Digital Stills From DELIVERED

[Linda Nelson]

Here's four stills from our first five days of shooting on RED in the Mojave desert. Tonight we will offload the RAID from the set to Adobe CS4. It's great to just drag and drop and immediately watch it in all it's glory. We'll be posting stills and video daily on the official DELIVERED website.

We love the tapeless workflow from camera to CS4 and we're using MaxDrive to allow us to use Mac's on set and a mega PC back in the studio. No problems switching back and forth between PC's and Mac's.

 

[Von Thomas]

Nelson,

You might want to invest in R3D Data manager, and use this to offload your clips, instead of dragging and dropping (very risky).

Also you may want to get your skin tones a bit better by using a gray card as a reference in each scene with different color temp.

My 2 cents.

Von

 

[Linda Nelson]

All Comments and Advise Welcome

All Comments and Advise Welcome

Thanks for the advice. Actually, I was over-simplifying. We're just dragging the whole folders (one for each day) from the set RAID to the production office RAID and CS4 automatically sees them. They even have a cool little Red Digital Logo for the icon.

 

[Von Thomas]

As I mentioned, it's risky to drag and drop. You may want to switch your procedure to one that is more secure. I recommend, R3D Data Manager.

Also, your color is off, which is normal for most RED workflows, however you have the ability to make is better for your editors, if you care about delivery and your craft.

 

[MikeHedge]

Von. how is it risky?

 

[Von Thomas]

Information can be lost in a drag and drop.

 

[Álex Montoya]

May be risky but after a year I haven't encountered a problem with that procedure yet.

 

[Stefan Christou]

Information can be lost in a drag and drop.

That kind of post needs a bit more meat. In what way does Finder handle the transfer differently from using Clipfinder?

 

[D Fuller]

I think Von is referring to the lack of verification in a Finder copy. Finder's copy function is pretty reliable, but it does not verify the copy. If you own a copy of Toast, there is a "compare" function in the "utilities" menu that will verify a copy, so you won't get back to edit and find that there was a problem with the copy process.
That said, R3D appears to do that and a number of other things that would make it well worth its pretty reasonable price.

 

[Von Thomas]

I've not experienced this, but I've been told that all bits of data not transferring over causing the corrupted file. Being concerned that this could happen, prompted to to use the safer route.

 

[Conrad Hunziker]

That kind of post needs a bit more meat. In what way does Finder handle the transfer differently from using Clipfinder?

Apologies for the thread hijack.

The issues with finder/explorer copies are:

- There is no verification of the data. Zeros and ones may not be exactly duplicated.

- There is no read from the destinations, to ensure the data was actually written. Data could have been written to bad blocks without finder/explorer notification.

- Finder/explorer will silently error in certain instances, for example if you are writing twice to a single destination at the same time, and the drive fills up.

- Once the source is copied over (and it must be copied over, as thats the only way to record on camera), there is no way to verify that copies further down the road, or even the initial copy made, are correct.

- Finder/Explorer dont deal with duplicate files easily/succinctly. Its not always obvious what will happen when you encounter a duplication. In addition, if the duplication happens after the copy has started (i.e. two copes at the same time), there is no notification by finder/explorer.

- Finder/Explorer only allows for overwrite and ignore options when it encounters a duplication. R3D Data Manager will intelligently re-name the copied folder, allowing you to compare if it is a duplicate side-by-side. This is the default behavior, and it can be modified to your situation. So you never will have a case where you will have two identical file names, but different file content, that arent copied (and yes, even after the RDC folder name spec was changed by RED, it does happen).

- If your show has any sort of completion bond or other legal obligations, finder/explorer to not satisfy those requirements. R3D Data Manager does satisfy bond requirements that we are aware of, by providing a way to verify copies are correct and an audit trail.

- Of course, finder/explorer dont do all the other features of R3D Data Manager: recovery, downconverts, notifications, etc.....

For a complete comparison of the difference, I invite you to look at the website: http://www.r3ddata.com/comapre/. Or if you re going to be at the REDucation Community Day, stop by and lets chat.

In short, the limitations of finder/explorer are exactly why I started writing R3D Data Manager.

 

[Warren Kommers]

Also, your color is off, which is normal for most RED workflows, however you have the ability to make is better for your editors, if you care about delivery and your craft.

I haven't seen these stills(can't find em) so i maybe off point here but the idea that everything should be white balanced going to your editor and the idea that is some indication of the level of your craft is incorrect IMHO. You very well may want a "normal" look and working with flexible RAW images and modern film negatives make it awfully tempting to make all your color decisions later. However I think some of the best cinematography is done when a look is committed to and followed through. Modern color correction tools can almost provide too many options if you don't have a vision of what you want in the final product.

Also politically.......Any project(feature, commercial, music video) that I haven't given a slight resemblance of the final grade, especially if it is a unique one, falls under instant criticism from directors/producers/editors that have become used to the neutral look they have been seeing for months while they edit. It can totally screw you.

 

[Linda Nelson]

Vista

Vista

We're using Vista on a PC with CS4 and so far it is awesome. Dragging a folder from the set RAID to the editing system RAID seems to work just fine. If there is a problem, I always have the original RAID.

 

[Linda Nelson]

Hey Mike, you in town? You'll have to stop by, neighbor.

 

[Shane Betts]

We had a situation recently where R3D came up with notifications on transfers to tell us data was not transferred. We rebooted, took the CF cards out and tried again and the data came up fine. Hate to think what would have happened without Conrad's handy little bit of insurance. Worth the price without a doubt.