Red-Cine X Pro - Can it be our main NLE?

[Ed Riew]

Here's a thought I've been having.

As I try to sort through our choices for the NLE I'm going to use for the near future to move away from FCP7 (maybe CS6 Premiere on PC or Mac, Smoke 2013 on Mac, or FCPX . . .), I find myself asking "Why can't Red Cine X Pro be our NLE of choice?" Overall, I would like to edit, color correct, and composite R3D files natively, in one super-app, without having to convert them to an edit codec like ProRes first, and without having to use 3 different programs to do those things. We already have a Rocket Card. Red Cine X Pro works great, is very intuitive to use, is Rocket accelerated for full res R3D playback (of course), and seems like it's pretty damn close. You can make sequences. You can make bins. You can color correct. You get output to monitors via the Rocket HD-SDI connections. Add some transitions, multi-layer sequences with compositing, and we're pretty close.

Seems like most problems of the problems we encounter with other programs occur because the software and the hardware aren't communicating as well as they could with each other (needs a different driver, needs different firmware, needs some patch update for the right sequence settings, etc), which is why FCP7 on Mac has been so nice and stable for so long. They made both the software and the hardware. Add an AJA card to the mix for broadcast monitoring - things were nice and stable. If FCPX had just been FCP7 with 64-bit architecture and R3D/Rocket support, I think a lot of people on this forum would have been pretty happy. But they didn't. Oh well. Moving on . . .

So, I know I'd like to see this.
What do you think fellow Red Users?
RED, what do you think about this?

 

[Cory Petkovsek]

One super program doesn't make a lot of sense to create from a programmers nor a business perspective. It's very difficult to design, manage, update, and sell. Modular programs that do one or a few things well but communicate well between each other are ideal. The adobe suite does this better than most suites. MS Office does this well. The FCP suite is meh, but works.

Turning RCX into an NLE is far from the simple addition of a few things you suggest. It will require a large undertaking by Red for the design, creation and support and their business is not software development.

However there is nothing stopping you from licensing the RED SDK and creating your own NLE that ideally meets all your specific needs. You just need an architect and some programmers and 100-200k and you'll have a fairly solid working start.

Cory

 

[MichaelP]

I think the bigger issue is making an NLE that only supports one codec format. Not to mention as Cory points out, everything that goes into an NLE. I spent close to 20 years in NLE development and there is a lot of work to be committed in satisfying different parts of the market. Now if the priority was for RED codec only for 4K finishing - it cuts down on the number of requirements, but not a whole lot when it comes to editorial.

Michael