Prem to AE to export

[Stephen Townsend]

Hi Chaps,

I've recently started working with an Adobe Workflow for RED as it seems to best suit what I do and my past experience with Adobe products. I've been working on a piece that was roughly edited in Premiere but required specific transitions between each shot which I've been working up in After Effects. Everything seems to run pretty smoothly by turning down the preview resolution in both Prem and AE so I've not been slowed down in that respect.

The problem I'm having is when I'm exporting to show the director. Even rendering out a couple of minutes worth of footage is taking hours and last night I tried to render out a full sequence to find it had only done the first section of it this morning... director not happy... I checked my 'In' and 'Outs' were correct but really that isn't my main issue. I'd really just like to increase the speed of the renders. They don't even need to be high quality, just for preview purposes, but the director would like to have a full play back he can watch through to check timing etc and how the transitions I created are working.

I'm running on a 12 core Mac Pro with 32GB RAM so I imagine that's more than enough. I expect my issue is storage. The RED footage is currently on a USB drive and then I'm working off the one hard drive in my Mac Pro which I'm also exporting to. I guess the main aim would be to get some sort of 3 disk setup for original footage, working with footage and then a disk for exporting to(?) but whilst I don't have that is there anything fundamental I'm missing to speed renders up?

Cheers,
Steve

 

[Stephen Townsend]

One quick question maybe someone can answer. If I know I'm going to be outputting my final film at 1080p, should I be setting up a 1080p setup in PP? I went with a 4k preset since this is what the film was shot at so it seemed logical and I assumed if I went for anything less I would lose quality when I wanted to grade. Also, with a lot of the footage I've been working on in this project, I've been cropping in to quite a bit so the 4k format has really paid off so, again, would going with a 1080p project setup have prevented me from doing this or if not would it seriously have improved my render times?

 

[PatrickFaith]

One quick question maybe someone can answer. If I know I'm going to be outputting my final film at 1080p, should I be setting up a 1080p setup in PP? I went with a 4k preset since this is what the film was shot at so it seemed logical and I assumed if I went for anything less I would lose quality when I wanted to grade. Also, with a lot of the footage I've been working on in this project, I've been cropping in to quite a bit so the 4k format has really paid off so, again, would going with a 1080p project setup have prevented me from doing this or if not would it seriously have improved my render times?

For speed, sometimes it seems that using QHD mode on the scarlet, and 1/4 view resolution with QHD premier format works real well(i.e. select the QHD format in premiere ... but only have the resolution set at 1/4). This way you get the best of both worlds, and this works real fast for me(r3d is naturally a compressed format, and with QHD aligned, premeire just flys). From a disk viewpoint, I'm using eSata, and also SSD for caches ... I think a lot of your problems are your disk setup. On the premiere to after effects render, this can get real tricky ... lot of time i will do everything at the top level in premiere, but when i do the composite in AE (started in premeire), I will save AE projects just do the renders in AE one at a time via queue - then paste them back into premiere (i.e. trying to do complex premiere renders with a bunch of AE sub renders has caused problems for me too, I'm not a expert though at all the new linking options in AE).

Though I mentioned QHD mode above as quicker, I btw have stopped using QHD mode, and shoot in 4096x2160, and go 4096x2160 through my entire workflow ... I find that more flexible ... but I think it runs a bit slower.

 

[Joseph Coleman]

Just a thought, if your just trying to get it out as fast as possible can't you just set your debayer to half and then render out a 1080p quicktime? I personally leave my Premiere prj at the native resolution of the r3d's and then render down to whatever resolution I want. Seems much more flexible.

 

[Stephen Townsend]

Just a thought, if your just trying to get it out as fast as possible can't you just set your debayer to half and then render out a 1080p quicktime? I personally leave my Premiere prj at the native resolution of the r3d's and then render down to whatever resolution I want. Seems much more flexible.

Is the debayer something I can set in After Effects after working up my transitions as this is where I'm rendering from for this project? Native resolution is exactly how I'd prefer to work myself which is why I set it up that way - seems to make the most sense.

I'll see if I can get my boss to invest in some new disks I think... We'd talked about a RAID setup before for storing RAW footage but we thought we might hold off until we move to our new office which won't be until the summer so maybe it needs to happen sooner.

 

[Joseph Coleman]

Yes right click on your footage and go to interpret footage. Then go down to the bottom where it says more options and it will give you all of the controls you need such as iso, white balance, and debayer quality. by setting it to half it will make your renders much faster at the expense of quality. I hope that helps

 

[Stephen Townsend]

Thanks Joseph, I'll give it a try!