New to Premiere and RED, some basic pointers needed

[Philippe Gosselin]

Hi all,

Actually I am a long time Vegas editor but I am switching to Premiere CC for this project. We shot my first short film (on RED Epic 5K FF) and, post-production wise, I expect it to be fairly simple and straight forward. Color grading with Colorista and a few shots thrown in AE to rotobrush here and there. My first question is:

-Can I import clips, trim them in the soucre panel and edit as is in sequences OR should I go through REDCINE-X?

-If the final output is 1080p should I set the project in that resolution or keep it at 5k?

-In the same vein, I need to edit the footage in a 2:39:1 aspect ratio. Should I then set the sequence to a resolution of 5120x2144 or 1920x804 if I set the sequence in 1080p? And if so I do I match the aspect ratio of the clips?

If I don't make it clear (very likely since I am a lousy writer) here is a nice thread that discusses a very similar issue but in Vegas

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/969592

Thanks for your input!

Philippe

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

I tried the colorista trail version in premiere and that was superslow to render out. colorista 2 also killed the real time playback. Im not sure what you mean in the first sentence. Did you mean inside of the source monitor or inside right inside of the bin?

http://youtu.be/TVtPizoxiuM

 

[Philippe Gosselin]

Hi Joel,

Yes, inside the source monitor, basically can I trim in Premiere or is it the practice now for RED user to do so in REDCINE and move on to their particular editing platform afterwards.

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

Reds r3d files are naitve in premiere so you can edit them like all other clips inside of premiere. Premiere can not write out the final edit to r3d. So you have to choose another format for your master.

 

[Ulf Krentz]

I´d suggest to apply a first color correction through RedCine (without exporting anything), import the R3Ds into Premiere, the source settings will be taken from your Redcine corrections but will still be accessable in the source window if needed. Corrections in the "post tab" of Recine won´t carry over. Of course you can do the entire settings in the source window but I prefer the user interface of RedCine. In Premiere set the timline according your file size / ratio, scaling R3Ds will slow down your editing process sigificantly. This way you will be able to work in real time, have no trancoding time loss and still have the benefit from RAW. Up from there you could go multiple ways. I like Resolve, it´s free in the light version and a powerful tool.

Cheers, Ulf

 

[Mike Garrick]

1st you will need to download the Red plugin (version 6...not sure about CC if you still need to do it ?) Anyway once done you can play as, Jole suggested, Epic files without any need for transcode. However IMO this all depends how big or small your project is, if you have hundreds of hours of footage than maybe a transcode.

In regards to CC. You don't need RCX do any of this, you can use it to create a "1light grade" and Premier will accept no problems (also Premeir has a dumbed down UI version of it within the NLE ) ...haven't used "Speedgrade" within Premier so I will leave it to others . I use "Resolve" for CC. and its pretty easy to export from Premier into Resolve. Then output to your desired deliverable codec .

 

[Philippe Gosselin]

Thank you gentlemen, I really appreciate your input. I wasn't aware that DaVinci offered a free version of their software, I am downloading it now.

There is only the matter of my third question. I understand that it will take away the real-time playback but I can accept that. Now how do I go about doing the same thing as what was described in the link?

Thanks again!

 

[Philippe Gosselin]

Something else I just remembered. Most of our shots were in 5K FF but some were in 4K. Would you recommend that the sequences be set to 4K or leave it at 5K?

 

[Ulf Krentz]

Something else I just remembered. Most of our shots were in 5K FF but some were in 4K. Would you recommend that the sequences be set to 4K or leave it at 5K?

I already tried to answer that. If shot in 5K and framed for 1:2,39 ratio set your time line like you suggested to 5120x2144. This way you won´t scale the R3Ds and will have a fluid editing. You can choose 1080p when exporting. Now of course that doesn´t cover your problem mixing different input sizes. If a lot of your takes have been recorded at 4K just use a 4K timeline.

Cheers, Ulf

 

[T_Freundlich]

If you're finishing to 1080p, I would just set the timeline to 1080p, and just do right click -> Set to Frame size for all the clips. This way you can mix in any resolution, 5K, 4K, 1080p and it will all come out scaled to the right size. For the 2:39 letterbox, I would just keep the sequence at 1920x1080 and add black bars on top of the picture on two separate tracks (you can generate a color matte in the project and place it in the appropriate position with the clip movement controls).

Keeping your sequence at 1920x1080 will also avoid trouble if you're monitoring via a video card to a 1080p monitor (Premiere always outputs the same resolution as the timeline).

The only time I would edit in a 5K sequence for 1080p delivery is if you need to use Warp Stabilizer as that won't work on resized clips.

Additionally, a really super useful feature in Premiere when working for 1080p finish is to right-click on the footage and choose Scale to Frame Size on larger-resolution R3D clips. This "throws away" some of the data and basically treats it as a HD clip, giving a massive boost in playback speed in case you don't have a Red Rocket available. And even if there is some quality decrease with this method it doesn't matter if you're going out to Resolve for the color grade, as you can always force Resolve to use the highest-quality scaling when doing your final graded output.

And for smooth editing, you can drop the playback/debayer resolution in the program monitor window, due to the way the R3D files are compressed this will give you realtime playback of 4K+ Red files on even a very modest machine, though at the expense of playback quality.

Hope that helps & makes sense!