Editing in Final Cut Pro 7 - HELP !

[Melissa O'Connor]

Hi

Stupid question, but would love to hear your thoughts...
What is the best workflow for Epic footage to Final Cut Pro 7 ??

Shooting a music video next month, and wanting to edit in Final Cut Pro 7.
My concern is how I get the colourist the raw footage once I've done my edit.


- First I open Redcine-X Pro and convert files to ApplePro res proxy
- Edit in Final Cut then export the mastered sequence to XML file
- Open XML file in Redcine-X and it should reconnect with my original R3D files

My question is how do I export the timeline back to final cut Pro?

Any advice on a great workflow would be great !
Basically I want to edit in Final Cut Pro 7, but give the colourist access to the RAW R3D's.

Thanks

Melissa

 

[Johnny Friday]

There is a white paper on this somewhere that explains how to import R3d's wrapped as prores 422 into FCP7 and edit from there and you can do color work in COLOR--not sure about 5k though.

 

[Shapour Daneshmand]

I would be interested in the response too.

 

[Björn Benckert]

My advice.

take your proress edit in final cut.
make copy of the timeline.
Remove all desolves and timewarps. Basically make sure you got all the material needed to recreate your edit within this copy timeline.
Export XML.
Use the import function in redcine, sellect import XML, locate your r3ds. and import the xml.
in red cine you go to export an create a r3d export setting, set handels if wanted and xml to FCP.
Use the r3d trim setting to export timeline as seperate clips, sellect a location on a external drive. hit process...
Then take that drive to your colorist and let him / her collor your r3d's and make graded proress files with corresponding names and timecodes.

Get back to you final cut edit and relink to the graded proress files.


viola...

I think thats how you do it... or you just ditch that 13 year old program and bite the bullet and learn to edit in resolve

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

My advice.

take your proress edit in final cut.
make copy of the timeline.
Remove all desolves and timewarps. Basically make sure you got all the material needed to recreate your edit within this copy timeline.
Export XML.
Use the import function in redcine, sellect import XML, locate your r3ds. and import the xml.
in red cine you go to export an create a r3d export setting, set handels if wanted and xml to FCP.
Use the r3d trim setting to export timeline as seperate clips, sellect a location on a external drive. hit process...
Then take that drive to your colorist and let him / her collor your r3d's and make graded proress files with corresponding names and timecodes.

Get back to you final cut edit and relink to the graded proress files.


viola...

I think thats how you do it... or you just ditch that 13 year old program and bite the bullet and learn to edit in resolve

+1
also i would skip the triming part and handle all the raw files to the colorist.

 

[jake blackstone]

All this, including R3D trimming and Prores transcoding should be done in Resolve. There is absolutely no reason to ever use RedCine X for anything. It's only limited to R3D. Resolve can conform anything.
So, to simplify the workflow
Transcode in Resolve, edit in FCP, export XML, conform in Resolve, trim R3D to a folder, re-conform from a folder, export the Resolve project and give it to a colorist. Done. On behalf of all colorists, I will thank you

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I love REDCINE-X for what it is, but to echo what Jake is saying, it rarely has a place in my actual workflows other than quick looks and transcoding.

EPIC files don't get along well as wrapped QT pointer files. I would transcode everything to ProRes -- do quick and dirty REDCINE-X to ProRes to 720p proxy or LT format from a low-res/ quality decode, unless you have a RED Rocket. Make your edit. Hand over your FCP7 project and clips, XMLs, and R3D files to your colorist.

You can always trim R3Ds in RC-X, but then you just have more files to manage -- the original and the trimmed and then you don't want to go mixing the two. I do a lot of trimming on long takes and continuous rolls as I review and log footage. I build a working folder of all my usable R3Ds, after they have been trimmed or paired with .RMD files for looks. Then start my actual editing/ finishing pipeline from there. ...I haven't cut anything in FCP7 in over 3 years now though. I understand comfort zones and all of that and don't mean any disrespect to the original poster, but holding on to old tools is saddling her up with a lot of extra work and worry for a project like this.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Let me explain r3d trim.. First it depends on what kind of project you are working on... But r3d trim is a very cool thing and also it's very time saving. As it gives only the clips needed for the edit and nothing more onto one single drive that you bring to the colorist... for that very reason this little r3d trim step is a great thing and as far as I know it can only be done in RCX, This step does not take long (even if you do not have a rocket, it runs fast) and it gathers all the needed files nicely trimmed with handles if wanted... So for example if you have 200 terabytes of source material spread out over so and so many discs servers or what ever storage, then your colorist guy would charge you quite a bit of money just to get the stuff sorted into his timeline, over at his place, before he can start to grade.

Also for your VFX team and online editor and all further steps after grading it's super handy to have a nice little disc / folder / backup disc with those r3d trims together with the XML especially since those clips then mach (at frame length) perfectly with your graded DPX files or proress files or what ever you bring from the grading. So when you do the grading you tell the colorist to grade all the trimmed clips with same file name and tc. So you got corresponding native files and r3d's.

So then your online guy also have a corresponding set of r3d's next to the graded stuff for keying and 3D tracking etc and can also create separate passes and such straight from these matched r3d's.

Also the producer can feel safe that they got all used source on a separate single backup disc. As a lot of times it can be quite a fuss to keep track of all the takes when spread out or when editing large projects thats done from huge amount of source material etc.

Personally when I work in flame doing online I usually make sure to start from a dual layered time line holding one layer with the 5k r3d's and one with the graded source. Doing so without r3d trim would mean that I would need to flush tremendous amount of data on and off our servers.

So as I see it, being able to do r3d trims in RCXP is actually one of the coolest things about the r3d format. It's not something you can do with alexa material or any other cameras source without loosing quality or expanding your per frame file size quite a bit. For example to trim a proress file you need to go uncompressed to not loose quality. So your shortend clip can actually become bigger in file size than your source... with red's r3d's no such thing will happen, and the process is fast.

So use r3d trim and love it, thats my suggestion.:thumbsup:

But one important thing... ofcourse also keep your original source as well, in case of re edits etc. Anf if you think of it a full length feature fits snuggly onto a small laice drive as 5k native r3d's. Which is quite a nice thing to have, carrying around all the source is a different story...

 

[jake blackstone]

Having all your material on one drive, with each cut in a separate Reel folder is invaluable. When i get properly prepared and conformed movie, when all I have to do is to open the project and start grading is so much better, than to receive an XML and multiple drives with material on them. You can spend better part of a day searching for shots on multiple drives. I just don't see the point even advocating this approach. The same goes for the today's existence of RedCine X.

 

[Björn Benckert]

All this, including R3D trimming and Prores transcoding should be done in Resolve. There is absolutely no reason to ever use RedCine X for anything. It's only limited to R3D. Resolve can conform anything.
So, to simplify the workflow
Transcode in Resolve, edit in FCP, export XML, conform in Resolve, trim R3D to a folder, re-conform from a folder, export the Resolve project and give it to a colorist. Done. On behalf of all colorists, I will thank you

Did not know you could output r3d's as trimmed native files from resolve? Even if that's the case I think most people would think the RCXP path is easier than resolve... or basically more people having red's are more familiar with RCXP than resolve. But if you can trim the r3d's there then the result is just the same, and sooner rather than later I guess we all need to learn that BM program... lol.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

That depends on what knd of project you are making... it can be very time saving to only have the clips needed for the edit and nothing more on one single drive that you bring to the colorist...

Of course. And that's definitely the way to go.

for that very reason this little r3d trim step is a great thing and as far as I know it can only be done in RCX, This step does not take long, even if you do not have a rocket and it gathers all the needed files nicely trimmed... So for example if you have 200 terabytes of source material spread out over so and so many discs, then your colorist guy would charge you quite a bit of money just to get the stuff sorted into his timeline before he can start to grade.

Yes and no... We're talking about a music video here, I don't think there's going to be 200TB of anything. And it's easy to pull from the XML which clips are required. I can pull that info and assemble only the clips needed faster than I can try to physically trim anything in RC-X. If you're trying to use the XML to load and trim and round-trip back to FCP, just for the sake of trimming and consolidation, you're just adding one more obfuscation into the workflow where things can potentially get broken. I'm all for allocating only the required clips so the colorist doesn't have to concern themselves with all the other data. As for trimming, I'm not a big fan of trimming clips mid project, just to clean up an edit to be handed off. Perhaps it's because I've seen too many things go wrong. And I can tell you from a VFX point of view, there are few things more irritating than a perfectly trimmed clip to work with where there's no extra frame on either end if we need to nudge, push or pull anything. Trimming the fat? Yes, don't mind that at all. Razor-trim all clips to match an edit. Oh, that sucks.... Just sayin'

Personally when I work in flame I usually tend to have a dual layered time line one layer with the 5k r3d's and one with the graded source. Then if I would have the untrimmed r3d's for each and every project on our server we would doing nothing but flushing massive amount of terabytes on and of our network.

IMO, this is the best reason to justify overzealous trimming.

I trim all the time, but it depends on the project. For music videos, commercials, even short films or shorter corporate pieces, trims are not always a huge concern. It's just one more round-trip in a pipeline that may or may not be necessary. For someone diving into this with an FCP7 workflow, I personally feel that the less back and forth between apps and re-writing of the XML data, the better.

being able to do r3d trims is actually one of the coolest things that RED invented. It's not something you can do with alexa material or any of the other cameras without loosing quality or expanding your per frame file size. A proress file can not be snipped of to be a shorter proress file without great quality loss or file expansion.

Totally agree. It's just that there's a time and place for trimming. As much as people like to make a huge deal out of file sizes and data quantities, most R3D productions, especially music videos and similar scoped productions, are not what I would consider data-heavy.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Having all your material on one drive, with each cut in a separate Reel folder is invaluable. When i get properly prepared and conformed movie, when all I have to do is to open the project and start grading is so much better, than to receive an XML and multiple drives with material on them. You can spend better part of a day searching for shots on multiple drives. I just don't see the point even advocating this approach. The same goes for the today's existence of RedCine X.

I think we mean the same... but prepping the material in resolve or RCXP makes no difference.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

When I hand off a project to someone else -- a very rare occurrence these days -- I keep it as cleanly structured and self-explanatory as possible. I test all the project files and data, etc.. to make sure everything loads properly. Or to the best of my ability I do. I do this for my own internal purposes as well. I'm willing to bet I have some of the most meticulously arranged workspace and project folders out there, I'm actually very anal about it.

Typically, I have all the original media in one folder, and divided into respective sub-folders for R3D and other formatted files. A separate folder in there for trimmed or prepped media. I then have the project folder which includes all the media actually used in the project. So yes, it duplicates a lot of what is in those previous mentioned folders, which the colorist or whoever should not have to access. They're on there for those just in case they're needed situations. Hopefully no one was getting the impression from my prior posts that I just drop everything in someone's lap and expect them to deal with tons of superfluous clips and data that the project doesn't even use or anything like that.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Of course. And that's definitely the way to go.



Yes and no... We're talking about a music video here, I don't think there's going to be 200TB of anything. And it's easy to pull from the XML which clips are required. I can pull that info and assemble only the clips needed faster than I can try to physically trim anything in RC-X. If you're trying to use the XML to load and trim and round-trip back to FCP, just for the sake of trimming and consolidation, you're just adding one more obfuscation into the workflow where things can potentially get broken. I'm all for allocating only the required clips so the colorist doesn't have to concern themselves with all the other data. As for trimming, I'm not a big fan of trimming clips mid project, just to clean up an edit to be handed off. Perhaps it's because I've seen too many things go wrong. And I can tell you from a VFX point of view, there are few things more irritating than a perfectly trimmed clip to work with where there's no extra frame on either end if we need to nudge, push or pull anything. Trimming the fat? Yes, don't mind that at all. Razor-trim all clips to match an edit. Oh, that sucks.... Just sayin'



IMO, this is the best reason to justify overzealous trimming.

I trim all the time, but it depends on the project. For music videos, commercials, even short films or shorter corporate pieces, trims are not always a huge concern. It's just one more round-trip in a pipeline that may or may not be necessary. For someone diving into this with an FCP7 workflow, I personally feel that the less back and forth between apps and re-writing of the XML data, the better.



Totally agree. It's just that there's a time and place for trimming. As much as people like to make a huge deal out of file sizes and data quantities, most R3D productions, especially music videos and similar scoped productions, are not what I would consider data-heavy.

You are right for a music video this might be over do... as long as they did not book the online in my suite, then 25 frames handles is all I want, hate those piles of lacie drives, offline guys should learn that their job is not only to make a cool edit and a quicktime, most of them forget that one important part of their job is to deliver a clean neat and tidy package for the rest of the production.
Sadly the norm is usally the opposite. The standard is that they deliver edl's forget all layers but one, does not include the clean pass for that speciall shot, forget the croma balls, the lens grids and or the light passes... then best case scenario they saved thier FCP project with nothing properly named... sequence, sequence copy, edit, final edit 3 etc... it's a joke at more times than it's not... And little do they know that they often cause way bigger costs in grading and online than they actually charged for their sloppy editing. Imagine here in stockolm, where a lot of people fly to london to do grading... then flying back to do the VFX work and realizing that half the shots are missing etc is quite a procedure...

But I can agree if you do not know what you do and you do short format things, then do not trim...

 

[Björn Benckert]

When I hand off a project to someone else -- a very rare occurrence these days -- I keep it as cleanly structured and self-explanatory as possible. I test all the project files and data, etc.. to make sure everything loads properly. Or to the best of my ability I do. I do this for my own internal purposes as well. I'm willing to bet I have some of the most meticulously arranged workspace and project folders out there, I'm actually very anal about it.

Typically, I have all the original media in one folder, and divided into respective sub-folders for R3D and other formatted files. A separate folder in there for trimmed or prepped media. I then have the project folder which includes all the media actually used in the project. So yes, it duplicates a lot of what is in those previous mentioned folders, which the colorist or whoever should not have to access. They're on there for those just in case they're needed situations. Hopefully no one was getting the impression from my prior posts that I just drop everything in someone's lap and expect them to deal with tons of superfluous clips and data that the project doesn't even use or anything like that.

Sadly not all editors are such computer heads as you are Jeff, many are more slanted towards their, should I say...their artistry. If they made paintings, they would for sure leave their pencils in a mess

 

[jake blackstone]

This is so frustrating. I think this is the fourth thread TODAY asking pretty much the same thing. If people just would learn and start using this incredible FREE software- Resolve Lite, their life would be so much easier
And while we're at it, Red should stop developing RCX. As it is, Red has it's hand full with cameras, projectors, redRay etc. and they should not waste time on tools, that are, frankly, inferior to an already existing ones, like Resolve. And Red should realize, that this confusion in using inferior tools don't help Red image in post community. KIIS

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

On one hand I agree. On the other, RC-X does have a place and not everyone uses Resolve. Even if it's free, due to industry/ political alignment, market perception or whatever... RC-X is still the best way to create looks for loading back to the camera for use on-set. RMD files can be loaded and used by various popular apps these days, what we create in Resolve can't flow that direction.

I do think that RC-X is mis-positioned as a tool and it attempts to do too much. There are tons of little features in RC-X that are cool, but have no practical application. I think RED would have been better off to make it more of a media management, tagging and review tool. It's practically a full functional stage-1 color grading system at this point, but with no practical abilities for I/O other than to create XML sidecar files for "looks" or to trim based on manual instructions or via EDL/XML imported from elsewhere and then the round-trip back happens on a wing and a prayer much of the time.

Old REDCINE was better multi-threaded and performed better overall than RC-X. It had all the color tools we truly needed. Functions that should be in RC-X that are not are:

* media management and metadata tagging
* all database driven for that management and tagging
* network render manager for transcoding and tasking out to multiple nodes, rocket cards, etc..
* offload and import facilitation for handling camera media, doing data verification and tracking checksum values --- more management database stuff.

But hey, we have that Alchemy slider! Woohoo! Because that's so awesome when no other app can make use of it and a multitude of anything else we do to a clip in RC-X. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I do 99% of all my color grading toward the END of my workflow, not at the beginning. Then again, I'm not trying to put a look on my camera files just so some director, editor or producer won't ask me why everything looks flat. I feel for those of you who have to work under those conditions. Really, I do.

OTOH, The Foundry tried developing Storm. It had more of the media management features, but was too heavily driven by metadata tagging rather than actual management. They had it priced way too high for what it was, especially when RC-X was there for free and was about to go "Pro"...

I guess what I'm saying is that RC-X should exist. It just needs to focus a lot more on other areas of the pipeline. I think they have enough color grading, tweaking and look making tools now. Let's move on to other things that should have been done before.

 

[Björn Benckert]

RCXP is for free and it goes beond HD, Resolve Lite does not do that. So I think RED needs to have a program that does pretty much what RCXP does. I looked at resolve a few times and maybe I'm to old to learn something new because I can't say I was all over it. I Guess I want my grading tools closer to my composting tools. RCXP on the other hand does what I need. I feel I can just use it without going trough the hassle of learning yet another big complex program. But now since you stressing resolve so hard Jake I guess I have to light it up tomorrow morning after a fresh cup of coffee and give it another go.

Question Jake, can resolve take Photo shop adjustment layers? As the project I'm working on has a still photographer engaged that graded r3d tif redlog film snaps from each shot in psd using adjustments layers. In premiere I can just apply those and work from there, Is it possible to do the same in resolve?

 

[jake blackstone]

Question Jake, can resolve take Photo shop adjustment layers? As the project I'm working on has a still photographer engaged that graded r3d tif redlog film snaps from each shot in psd using adjustments layers. In premiere I can just apply those and work from there, Is it possible to do the same in resolve?

As you know, Smoke or Flame can open Photoshop files with layers intact too, but Resolve unfortunately can not.

 

[jake blackstone]

But now since you stressing resolve so hard Jake I guess I have to light it up tomorrow morning after a fresh cup of coffee and give it another go.

If I'm spending my time learning Smoke, you may return a favor with learning Resolve:beer:
Joking aside, wait a couple of days. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Baselight Editions for Flame...