Cutting RAW

[Andrew Burhoe]

Okay hate the term, but I am curious as to the workflow of cutting with RAW R3D files. Does it work nicely with a Red Rocket or is it false to think so?

What is the proper workflow?

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

There are 3 platforms on which I'd try to cut r3D directly:

Premiere CS5
Avid MC5 (See Greg M's post below)
Storm
Smoke (Thanks to Greg M below)

Of these the best workflow seems to be Storm... but Storm is not an NLE. Its an ingest/workflow/first light color correction system, that happens to include some basic editing features.

That said... as soon as I can get Storm on a system, I'll be testing it as a low end editing workflow. Among all its powerful features, I think it can presently serve as "iMovie Pro for R3D."

Avid MC5 is your best bet for editing serious projects.

I expect Premiere will prove very good for editing single editor shows of low to moderate complexity.

All three of these systems can use a Rocket for decoding. Premiere can cut R3D's using the GPU as its source of compute power, which is probably good for a 2K or 1080P finish.

If I understand properly Storm also uses CUDA/OpenCL, so you may get good performance without a Rocket on R3D... but I have not tested. (I don't have an appropriate system available for testing.)

RIGHT NOW the only unquestionably tried and tested workflow is to shoot and get your footage into RedCine, then transcode (using rocket) to your editing/finishing codec of choice. (ProRes 4444 is popular right now.)

That state of affairs is changing VERY fast right now. Within the next 12 months I expect direct editing of R3D files will be the norm.

 

[Greg M]

Avid doesnt technically cut RAW, and its limited to 1080p. If you want to cut raw check out Smoke.

 

[Stacey Spears]

I used the QT reference files in FCP when I edited my last project. I did not pre-render anything to ProRes, I simply pulled in the QT files and did my thing. I think I used 1/4 res.

 

[Greg M]

I used the QT reference files in FCP when I edited my last project. I did not pre-render anything to ProRes, I simply pulled in the QT files and did my thing. I think I used 1/4 res.

OP asked about editing R3D files

 

[Stephen Strangways]

I used the QT reference files in FCP when I edited my last project. I did not pre-render anything to ProRes, I simply pulled in the QT files and did my thing. I think I used 1/4 res.

If you then send that edit to Color, you will be grading and outputting from the R3Ds.

Sony Vegas on the PC can also edit directly with R3Ds.

 

[Noah Kadner]

I've tried it recently in Premiere and found performance to be lacking. It's a ton of computation to be doing as you're trying to edit. If you really need to have full R3D control during editing and you have top of the line hardware including seriously fast hard drives- think Fibre channel RAIDs- it's a good option. Otherwise, transcode to ProRes is a far more happy editorial experience IMHO. R3Ds are nice to have for grading- though by no means essential the further you go down from a 35mm film recorded destination. For 1080p on down it's overkill- again IMHO.

Noah

 

[shashbugu]

Noah, there must be something wrong with your system "seriously". We have 4 mac systems from a 2008 octocore to the current 12 core mac. We cut full length feature films, music vids, commercials etc and even mix 35mm originated dpx and cineon files, all using internal and off the shelf external raids, no fibre channel, (lots and lots of ram though 24GB minimum). Premiere pro does not hiccup in any shape or form full res full debayer R3d realtime playback.
The truth is PPro does transcode in the background, but not in anyway like FCP. You have to learn to use it. When you import r3d footage to your bins, you have to walk away from the system for about half an hour for the transcode to conform the audio.
For now I seriously advice you to forget Apple color and get Resolve, or if you can afford it get Smoke. Smoke and Resolve use the same exact system resources as Premiere does, just make sure you don't hard import your R3d's into Smoke, or you'll surely need a massive fibre raid system.
Transcoding and offline editing is sooo yesterday.

Funny how people keep comparing FCP and Avid MC5 to PProcs5, they are different systems. FCP and Avid are great time tested NLE's used by traditional professional editors on a daily basis. PProCS5 is definitely an NLE in development with more raw realtime power than systems costing 50 times as much. It is for the editor that hates sitting behind a computer for hours and just needs to cut and move on.

 

[Noah Kadner]

Yeah that's what I was alluding to- you need top of the line firepower. Can you edit R3Ds on a mid-range laptop with usable performance off a Firewire drive- heck no. Can you edit ProRes 1080p clips on the same system- you bet. R3D R/T editing is massive computation and requires the heavy hitting hardware to go with it. Just saying. If you have that sorta setup more power to you but it's not for everyone. Especially folks just cutting RED for hire and not owning the camera.
Noah

 

[shashbugu]

Yeah that's what I was alluding to- you need top of the line firepower. Can you edit R3Ds on a mid-range laptop with usable performance off a Firewire drive- heck no. Can you edit ProRes 1080p clips on the same system- you bet. R3D R/T editing is massive computation and requires the heavy hitting hardware to go with it. Just saying. If you have that sorta setup more power to you but it's not for everyone. Especially folks just cutting RED for hire and not owning the camera.
Noah

I absolutely agree with you. I re-read my post and have to agree that each of our system's components configured to run CS5 is actually pretty expensive.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

My desire to cut RAW has decreased incredibly as I have become more involved in long-form big-organisation type of projects. I simply don't see it as a secure and rational way to work. Conforms are one-click operations when I need to go RAW, transcoding to offline is quick and makes for really fast and secure turnarounds.

Guess I am weird...

 

[Andrew Burhoe]

going further with this. I did get to render the Full quality MOV file you get by importing it via FCP. I have Final Cut Studio and damn if that package ain't nice. One thing that helped was having the RED One Firmware. Without Final Cut will crash and give the middle finger while it laughs at you. Slow as all hell so without the RED rocket it is a nightmare, but beautiful.

 

[Lauri Kettunen]

I've tried it recently in Premiere and found performance to be lacking. It's a ton of computation to be doing as you're trying to edit.

In PPro one may cut real time 1K sequences even in a not so powerful machine, color grade using RedCine-X, and then, copy paste everything to a 4K sequence and eventually export the whole thing with After Effects or PPro.

 

[Noah Kadner]

I define 'not so powerful' as a 2 year old MacBook Pro 17" with a Firewire 800 drive. Which for RAW in CS5 equals press play and wait 1-2 seconds to see timeline activity. That's not acceptable to me for editorial.

Thus I stick with what I said- which is real simple and not really an argument: if you have a fairly powerful system you can go RAW with CS5 to your hearts content but the bar for usable performance via transcoded footage is much lower. And that's no slight on Adobe so please don't get me wrong. It's simple computational power- you need more of it for RAW than you do for transcoded footage.

I'd also guess you could ask anyone at RED- and they will tell you their codec is optimized for high-quality RAW capture of footage in the camera, not high-speed on the fly editorial. Why else would they offer the RED Rocket?

Noah

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

Avid doesnt technically cut RAW, and its limited to 1080p. If you want to cut raw check out Smoke.

Technically seen R3Ds are compressed RAW files. But when they go through Red's SDK, currently the only possibility to works with them, they are 12 Bit RGB not RAW anymore. From this perspective no RAW editing with R3Ds is done in any of the mentioned NLEs.

Smoke works very well with R3Ds but soft imported, meaning not transcoded to 10 Bit DPX to Smoke's stone, the RT performance depends on the debayer settings. Set to 1/4 (the default) is RT, anything higher does not work on my machine. Further on, debayering costs a lot of processing power that one needs elsewhere when creating VFX.

Currently using a RedRocket does not work well (at least on the Mac) because there are driver conflicts with the AJA card you need for video out.

In the moment the workflow with Smoke is to work with the 1/4 sized R3Ds. After the edit is done hard import them with handles in the desired size (transcoding them to DPX within Smoke), reformat the timeline to the size of the transcoded DPX and then conform the timeline to the DPX files.

When talking about PremierPro CS5 and it's capabilities regarding Red I can only say good things about Adobe. We use PremierPro on our grading workstation (HP Z800, 5600fx Nvidia SDI) and the performance is stunning. Half debayering is possible. When shooting 4KHD we look at pristine 1080p on our SDI out, although it's not 10 bit but 8 bit due to Premier Pro's limited Nvidia support. Two leverage the possibilities of Premier Pro you need a CUDA capable graphics card and powerful CPUs for transcoding R3Ds to RGB. Editing R3Ds on a Laptop is a compromise, regarding performance and ergonomics. Editing in the field makes sense for ENG but is the RedOne an ENG camera?

Smoke is supporting Avid AAF and FCP XML for import. Currently the FCP XML needs round tripping via FCP when created elsewhere, otherwise Smoke won't recognize it. Premier Pro has an AAF and XML output option which makes Smoke and Premie Pro a good team for working with R3Ds.

One side note to native R3D editing: Since R3Ds are RAW they need transcoding to RGB to make them visible. This can be done in million ways - we call that grading off RAW. Any application using the Red SDK is performing some kind of grading. If you are happy with the possibilities of the SDK together with the tools of your NLE - fine. If not, you need a grading application to transcode the R3Ds to RGB/YUV files with the look you intend. From now on your workflow is RGB/YUV based. IMHO, a RAW only workflow until the deliveries does not make much sense.

Hans

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

My desire to cut RAW has decreased incredibly as I have become more involved in long-form big-organisation type of projects. I simply don't see it as a secure and rational way to work. Conforms are one-click operations when I need to go RAW, transcoding to offline is quick and makes for really fast and secure turnarounds.

Guess I am weird...

Gunleik, you are spot on.

There are many downsides to a R3Ds based workflow:

1. You need an application with the Red SDK incorporated to view them. Many people involved in the process may not have such an application.

2. There are many, many ways to set up the Red SDK. Many room to mix things up. People may talk about the same shot and see it varyingly, depending on the SDK settings. Using the camera settings makes things equal but have a good chance to be wrong in terms of exposure, colour temperature, etc...

3. RAW eats computing power. The RedRocket is not installed in all systems, and even if it were in terms of performance it would perform very differently from application to application.

4. I the industry working with a couple of seats on one project is common. Working off R3Ds, especially when we talk about VFX, may lead to point 2.

If you know all these pitfalls and your collaborative team is manageable working with R3Ds, at least in the off-line process, is a time saving workflow.

Hans

 

[shashbugu]

Thanks for the clarification Hans. The PProcs5/ Davinci/Smoke workflow has saved us a lot of time and money. We are able to hire top tier freelancers to come into our studio and work their magic. The smoke on the Mac is literally like a stealth bomber. Its very difficult to fly, but the experts can make the impossible seem possible on it.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

Of these the best workflow seems to be Storm... but Storm is not an NLE. Its an ingest/workflow/first light color correction system, that happens to include some basic editing features.

That said... as soon as I can get Storm on a system, I'll be testing it as a low end editing workflow. Among all its powerful features, I think it can presently serve as "iMovie Pro for R3D."

All good things are three.

Alexander, I haven't tested Storm yet. But reading the specs I doubt that it is even close to anything that one would call an NLE. Hence it cannot be the "best workflow". Don't you agree?

It may be a great transcoding application and grading tool. And of course it is worth to mention here because a RAW workflow from A-Z is often not desirable.

Hans

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

The PProcs5/ Davinci/Smoke workflow has saved us a lot of time and money. We are able to hire top tier freelancers to come into our studio and work their magic. The smoke on the Mac is literally like a stealth bomber. Its very difficult to fly, but the experts can make the impossible seem possible on it.

We are currently working on a 40 minute Red shot documentary that is edited in Premier Pro on R3Ds and then conformed in Smoke using graded ProRes files that were created in SpeedGrade XR.

Basically the same workflow like yours, only the grading tool is different.

Yes, Smoke is different to all other NLEs but if you learn it and know how to work with its modules, being Action as the 3D compositor its core tool, you can go pretty far, no to be compared to FCP, Avid MC or Premier Pro.

It took me half a year, one big image film (mostly GS) and 8 TVCs I shot to learn how to leverage Smoke's guts. It's a superb tool for video junkies and a time-saver for any facility that must accomplish fast turnarounds with demanding clients (being myself the most demanding one). If you got one around I can only suggest to train yourself on this machine. Autodesk's finishing tools will be around the next decade and good staff is rare.

BTW, if you have the necessary hardware already, Smoke on the Mac is a bargain if you compare it to other tools in its performance realm.

Hans

 

[Gunleik Groven]

I work in the full signalchain, from prep, through set, to prep for online/VFX to online, mostly TV-drama and some feature work these days - and I see the advantage of giving people optimized media and advice for their profession. It is simply too busy on each level to teach ALL how to best use the RAW files for their needs.

The turnaround in preparing stuff for the different uses is rather short compared to the hassles of learning everyone everything.

Most RED F***ups I see is due to bad/wrong understanding about how to use the metadata when developing the files for a certain application. A full RAW workflow is a nightmare for QC for image-workflows as to signalchain issues and "what to do when" issues.

I think this is one of the big GAINS of raw source-material, btw.
That you can optimize the image for different uses...

Actually I find the gains so huge, that I have let them trickle down to short-form projects I work with, too - like commercials and shorts.
I end up with better structured projects, less mess-ups and more flexibility all over.


Sorry...