Looking for a post house with a great deal of RED experience.

[Paul Korver]

You can't do anything without debayering because you'd be looking at an image that represents the Bayer filter array pattern. You must do some type of debayer in order to get a coherent RGB image.

Of course.

Having said that, Assimilate Scratch, Baselight, Iridas Speedgrade, Nucoda Film Master, and DaVinci Resolve all do a "live debayer" and maintain direct access to the SDK settings, so they allow you to do what you're asking. Unless something has changed, Pablo and Autodesk Lustre do not.

Are you sure about Baselight and Resolve? I thought they were native DPX systems and would require DPX to color from. But honestly it's been a year since I've looked hard at how the Baselight deals with R3D and since then they've "optimised" quite a bit... added BTL etc.

 

[M Most]

Of course.

Are you sure about Baselight and Resolve? I thought they were native DPX systems and would require DPX to color from. But honestly it's been a year since I've looked hard at how the Baselight deals with R3D and since then they've "optimised" quite a bit... added BTL etc.

I am 100% sure about Baselight because I've used it. I am about 95% sure about Resolve because I know people who use it, and because I have talked to the DaVinci folks about it (at least the very few Los Angeles based DaVinci folks that are still with DaVinci).

Baselight in particular is not simply "native DPX" at all. It handles a lot of native formats, including Avid DNxHD MXF files, Quicktime (minimal codec support in the basic version, complete Apple codec support with the Kompressor option), Phantom .cine files, Arri RAW files, and some others I'm probably overlooking. In fact, I would say Baselight has perhaps the most comprehensive support for native file formats of any of the current systems with the possible exception of Speedgrade.

 

[Peter Moretti]

This another area where Avid is missing the market and droping the ball. DS could be an excellent finishing systme if they would add support for a control pannel and some other features to it's grading interface. It's doable as is, but it COULD really shine if Avid would understand the opportunity they have in front of them: edit in MC, then easily conform to DS (no EDL) w/ almost all tranisitions, effects and color corrections carrying over. Use DS for final grade and finish.

The easy conform is already a reality. It's the improved finishing toolset that DS needs to really make an impact.

 

[Nick Shaw]

To add to Mike's list, Baselight also now supports EXR files for VFX work. As he says the format support is very comprehensive, although EXR is currently in Beta.

R3D is fully supported (no Red Rocket support yes until they get the Linux SDK for that) and it's not for me to speak for them, but since the new SDK came out recently, I would expect support for M-X footage and FLUT colour science will be coming soon.

As Mike also said many people are not using native R3D support, as it not as fast as working from DPXs, but it is there, and in my opinion FWIW it's the best way to go.

 

[Frank Cueto]

Of course.

Are you sure about Baselight and Resolve? I thought they were native DPX systems and would require DPX to color from. But honestly it's been a year since I've looked hard at how the Baselight deals with R3D and since then they've "optimised" quite a bit... added BTL etc.

Yes, the baselight will allow you to work from R3D's.

Another advantage to working in native R3D's is that it takes up little space.
Also, its rather cool to work on the session in 2K, and when we render projects we render them in full 4K debayer and then resize to 2K. All noise reductions, qualifiers and such seem to give better results that way.

If you had to do that with DPX's or EXR's you would need to have all those huge files on your systems and create proxies for all of it as well just to be able to work decently (please correct me if I am wrong about this....)

 

[Ian Vertovec]

Lets say you import everything as RedGamma/RedColor 6500Kelvin. But one shot was shot with 3200Kelvin lights... that will make your DPX very hard to workwith

That sounds like an operator problem not an equipment problem. Speculation on these forums causes more mis-education then actual insight.

I would like to agree with the general consensus, just because a facility has a good or bad system, doesn't mean they use it correctly. A facility is probably 85% people and 15% equipment.

And of course all this varies depending on the clients need and expectations. For example, some clients have no need for a film record, others this is critical. Some clients need to walk out with a tape and can't wait for a 4 hour render.

A great facility can adjust their workflow to meet as many needs and expectations as possible while keeping costs and time down but quality up.

 

[Martin Tlaskal]

R3D is fully supported (no RED Rocket™ support yes until they get the Linux SDK for that) and it's not for me to speak for them, but since the new SDK came out recently, I would expect support for M-X footage and FLUT™ colour science will be coming soon.

Hi Nick,

We're currently testing a new website release with support for 4.5K images, M-X and FLUT - shouldn't be too far away. If you need support before an official website release, contact us directly and we'll arrange an interim version.

-Martin

 

[Priya J]

Thanks for all the suggestions, I'm looking for 4K filmout places too. We're on the East coast though. Does anyone have recommendations for decent, affordable places out here that handle color correction and 35mm transfer? Thanks in advance.