Help! Redcine will only do one file at a time, or one long file.

[Thor Wixom]

A client is trying to output .R3D files to ProRes 422 10bit YUV.

He loads his files into Redcine, and when he goes to output them, he says Redcine will only A) do one file at a time, or B) render all the loaded clips into one long file.

I haven't heard of this before, but I haven't tried this method before, either. All my clips have been one at time.

My client is under a tight deadline.

Any thoughts would be very helpful.

-Thor Wixom

 

[Paris Remillard]

We found something similar last week exporting clips that had new in and out points set. If the duration was changed, the clip had to be the first clip in the timeline or it would just output a freeze frame of whatever clip was first in the timeline. So, we moved everything one at a time to the front of the timeline and exported that way.

But then we found that with any clip that was long enough to be split into 2 .R3Ds, the first half renders fine, but the second half is a freeze frame. The only format that doesn't do that is a full rez TIFF sequence.

Any thoughts?

 

[Häakon]

Make sure you have a variable set in your output settings to split the files by original filename (#F, I believe?) so that each rendered clip is outputted separately. If you name your output movie as your own custom title and do not use a variable, it will render as one long file.

Best,

Häakon

 

[R Fogg]

Thor, I was told that the better way to get pro-res files is to bypass redcine altogether. Instead use the Log & Transfer in FCP and use compressor to generate your pro-res files. Apparently this is a much faster way to transcode and I believe it generates individual files as well. Give me a call if you need to.

 

[Häakon]

Doesn't the log and transfer feature encode from the proxies?

 

[Dominic Jones]

Yup - log and transfer no good for finishing via the generated ProRes files (imho). I only use it for generating offlines for those who don't want to/can't work from proxies.

#F is the way to go...

 

[R Fogg]

Hmmm, I was told this by a VERY red-centric post house - but maybe they were under the impression that I was going to offline with the files. Apologies for the misinfo.

 

[Thor Wixom]

Thanks for the help, everyone.

It looks like we have it ironed out at this point. If I need any more help, I will post again.

It's great to have the confidence that I can post a problem, and have great suggestions within an hour or two. This truly is a community!

-Thor

 

[Dominic Jones]

Hmmm, I was told this by a VERY red-centric post house - but maybe they were under the impression that I was going to offline with the files. Apologies for the misinfo.

Or maybe there's a better way to use log and transfer than I've found - would be interesting to know their workflow, if that's a possibility.

The problems I've found with this route (and I haven't played around with it much, to be fair, but I cannot see a logical way around them) are:

1) Lower quality debayer.

2) No ability to "develop" the footage from the RAW, and hence a very flat file is created. Of course, you can then grade this, but you will be losing a lot of the oft-talked-about power of RAW, especially when it comes to correcting shots that are not optimally exposed.

Would be very interested to hear of any solutions to the above, as as your post house rightly states, this method is much quicker than going via RC. That said, it sounds like we might be in free lunch territory here!

 

[Häakon]

2) No ability to "develop" the footage from the RAW, and hence a very flat file is created. Of course, you can then grade this, but you will be losing a lot of the oft-talked-about power of RAW, especially when it comes to correcting shots that are not optimally exposed.

This is the bigger problem, even if the L&T function was able to tap into the R3D file as suggested. In REDCine you're working in a much deeper color space and can more effectively manage base color correction. Once you "burn" to an RGB codec, the extra information is lost. IMO, using the L&T function is next to useless, because if you have to re-render your files in REDCINE anyway, there's no point in taking an extra transcoding step in the beginning of the chain. I've gotten in the habit of just cutting the proxies (super quick and easy), outputting the XML to Crimson, rendering (and hence, grading) ONLY the clips I need for my project, and quickly round-tripping it back into Final Cut. When REDCine behaves properly, it's a much faster process than rendering everything at the beginning and will net you the best quality files possible.