Post Workflow for Short Film - RED EpicDragon

[Chris Langer]

Hello everyone,
I am hiring a camera operator and his RED Dragon to shoot 6K WS for my short film next week. I will be editing this short film myself on the new trashcan Mac Pro. I am wondering what the best avenue for post-production. The final film will be submitted to film festivals and played at a private premiere. I don't need anything above 1080p, I do believe. I use Premiere and will grade in Speedgrade or Da Vinci Resolve. No special effects or composite work.

Basically, do I do the 1080p conversion in REDCINEX or Premiere later? What are the benefits and disadvantages? Are these workflows below correct? Do you suggest ProRes or R3Ds?

1. 1080p from REDCINEX
- Import R3Ds
- Apply color settings
- Export to 1080p R3D or ProRes 444?
- Edit in Premiere
- Grade
- Export to 1080p Compressed Formats

2. 1080p from Premiere
- Import R3Ds
- Apply color settings
- Export to 6K R3D or 4K ProRes?
- Edit in Premiere
- Grade
- Export to 1080p Compressed Formats

 

[David Weissman]

Sorry I don't have any suggestions, but I'm glad you're asking this because I have the same questions, for a project I'm shooting late next week. Only difference is that I'm doing some VFX work as well. Working in 6K isn't easy in After Effects and it isn't ideal in Resolve either, not without the right hardware. Best of luck to you.

 

[Phil Holland]

Hello everyone,
I am hiring a camera operator and his RED Dragon to shoot 6K WS for my short film next week. I will be editing this short film myself on the new trashcan Mac Pro. I am wondering what the best avenue for post-production. The final film will be submitted to film festivals and played at a private premiere. I don't need anything above 1080p, I do believe. I use Premiere and will grade in Speedgrade or Da Vinci Resolve. No special effects or composite work.

Basically, do I do the 1080p conversion in REDCINEX or Premiere later? What are the benefits and disadvantages? Are these workflows below correct? Do you suggest ProRes or R3Ds?

1. 1080p from REDCINEX
- Import R3Ds
- Apply color settings
- Export to 1080p R3D or ProRes 444?
- Edit in Premiere
- Grade
- Export to 1080p Compressed Formats

2. 1080p from Premiere
- Import R3Ds
- Apply color settings
- Export to 6K R3D or 4K ProRes?
- Edit in Premiere
- Grade
- Export to 1080p Compressed Formats

Hi Chris. I utilize the Adobe CC workflow regularly and REDCINE-X Pro is a massive part of my workflow as well. I typically grade in REDCINE-X Pro, SpeedGrade, or DaVinci Resolve. I also generate files to be graded off site at a studio either by me or others. That's commonly a proRes 4444 or 16 bit DPX, TIF, or EXR sequence workflow.

However, a couple things that I hope help you choose your desired workflow. First you won't be exporting to a 1080p .R3D trim. .R3D trims maintain their capture resolution.

Additionally, one thing you have going for you is this is a shorter project so editing with the native .R3D files is entirely possible. The cool bit about all of this is you can edit either .R3Ds or proRes and jump in and out of SpeedGrade straight from Premiere Pro CC these days. So editing and grading has become closer in many ways and easier to jump in and out and make changes. Editing and working with the .R3Ds all the way through allows you to jump into RCX at anytime to change your source settings and proceed from there.

So on to my advice. Personally what I enjoy doing is using REDCINE-X Pro for my first light color correction (and sometimes my final color grade if it works out that way). So I would get your footage in there and do a base correction. Get your edit going either with proRes 4444 or .R3Ds. After that editing process grade from there.

To answer the 1080p or 6K or 4K question. If this is a straight forward shoot and you know you are finishing 1080p there's no real harm in working from 1080 proRes 4444. However, I'd invite you to work for a 4K finish and export both 1080p and 4K deliverables you know..... Just in case

 

[Björn Benckert]

Yes do what Phil Says.
You will get a nice UHD master and it cost you nothing extra. Hardly even time. And believe me you will get more attention from the short film festivals if you got a UHD master. And a few years from now a 1080p master will feel like a SD master so don't do it, don't scale down your source when you do not have to.

If you would have said it's a big space film with a lot of CG and effect, the sure you might need smaller resolution to handle the renders and such. But if it's only grading and graphics and not post heavy the there is no reason to scale down to 1080.

So edit from native source. IT works well with dragon footage. Set your view to 1:2 or 1:4 even and it will be no lag. Then export XML and import into Davinchi or RCXP and do a flat pass as "R3D trim" With 50 frames of head/tails. This gives you a nice folder with trimmed but unaltered raw source footage which is nice to have.

Then conform again in resolve from the r3d trim folder using the same XML and grade from there and shoot out a UHD master (I would do it as tiff or DPX sequence, some would do it to Proress or other mov format) From that sequence you can make all your masters, 1080p or what ever is wanted.

The render time is not much to talk about for grading and the conform etc will handle smooth as butter as you do not mess around with proxy files that can disturb the XML frame size settings and such.

And if you get any trouble you just turn to this thread and I'm sure reduser will sort it very quickly for you.

 

[Chris Langer]

Thanks for the comments everyone! This is really helpful getting an idea of the workflow before I even get the footage.

I assume it will look the same if I export to 1080p from REDCINE-X and Premiere? Does REDCINE-X have some magic over Premiere?

I will most likely get a really nice neutral look from REDCINE-X, export as R3D's then edit natively using the 6K files, grade in Speedgrade, export 4K master, use Media Encoder for compressed formats from the 4K Master

I have been pretty happy with what I can get out of the REDCINE-X Looks using some RED Epic footage I shot a month ago. I am going for nice neutral tones with slight contrast increase. I might just like what REDCINE-X can do and do a light grade afterwards. I will know next week when I have some footage in my hands!

I will post my findings here so you can guys can see!

Also, for screen grabs for promotion and stuff, is that a R3D Still? I assume Photoshop can read those as RAW files for just basic editing.

Thanks for the help! Any additional pointers is helpful!
Chris

 

[jimhare]

Hi Chris,

RedCINE-X has a couple of cool features like Alchemy, which bakes in a nice contrast and saturation curve, but as far as the debayer quality goes, I don't believe there is any difference.

 

[Chris Langer]

Shoot went great and the RED Dragon is perfect. Love the colors and tones. It looks like an Alexa now!

Anyways, I have one of my R3D's and I prepare a base grade in REDCINE-X. From there, I export them as R3D Trim files. After importing them into Premiere, nothing is applied to the R3D from REDCINE-X, so it looks like the original before I applied my base grade to it. I imported the whole folder that REDCINE-X exported. What am I doing wrong here?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[David Ibbitson]

Hi Chris,

When Trimming the look is not baked into the R3D file. In your Trim settings you can select to have it also create an .RMD alongside the trim so that you carry over the clips look.

David

 

[Chris Langer]

Thanks, works like a charm now!

 

[Chris Langer]

Question regarding the .RMD files... I really like the RedCine-X interface and the idea of seamlessly editing the RMD files in RedCine-X. Is there a way to make changes to my current R3D's used in my edit through the RMD's? How do I get my new settings to write to the RMD's so it applies it to the R3D's?

Do I re-export the R3D trim files?

 

[Chris Langer]

The reason why I am asking, when I export ProRes, it has a yellow cast to it, so it kills my color grade. Wondering if doing it through speed grade is my problem? Are there other good master file types that do not have any casts?

 

[Jason Kraynek]

What are the settings you are using for the 4k UHD master export?