REDCINE-X Scripting in LUA?

[Richard Goodwin]

During the excellent REDCINE-X walkthrough at RED DAY, an EDL was brought up on screen for import back into REDCINE (if my memory is correct). It looked like it was written in the LUA language.

So, for those that might be able to answer:

A) Did anyone else notice that or did I miss something?

B) Does that mean that LUA will be the scripting/plugin language for REDCINE-X?

If so that is pretty cool. Lightroom (as well as other frameworks) already use it. And it would be a lot nicer than python (and def Applescript - on mac where I am at least).

Thanks, Richard

 

[Deanan]

Correct, lua is the new scripting language for REDcineX.

 

[Chuck Z]

That's really cool. LUA scripting is great.

 

[Richard Goodwin]

Correct, lua is the new scripting language for REDcineX.

That's cool and will provide for some really interesting possibilities I bet.

Thanks, Richard

 

[Deanan]

That's cool and will provide for some really interesting possibilities I bet.

Thanks, Richard

Yean, that why we chose to do a scripting approach over an xml import. this is way more powerful.

 

[Richard Goodwin]

Yean, that why we chose to do a scripting approach over an xml import. this is way more powerful.

Right. I partly asked because when I saw the "EDL" I was surprised because you usually see text/xml so I was not sure.

Out of curiosity will RMD be procedural as well? (maybe I should put this in a separate thread but since we are discussing here ...). It seemed as if RMD will be XMP for the RED and Motion world.

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

This is encouraging... what is the time horizon like before we will see this feature in a build for the public?

 

[Deanan]

This is encouraging... what is the time horizon like before we will see this feature in a build for the public?

It's already in our dev branch so as soon as we work through the bugs in that branch.

 

[Zach Gray]

Why was LUA chosen instead of TCL or Python?

Size? Tables?

 

[Deanan]

Why was LUA chosen instead of TCL or Python?

Size? Tables?

It's always a tough choice but I've done python before in realtime and threaded app and there were way too many pitfalls. Python is great for many things and it's one of my favorite languages with lots of 3rd party stuff. The downsides pushed it off the list for what we needed to do in the backend. It's also quite bloated. Pythons other advantage is it's ubiquity in vfx and we had to weigh that against our requirements.

Lua's advantages are speed, lightweight, efficent and threadable.

It doesn't mean we might not add python later though.

I've used TCL extensively before and IMHO, I hate it.

 

[Dave Beard]

So for someone that has NO idea what LUA is, and how it works, how is this going to help me get FCP and REDCINE-X talking to each other? Any pointers/resources would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Deanan]

So for someone that has NO idea what LUA is, and how it works, how is this going to help me get FCP and REDCINE-X talking to each other? Any pointers/resources would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Third parties will be able to hook in and develop solutions to import many types of edit list/xml files.

 

[Dave Beard]

Please oh PLEASE, third parties.... please develop something cool. So at this point, is there anything available out there that allows me get the two pieces of software talking to each other.

 

[Bruce Allen]

LUA is cool, lightweight and it's realtime battle tested by a ton of games like World of Warcraft, FarCry etc!

RedCine-X really looks like it is getting very strong foundations. Congrats again, Deanan and co.

So for someone that has NO idea what LUA is, and how it works, how is this going to help me get FCP and REDCINE-X talking to each other? Any pointers/resources would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Lua opens up all sorts of interesting options for conform, etc. Straight XML import sucks if you change some edit points and want to do something like "only re-export the shots with changed lengths, but use the color grade I've defined already" or "please apply the same grade to everything shot within the same hour", or "please create a RedCine-X render farm" - Lua scripts could eventually do all of that very gracefully.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Nils Ruinet]

So, how far can this go ? I mean, what can we expect ?
Would it be possible for someone to write a denoise plugin for example ?
Or a secondaries grading tool that integrates into Redcine X ?

Or will the scripting be limited to import/export features ?

 

[Bruce Allen]

So, how far can this go ? I mean, what can we expect ?
Would it be possible for someone to write a denoise plugin for example ?
Or a secondaries grading tool that integrates into Redcine X ?

AFAIK, an interpreted language such as Lua is not too hot for writing anything that has to do fast pixel processing.

Something like an OpenFX interface so that we can get plugins to do denoise, secondaries, etc would be lovely. But that's not what RED is talking about today. Tomorrow, hopefully! Actually, there are a ton of other things that I hope they do before that OpenFX thing - like make the app mutithreaded or do a GPU debayer. Scripting would be great though - it would allow EDL import, which would save us a ton of time.

Or will the scripting be limited to import/export features ?

IMHO, scripting would be limited to an "autopilot" feature. Anything that you can do currently with REDCINE-X... can be automated.

Right now, you could manually look at an EDL and duplicate that edit in RedCine. It would just be a very laborious process.

A script would automate that process, making that laborious process painless.

I gave a couple of examples of other things you could do. I'm sure others can think of tons more!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Nils Ruinet]

Thanks Bruce.

OpenFX support would definately be awesome, but I agree with you that there are other things that need to be done first. Just hope they'll do it down the road.
Having EDL / XML / pull list import will already be a huge leap forward !

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

Third parties will be able to hook in and develop solutions to import many types of edit list/xml files.

So the EDL import feature is not something that will be included by Red, but a side car development kit for third parties? Or will Red author this feature right into the software?

Here is my concern: We are now up to build 30 on the camera firmware. This build, if I am reading the news correctly, will require Redcine-X over Redcine since it's a cross-over build. If this is true, this ties our hands in the post-production world until we can get our old XML import support back.

We had the ability with Redcine to reference alias files that could reproduce cut down versions of the parent .R3D files. Crimson Workflow would create "cowboy intermediates" that gave the ability to load an XML on top of the imported intermediate clips and create a cut list automatically with in Redcine. Redcine-X no longer will import these intermediate files so for now I have been working with old Redcine because it still supports the ability to transcode selects, not whole clips. This is a very important ability as we don't all own rocket cards and we don't all want to transcode a 5 minute take for a 7 second cut-away.

Since the import file structure likely has nothing to do with the color science image processing, is there a way to re-enable this ability to load intermediates into the software?

I haven't seen any build 30 footage yet, but as I am strictly a post guy, I don't get to control what camera build people choose to shoot at. I would love to hear there is a solution on the way before I get my first mag of build 30 footage.

 

[Deanan]

So the EDL import feature is not something that will be included by Red, but a side car development kit for third parties? Or will Red author this feature right into the software?

Here is my concern: We are now up to build 30 on the camera firmware. This build, if I am reading the news correctly, will require Redcine-X over Redcine since it's a cross-over build. If this is true, this ties our hands in the post-production world until we can get our old XML import support back.

We had the ability with Redcine to reference alias files that could reproduce cut down versions of the parent .R3D files. Crimson Workflow would create "cowboy intermediates" that gave the ability to load an XML on top of the imported intermediate clips and create a cut list automatically with in Redcine. Redcine-X no longer will import these intermediate files so for now I have been working with old Redcine because it still supports the ability to transcode selects, not whole clips. This is a very important ability as we don't all own rocket cards and we don't all want to transcode a 5 minute take for a 7 second cut-away.

Since the import file structure likely has nothing to do with the color science image processing, is there a way to re-enable this ability to load intermediates into the software?

I haven't seen any build 30 footage yet, but as I am strictly a post guy, I don't get to control what camera build people choose to shoot at. I would love to hear there is a solution on the way before I get my first mag of build 30 footage.

Both REDline and REDcineX with the scripting interface will be out in the next week.

 

[Dave Beard]

Both REDline and REDcineX with the scripting interface will be out in the next week.

WOW! That's great news. But does this only mean that now third parties can come in and start developing, or does this do anything towards allowing us to import an EDL/XML?