Onlining questions: Resize, Color Correct

[Conor]

I'm working on a short film that was shot on the RED ONE camera (4K, 24 fps). I'm approaching the online stage of the edit and I'm hoping for a little guidance or advice. Let me give you a little background.

I ingested the footage into Final Cut Pro as ProRes 422 QuickTimes using the Log and Transfer function. I've been cutting with these 2048x1024 ProRes files ever since with no problems. When RED introduced support for native REDCODE files in FCP and Color, I thought I would use Color Workflow #2 "Work Offline Using ProRes; Finish Using RED QuickTime Media" described in the RED FCS Whitepaper. I ran some tests using ClipFinder, and everything looked good.

Here's where I run into a small issue. We're probably going to finish to an HD tape format, most likely D5. My director has decided that he'd like the film to have a 16:9 rather than a 2:1 aspect ratio so that there is no black letterboxing on the D5 image. Content-wise, there's no problem; the shots will look fine with a little of the sides cropped off. However, and here's my first question, if I perform the resize using the Geometry tab in Color, I will be degrading the image slightly, right? Since Color can only ingest the 2K resolution (2048x1024), and 1080 is obviously bigger than 1024, Color will blow the image up slightly to fit the 1920x1080 frame, correct?

ClipFinder allows me to send my clips to Red Alert, but it appears that Red Alert does not have resizing capability. I know RedCine does a good resize, but ClipFinder can't send my clips to RedCine, right? If I want to resize my 2:1 files to 1920x1080 without degrading the image, do I need to abandon the ClipFinder workflow and use Crimson instead?

Here's the next question. If I do have to do my resize in RedCine, how should I export the resized files? I know you can do some nice color grading in RedCine, but my colorist is going to work in Final Cut Pro/Color. Render times are not an issue, so I was planning to export uncompressed 10-bit QuickTimes from RedCine to work with in FCS. I don't need my RedCine exports to look pretty or polished at all; I just want to give my colorist the maximum flexibility to work with the image. (I would have loved for him to be able to work with the native REDCODE files in Color, but I think my 16:9 issue makes that impossible.) So how should I treat the REDCODE files in RedCine? What should my color and gamma settings be? REDspace? REC 709? Remember, all I want to do is give my colorist the greatest possible tonal and color range to work with.

Thanks so much for reading this whole post. I'd love to hear any thoughts or advice you have. (I'm also going to post this question in the Apple Workflow and general RED Workflow forums. Sorry if you see it more than once.)

-Conor

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

IMHO, using Crimson and Redcine is a good way to go on this, to manage your resize and generate 10 QT for Color. Use Redspace and Rec 709 to give you a nice flat image that represents all the latitude of the raw file, then the colorist can pull down the blacks and add in contrast where it's most appropriate from your raw looking 10 bit transcodes. I think this gives the most flexibility in the color correction stage. The only other thing I touch in Redcine is sometimes WB, only if charts were shot and I have a valid white point to sample under real lighting situations.

 

[Antoine Baumann]

IMHO, use camera rgb and not redspace as color space, normally camera rgb gives you a flater image than redspace and gives you even more flexibility in grading.

If your master if going to be in a video space, then i would go with rec709 gamma setting.

Unfotunately I have no idea about color workflow, but if you do go the redcine/redalert road:
redalert has a scale option. As I understand it, you want to scale down the 4096x2048 r3d to 1920x1080 and don't want black bar up and down, so you need to scale down the r3d to about 52, 734% and you should be good.
Using redince/redalert to downsize with a good filer is not going to degrade your image.

cheers,
antoine.