My first 30 second Red One shoot experinces.

[Lars Wikstrom]

By all means I am not a professional at doing high end spots. I have been shooting local commercials for about 15 years for local cable companies and businesses. To date I have done about 1000 spots normally under in the range of $600 to $1K. Small time stuff. A friend I know got a Red One camera and I asked him to come with his camera for this Restaurant/Bar because they wanted nice food shots. There are 2 shots that were with my HVX-200 from the previous shoot I had there.

http://www.sbtraveler.tv/madisons_test.html

My experience...

I am use to fast productions in and out of a place in 2 to 3 hours max. Moving my HVX-200a and lights around fast. the Red One production was about 6 1/2 hours and it was a beast of a camera to move around. The shots were amazing though when compared to the P2 footage.

Things I had to adapt too that were difficult....

When shooting food I was use to a lot of DOF the lens that we used was the RED 18-85 I think but I only had about 3 inches of in focus for the food. That was tough to work with the the client wanted to see the whole dish. Also I am so use to zooming out with the HVX-200 but it was very hard to try to zoom out and keep the food in focus with the limited DOF. I had about 2K of light on the food.

Post...

O my god does it take for ever to ingest the media. With P2 I could have the clips in in about 15 minutes and start to edit. It took about 2 hours per 1 minute of footage to ingest. This is not a work flow I would do for normal projects. When I heard of the Scarlet cameras I thought this would replace my HVX-200 but that will not happen now. There will be the cheaper HVX production and the higher price RED production.

Over all there is no way my HVX-200a will ever come close to the detail and dynamic range this camera has. But if you normally spend 8 hours shooting and editing a spot like I do that is now more like 20 to 30 hours I would guestamate it took me.

Is it worth it. Yes.... for clients that will pay for it and you will have to adopt a new way of thinking and shooting then you are use to if you do fast production like I do.

My 2 cents.

-Lars

 

[Stronz Vanderploeg]

really? two hours to ingest 1 minute of footage? that seems like way too much time to me but I don't own a RED so I'm not one to say.

How did you go about ingesting the footage? What software? From my understanding you can either use the reference QT files that are made from the .r3d files automatically (which is super processor intensive) or you ingest via log and transfer and convert to ProRes 422 or ProRess 422 HQ. I'm sure there are other ways to edit but these are the ones I have heard most often.

I too own an HVX and am eagerly anticipating the Scarlet. Would have liked to get a RED One two years ago but just didn't have the money at the time.

 

[Jeff Dunant]

When shooting food I was use to a lot of DOF the lens that we used was the RED 18-85 I think but I only had about 3 inches of in focus for the food. That was tough to work with the the client wanted to see the whole dish. Also I am so use to zooming out with the HVX-200 but it was very hard to try to zoom out and keep the food in focus with the limited DOF. I had about 2K of light on the food.

As far as DOF goes, it sounds like you had the aperture wide open, which is why you were getting only 3 inches of food in focus.

Play around with this: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

DOF is really quite controllable.

 

[Colin Sheldon]

We have a Red One and a HVX, and each camera does have it's strengths and weaknesses.

We don't, however, spend 2 hrs/min of footage ingesting! The best workflow I've found is to either import the footage as native (which takes about the same time as P2), or you just edit off of the proxies.

By doing it that way, instead of converting every single minute of footage, you only convert the footage that is used in the final project.

So a 30 second commercial would take 1 hour to export... which is quite workable.

Red footage is, however, more processor (and drive) intensive so it helps to be on the leading edge of technology... which can get expensive.

cheers!

 

[Lars Wikstrom]

I had my friend there who owned the RED ONE. After we lit it we adjusted the lens/aperture till the image was lit perfectly. He said that we needed more lite and plus the camera was pretty close to the food within a foot I would say. He did have another lens, I forget which one but it was a Cooke and we had to be at least a minimum of 6 feet away to get the subject into focus. I could not find the happy medium and being so close to get the nice detail in the food the camera had to be close. With the RED ONE you almost need 2 people for production. For a few shots I manually adjusted the zoom while he adjusted the focus.

The software was downloaded and put onto my Laptop. It was the RedAlert and RedCine. RedAlert allowed me to open the file and make some color correction which I further corrected in FCP. When you open the clip in RedAlert you set your In/Out points and other basic color space settings. This creates a file called RSX in the clip's folder. Then you open the REDCINE which is a batch conversion program for the most part and select the RSX file's properties and what you want the clip to end up as 1080/720 and so on. After that you press the render button I think it was and wait and wait and wait. Rendering the clips was the longest part of the whole project. It would have taken days to render out every second of every shot.

I could not get REDALERT to play the native 4K files back in real time but that was expected. The cool thing is that each 4K file had 3 or 4 proxy files in the same folder that were different sizes from 320 (I think) upto HD. They were low quality but you could play them back real time. It would be nice if these proxy files had a frame TC assigned to them. When you set In/Out points in REDALERT you have to guess where they will be kinda, I'll explain. We would roll like 2 minutes on 1 dish of food. when I play back a proxy file I can see in real time which shot I wanted. But since you can not playback the 4K in real time (on my machine) and many of the shoots look the same it was hard to find the right one. But with a frame TC on the Proxy's it would have helped save time.

P2 is a much faster way of ingesting the footage. All the clips line up and you set the in/out's and while that it converting from MXF to QT you are looking at the other shots. With the RED ONE each shot is in it's own folder and you need to go into each folder to view the proxy's.

Don't get me wrong I love the camera and the footage is night and day compared to the HVX-200. But being on set for 6 1/2 hours and packing up was draining. When shooting local shops and restaurants it's nice to get in and out as fast as you can to avoid disrupting their business. This would not be a good camera for fast production but for clients that understand quality and don't mind you in their shop for 4 to 6 hours.

Lastly... I am going to be looking a little more closely at the 2/3 fixed lens. With Auto Focus this might be a nice medium that can deliver faster production with quality. I used 80 gigs of drive space for the day.

-Lars

 

[Colin Sheldon]

For ingesting, next time try "log and transfer" in final cut pro and you will see that it is exactly the same process and interface of P2. If you get it to import as native (rather then prores) you will find that it's just about the same conversion time.

The slow part comes when you do your color timing in Color. Sometimes the renders can take a while - but at least you're only color timing and rendering the final product.

Colin

 

[Jean Déraps]

Lars, I don't want to sound too harsh, but it sounds like you went into the project with little prior knowledge of how to work with the RED. This is a dangerous thing regardless of the equipment you decide to use. I have never used an HVX200 before, and I would never start a project "cold turkey" without having used the equipment before.
The RED is a cinematographic camera, meaning you have to know how to deal with things like manual focus, manual zooms, depth of field, etc. Professionals determine the iris opening required to obtain the depth of field needed for the particular shot (and field of view) and then add the appropriate amount of light. Saying that you didn't have enough depth of field on the RED is like saying I can't get my Porsche Carrera to go over 40 mph, not realizing that I have to shift the manual transmission...

Also, viewing all your clips is easy and fast (you don't have to open each folder!) with clipfinder (http://www.daun.ch/software/) and it's free!

There is definitely a problem with your workflow. It is ludicrous to suggest you need 2 hours per minute of footage to ingest. The Che films would still be ingesting. Ingesting using the "log and transfer" method takes about as long as it takes to copy the material over to your scratch drive (in your case 80 GB of data). Were you trying to render everything in 4k at full quality debayer?

Have you read the whitepapers on RED workflows?

Although the RED One will never be as lightweight and maneuverable as the prosumer HVX, it is far from being as cumbersome to use and as slow in its workflow as you make it out to be.

As they say: "A little knowledge is dangerous..."

Regards

Jean

 

[Tony Lorentzen]

Lars - something is wrong with your post-workflow and/or system. Though it's not as fast as P2 - it shouldn't take 2 hours for 1 minute of footage. Not sure what kind of computer you're using but it's at least a Mac with an Intel processor. Before I got my Mac Pro I had my Mac Mini do conversion with REDRushes (don't use REDCINE for batch conversion btw.) and the conversion was about 12:1 to convert the R3D files to Avid DNxHD in 1080p using half-high debayer. If you just need SD then convert and resize to something like ProRes and you should be getting vastly better performance. Or just edit straight off of the proxies and finish directly from them. Though it's not a suggested workflow you'll get far better quality than the HVX200.

 

[jimhare]

All I can say is my 30 seconds weren't great either! :biggrin:

Out of focus, noisy and very slow to process.

Amazing how quickly my images improved with my experience.

Now I can process material basically in real time (thanks to Red Rocket) and my images amaze me!

It's a whole new world and it needs to be respected. Give it the effort it deserves and it will serve you well.

You can work quickly, efficiently, and ultimately deliver material just as quickly as DV, but you have to work for it.

If it were easy everyone would do it! arty:

 

[Justin Kirchhoff]

Lars,

I really don't understand why you went from RED Alert! to REDCINE...You basically colored the footage twice...REDCINE has more settings than RED Alert!, I would just use that to do everything you needed. RA! is used to create new proxy files with an LUT you applied. It's good for 1 clip renders, but I would stick to RC for your needs.

Listen, everyone has different workflows. There isn't a "best" way. Most people use log and transfer, I usually just edit the proxy files. Then I export an EDL to reconform to DPX via Monkey Extract. Monkey Extract creates a new EDL linking all the DPX footage to your edit, so you can then bring that into Color and go nuts on it. Render it out, send back to FCP, and relink the audio.

Good luck to you in the future. Figuring out YOUR workflow is the fun part. When I got my camera over a year and a half ago that was my biggest problem, but there are so many 3rd apps now that have helped. If you shoot with the RED again, do some research on these boards, it's like the RED Bible.

 

[Lars Wikstrom]

Sorry, my bad. I looked again and it was REDALERT and REDRUSHES that were used, not REDCINE. As far as going into it blind I did not. The camera owner/operator was there since I wanted RED experience. He downloaded the RED software to my intel laptop and showed me the work flow he used. I relied on him for information on the camera and work flow. I would never think about renting the camera and shooting by myself for the first time. I didn't want to learn on the job. The final result was amazing when processed. My conversion was from 4K to 1280 x 720 ProRes. I use the 720 24PN work flow with my HVX-200 when I shoot HD that needs HD to SD down conversions.

I understand there is lot to learn and my experiences was great and learned a lot. Most importantly I learned that I need to keep my HVX-200a for fast turn around of projects and get a Scarlet for high quality productions.

I did not get a chance to try the Log and Transfer. I am interested to see how that will work. I'll test that on the footage that I have.

Thanks!

-Lars