MacBook workflow Tested

[Vangelis]

This is my suggested workflow using only a MacBookPro (2.33 Ghz, 10.4.11, Quicktime 7.4.1, 2Gig RAM and a FireWire400 Drive. Minimum stuff).
We shot a 4 min Music Video (2 Hours of footage).
We shot 4k and 3k at 37fps. 2:1 Ratio.
You can watch it here http://tldots.com/vangelis/Tatouaz

This workflow was intented to be
a. Fast and troublefree to edit,
b. Keep the best quality possible by rendering out of RedCine (not the reference files in FCP)

1. Use the FCP Log and Transfer (Install it first ) to convert ALL materials to ProRes HQ. Do NOT change NAMES ON CLIPS. Leave all as is!!
- No need for 1-light to preserve highlights or shadows, this will be your offline, throwaway cut.
-1 min of materials took me about 13 min of Render. So 2 hours of materials took 1 night of render using two MacBooks.
2. Wake up and edit natively on the MacBook on 2k Proress.
-Trying to use the proxies will get your fans spinning as well as you won't be able to watch normal motion. If you are an editor you 'll apreciate being able to just cut. It's worth the overnight render.
3.Once you finish you final cut, get Crimson Workflow. www.crimsonworkflow.com/. Charge the client
4. In FCP, flatten your sequence (and get rid of your dissolves and expand the media needed for those dissolves).
5. Export .xml
6. Import .xml to CrimsonWorkflow. Connect .r3d files.
-(It can do that with your Proress Media! as long as you have not renamed anything).
7. Export to RedCine.
8. Do a good one light Telecine in RedCine. PRESERVE your HIGHLIGHTS. You will fix the problems in Color (i.e., Skies).
9. Render to Quicktime Proress HQ (my master was 1080p). Watch how RedCine names your quicktime files!! (see the CrimsonWorkflow demo first).
10. Go back to Crimson and export an .xml final cut
11. Reassemble your dissolves. Send to Color.
12. Do color and send back to FCP.
13. That's it

Problems shooting 4k and 3k.:

A practical problem that arises is that using the log and transfer utility you end up with 2k (from 4k) AND 1.5k (from the 3k materials) media. On the 2k sequence, the 1.5k files will not play realtime. I took all the 1.5K Proress Materials and used Compressor to uprez them to 2k. I preserved the name clips just added _UPRZ at the end. I highlighted the uprezed media on my FCP Browser, so that I could identify them on the cut. Once I finished I made two sequences: One with the 4k shots and one with the 3k shots. I send two xml's to Crimson. One for 4k->2k Proress and one for 3k->2k Proress. Did two renders in RedCine. I ended up with two Sequences in FCP that I reassembled easily by hand, into one.

Another Note: Not knowing that Crimson Workflow can relink the Log and Transfer Proress media back to the r3d files, and having uprezed files with new names, I found a manual way to create a cut using the Quicktime reference files, identical with my prores cut. Just took the sequence offline (exported it without the media, then opened it on another project with offline media). Then I made a simple EDL. Opened it in text editor and did a "FIND and Replace". Changed the end of the file names accordingly so that the have the same name as the refernce .mov files. Saved the edited EDL file. Ipmorted back to FCP and relinked to the R3d reference .movies. And voila, I had a cut with reference media ready to .xml Crimson. Not need to do all that but if you get in trouble it's a easy way to get out of it.

Overall a great experience. Love the red on the shoot. Here are some photos from the shoot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11361050@N08/sets/72157604670545262/

 

[D'Arcy Foley-Dawson]

Hi,

Thanks for the post, I'm about to do pretty much the same thing, with pretty much the same hardware.

I'm having a lot of trouble with 50p stuff. The majority of what we shot was 25p, and that's the intended frame rate for delivery. But I just can't seem to get the 50p stuff to play back properly in FCP. Whenever I drop a 50p clip into a 25p timeline, it just plays it back at the speed at which it was recorded but seems to play only every second frame. In other words, it's not slow-motion. I've tried switching off the 'Removed Advanced Pulldown and Duplicate Frames' box in the Log & Transfer interface and this makes no difference.

I'm guessing this is one of those common problems everyone new to RED comes across and I'm sure there's a simple solution - anyone care to tell me? Thanks.

 

[Ed Watkins]

Good summary,

One advantage of the conversion to ProRes at the start for the offline is that you can give the converted files to an editor who doesn't have an intel mac (which believe me is an absurdly large number). Then just use the Mac Book/Mac Pro for the conform.

 

[Jim Brennan]

One advantage of the conversion to ProRes at the start for the offline is that you can give the converted files to an editor who doesn't have an intel mac (which believe me is an absurdly large number). .

Yep. We are legion :tongue:

 

[WesG]

Hi,

I'm having a lot of trouble with 50p stuff. The majority of what we shot was 25p, and that's the intended frame rate for delivery. But I just can't seem to get the 50p stuff to play back properly in FCP. Whenever I drop a 50p clip into a 25p timeline, it just plays it back at the speed at which it was recorded but seems to play only every second frame. In other words, it's not slow-motion. I've tried switching off the 'Removed Advanced Pulldown and Duplicate Frames' box in the Log & Transfer interface and this makes no difference.

I'm having the same problem.
Even the proxies are playing at real time speed when i thought they would play at 50%.
Is there something we're missing?

 

[D'Arcy Foley-Dawson]

I'm having the same problem.
Even the proxies are playing at real time speed when i thought they would play at 50%.
Is there something we're missing?

Yes could someone please help or redirect us to a thread where this is covered? It's such a straightforward thing, I can't believe it's giving me this much trouble!

 

[Kenn Michael]

How were these 50p clips shot? Project framerate 25fps with Varispeed option at 50fps? Are these clips 3K or 2K?

 

[D'Arcy Foley-Dawson]

How were these 50p clips shot? Project framerate 25fps with Varispeed option at 50fps? Are these clips 3K or 2K?

I know they are 3k and not 2k, but as for your other question I would have to check with the director of photography. Just prior to our video he shot a number of projects on RED at variable framerates, and he knew I was finishing at 25p and wanted 50p material to play back as slow motion..... so, I'm going to assume it was shot on the necessary settings. Unfortunately my knowledge of RED is pretty limited (I'm the director and editor).

cheers
D'Arcy

 

[D'Arcy Foley-Dawson]

UPDATE: Can't find a FCP solution. Exporting thru RedCine seems to work fine however. Yet another weird thing: according to the RedCine metadata, the clips are all 24fps, not 25.

Jeez I hope my posts don't make me sound like a completely unprepared idiot.... When you're organising a music video shoot it's kinda hard to find time to 'bone up' on a completely new workflow. I wish we had the money to hire an editor :-(

 

[Jason Ing]

Thanks! I'll have to try it out.

 

[BASSAM MSSALATIE]

Thanks For Your Experience

 

[Ben Holmes]

UPDATE: Can't find a FCP solution. Exporting thru RedCine seems to work fine however. Yet another weird thing: according to the RedCine metadata, the clips are all 24fps, not 25.
(

Unfortunately this is a known bug in REDCine, sent to try everyone in PAL land. If you accidentally leave everything as 24 fps in REDCine, you can use Cinema Tools to batch re-conform these back to 25 fps, getting rid of jerky motion in a 25p timeline. Otherwise you have to manually change every clip's framerate in REDCine - pretty dull, but more correct.

I think I'm also correct in saying that the Log and Transfer route does not support variable frame rates. It's only version 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.1 after all.

Everything (including the price of oil and world peace) will be fixed following build 16.



Ben

 

[D'Arcy Foley-Dawson]

Unfortunately this is a known bug in REDCine, sent to try everyone in PAL land. If you accidentally leave everything as 24 fps in REDCine, you can use Cinema Tools to batch re-conform these back to 25 fps, getting rid of jerky motion in a 25p timeline. Otherwise you have to manually change every clip's framerate in REDCine - pretty dull, but more correct.

Yep fortunately I realised this before it was too late and exported everything at 25fps. Would have been a real bitch to have to do again - it's taken me one and a half days as it is to get through approx. 60mins of footage (mind you that's cause I also had to do it single shot by single bloody shot because for some reason RedCine can't do a proper batch output on my system).

I think I'm also correct in saying that the Log and Transfer route does not support variable frame rates. It's only version 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.1 after all.

But the guy who started this thread claims to have been working off 37fps material.

 

[CB84]

"1. Use the FCP Log and Transfer (Install it first ) to convert ALL materials to ProRes HQ.
Not sure how to use Log and transfer, what do I need to install?

 

[Vangelis]

To Help out:

1. The Log and Transfer is a free plug-in by Red to be isntalled in Final Cut Pro v6.0.2. It enables the import and transcode of Red Native .r3d files into FCP native Proress 2k files. I did Pal.I shot 4k 25 and 3k 37 and 50fps. I had no problems with frame reates. Everything worked.
2. In RedCine, you have to manually adjust the project settings as 25 fps if you shot 25. By default it's set to 24. Just change it to 25. Then render.
I shot 25 fps as my baseline. What I shot at 37fps and 50 fps just came out to be slow motion like it was supposed to do.
Just trying to clarify this because reading the posts, its seemed like there is a problem with Red and PAL. I had NONE. Works fine.

http://tldots.com/vangelis/Tatouaz

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Just trying to clarify this because reading the posts, its seemed like there is a problem with Red and PAL. I had NONE. Works fine.

http://tldots.com/vangelis/Tatouaz

Nice clip!

Thanks for sharing.

Do you know if it is possible to first edit in FCP with proxies and then transcode with Log and transfert your timeline to Prores? I do edit with the proxy xxxx_M.

Thanks.

Pat

 

[Kevin Stanley]

For slow motion make sure you are using the varispeed function in camera and not simply changing the project frame rate.

Thank you for posting this, very good information.

Kevin

 

[Todd Jones]

1. Use the FCP Log and Transfer (Install it first ) to convert ALL materials to ProRes HQ. Do NOT change NAMES ON CLIPS. Leave all as is!!

Why do you not change the names on clips. I just went through a bunch of red footage and changed the name to fit our naming scheme, but moved the red name to shot/take. Have I made a grave mistake that I will regret?
Thanks

 

[conrad gaunt]

Hi,

Thanks for the post, I'm about to do pretty much the same thing, with pretty much the same hardware.

I'm having a lot of trouble with 50p stuff. The majority of what we shot was 25p, and that's the intended frame rate for delivery. But I just can't seem to get the 50p stuff to play back properly in FCP. Whenever I drop a 50p clip into a 25p timeline, it just plays it back at the speed at which it was recorded but seems to play only every second frame. In other words, it's not slow-motion. I've tried switching off the 'Removed Advanced Pulldown and Duplicate Frames' box in the Log & Transfer interface and this makes no difference.

I'm guessing this is one of those common problems everyone new to RED comes across and I'm sure there's a simple solution - anyone care to tell me? Thanks.

It won`t, you don`t need `removed advanced pulldown` and your footage won`t contain duplicate frames.
You need to convert your 50fps footage -> 25fps (half speed etc) if you want slow motion, otherwise most applications will skip every other frame , unless you use a 50fps project setting, instead of 25. See if your application lets you override the clips 50fps setting with 25fps , so it takes twice as long to play on your timeline ie slow motion, or adjust the clips speed to 50%.

 

[Surf_RED]

I followed the steps and everything seemed to work fine except for this error message in fcp.

Thu, 29 May 2008, 4:14 PM - Errors Found Importing red test 01_roundtrip.xml
sequence item: Required element <name> not found for sequence item definition( line 376 )
sequence item: Required element <name> not found for sequence item definition( line 473 )
sequence item: Required element <name> not found for sequence item definition( line 570 )
sequence item: Required element <name> not found for sequence item definition( line 672 )
sequence item: Required element <name> not found for sequence item definition( line 769 )
sequence item: Required element <name> not found for sequence item definition( line 866 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get audio <clipitem> for <effect> "audiolevels".( line 376 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get audio <clipitem> for <effect> "audiopan".( line 376 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get video <clipitem> for <effect> "video".( line 376 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get audio <clipitem> for <effect> "audiolevels".( line 473 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get audio <clipitem> for <effect> "audiopan".( line 473 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get video <clipitem> for <effect> "video".( line 473 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get audio <clipitem> for <effect> "audiolevels".( line 570 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get audio <clipitem> for <effect> "audiopan".( line 570 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get video <clipitem> for <effect> "video".( line 570 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get audio <clipitem> for <effect> "audiolevels".( line 672 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get audio <clipitem> for <effect> "audiopan".( line 672 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get video <clipitem> for <effect> "video".( line 672 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get audio <clipitem> for <effect> "audiolevels".( line 769 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get audio <clipitem> for <effect> "audiopan".( line 769 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get video <clipitem> for <effect> "video".( line 769 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get audio <clipitem> for <effect> "audiolevels".( line 866 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get audio <clipitem> for <effect> "audiopan".( line 866 )
<clipitem>: Unable to get video <clipitem> for <effect> "video".( line 866 )

I don't think it's a problem but it would be nice to find out why its doing it.