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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Quick RED FCP Workflow?

Kyle Osburn

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Hello all,

Quick question, just want everyone's expertise on it.

I am going to be working on a job where the director would like to start editing at the end of the day in his hotel room. We will be shooting interviews and b-roll on the RED and a 5D as the B Camera.

My tasks on set all day will be consumed by downloading and managing all the footage, assisting the 1st AC as a 2nd, and getting all the footage to our on set transcriptionist (the client wants transcriptions of all the interviews and b-roll at the end of the day as well).

Suffice to say, I will have my hands tied pretty well during the shoot day, and I'm trying to figure out the quickest way to get the director up and running to start editing on FCP (He has Final Cut 6). Is there a pretty quick workflow to transcode the footage for an offline edit. I was thinking that shooting in 4K HD will speed up the process, but wanted to know the quickest way to achieve all of this. Any insight would be much appreciated!
 
Also, we will be working solely on MacBook Pro Core 2 Duos, with no access to a Mac Pro tower FYI.
 
We don't really have the budget to acquire those things.

But if I shoot in 4k HD, and ingest with the L&T to ProRes 422 (Proxy) for the offline edit, how long do you think it might take on a 2.4 ghz Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro. We'll probably shoot in the range of 100-150 gigs of RED data a day.
 
Last week it took me about 5 hours to do 500 gigs using a redrocket meaning 200 gigs wold be half that with a rocket meaning with out a rocket on a lap top it will be like 2 days to transcode using redcine x with that much footage :)
 
p.s. will your footage be on firewire 800 drives because then it could take longer.


your best be it to install the new final cut codec and use the proxy files use the smallest resolution so your system wont lag edit with those then when you are all done do you export and corrections in redcine x and re link the media or do a re link with xml file using the new clip finder.
 
Were you transcoding to ProRess 422 (Proxy)? From what I have read, it seems like transcoding to that bitrate for the offline should not take nearly as long as transcoding to ProRes 422 HQ with a higher debayer setting.
 
So if I used the proxy files for the offline, I would just need to drag and drop the proxys into FCP for the offline edit and then reconform them later, correct? Sorry I know this is probably a basic question, but I am new to the post side with the RED, my experience has only been on the production side so far.
 
ya you can do that the proxy route....but even transcoding to prores (LT) or (proxy) non full debayer will take a while longer than what you will want you will be up till 6am doing what you need. I was doing prores 422 full debayer ...but remember you will be on laptops so you will probably be using firewire 800 drives right? that alone will slow any process down.
 
Before you shoot.

Get a 10 gigs worth of RED material.

Time the transcoding time it takes you to bring in the ten gigs.

Multiply by ten and you will have your 100GB time.

I think it is very safe to say that with no access to REDROCKET you can really forget about editing with rendered media.

You also need to transcode all of the material from the B camera into some kind of editable format.

iMHO, I really think that editing the dallies every night is a pipe dream, even if you go the proxy route, you'd be editing masters (not good) and you still have to deal with B camera transcodes.

I know it might not be what you want to hear, but I would hate to see you promise that you could do this, when with the way you have explained how you want to accomplish it is fairly impossible with that amount of data.

David
 
A workflow I've used with many low budget, run and gun productions is the render out at 1/8th or 1/16th quality. You can do this at a decent speed on a laptop and then it will be a breeze to edit with. Only problem is it's low quality. You can then use Clipfinder to reconform back the R3D files to finish.

One thing to remember is that you can use more than one computer to render. Clipfinder has a great poor man's distributed rendering built in or you can just divide the clips up between different computers.
 
A workflow I've used with many low budget, run and gun productions is the render out at 1/8th or 1/16th quality. You can do this at a decent speed on a laptop and then it will be a breeze to edit with. Only problem is it's low quality. You can then use Clipfinder to reconform back the R3D files to finish.

One thing to remember is that you can use more than one computer to render. Clipfinder has a great poor man's distributed rendering built in or you can just divide the clips up between different computers.

Clipfinder does not yet support the NCS or the new version of REDLINE, so if you are going to capture with BUILD 30.5 you need to determine this ahead of time.

Perfect if you are using build 21.

David
 
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