Rendering jpegs in a REDCODE timeline

[Julio Quintana]

Hey guys. I have a Final Cut sequence in which I am cutting the _M proxies from 4K HD footage. The timeline compression is set to REDCODE so I don't have to render anything.
Now I have to edit in some jpegs, but Final Cut won't render them, saying "Codec not found. You may be using a compression type without the corresponding hardware card". If I change the sequence settings to "Always render in RGB", the photo renders, but shows up as solid gray.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Julio

 

[Philip Hodgetts]

Check that the JPEGs are indeed RGB. FCP barfs at any Grayscale or CMYK images no matter what the format.

Philip

 

[Harry Lipnick]

Hey Julio-
I've never edited a full project on RED, but I have played aronud with it. My understanding, and I believe this is detailed in the RED/FCP Whitepaper on RED's support site, is that while the material is REDCODE, the sequence setting should actually be set to ProRes. REDCODE, at least right now, is only an acquisition codec, not an editing codec, and therefore can't be written by Final Cut. Take a look at the whitepaper and see if that'll do it for ya.
Peace,

-Harry

 

[Mel Matsuoka]

This is why you dont want to do any serious editing using the proxies. There aint no free lunch, as they say, and the realtime benefits of playing back a sequence set to REDCODE is offset by the fact that you cant do anything besides straight cuts, and absolutely nothing else, since REDCODE is a read-only codec. You could set the sequence to ProRes so you can render transitions, etc, but unless youre only editing the simplest timelines, or are in a serious time crunch, it's just not worth the pain of trying to edit with the camera proxies.

Transcode your dailies to ProRes, and you'll be a much happier human being.

 

[Julio Quintana]

Thanks guys. Much appreciated.

Julio