Footage is black, RedAlert fix does not help!

[Aron Krause]

Hello,

I just connected a drive to my computer (MBP) containing RED-footage of two different projects (shot with the same camera but with different settings).

The first project is fine, I can read the quicktimes, I can L&T the native material, everything is fine.

Now the second project.
The Proxys are black, L&T shows black. I heard of the method to fix it in RedAlert. When I open it in RA, I can see the colour-corrected material for a second and then it gets black again (the curves are down).
Now i press "default" and I can see the uncorrected sequence.
Now I hit "Make quicktimes". The sequence-folder shows a new .rsx-file. But I still can't read the material, neither proxys nor the native footage.
I even created a new user-account on my computer (according to an older thread concerning this problem). It woun't help.

Does anybody know a solution? I'd be happy for any help.
Thanks,
Aron

 

[Ido Karilla]

Try opening the "black" footage in redcine, in the color tab reset manually all the parameters and lift a bit the curve.

Probably the video settings in the camera where such that make black preview.

 

[Uli Plank]

Seems to be a bug in build 17. You can use REDAlert too, click default, set your desired look (no curves!) and save that grade. Use it for L&T in FCP and your're set.

 

[Aron Krause]

I've done it already as i wrote. I hit "default" and created new Quicktimes. But it does not help. Log & Transfer still shows black footage.
Does anybody else had this problem?

 

[Uli Plank]

You need to save the grade in RA and use that during L&T ingest, not just change the Quicktimes.

 

[Aron Krause]

But how do i save the grade including the curve?
By saving the preset, the curve is not considered. So during the L&T ingest I'm getting the default settings concerning iso, exposure, brightness... but not the curve that i want. So the footage remains black.
Is there a way to save a preset with curve-information that I can use in L&T?
The only way to fix the problem that I know of is to export each clip from RA. But it would take days of work to do that. There must be a better way.
I would be grateful for further help!

 

[Uli Plank]

Is there a way to save a preset with curve-information that I can use in L&T?

No. Use the other settings, exposure works for me.

Sure: REDrushes or Clipfinder and a beefy Mac.
And please have a look at the whitepaper regarding FCS workflow.

 

[francois]

Do you have the black frame in Redcine? If so check in red colour and try manualy to click on on exposure just change a value and reset if the double click on exposure foes not work. It's the way we did.

 

[Mike Prevette]

Adjust the "tint" control. I had one expierience where the camera auto white balanced, and set a crazy tint number that made all my QT's black.

 

[Aron Krause]

The curve is the problem. It's not exposure, It's not tint. The curve is completely down. I can recover the footage by setting the curve to default in RedAlert and RedCine. But how do I apply this to my original footage?

 

[Aron Krause]

I found a solution.
REDrushes seems to be the only app to give you all options concerning look, colour space and gamma space. And transcoding is easily done with REDrushes.
My original footage and the proxies are still not visible, due to the curve-crash (heaven knows why...).
But since I wanted to transcode the material to ProResHD anyway (with L&T), REDrushes is the app of choice to do that instead.
It'd be a good option for the L&T ingest to decide, how look, colour and gamma are treated while transfering. The REDalert presets where no help.

Thanks everybody for help and concern.

 

[Uli Plank]

If you go the external transcoding route, have a look at Clipfinder (free). IMHO it's even better than REDrushes.