First Timer R3D Workflow...

[Shane McGee]

So i'll be DIT and editing a short film being shot this weekend. I've not had hands on experience with the Red workflow so i've been giving myself a crash course around the clock once I found out id be doing the job.

It should be about 12 minutes long, all said and done. We'll be shooting on the RED Epic. I'll be working on my:

2011 Macbook Pro
2.0Ghz Intel Core i7
16GB Ram

I'll be honest, this thing is kind of choking on these R3D sample clips at 1/4 res in Red Cine-X...So i've lined up a newish Retina Macbook Pro maxed out for the actual editing, which will come later once my friend can spare it and let me borrow it.


1. As far as DITing...I have a few tech questions.

I'm planning to use a checksum off loader such as ShotPut Pro or DoubleData (R3D Data Manager). Which do you recommend over the other? The production will be buying this.

Also, we should be shooting for about 4-5 days...I'm planning on 2 project backups and an edit drive to store the whole project that I will edit off. In a perfect world id get all Thunderbolt drives but im guessing the budget wont allow that so hopefully I can get by with normal G-Drives (or something else?) and possibly a Thunderbolt G-Raid as the edit drive? Does this sound like it will suffice?

Any guesses on how much storage space to get to be safe?

2. Editing the project.

I've been studying the workflow of Sam Mestman (http://www.moviemaker.com/diy/movies-better-fcp-x-red-feature-film-workflow-part-1/) and I really would like to edit by referencing the original R3D files and use proxies during the editing, then revert back to the original 4.5k on export (to 4.5k master for archive and 1080p for festival submissions or whatever) just like he does. I know there will be SFX at some point and also color grading happening at some point in the timeline too, so I dont want to lose any flexibility of transcoding the RAW to ProRes unless you recommend that?

I'm also a little unclear on how audio syncing will work... I come from 5D land where I just dump everything in Pluraleyes and it outputs perfect synced ProRes files that I THEN import in to FCPX and being organizing.

Will I be best served by doing that syncing in Red Cine-X after I offload the files from the Red Mags? I saw how its done instantly with timecode sync, which I'm assuming we will be using on this shoot, but I was reading the synced R3D files wont move over to FCPX with the good audio attached? Huh? Is it better to just import everything for the whole project to FCPX and then select it all and hit sync?



Its late, so thats it for now. Thanks for any info!

 

[Barry Bishop]

1)
a) CHECKUM SOFTWARE: Ive never used the checksum loader but I have heard great things about shotput

b) STORAGE for 4-5 Days of footage: 15TB. Why? Assume they are using 512 cards, and assume they have two of those cards. Thats 1TB of data. You need to make two copies correct. Thats 2TB. 2TBx4Days of shooting = 8TB of backup and then make room for that 4tb of footage to dump, so get 5 TB for editing. You could get less storage, but....you didn't tell us what redcode they are shooting in, nor did you say if they had more than one camera.

2)
a) WORKFLOW: Transcode the ProRes and it will auto link to the R3D file, you change that in preference tab. Also your machine will stutter if you don't.

b) AUDIO SYNC: Dont know.

 

[Sam Mestman - WMM]

Shotput is great. Can't speak for the other one either.

Storage is hard to say... an 8-tb Thunderbolt Graid should work great depending on the amount of footage... if you need to go larger, i'd check out the Areca 8 bay tbolt enclosures which can take you up to 32tb. Promise will work too. You almost definitely want to be editing from Thunderbolt, though. You should get 2 streams of R3D playback.

Far as syncing... Sync n Link X (from the App store) is the way to go to attach audio to your R3D's in the timeline (you have to be using timecode for this to work). Won't work using Redcine-X... you'll need to transcode if you want to do that.

If you can record reference audio on the RED, making synchronized clips using waveforms will be a pretty straightforward, simple (and fast) process as well, if you just want to sync within FCPX. Just make sure you make a smart collection for synchronized clips. Haven't tested pluraleyes with X yet... but you should be able to use that as well (there is a version that works with X). Best of luck!

 

[Shane McGee]

1)
a) CHECKUM SOFTWARE: Ive never used the checksum loader but I have heard great things about shotput

b) STORAGE for 4-5 Days of footage: 15TB. Why? Assume they are using 512 cards, and assume they have two of those cards. Thats 1TB of data. You need to make two copies correct. Thats 2TB. 2TBx4Days of shooting = 8TB of backup and then make room for that 4tb of footage to dump, so get 5 TB for editing. You could get less storage, but....you didn't tell us what redcode they are shooting in, nor did you say if they had more than one camera.

2)
a) WORKFLOW: Transcode the ProRes and it will auto link to the R3D file, you change that in preference tab. Also your machine will stutter if you don't.

b) AUDIO SYNC: Dont know.

I thought if you trascode to ProRes it would essentially cut off your access to the R3D Raw files for the rest of the workflow? Is there a way to not lose the RAW access if you transcode to prores in Red Cine X?

Id really like to be able to just transcode to ProRes 4444 and sync as a big batch in Pluraleyes like I normally do but i dont want to defeat the purpose of shooting RAW....

 

[Shiblon Wixom]

There are many different choices or options for every question asked, but a MBPR is a good starting point, the 2011 17" isn't bad either if you have a good SSD system drive and expresscard gen2 slot.

1. Shotput Pro or DoubleData works okay, not completely optimized yet, but they work. The biggest risk of data loss or corruption is when transfering from one file format to another, such as from the red SSD cards to a MAC or WIN formatted drive. Just make sure you verify them visually, corrrect number of files and aprox file sizes (with indexing the files sizes won't be exact, but will be very close), and load the R3D files into RedcineX to make sure they load properly.

2. If you're going to use FCPX, i would sync up sound in RedcineX and output conformed BWF files instead, sound will have the same R3D name and in/out points, but Transcode the R3D files to ProRes without sound. Then sync up sound/video once you have the materials imported into FCPX. This will save you alot of additional post work in FCPX but will take a little more work up front.

3. For compatibility, I would probably stick with eSATA/FW800 and use a thunderbolt Sonnet Pro Expresscard Adapter with a Sonnet 6Gb Pro eSATA expresscard. USB3/FW800 is also a good option, but the MBPR only has two USB3 ports. There are also some good USB3 to eSATA adapters out now, as well. (note, usb3 expresscard over thunderbolt isn't currently supported, but does work in the 2011 17" native expresscard slot)

4. I would probably refer to data management and backup only as a DAT position, as a DIT is hands on with the camera/lighting/video setup/color grading as well as handling the DAT position of data management and backup.

5. Most cinema productions shoot between 250 and 350 GB of R3D material per camera per day. Interviews and music videos are usually twice that data 500 to 750 GB per camera per day, and a lot of slow motion can double or triple those numbers. This is for 4k HD at 23.976, obviously 5k would be 25% higher on the amount of data storage, and Anamorphic would be 25% lower on data storage.

 

[Shane McGee]

There are many different choices or options for every question asked, but a MBPR is a good starting point, the 2011 17" isn't bad either if you have a good SSD system drive and expresscard gen2 slot.

1. Shotput Pro or DoubleData works okay, not completely optimized yet, but they work. The biggest risk of data loss or corruption is when transfering from one file format to another, such as from the red SSD cards to a MAC or WIN formatted drive. Just make sure you verify them visually, corrrect number of files and aprox file sizes (with indexing the files sizes won't be exact, but will be very close), and load the R3D files into RedcineX to make sure they load properly.

2. If you're going to use FCPX, i would sync up sound in RedcineX and output conformed BWF files instead, sound will have the same R3D name and in/out points, but Transcode the R3D files to ProRes without sound. Then sync up sound/video once you have the materials imported into FCPX. This will save you alot of additional post work in FCPX but will take a little more work up front.

3. For compatibility, I would probably stick with eSATA/FW800 and use a thunderbolt Sonnet Pro Expresscard Adapter with a Sonnet 6Gb Pro eSATA expresscard. USB3/FW800 is also a good option, but the MBPR only has two USB3 ports. There are also some good USB3 to eSATA adapters out now, as well. (note, usb3 expresscard over thunderbolt isn't currently supported, but does work in the 2011 17" native expresscard slot)

4. I would probably refer to data management and backup only as a DAT position, as a DIT is hands on with the camera/lighting/video setup/color grading as well as handling the DAT position of data management and backup.

5. Most cinema productions shoot between 250 and 350 GB of R3D material per camera per day. Interviews and music videos are usually twice that data 500 to 750 GB per camera per day, and a lot of slow motion can double or triple those numbers. This is for 4k HD at 23.976, obviously 5k would be 25% higher on the amount of data storage, and Anamorphic would be 25% lower on data storage.

Apparently they have now added 2 DSLRs to the mix as B and C CAM...anyone mixed DSLR and Red Epic before and not had it look weird or any issues?

I guess ill have to pre-sync the DSLR files with the GOOD audio outside FCPX in Pluraleyes and THEN import that stuff to FCPX...then have to figure out the R3D separately...Not sure if I should end up just transcoding all the R3D files to ProRes now since 2/3 of the project will have to be that format anyway...ah confusion.

 

[Shiblon Wixom]

DSLR material usually takes more time to process and prep for edit than Alexa or Red Material, I typically use the MBPR native GPU hardware ProRes 422 encoder for H264 clip, it's faster than anything else. Just right click and in the bottom of the tab, encode selection, pick Prores. The native encoder will work with H264 material but not AVCHD.

If you need ProRes 422 HQ or 4444, use Resolve.