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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Mac Pro Workflow

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Matt Setnes

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Will the new FCP 2 be efficient enough to edit 4k Red on a Mac Pro with 2 dual core?

I know quad came out, but no sense in buying the quad core until Leapord is released.
 
bluestar said:
Will the new FCP 2 be efficient enough to edit 4k Red on a Mac Pro with 2 dual core?

I know quad came out, but no sense in buying the quad core until Leapord is released.
Click to expand...


I cut 'Crossing the Line' on a dual dual-core Mac Pro with FCP5, using native 4K redcode files in 1k proxy mode. It never dropped a frame.

Also my Assistant Editor was working with the native 4k files in FCP on a MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo). That too worked fine.

cheers

-Jabez Olssen
 
cogito said:
I cut 'Crossing the Line' on a dual dual-core Mac Pro with FCP5, using native 4K redcode files in 1k proxy mode. It never dropped a frame.

Also my Assistant Editor was working with the native 4k files in FCP on a MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo). That too worked fine.
Click to expand...

I'm curious as to whether you were able to compare the performance of this approach to, say, transcoding to a lower overhead codec, possibly DVCPro or ProRes. Although there is certainly a significant amount of convenience to be achieved by using the 4K footage directly (less copying, no transcoding time, etc.), I would think that for creative flexibility and more editing fluidity, there might be some advantages to the transcoding workflow, especially if one is using transitions and/or multiple layers of video.
 
mmost said:
I'm curious as to whether you were able to compare the performance of this approach to, say, transcoding to a lower overhead codec, possibly DVCPro or ProRes. Although there is certainly a significant amount of convenience to be achieved by using the 4K footage directly (less copying, no transcoding time, etc.), I would think that for creative flexibility and more editing fluidity, there might be some advantages to the transcoding workflow, especially if one is using transitions and/or multiple layers of video.
Click to expand...

I'm sure there are many advantages to transcoding to another codec, such as ProRes. But we were facing a daunting deadline and could not spare the time it would have taken to transcode the eight hours of rushes. We had to start working on the offline as soon as possible.

cheers

-Jabez Olssen
 
Jabez, did any effects work in realtime? Like a dissolve? How responsive is the playback in FCP using 4k redcode raw? What was yor sequence settings?
Thanks!
/Christian
 
cogito said:
I'm sure there are many advantages to transcoding to another codec, such as ProRes. But we were facing a daunting deadline and could not spare the time it would have taken to transcode the eight hours of rushes. We had to start working on the offline as soon as possible.
Click to expand...

Yes, I understand, hence why I mentioned the time savings in the original question. And it's nice - really nice - to actually have that choice at all.

I'm still curious, though.
 
Cogito,

What were you using for monitoring, since you were editing for a projected image? Do you know what the final cut was mastered to? What colour space/file format? Were you able to accurately monitor for your final output on your edit station?
 
Cogito,
you actually cut Crossing the line?
Please, explain all the process in depht! Ingest, off_line, on_line, plug used, render times, grading, fx, delivery.

We need to understand all that you can explain (without loosing your job)...
Please!
 
Elcurado said:
Cogito,
Please, explain all the process in depht! Ingest, off_line, on_line, plug used, render times, grading, fx, delivery.

We need to understand all that you can explain
Please!
Click to expand...

Yes, cogito. That would be a useful piece of information for all of us. I hope you can find a couple of minutes to post a quick summary.


Thanks in advance.
 
What were you using for monitoring, since you were editing for a projected image? Do you know what the final cut was mastered to? What colour space/file format? Were you able to accurately monitor for your final output on your edit station?
Click to expand...

We were pretty much using nothing for monitoring except a second Apple monitor. The final cut was mastered to 4K DPX files on a Quantel Pablo at Park Road Post, for various reasons we mastered in rec709 colour space.

Please, explain all the process in depht! Ingest, off_line, on_line, plug used, render times, grading, fx, delivery.
Click to expand...

Ok, On set we (Deanan) copied each magazine onto a large esata/firewire800 harddrive (Actually several copies were made). After the last day of shoot Deanan handed me a 750 gig hard drive that contained all 8 hours of rushes shot, plus the reference quicktime wrappers for the media which turned the 4k Redcode files into 1k Proxies. I attached the drive to our Mac Pro via eSata, and the quicktimes were imported (very quickly) into an FCP project.

There were several teething problems which I'll skip over as it was all part of the teething process and will all be rectified by the time the camera is shipping. But something I should mention is that at the time the redcode codec could not be rendered in, this will be fixed, but it meant that we had to either cut in a sequence set to the redcode codec and never do anything that that would require rendering, or else cut in another codec and have to render every bit of footage. So we cut in redcode, then when the cut was locked we changed the sequence settings to MJPEG-A and rendered the cut so that we could do some resizing etc in FCP.

Going back a bit, as soon as the footage was loaded in we copied the drive of footage onto another empty drive so that we had two copies and my assistant editor could sync the production sound to the rushes on another machine (a macbook pro). We were under a great deal of time pressure so we started cutting before the sound was synced to the picture, and we just grabbed sound as we needed it. Then when the cut was locked we went through and added in the sync production sound.

Making a long story slightly shorter, we eventually finished the offline cut and created a quicktime of the sequence for our Sound Editors, and for Weta Digital. We held a handover meeting to explain which shots were to be VFX and how PJ wanted the audio to sound etc.

All the quicktimes we were cutting with had the original Magazine and file name as part of their clip names, so we were able to refer back from the timeline (or EDL) to which parts of the original redcode files we required for the online.

The Online process basically involved manually going into redcine and extracting in a useable 4k format all the shots that we had used in the offline. This task was bravely tackled by Weta Digital and their editorial and I/O teams. This part will be much easier in future once REDcine Pull List is working. Anyway, once the frames for the 11 minute final cut were extracted at full quality they were sent to Park Road Post to be conformed in their Pablo system. Weta also kept hold of the shots that required vfx and got to work on those.

The Colour Grading was done on the Pablo at Park Road Post whilst the sound editors were track laying, recording ADR and doing the mix, and also whilst Weta was doing the VFX.

The VFX were dropped straight in the cut in the Pablo when they were done and once it was all finished the 4K data was rendered out and copied to a 750GB hard drive (actually this was done twice so we had two copies). I carried one copy and Richie Bluck the other, Chris Ward the Sound Editor carried the final sound mix and we all traveled to Las Vegas where we handed the drives to Jarred in his hotel room on the Friday afternoon before NAB. They then had to copy all the frames on to the 4K playback server and build the cinema (!) and we finally got to test the picture and sound and saw that it was all working on Sunday (!!).

I hope this helps.

cheers

-Jabez
 
After the last day of shoot Deanan handed me a 750 gig hard drive that contained all 8 hours of rushes shot, plus the reference quicktime wrappers for the media which turned the 4k Redcode files into 1k Proxies. I attached the drive to our Mac Pro via eSata, and the quicktimes were imported (very quickly) into an FCP project.
Click to expand...

Could some explain this part to me and how you get the 1k proxies. Thanks
 
fightordie said:
Could some explain this part to me and how you get the 1k proxies. Thanks
Click to expand...

I believe once the camera is shipping it will create the reference quicktime wrappers for you as it shoots. For this project Deanan had a little utility that opened the 4k Redcode files, looked at them, and made the QT wrappers. We chose to use the 1k versions, but 2k and half-k (512 pixels) versions were also created. As long as the QTs were in the same folder as the 4k redcode media that they pointed to, there was no problem.
 
Cogito thanks much for taking the time to explain in detail the process. I hope you stay and check this forum regularly. If you're open to it I think most readers would love the opportunity to ask you more questions with or without RED workflow.
 
We were under a great deal of time pressure so we started cutting before the sound was synced to the picture, and we just grabbed sound as we needed it. Then when the cut was locked we went through and added in the sync production sound.
Curious: Was this very time consuming to sync sound?

Would it be much faster if there was specifically a tool for audio sync?
 
That is an impressive behind the scenes achievement - thanks for sharing and pulling it off - WOW!
 
cogito said:
I believe once the camera is shipping it will create the reference quicktime wrappers for you as it shoots. For this project Deanan had a little utility that opened the 4k Redcode files, looked at them, and made the QT wrappers. We chose to use the 1k versions, but 2k and half-k (512 pixels) versions were also created. As long as the QTs were in the same folder as the 4k redcode media that they pointed to, there was no problem.
Click to expand...

Hey Jabez, one quick question.
How responsive did you find final cut at 1K?
 
cogito said:
I believe once the camera is shipping it will create the reference quicktime wrappers for you as it shoots. For this project Deanan had a little utility that opened the 4k Redcode files, looked at them, and made the QT wrappers. We chose to use the 1k versions, but 2k and half-k (512 pixels) versions were also created. As long as the QTs were in the same folder as the 4k redcode media that they pointed to, there was no problem.
Click to expand...

I'd guess one of Red's workflow guys would know better, but... can this trick deliver online-quality footage to QuickTime apps? That is, can I just create 2K proxy wrappers, and then use that footage like 2K QuickTime footage in any app that supports QuickTime, eventually rendering out straight from the proxies? Or is the image data presented to QuickTime apps using this trick lower bit depth, with a fast low-quality debayer, etc.?
 
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