RED CODE RAW - Native support in NLE

[Joe Carney]

Yuval - your passion for Adobe products makes them happy, I'm sure.:sarcasm:

And I certainly understand the desire to avoid unnecessary workflow steps. In your case, I'm guessing you're a one-man operation, so the distinction between "Offline" and "Finishing" is arbitrary.

But for this discussion to make sense - what is your final deliverable? Is it HD? 2K? 4K? If it's 4K, then I'm curious what your distribution venue is, and where the 4K is going to go?



I can't give you an official answer - I don't work for RED. But RED has been very vocal and open about who their partners are and who they are working with to try and create workflows. Look at this page...
http://www.red.com/gear_we_use. That, combined with the fact that nobody from RED has mentioned Adobe in the context of native support, and I think that's a pretty good hint.

You could always go pound on Adobe's door and ask them to implement native Quicktime support for Premiere. They have really good forums at http://www.adobe.com/support/forums/

Lucas
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ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

To expand on Lucas' post, I went to the Adobe forum this week and posted this question about support. Not only is there no answer from Adobe yet, but people experienced with them say don't hold your breath.
Yes Adobe supports Quicktime, but support for a specific custom codec is not there until either Adobe or a 3rd party writes it. I also exchanged emails with the developer of the "Sheer" quicktime codec and he is waiting for Adobe to add support for his 10bit version on Windows and Mac as well.
At least on Windows the only codecs Adobe supports natively are 8bit per channel. Everything else has to be created by 3rd party.

Cineform wrote their 32bit per channel directshow codec using
the Adobe Api.
It will come down to if Adobe see's it as good for business. They may be a large company, but they have their limitations too.

I do know that both Adobe and Sony (Vegas) are trying to expand their support for Quicktime and higher bit per channel plug-in codecs. But even then it will only be specific ones, not 10bit in general. Because Sheer is already being used in several production pipelines, I'm guessing support for them will come first.
btw, I'm referiing to Windows platform. I don't have a clue about what is happening on the Mac side of things.

 

[RivaiC]

Yeah, just check that out kinobairn,

FCS2 or CS3, i do not want to choose either one. I just take the best from each. Truthfully, Dynamic Link in CS2 helps me a bit, but i'm not very keen of it, and i don't use motion from FCS as well. I still own the old encore, anyway, we have DVD Studio Pro as well. So it's not really a big problem.

 

[Yuval Shrem]

Yeah, just check that out kinobairn,

FCS2 or CS3, i do not want to choose either one. I just take the best from each. Truthfully, Dynamic Link in CS2 helps me a bit, but i'm not very keen of it, and i don't use motion from FCS as well. I still own the old encore, anyway, we have DVD Studio Pro as well. So it's not really a big problem.

Rivai,

My main point in choosing CS3 over FCS2 is the render-free workflow.
When moving between the packages you automatically loose that.

 

[Yuval Shrem]

Got a word from Adobe

Got a word from Adobe

Ok.
I finally got a word from Adobe about natively supporting RED-CODE RAW.

The bad news:
CS3 is not going to offer native support to RED-CODE RAW.

The good news:
CS4 probably will, as Adobe do recognize the importance of it.

Yet, I'll probably stick with Adobe in spite of it, because of the unique render-free workflow offered by their "Dynamic-Link", knowing that Cineform will surely come up with a solution soon, and that native support will be added eventually with the release of CS4.
I do hope that working with the RED-Code RAW codec in CS3 won't be a nightmare either.

If anyone at Red could elaborate a bit about the limitations of the non-native support in Premier and After-Effects that would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Yuval

 

[Kevin Halverson]

Ok.
I finally got a word from Adobe about natively supporting RED-CODE RAW.

...

This is very interesting. Can you provide information on the source of the "word" you received? Was this an official statement from Adobe?

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Avid is also an option.

They have DS nitris (initially made by softimage) wich can hadle 2k uncompressed and 4k full res (but proxy based in 2k or HD). The DS is file based and very versatile solution but... a bit expensive... more than FCP, or AE... But on my opinion : a tool we can work with.

See you.

 

[Cail Young]

Actually the main reason I prefer the render-free workflow is the way it simplify remote collaboration. Everybody uses the same sorce material, witout the need to send and transfer huge media files but rather only the small project files. This way I can always also tweak elements that I've recieved from somebody else colaburating on the project.

The Pixel Corps use this very mechanism with offline quality MP4 videos and FCP project files to edit their projects all over the world

When I send a project to color-correction I'd like to still be able to tweak it afterwards.

Then do your temp CC in FCP and once you actually lock your edit send it to Color 1.0.1, which will convert 3way CC to the Primary In for each clip.

After realizing the need to render cc'd clips from "Color" before they can be used in FCP, and after realizing how inaccurate "Motion" is for serious compositing, I've made up my mind that if Adobe will support the RED-CODE RAW, they will be my choice.

It's been a while since I roundtripped to Shake but from memory it's reasonably painless and doesn't blow away your original cut. Motion is not a compositing tool, although it can be used as one. Conduit offers GPU-based nodal compositing as an FxPlug inside FCP...

Yes, none of this is actually "render-free" (except maybe Conduit) but it's pretty painless, I think.

 

[Steve Freebairn]

This is very interesting. Can you provide information on the source of the "word" you received? Was this an official statement from Adobe?

Yeah, I'd love to be forwarded a copy via PM of their statement or a link to it. I wish CS3 would support it, but if CS4 is only 8 months away, then maybe that is fine. They'll need beta testers So we (the REDCORE) should get some opportunities to use it sooner.

 

[Cail Young]

When I send a project to color-correction I'd like to still be able to tweak it afterwards. Of course, sometimes there are smaller quicker projects that do feel more like a one-man deal, and in those cases it can obviously save me a lot of the frustration of having to render all the time.

Color will (as I've just finished testing) render with handles - so as long as all you're doing is tweaking edit points then you can do a full grade and then return to FCP. If you want a more flexible approach, you can use the 3way CC filter until you send to Color which will convert as closely as it can to a Primary In setting.