Cineform response to Final Cut Studio?

[Sanjin Jukic]

Thanks Evin. PC guys supposed to be p...ssed because the RED is born on a Mac. But Mac is also friendly to little fat PC guy. The problem is that he (PC guy) just has to buy a new Mac than he can run the Redcode RAW (4K or 2K) to cut native on the FCP timeline and then he could rebooth in Windows XP/Vista and continue to use his Premiere, Avid, Vegas, etc.. NLE.

Hey PC guy just buy a new Mac once in your life and solve your REDCODE RAW frustration.

 

[Roberto B]

sanjin, don't bother..

Just a small note. In meantime, while they don't supply the support, shall we have the Cineform 4k?

And if so, can we drop it right on a laptop? With a 1k or 2k preview? Likely FCP/Apple?

Will Cineform provide it? Or will the Redcode compression be a better option for editing and color correction?

fair questions.. fair enough.. Mr Newman?..

 

[Tom Lowe]

The Redcode RAW (4K or 2K) will cut natively on a an FCP timelime (With a 1k or 2k preview). In fact you can drop it right on a Macbook pro from your Reddrive and play it realtime, no rendering. I know I've been doing it in the booth for the last four days. As far as PC support, you can go from Redcine to anything you want on a PC. Scratch (witch runs on XP) will DI Redcode Raw 4k natively. If you want native support in Adobe or Avid products then let them know vocally the need to come to us, just like Apple and Assimilate did.
E.

So you can take footage straight from the camera and drop it into a FCP timeline?? What about the RAW processing? -- white balance, exposure, etc? I thought that had to be done first in REDCINE?

 

[Ace]

So you can take footage straight from the camera and drop it into a FCP timeline?? What about the RAW processing? -- white balance, exposure, etc? I thought that had to be done first in REDCINE?

Yeah its quite cool isnt it. Apparantly all that can be done as a final step or on the fly?

 

[Nick Shaw]

There is a REDFX FXPlug plugin for FCP, which gives you access to REDCINE type adjustments, right there in the FCP timeline. It was not ready to be demo'd at NAB, but Mike Curtis assured me it was coming.

 

[Anders Holck]

What about the RAW processing? -- white balance, exposure, etc? I thought that had to be done first in REDCINE?

It will decode a 1k or 2k proxy in realtime from the raw file. You don't need to go through redcine first or convert at any step (But it's still possible). Don't know if the codec will read the metadata you set in camera, or you need the fx-plug for that.
But this is what we are raving about. Realtime support in a workflow thats even faster than P2...
I think RED going with Quicktime as the in camera format, got them a lot of Apple love

 

[dewman]

well coming from the PC side and having invested into the Adobe platform, I'm leaning towards purchasing a new MAC Pro and FCS2. I don't know this for a fact, but I posted a message on Adobe's forum and asked if I could purchase the upgrade for CS3 for MAC if I own the PC version - the answer was yes/probably. So, I can have the best of both worlds...unfortunately I'm locked into Apples hardware...but I'm cool with it.

As I've stated before (my opinion only) Adobe is a traditional style company and as a result they have dropped the ball on engaging companies such as RED and Panny. They really need to look at their current biz model. Also, I'm not sure, but I think they left out batch exporting/rendering in PPCS3 - if this is the case - it's a total oversight on Adobe's part.

I'm definitely going to see what Cineform solution is going to provide...anyways I'm not purchasing anything until probably August - when my camera is scheduled to ship

 

[Nick Shaw]

Don't know if the codec will read the metadata you set in camera, or you need the fx-plug for that.

My impression was certainly that the in camera meta-data (white balance etc) would be read by the codec in FCP.

It was certainly impressive to see it working at NAB directly off a RED-DRIVE connected Firewire 800 (bus powered) to a Mac Pro. I don't believe external monitoring (via AJA/BMD etc) is currently possible from a REDCODE timeline, but I'm sure that will come soon – probably from AJA first, given Ted's contacts there.

 

[S. Um]

well coming from the PC side and having invested into the Adobe platform, I'm leaning towards purchasing a new MAC Pro and FCS2. I don't know this for a fact, but I posted a message on Adobe's forum and asked if I could purchase the upgrade for CS3 for MAC if I own the PC version - the answer was yes/probably. So, I can have the best of both worlds...unfortunately I'm locked into Apples hardware...but I'm cool with it.

I'm in the same situation, except I already purchased my MacPro and FCS several months ago. I'm thinking of upgrading my Adobe software to CS3, but getting the PC version. That way, I can use it on both my PC and Mac (through Bootcamp or Parallels). On the Mac side, what I really want are just Photoshop and After Effects. Hopefully it will be a fairly smooth workflow, even with the switching between operating systems.

 

[Jason Rodriguez]

Just to add an interesting mix to this discussion, I ran an ad-hoc demo in the CineForm booth on the last day of NAB for someone who wanted to know what CineForm RAW could do with 4K footage. We had some scenes from the Dalsa Origin at full 4K RAW resolution, and so on a lark I dropped two 15 second clips on the timeline using a picture-in-picture effect (so two video streams running at the same time), and then added a title.

*Real-time* playback . . . this was on a very humble 3.73Ghz Pentium D with 2GB of RAM (not a newer Conroe-based system) and a very simple Intel-Matrix RAID 0 (two drives using the Intel Matrix RAID utility buitl into the motherboard).

I then did the same thing again, this time using a dissolve in-between the clips rather than a picture-in-picture . . . again, real-time.

Tim Bucklin from CineForm in the Sony booth did the same picture-in-picture effect as myself with a title, but since he was on a slightly faster machine (still Pentium D though), he was able to also get a real-time color-correction to run on one of the clips as well.

So suffice to say, if you're using Premiere Pro, and have a nice machine (especially a newer one based on the Core architecture rather than an older Netburst Pentium D), multi-stream 4K editing is a reality with CineForm RAW.

Again, I can't remember who I ran the demo for (too many names in 4 days and too many demos!), but it was someone with a Red reservation who wanted to know what his options for 4K editing in real-time on the PC were . . .

 

[sander kamp]

Jason, just to be sure: you are not saying you were playing back footage at 4k resolution, right? I mean, you wouldn't have a 4k monitor. So my guess is you were playing back 4k footage at a lower resolution, which if I understand it right is exactly what FSP2 can do with the RED files.

 

[David Newman]

Sander,

Yes you are correct, the CineForm RAW and REDCODE RAW both exploit the multi-resolution nature of wavelets to achieve higher editing performance. One key difference being CineForm RAW requires less CPU power to decode to the same resolution as REDCODE RAW, the precise performance, while significant can't be truely commented on until REDCODE RAW is publicly released (they might surprise us and catch up some.) We use the additional CPU availability to performance user controlable 3D LUT (film look) processing, there is always ways to use up today's CPU power.

 

[sander kamp]

Thanks for the explanation. I think it is great there is competition from Cineform, keeps the guys at Apple awake! And it sounds like a wonderful codec.

Same for the whole PC versus Mac discussion: Let's be really happy we have a choice. I am a Mac user but don't mind PC's at all. I don't want to imagine a world with only Mac's or PC's :waaa:

 

[Gopher77]

David,
The CS3 suite looks very invinting to me, however the weak link in the chain is Premiere. Could you describe how cineform will help PP in layman terms. I'm not an editor, i'm a camera man so if you can make me understand it I'd be very grateful.

G

 

[David Newman]

G,

That is tricky as everything has their favorite aspects of different NLEs. Premiere Pro is getting a slicker UI, FCP strong point, but PPro has a far superior pixel engine than FCP. PPro has supported 32-float RGB, YUV, 16-bit RGB, and all the favours of 8-bit for a while now (with no gamma shift issues.) For color processing alone PPro is the way to go. However PPro is a memory hog, so we always recommend that feature films are edited in reels to limit memory issues. CS3 is better than 2.0, yet I believe FCP is a little better for large single project timeline. So this is just a workflow issue, either product can and has cut/onlined feature films.

 

[Mike the beginner]

If you were completely new to editing and were considering purchasing a powerful new computer complete with NLE suite to use exclusivley with your red camera which would be the most cost effective and ease of learning direction to go as well as making life easier (well less impossible he he)

A new large apple store is to open in Glasgow (where i live) two stories high and there might well be special deals on opening day scheduled for July. This is massivley tempting.

Pc vendors vary in their quality and prices. Macs appear to be all built to similar specs etc. THis might make the mac less likely to have something missed out or not working properly. Their new operating system throws a spannere in the works though? uncertainty? What do i do?

Mike the beginner

 

[Tom Lowe]

What is the learning curve moving from Premiere Pro to FCP, and visa versa? In terms of editing features, what are the differences?

 

[Emmanuel Decarpentrie]

What is the learning curve moving from Premiere Pro to FCP, and visa versa?

I moved from Vegas (which was the soft I started with) to FCP quite a while ago and it took me about a couple of days to feel myself at home with FCP. This was not the case at all with AVID by the way: I believe you really need some sort of professional training to start feeling comfortable with AVID, unlike FCP which is very intuitive.

In terms of editing features, what are the differences?

Wow! That's a pretty good question and a tough one to answer in a few words. From my personal experience, I have found FCP to be more stable (as long as you maintain your station correctly and you regularly clean the "user preferences") for large projects... There are a couple of Premiere tools that I miss on FCP (like the time stretch or the color correction tools-curves), but on the other hands, I like the bezier curves (including time remap) of FCP very much. I also like the Shake-FCP integration: Shake (and Fusion) is truly the best when it comes to compositing, color correction, etc (at least compared to AE). All in all, I believe Final Cut Studio 2 to be the best solution available for editing and color-correcting. Once you've tried it, there generally is no turning back...

 

[Tom Lowe]

How about transitions? Would you say FCP is better than PP for transitions, or the other way around? I really obsess over my cuts, down the frame.

I guess I should try FCP to see what all the fuss is about.

 

[David Newman]

As we where PC only for a while, we have pulled many FCP users to Premiere Pro, and the experience is mostly very positive. I do believe the PPro learning curve is shorter for complex productions, mixed media, range of shooting formats. FCP in the past works best if you don't need to tweek presets -- setting up non-standard projects in FCP has been tricky.