are recorded to the RED media (approved CF cards, RED Drive, RED RAM) and you will want to offload these to other media for working with them. You can connect the RED media just as you would any other CF card or external hard drive and you can work from this media, but that's not recommended. Most will advocate a procedure that creates at least two copies of your camera original files - one to work with and one for redundancy, before you erase your media.

This forum has all the information you need to get working. I recommend downloading some RED footage from REDRELAY.NET and grabbing the software tools from RED.COM/SUPPORT

If you want to take it one step further, there's online training at fxphd.com and the upcoming REDucation offerings. I'm also sure there are local RED owners who would provide a demo service of some kind for a reasonable fee.

The one thing you will find as you jump into working with RED footage is that there is no shortage of workflow possibilities. You can do just about anything you want to do. It's hard to recommend any specific workflow as the best practices can often be dictated by the production itself and what is ultimately best for the time, budget, and intended final product.

 

[Todd Groves]

Thanks for your help, Jeff. It's good to know there's RED footage to work with. As a VFX artist I'd like to get my head around working with RED ahead of my first RED project, hence my signing up here for help.

EDIT: Is it an accurate understanding that RED Alert can be used to take raw R3D files and export them for VFX work? (i,e, Quicktimes, etc.)

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

For transcoding of footage, you can use RED ALERT, REDCINE, RED RUSHES and REDLINE. Currently all are on OSX and REDCINE is also available for Windows.

For compositing / FX work, I typically approach it in two ways. I either run the R3D files directly into After Effects. Or I will export out of RED Alert / RED Rushes to DPX or TIFF sequences for use in Shake, Nuke, AE, etc.. For most projects and editing work, I'm using Adobe CS4 these days.

RED Rushes and REDLINE come with RED Alert. You can use RED Alert to tweak primary color information, white point, etc.. And it will export a single clip at a time. You can use RED Rushes to batch convert multiple clips to your desired format. And it can pull look information from each individual clip or from a specified look file.

REDLINE is a command line utility for processing an R3D clip. There are other tools out there that can interface with it. Or it can be used with a network render controller to process R3D frames. I'm anxious to see Windows and Linux versions of REDLINE. It actually wouldn't be that big of a deal to create a REDLINE equivalent now that the RED SDK is available, but I don't think anyone has tried to do so, or at least not for public release, since those other versions of REDLINE have been promised.

 

[Todd Groves]

I'm on Mac, and I haven't upgraded my Adobe production bundle to CS4 yet, but I will. In the meantime, is the RED Alert app free to use. I saw the Download link but no reference to purchase.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

All the RED tools / plug-ins are free.

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

Please don't shoot me for asking, but according to the FCS white paper its best to capture RED into ProRes422 (HQ) Quicktimes to edit in FCP and work with in Color. Is this the format that users can work with for visual effects?

I ask for my own needs, as I think the white paper answers my client's needs, but in case I'm asked to do the visual effects for this project I need to know.

Thanks.

I would suggest you explore applications like Crimson Workflow and Monkey Extract. These are tools that you use in conjunction with transcoding tools like Redcine to convert your FCP XML's that you create by editing with proxy files into XML's that Redcine and Redalert can read so you can selectively transcode at very high quality just the material you end up with in your locked cut into any format you could need in a VFX/CC pipeline. I personally do not subscribe to the workflow outlined in the FCP white paper. Working with proxies is a fast and efficient method for doing off-line editing. It takes some education on the part of the client for them to understand at that stage what they are (and are not) looking at.

Also if your working with AJA hardware, you should consider working with DPX transcodes and wrapping them into QT's for your online work. I tend to work with M proxies in the offline and transcode selects to 2k DPX sequences for online. If I need the resolution I will selectively export 4k plates if need be, or crop instead of scale my 4k material to 2k. Pay close attention to color space and gamma space when you transcode, read up on which you might want to use when. I tend to mostly use CameraRGB/RedLog if I am going to grade my shots in Color, for example.

Good luck.:beer:

 

[Todd Groves]

Excellent. Thanks for all of your help. I'll check back if I have any more questions.

Cheers.

EDIT: Thanks, Brandon!

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Todd, welcome. It can be intimidating at first when dealing with RED workflow, but as Jeff suggested there are many workflows. I suggest trying a few of them and see what results you get. Then you'll know how to apply what you discover on a number of different projects.

I have to say that where this is all heading is native editing of R3D files with full access to metadata at any time, i.e. Premiere CS4 and perhaps FCP 3 in the future. Once you have dropped R3Ds in the timeline, edited, accessed metadata (producer sitting behind you says he wants to see what the shot would like in Redspace as opposed to Rec709) it shows you the potential of what is coming. Still some bugs to be worked out, but once it happens and you have the computer processing and storage to do it, working with RED footage is going to be even better. It's exciting times to be getting into a the RED workflow. Plus, make sure to check out Jim's thread about Red Rocket.

Best of luck with your project and don't hesitate to ask for guidance here when needed.

 

[Todd Groves]

Thanks, Steve. Yea, I'm actually planning on getting the 3K Scarlet for myself when it comes out. It just happens that I was asked to participate in this shoot, and since I might end up doing VFX - and I'm meeting with the filmmakers this week - I thought best to look into it a little more deeply since I opened my little mouth and suggested shooting in RED.

I, too, am excited about RED. For VFX artists/wannabe filmmakers like myself, these are exciting times. And thanks, I'll look into Red Rocket, too.