RED Post Tool - EDL/Cutlist

[Mark L. Pederson]

yes why doesn't RED buy Crimson and give iBoom a nice cheque for his hard work and he can work with them to bring a RED tool that works without having to jump through hoops.

iboom if they do purchase, please buy me a beer

iBloom is doing just fine for all his hard work ... and he's about to blow all your minds ...

Let's just say ... (I can't tell you the name) + REDCINE X will even make mmost smile.

 

[M Most]

iBloom is doing just fine for all his hard work ... and he's about to blow all your minds ...

Let's just say ... (I can't tell you the name) + REDCINE X will even make mmost smile.

It probably will, as I appreciate all useful tools. This thread hasn't been about that. It's been about those who believe that somehow Red owes them these tools (for free, in most cases), and those like myself that understand why Red wants third parties to embrace their file format and provide more professional level solutions. And, to a lesser degree, those who either don't understand or don't accept what Redcine was designed to be in the first place.

 

[Jason Diamond]

Just wait til Ian finds the loophole hooks in REDCine-X like the current REDCine

His new (and I know the name as well) Weapon-X will be an incredible companion to almost every workflow!!

 

[roryhinds]

hmmm I thought this thread was a discussion on why RED should bring EDL/XML support to their processing tool.
I don't think anyone would complain if they charged a reasonable price for that.

I can see RED wanting 3rd parties to support their file format but this has nothing to do with RED themselves offering a useful tool that gets you from Off to Online.

Come on Mike, REDCine was designed as the Telecine tool for REDCODE, well it was at least advertised as such.

REDCINE-X looks to be a complete redesign (resembling Apple's Aperture) so a fresh new sheet to implement what ever functions RED want to include with no constrains to 3rd parties contracts.

RED don't own us anything, just like they didn't owe us the REDONE.
The offered the REDONE and were open to hear what people needed and thought was important to this tool.

So with REDCine-X I would think that they would be interested in what people really really need, be it something they need to charge for or not.
Its not going to stop people still needed it.

 

[Casey Green]

Pretty simplistic way of looking at things.

FCP and Scratch XMLs are not "incompatible" - they just need translation.

There is a HELL of lot more information in both XMLs specs than any EDL.

Ever see CLIPSTER conform a reel of a feature film from an FCP XML?

It will make your head spin.

It's so impressive IMO - that I am committed to putting my own resources to scripting translation from CLIPSTER XML to SCRATCH XML.

None of this is rocket science. After all ... A=A and B=B ... and I know a coder in the Slovak Republic that can circles around most ...

Heheheh... I tend to agree with Mark on this one. While working on this would be complicated, there are amazing people capable of accomplishing such a feat.

Also, I'm not one who believes RED owes us anything (especially more than what is already available in REDCINE) - after all it is a free app. But I also would welcome some of the capabilities spoken of here for a price. (After all, even though we were told not to ask for the world, they did ask for our feedback).

 

[Miltos Pilalitos]

This thread hasn't been about that. It's been about those who believe that somehow Red owes them these tools (for free, in most cases), and those like myself that understand why Red wants third parties to embrace their file format and provide more professional level solutions.

mmost i don't know what is your RED's serial number or even if you have one. Mine is #1473. Now let me tell you what that means...

Back when RED was an unknown quantity, some people trusted the vision of a certain person that we all know who he is now. Back then we only had some forum posts and some racing car photos on red.com.

Based on that limited information i trusted more than $44000 of my money to this new idea. The exchange for my trust (and money) was the promise for a new way to shoot and deliver content that had nothing to do with anything we knew by that time. I beta-tested the camera for RED for more than a year with some hard times during that period. I never complained...

So let me tell you something. I am one of the many people who made RED what it is today. I supported the camera when everybody seemed to be defensive of their established workflows. I turned other people into RED owners/users. You know what? I did all that for free too!

Is it so much to ask for a simple addition to one of their existing tools so it can do what it was designed to do? Maybe it is... but this is how i feel about it and now you know where this feeling is coming from.

What about you? Why the strong feeling against REDCINE's completion? I am trying to understand you but you don't even post your real name...

 

[Jason Diamond]

i think the best thing to come out of all this is that Standardization and Base starting points would be a great solid foundation for making development and advancement easier. this goes beyond EDL/XML squabbles and extends all the way to codecs, compression,FX,VFX, etc...
some people might think that a standard base would kill competition and innovation..i think the opposite and in the meantime we, the consumers/end users, would be even more free to expand and extend our creative visions across more tools and toolsets to achieve our goals.

(step down off soapbox and spit out some bubbles)

ahemmm.....

 

[Lucas Wilson]

Pretty simplistic way of looking at things.FCP and Scratch XMLs are not "incompatible" - they just need translation.

Yes, and as everybody knows... translation is always imperfect. And doing a conform is about getting things right, not "sort of." Translation is merely part of it. Supporting the parsing of an EDL or XML is about 1/10 of the actual work of conforming. The problem here is with a huge amount of feature creep. As soon as REDCINE supported an EDL (or XML) then there would be a 150 features immediately following that would be necessary to actually build a usable timeline.

Hands up - who wants an EDL or XML that gets 90 out of 100 edits correct?

There is a HELL of lot more information in both XMLs specs than any EDL. Ever see CLIPSTER conform a reel of a feature film from an FCP XML? It will make your head spin.

Yes, I have. And I've also seen Autodesk Smoke and Quantel's FCP XML conform. They're all pretty good.

And DVS has several hundred employees dedicated to building post-production tools and toolkits. There is a big team dedicated to Clipster and the Clipster toolset. The LA office alone has support people that do pretty much nothing but post-production workflow and customer support on post workflow.

Do you think that is comparable to what RED is doing in post-production, or what they should be doing?

None of this is rocket science. After all ... A=A and B=B ... and I know a coder in the Slovak Republic that can circles around most ...

Talk to me when you have at least 500 customers that you need to support with these workflows.

Lucas

 

[David Battistella]

This thread is kinda interesting but it is dated.

There are MANY ways to conform RED footage and the workflow is not the problem that everyone makes it out to be.

If you put edl support in REDCINE then everyone will complain that it doesn't do enough. That it should do more, etc.

It's a piece of software usefull for looking at multiple clips in 4K on set. It can be used to do a onelight for dailies from a CC'd tiff or someting, but the moment you add edl or XML then you are in effect saying that you can finish with it and that sends the wrong message.

There is an SDK and many companies are implementing r3d footage. It's more important to have good clean XML's/edl's from off to online than it is to put that support into REDCINE.

I like that they added wmv and flash support in REDCINE X, that could be a great help, but let the finishing tools to the finishing.

Color, Lustre, pablo, Baselight, Premier & AE, Scratch and many other people are at work to make r3d fit into existing workflows.

...and then REDCINE X will probably end up being a killer RED post app in the near future, who knows with these guys!

David

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Yes, and as everybody knows... translation is always imperfect. And doing a conform is about getting things right, not "sort of." Translation is merely part of it. Supporting the parsing of an EDL or XML is about 1/10 of the actual work of conforming.

We conform difficult projects everyday Luki - I get it.

The problem here is with a huge amount of feature creep.

Nature of beast. You focus on features that slow down the majority of people in a given workflow or workflows.

As soon as REDCINE supported an EDL (or XML) then there would be a 150 features immediately following that would be necessary to actually build a usable timeline.

Massive exaggeration. Maybe 30 features.

And DVS has several hundred employees dedicated to building post-production tools and toolkits. There is a big team dedicated to Clipster and the Clipster toolset. The LA office alone has support people that do pretty much nothing but post-production workflow and customer support on post workflow.

And it shows. And NO I never suggested that RED does this. My point was ... all this talk od EDL support is very funny to me. EDLs do not have enough information to efficiently confrom complex timelines - PERIOD.

Do you think that is comparable to what RED is doing in post-production, or what they should be doing?

NO. And I never said that. Re-read my posts. But ... I would like them to auto sync BWF audio files (couldn't resist - sorry I tried).

Talk to me when you have at least 500 customers that you need to support with these workflows.

Lucas

What does that mean? That my points are not valid because I don't have to support 500 customers?

Do you mean it's so hard to support software that one should not aspire to innovate ....?

Anyway .. you know I love you man.

I look forward to showing you my CLIPSTER XML to SCRATCH XML translator.

 

[Lucas Wilson]

Back when RED was an unknown quantity, some people trusted the vision of a certain person that we all know who he is now.
...
Is it so much to ask for a simple addition to one of their existing tools so it can do what it was designed to do? Maybe it is... but this is how i feel about it and now you know where this feeling is coming from.

Miltos,

Take a deep breath, man... : )

Mmost = Mike Most. It is his real name. And I know that he, along with many of us here, put himself on the line awhile ago for RED. In my case, we steered our entire company this way, risking our reputations and livelihoods. And we're pretty happy with the risk we took.

But - you are missing the key point.

It was *not* designed to do conforming, and it was *not* designed to read and interpret EDLs. And as I explained a few posts ago, it is far from a simple addition.

Lucas
-----
ASSIMILATE, inc.
LA, CA, USA

 

[M Most]

mmost i don't know what is your RED's serial number or even if you have one. Mine is #1473. ...What about you? Why the strong feeling against REDCINE's completion? I am trying to understand you but you don't even post your real name...

I really don't appreciate this kind of personal attack. MMost IS my real name (my first name is Mike, hence the M, and many, many people here use my first name - I would be happy to change it but Jarred basically said to leave the names alone if they consist of an initial and a last name). As for ownership, I did order two units - #1632 and 1635 - for my previous employer. Since I'm not a shooter, but work primarily in post production, I don't personally own one. But I've been active here since the beginning, and I've handled post production on Red projects - everything from designing workflows to coming up with dailies solutions to conforming to color grading to delivering both on film and on various digital formats - since the very first cameras were available. I don't think you have to defend your qualifications for posting here, and I don't have to defend mine. So let's just stop the personal attacks and talk about the topics at hand.

I have never seen Redcine as "incomplete." I've seen it as a tool that was designed to do real time viewing, basic RAW conversion settings, reformatting, scaling, and format conversions. The fact that its status has been perpetually "Beta" should tell users something, although around here it never seems to do that. Beta software has bugs, and yes, Redcine has and always has had bugs. But it has also always done what it was basically designed to do. It was never designed to be a conforming tool, even if basic EDL functionality was talked about from time to time. But the world of Red is a world of change, some welcome, some unwelcome. That's the nature of new technologies in general. What Red felt they might need to provide directly in 2007 is not necessarily what they have decided they must deliver in 2009. The delivery of the SDK was not a change in direction per se, but a statement that Red wanted to enable third parties in a more direct way. Everything they have done since is consistent with that, including the development of the Red Rocket card. The introduction of a rewritten Redcine is, to me, an evolutionary view of what the tool represents to Red - which is a viewing and RAW conversion application that can help production in various ways (hence the inclusion of a quick cut timeline), as well as provide a smoother experience in terms of file conversions. I see that as a nice evolution of the tool as Red envisions it, even if that's a bit different than some people here envision it.

 

[CJ Roy]

I can't count how many jobs have been lost because of the "nightmare" red post-workflow. I recently lost a job to a Panasonic camera because of their previous horrible experience. I was on the conference call with the agency and couldn't even get a word in before they switched cameras.

Post is absolutely notorious for the red. I do a lot of music videos and commercials and I'm constantly hounded to help them through the post. There needs to be a simpler conform process. As successful as Red is, post is the one thing really holding it back and it's completely fixable.

Luki- I'm not sure why you're dressing up importing XML's as such a major problem. Isn't that where Scratch is successful? The "swiss army knife of post"? Where would Scratch be if you couldn't conform? Obviously Assimilate solved it, why can't RED or others? What exactly is the roadblock here? Is RED under agreement with Assimilate that it can't ever have a conform tool in its software? If not, crew member vaguely familiar with the RED, seems to be under the misconception that there is.

Whoever comes up with a simple solution for this, is a rich, rich person. I don't see why RED doesn't add this, even as an extra cost. It just doesn't make any sense to not have this.

As for Redcine-X, can someone who's excited about it, finally explain how it's going to fit in their post workflow? If the looks aren't compatible and it can't accept EDL/XML/ETC.... then what is it good for? I just don't get it. And yes, I understand it's free and that's awesome. I just have no clue as to how or why people should be using this. I'd love to learn.

Thanks.

 

[Casey Green]

OpenFX is absolutely our first choice for the plugin architecture... working through a few 4k(+) kinks but it's the current plan.

There will be lots of hooks.. and to be clear, just because WE aren't doing conform/edl support... it doesn't mean we are not making it easy enough for someone else to add it... :001_wub:

The above was posted in the "Here it is" thread. ( http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=31259 )

I think this is positive news on the EDL subject.

As for me, I'm pretty happy with REDCINE-X getting RED ROCKET support for real-time playback, ultrafast transcodes, adding the ability to load / save / upload it's LUTs to RED Alert! and the Camera (hopefully), and becoming more stable (not to mention a great new GUI).

Just thought I'd add that for anyone who is asking why anyone would want REDCINE-X

 

[Colm O'Rourke]

Reading this thread it almost sounds like there is no offline/online route with red. At the last count the options we have are:

offline: redline, redrushes, log and transger, proxies in fcp, apple automater, metacheater: importing staright to avid on mac, scratch, baselight transfer, metafuze. Crimson, Monkey extract

online: crimson, monkey extract, baselight transfer, davinci resolve. clipfinder, cinexml, flame, mistika, scratch.

I am sure I have missed a few out. But the point is that for a long time there has been options for conforming red, some are free, some a few hundred quid and some a lot more.

 

[Paul E. McCarthy]

There is an old saying "If you want play film, you need to pay film". Maybe we should change it to "If you want play 4k, you need to pay 4k". From what I saw today Redcine X looks like some pretty sick free software. So what if you cant conform in 4k? Are you really in professional world or any world at all where you are going to deliver a graded 4k, perfectly conformed, Log DPX output Feature film to Technicolor for Laser Printing using free software and a Macbook Pro. Doubt it but Good luck:laugh:
News flash!
Scratch like the RED camera is not expensive, If you have ever used it you would understand. They both, in the right hands, have the ablilties to earn a company or an individual millions of dollars, i.e. Steven Soderberg he probably made a mill or two with them. People that want free software, labor, and technology are probably amatures (which is cool you gotta start somewhere) starting out or are people that are comfortable with taking advantage of others. I'm sure a lot of people have worked extremely hard to deliver REDcine X and it must make them sad that they cant fullfill the expectations of the non paying customer. I hope it never has EDL support because all thats going to do is bring in more inexperience than there already is into a professional industry and allow people to make a lot of 4k conformed Crap for free, at least pay the 2k for AE or FCP. I'm happy with all the 1080 crap for now.

 

[J. Eric Camp]

To me this is a cake and eat it to.

There are many options based on many users.
(not pointed at anyone... the following person is fictional)
You are a smaller entity. You can not afford (insert expensive r3d native platform)
You are budget conscious. You shoot on Nikon lenses. You have manfrotto sticks. You try 3rd party cf's, you get the cheaper matte box. You are willing to accept compromise on many fronts. You have to. Accept it here. You export to your final format with full debayer. You edit, you color, you get good results.

You want the "big boy" online, offline 4k film work flow. But you also want Cine-lenses. You also want an o'connor.

No one is debating the usefulness of r3d conform tools. Just the level of entitlement versus investment.

Red has provided you with the ability to get good results with out paying for crazy post tools. You just want more.

 

[Miltos Pilalitos]

Miltos,

Take a deep breath, man... : )

I really don't appreciate this kind of personal attack.

When many RED users continuously ask for XML support in Redcine since Redcine was introduced to us it means that there is a missing link somewhere in the workflow that we repeatedly have to face.

Is it a deal breaker? NO. I have completed more than 20 TV commercials during the last year without the ability to import my edits in REDCINE.

Is it possible to work with RED without this RC feature? YES. There are workarounds and additional steps someone can take to go where he needs to go.

And yet, importing XMLs of our edits in Redcine would make life much easier. I didn't attack Mike Most personally but i honestly find annoying all this effort to present our request for this feature as erroneous and misinformed.

Would this feature hurt you in some way? If the answer is "NO" please stop fighting against it and let us request it. If red users ask for it, it means it is needed.

 

[A. Bastaki]

redcine... bla bla bla
meh.
redcine -x .. bla bla bla
meh.

adobe... OOooo
nice.

 

[gbalaji]

I would like to add myself to this conversation and would like to clarify people who want support of edl / xml in RedCine, needs to know something that except dissolves edl is of no great use and I'm seeing that on my jobs used all big Color Grading softwares. So the point here is what happens when multiple tracks are used in the edit? What will happen for time remap or speed change?

If Red adds support for EDL / XML like what Ian has done with Crimson, still you cant finish in RedCine is the big point here.