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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 :)

Recommended Apple Color Workflow?

Color seems to need an edl to force it to accept 25FPS footage. I might try the AJA solution. You may not be able to choose log when using QT, but it's not like you have a Color lut for redlog anyway.

At the moment I do the following:

Send the whole project to the render farm overnight to get ProRes files for the offline.
Edit in FCP, export an EDL.
Open the EDL with Monkey Extract (Not much use if you don't have it, sorry).
Open the Monkey made EDL in Color.
Grade, export QTs, import to FCP.
 
DPX 24p to 25p or 30p / Color FCP reconform

DPX 24p to 25p or 30p / Color FCP reconform

Irri said:
Color seems to need an edl to force it to accept 25FPS footage.
Click to expand...

If the footage is DPX, color will always tag them as 24p, even if you shot in 25p or 30p.

Do following:

- import the DPX in Color in a 24p project (yes it will look slower but who cares for CC?)
- Color correct them
- Render in 24p QT (to send them to FCP)
- Open the rendered QT files in Cinema tools (utility in the FCP studio bundle)
- Change the frame rate (reconform) to 25p or 30p (instant change without render)
- Import the clips in FCP in 25p or 30p.

Voilà,

It could be much faster... if Apple...:bye2:

See you.

Patrick
 
gunleik said:
haven't tested it, but check your gluetools controlpanel, that you haven't forced 23,98 in there...

Also I have seen that when you export through compressor from a DPX timeline in FCP, it creates lots of unwanted... dithering... (or I do not know what else to call it) "Extra gradients" averaging pixel-luma on both sides of a greyscale line.

gunleik
Click to expand...

Thanks Gunleik,

It is not gluetools!
I had to recreate the project manualy in color.... I imported each dpx clip manually into a 24fps project and color rendered it to the frame ....happy end the DVD is on its way to Berlin....

I do not know where the BUG is but it is one that compromises the FCP - CRIMSON - REDCINE - FCP - COLOR workflow.

I will check when I have time if REDLINE/REDALERT creates this problem. In this project I had to go to REDCINE because on set even wht balance was not made, intiriors and extiriors at 5600 k.

If I nail it down I will update.

Ido.
 
flameop said:
I though curves were busted in Color currently Nick? Something about clipping when in float?

S
Click to expand...

Did not appear to be so when I was using it earlier today. I have an ATI graphics card, I don't know if it might be an ATI / NVIDIA thing. Didn't there used to be issues? I'll test emulating REDSPACE with a curve tomorrow.
 
Thanks everyone for your replies and discussion...

So far, the AJA/DPX workflow seems to be pretty solid. I've had no problems thus far getting 25fps content into and out of Color.

I only read your comment Nick, after already exporting out everything in REDSPACE, so I'm going to stick with that for this particular grade (unless we end up having serious issues - in which case we'll just re-export the trouble clips in REC709 or REDLog). As the DOP exposed for REDSPACE, and the look on camera is pretty close to what we want anyway - based on Graeme's comments, I felt REDSPACE would work for our purposes, but I'll definitely keep what you said in mind for next time!

Patrick, the Cinema Tools workaround sounds like a really great suggestion! But to be honest, I'm now sure how it actually works? I understand that using the Conform tool in Cinema Tools just modifies the Quicktime header so that Quicktime is told to play at 25fps instead of 24fps - but I still don't get how this actually works? Are you loosing any information? I don't think you do - but I'm just not sure why this is.
 
Tresch said:
Do following:

- import the DPX in Color as 24p (yes it will look slower but who cares for CC?)
- Color correct them
- Render in 24p QT (to send them to FCP)
- Open the rendered QT files in Cinema tools (utility in the FCP studio bundle)
- Change the frame rate (reconform) to 25p or 30p (instant change without render)
- Import the clips in FCP in 25p or 30p.

Patrick
Click to expand...

Thanks
 
possible workaround

possible workaround

Found this at creative cow forum. have not had the chance to test it:


"Re: DPX files in 25 fps ?
by Mats Andersen on May 23, 2008 at 1:38:15 pm

Thanks!

I found a great workaround in an earlier post on this forum:

1. Import 25 fps edl as cutlist with QT fil as source media.
The color project is now created perfectly.
2. Export an EDL from the new color project.
3. Import that EDL as a cut list with the DPX sequence as source material.


When I did this it worked as it should."
 
I tried this method. It did seem to work bringing the DPXs into Color, but I had all sorts of issues trying to get the sequence out of Color. As far as I can see, 25fps DPX files in Color simply don't work well at all (hence the reason for the AJA workaround).
 
Just curious... Is there any reason Apple don't have an 4:4:4 Uncompressed Quicktime Codec (ignoring the Animation Codec, as that doesn't play nicely with Color anyway)?
 
When you look inside the package of a color project there are several places that refer to the FPS, anyone has any expirience in tweaking those?

If it is that color ignores the fps of the headers it might not help but if it just interprets 25 as 24 it might and up as asimple tweak, but the right line should be found.

Any advice before I dig into it?
 
karilla said:
When you look inside the package of a color project there are several places that refer to the FPS, anyone has any expirience in tweaking those?

If it is that color ignores the fps of the headers it might not help but if it just interprets 25 as 24 it might and up as asimple tweak, but the right line should be found.

Any advice before I dig into it?
Click to expand...

When importing and EDL into color, you can set the project framerate (say 25) and all DPX files imported will be considered to be that framerate, even if the headers say otherwise (24).

If you manually load a clip into color, it will ONLY look at the headers. So even if the project is 25, manually loading a 24 clip results in a frame skip.

FYI all headers exported from REDLINE come are set to 24 fps as far as color is concerned.

The solution is to alter the DPX header framerate. The next version of Monkey Extract has this feature.
 
Nigel_Monkey said:
When importing and EDL into color, you can set the project framerate (say 25) and all DPX files imported will be considered to be that framerate, even if the headers say otherwise (24).

If you manually load a clip into color, it will ONLY look at the headers. So even if the project is 25, manually loading a 24 clip results in a frame skip.

FYI all headers exported from REDLINE come are set to 24 fps as far as color is concerned.

The solution is to alter the DPX header framerate. The next version of Monkey Extract has this feature.
Click to expand...

Thanks Nigel.

If I understand you correctly then The thing is that the rendering of color goes back to the dpx's header and not the projects FPS. Thats why the EDL's solutution does not work. Until your next ver. that will be tweaking the headers we do not have a solution.
When can we expect that version?
Ido.
 
Ido, have you tried Patrick's Cinema Tools workaround? That seems to work fine, as does the AJA workaround. Great to hear that Monkey Extract is going to address some of these issues - but hopefully with the next major update of Color, well have native R3D support and all of these workarounds will be redundant! Only time will tell I guess...
 
Color in our specific case imported the edl with all the dpx 25 fps clips but it was an 18 minutes project, maybe too long, because for other shorter projects (3/5 min.) the edl worked fine. In the color timeline we had the same timeline of fcp and redcine but the problem was some clips in a random way were only 1/5 frames. At the beginning I thought redcine failed to export all the dpx, but with the demo of glowtools I was able to preview the dpx in quicktime and I noticed the dpx weren't corupted at all. It was evening, we had a meeting with the client the morning after and there wasn't too much time to make new files (apple pro res hq) out of redcine and dpx is a much better format for the color correction, so we used the aja dpxtoqttraslator and it worked fine, bad thing is we had to do the conversion manually one clip at the time, because I think if you don't have an aja card you can't do a batch. We apply again the color correction that we made in the 25 fps dpx project in the new color project with the aja files and we launched the render to apple pro res hq and all went fine.:whistling:
 
gunleik said:
This is the common workaround (though I prefer to make an AJA, not prores master)

Then, if only Color was stable...
Click to expand...
Yes, you are right, at the end we finished with aja files not pro res. Yes again, if color was stable...
 
Chris Hocking said:
Ido, have you tried Patrick's Cinema Tools workaround? That seems to work fine, as does the AJA workaround. Great to hear that Monkey Extract is going to address some of these issues - but hopefully with the next major update of Color, well have native R3D support and all of these workarounds will be redundant! Only time will tell I guess...
Click to expand...

Thank you Chris,
If I understand corectly, for film out, as in my case, I have to finish in DPX's. So cinetools workaround wont help. And with the aja it is a two way transcode.

Please correct me if I misunderstand.

Ido.
 
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