RED Native rewrap plays jittery on MP 2.26 Nehalem

[maho]

I am editing a feature film which I was on location for and organizing the RED footage on an MacBook Pro laptop. The DIT person strongly suggested wrapping the 4k R3D files NATIVE so I'm working with 2k files. I did some rough edits on location but the footage playback was very choppy which I just chalked up to lack of processing power on the laptop.

I have a 8core 2.26 Nehalem Mac with standard 6gigs of Ram and the base NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB card. My monitors are a 1st generation 23" Apple Cinema Display and a 22" inch Samsung cheapie which is basically my bin monitor. Running FCP 6.0.6

I have the RockertRaid 4322 running to a Proavio EB8-MS with 4 Samsung 1TB Spinpoint drives formatted as Raid 5.

I've just finished formatting the Raid and copied over a few FCP Native clips to see if playback would be smooth. I'm getting the same choppy playback on my desktop as I did on the laptop. Any suggestions as to what needs to be upgraded for smooth Native 2k playback?

 

[Scott Simmons]

IMHO you can't rely on always getting super, buttery smooth native playback. If shudder at the thought of having a full feature's worth of media with long timelines and attempting native playback as you screen for the director. It sounds like you have a powerful enough system and should expect as smooth a native playback as possible. I would transcode all my footage to ProRes or similar for offline so you don't have to worry about playback issues.

 

[Jonas Rejman]

Convert to ProRez HQ or DNxHD36. both will allow 1080p,
it think that you would do 2K without a problem on ProRezHQ.

Your DIT person made the wrong suggestion, as it will cost you more time in the bottom line.


This is the very best workflow, as you can edit, trim, pan+scan, usw. much easier with ProRez, rather then with the R3D files.
It takes time, but its worth it. When you transcode and need that quick, go down to quarter rez. Even the 1080p will look cool that way.
You will not need to upgrade your system at all, apart from the extra storage for the ProRezHQ files.

Conforming back to your grading suite shall not be a problem from the ProRezHQ proxies.

 

[joe hedge]

Your "DIT" needs to spend some time on this site.

You also need to figure out how you're going to edit your feature, and how it's going to be color corrected, and what it's going to be delivered as - all these questions are directly connected to how you process the raw camera files.

A safe bet right now is to forget about native wrapped R3D's and transcode everything on that Mac 8-core in RedRushes to ProRes, half res standard debayer, scaled 720x1280. That way you can start syncing (if it needs syncing) and watching full-framerate-playback dailies the next day. Later you can up res to 1080, 2k, or go back to the R3D's for maximum bit depth for color correction.

 

[maho]

Thanks for the replies. Looks as though I'll have to retranscode everything to prores HQ. I did a test and transcoded a couple R3D files to ProRes HQ using log and transfer and they play smoothly. To be more specific about my post workflow - I will do the offline (love what we're using for offline quality these days) at my house then most likely CC will happen in Color (I will not be doing the CC) and final delivery...well, that will be determined by additional post funds to be secured by producer, but most likely this feature will do the festival circuits and at the very least, hopefully secure a dvd release.

One other question, what is the difference between using RedRushes or FCP's Log and Transfer to create ProRes HQ files? Should I use one over the other and if so why?

thanks again.

 

[sander kamp]

I have the same 8-core machine. Transcoding to 1080p prores with a 2k normal quality is very fast, I get about 7 frames per second and after that it is very easy to play back, check focus and edit. With Clipfinder you can connect back to the RAW files if needed for grading.

Premiere CS4 with the RED plug-in works very well too, a realtime 1/4 debayer and smooth and responsive feel in the timeline. And you can change the colors any time without rendering which is very very cool. But it is a beta plug-in so I am not sure if you should do a whole feature that way.

Overall the MacPro is much better for editing RED files than the MacBook Pro. But you should consider upgrading RAM, especially if you need to do work in After Effects. I have 12GB now and it is still on the low side.

 

[joe hedge]

FCP is not multi-processor aware, it only uses 2 of those 8 cores. RedRushes, in addition to using all the cores, gives you many more options in terms of debayer quality, frame size and codec. Usual settings for offline dailies in RR are:

Render Tab:

Debayer Quality: Quarter Res to Half High (Standard), your preference
Look Source: Camera (unless you used RedAlert to change the camera metadata, then set Look Source to .RSX)
Color Space: Look Source
Gamma Space: Look Source

Resize Tab:

Scale: Checked
Presets: 1280x720
Fit/Stretch: Fit Width
Resample Filter: Lanczos(sharp)

Output Tab:

QT Codec: ProRes 422

Also be sure to check the Settings drop-down menu in the Menu bar and set it to 2 clips at once and 8 cores per clip. Then make sure there's enough room on the drive (720 quarter res transcodes are about half the size of the R3D's) hit start, and come back in the morning.

 

[Mohammed El Sharqawy]

I am editing a feature film which I was on location for and organizing the RED footage on an MacBook Pro laptop. The DIT person strongly suggested wrapping the 4k R3D files NATIVE so I'm working with 2k files. I did some rough edits on location but the footage playback was very choppy which I just chalked up to lack of processing power on the laptop.

I have a 8core 2.26 Nehalem Mac with standard 6gigs of Ram and the base NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB card. My monitors are a 1st generation 23" Apple Cinema Display and a 22" inch Samsung cheapie which is basically my bin monitor. Running FCP 6.0.6

I have the RockertRaid 4322 running to a Proavio EB8-MS with 4 Samsung 1TB Spinpoint drives formatted as Raid 5.

I've just finished formatting the Raid and copied over a few FCP Native clips to see if playback would be smooth. I'm getting the same choppy playback on my desktop as I did on the laptop. Any suggestions as to what needs to be upgraded for smooth Native 2k playback?

my suggestion is to through your MAC OSX in garbage and install Windows Vista x64 edition and Adobe CS4 with RED plug-in.. I have a machine which costed me less than $1.5K (HW only) with no raids.. (simple Core i7 2.66GHz, 6 gigs of RAM in 3 channel, GeForce 9600GT 1GB) and I'm getting real 2k super smooth playbacks of 4K R3D files.. maybe you can get real time effects if you added water cooling and overclocked it to 3GHz,,
OR, maybe try to use CS4 on your MAC OSX.. coz FCPs engine is really out-dated.. PPRO CS4 is not 64-bit but now the only editin application that can benefit RAM more than 4gigs.. it got a limit of 20gigs.. i don't know if this ram utilization is available on MAC OSX or not.. maybe wait for FCS 3...

 

[A. Clint Litton]

Though I haven't used it extensively for transcodes, FCP L&T always seemed a bit slow, and I've gotten inconsistencies in the color rendition (not just the gamma issue), especially when trying to make basic changes to the look (color temp, curve, etc)...L&T never seems to recognize the look, even when I ask it to reference something other than what was done in camera.

RedRushes has always been a trouble-free for me, definitely faster, and better considering it will read the rsx looks that you may want to apply. The other advantage to this method, I think, is that it frees up FCP if you need to be doing any syncing, etc. In other words, you could start editing a sequence from files that have already been transcoded, while RR works in the background. It may take away from RR using all available processors, but should be fine for less intensive work (logging footage and making notes on takes/performances would be another potential use of this extra freedom)...some may be wary of using multiple programs in concert with the transcoding (we can sometimes be a superstitious bunch), but test it out and see if works for you with your setup.

In my mind, the only questionable aspect to this approach would be if you're reading transcoded files from the same drive/raid that you're writing to...I usually transcode to a separate drive that only houses the offline transcoded ProRes files. Hope this helps.

 

[maho]

Thanks again folks for the workflow suggestions. I'm using Redrushes to redo the first few days of shooting, going ProResHQ at 1080 and the clips play fine. The big question will be whether I can relink these new transcoded clips to all the scene bins I've organized and synched (syunk) already. I anticipate the FCP friendly "some of your attributes have changed, do you want to continue" warning but since the frame count is the same hopefully things will relink and I can do what I'm being paid to do...ya know, edit.

$2 says there will be an app named REDRUM at some point...

 

[joe hedge]

We tested out my workflow at a post house with a Quantel Pablo last week, the colorist exported an AAF of a test sequence that consisted of master clips made from RedRushes transcodes, and everything linked up. As long as the master clip has the same name as the R3D that the transcode came from, it should link all the way through from master clip to transcode to R3D no problem.