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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Should I get the Nitris DX for RED?

Sycophant:

when you edit offline with RED footage, do you transcode to a DNxHD format or what? i'm totally for offline editing as well...film workflows are so nice! if I can get declink or matrox to work i'll just jump to the MAC, get MC 3.0 and then do an offline edit on RED - but maybe still an HD DNx codec if that is possible...
 
You use metacheater to generate an ALE from your RED footage
then Batch import that footage into the Bin the ALE import creates.
you can either transcode the proxies on import to the desired resolution or don't tie up your machine and use compressor to batch them all to the desired DNx res then fast import them when you are ready to work.
after that its just shooting an EDL to scratch or another "finishing" program to maximize you CC and other finishing issues.

We are working on the AVID side of Crimson with ian so we'll be running it thru its paces as soon as hes ready to go and we'll be using MC 3.0 so we're ready for the transition when it starts shipping.
 
okay....wow, that actually sounds really simple.

question: compressor...this is a mac program yes?

if I were not to use compressor, and had a new quad core mac with say at least 8GB of RAM, would it be realistic to let Avid do the proxy conversion?

and one last question jedi (sorry): when you say proxy...I only know that term from IT relating to a server. what is a proxy in this scenario exactly? i'm not dumb, just spent more time with ethernet and windows server than video concepts at this point. =)
 
theatereleven said:
Sycophant:

when you edit offline with RED footage, do you transcode to a DNxHD format or what? i'm totally for offline editing as well...film workflows are so nice! if I can get declink or matrox to work i'll just jump to the MAC, get MC 3.0 and then do an offline edit on RED - but maybe still an HD DNx codec if that is possible...
Click to expand...

I've only been using SD resolutions - DV25 actually. But I did import a proxy file as DNxHD120 early on I think, it looked pretty good, but I had no HD monitoring option in Avid at the time, so I didn't really take a good look at it. If I get a chance I will try again with our Decklink, and the Panasonic 26" HD monitor we're trialling at the moment - see how it looks.
 
theatereleven;206417and one last question jedi (sorry): when you say proxy...I only know that term from IT relating to a server. what is a proxy in this scenario exactly? i'm not dumb said:
I'll take this one... :)

The RED One generates a set of 'Proxy' files (this can be done with RED Alert too) - basically they are Quicktime Reference files that point at the original R3D files and, using the RED QT Component, do a quick demosaic and debayer on them to generate a standard video stream that any Quicktime-aware application can deal with.

So in the Avid scenario, on a Mac, you can either import the media directly from one of the Quicktime proxy files, or you can use an intermediate step (like Compressor or REDCINE or RED Alert) to generate self-contained Quicktime files with the media.

My approach has been to import the proxy files into Avid directly, batch importing them against an ALE file generated by Jabez's excellent Metacheater application.
Click to expand...
 
sycophant:

sorry - i've been off the forum today. thanks for explaining. got it.

initially, it sounds like the direct import that you do would be the easiest and even more accurate than trying to hop through another application.

on that import you can do SD or DNxHD from what it sounds....nice. why would anyone do anything else? I don't get it.
 
theatereleven said:
on that import you can do SD or DNxHD from what it sounds....nice. why would anyone do anything else? I don't get it.
Click to expand...

It's certainly the quickest option with Avid. But it will only work on an Intel Mac. Anyone with only Windows Avids has to use REDCINE to make conversions.

Also, importing the proxies you have no control over the clip geometry - the proxy clips don't fit perfectly within standard frame sizes, so the Avid has to perform scaling on import, which will degrade the image quality slightly.

But for an offline that's not a big deal.
 
what type of processing power is required if I convert in REDCINE first and edit in Avid on Windows?

i've currently got a Dell 690 with a single 3.2GHz dual core Xeon, nVidia 3500, 4GB RAM (i know - useless on 32bit XP). my feeling is that RED will kick this thing's butt.

plus the single import sounds nice...if you use an HD codec on importing the Avid resizing should still look good right? I want the director to be able to view on a 720P HD widescreen tv if possible.

(BTW - thanks for all these answers!)
 
We can convert with REDCINE on our XW8200 workstation, which is less powerful than that, but it's not fun or fast.

On a 4K clip, you get proxies at 4096px, 2048px, 1024px and 512px (I believe). In the SD import we use the 1024px one tell it that it's 601-sized (which it's not) and we get a full frame anamorphic image. To get the aspect correct in the 16:9 monitors I also have to add an additional vertical resize to letterbox it slightly.

Experiment with the different proxy sizes into different HD resolutions and see what works best I guess.

You could make a nice pattern test image in Photoshop at the various RED proxy resolutions and import that into Avid to get an idea of how the image gets altered.
 
In case you missed my article in Studio Monthly on how to use RED with MetaCheater and Avid:
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/searchlist/9261.html

The next issue will have a more detailed view of MetaCheater. Keep in mind that it supports SD workflows as well if you don't want to offline in HD. Avid can handle multiple timecodes during editorial - 30, 24, 25, etc.

Michael
 
Dylan - good idea on the photoshop part. maybe i'll just get a Macbook pro and use that to run REDCINE, and then edit on Windows. that sure would be cheaper...how long does it take you to convert say a 1 minute take (or use any example - i just don't know exactly what 'painful' entails!)

MichealP - sweet, didn't know you'd written that. i'll check it out. (btw - good to finally put a face to the name at the avid event at uni. thanks for all your help on these forums...editors like me would drown without it)
 
You're welcome. Things are always changing with workflows, and they are getting better... stay tuned.

Michael
 
theatereleven said:
Dylan - good idea on the photoshop part. maybe i'll just get a Macbook pro and use that to run REDCINE, and then edit on Windows. that sure would be cheaper...how long does it take you to convert say a 1 minute take (or use any example - i just don't know exactly what 'painful' entails!)
Click to expand...

Yeah the test image thing was a sudden brainwave on my part, I haven't tried it. I don't have Avid at home (not even sure if my Laptop would run it) so I can't test it this weekend.

In my opinion, the best way to get the images into Avid is to import proxy files directly on a Mac Pro with Avid Media Composer or Xpress Pro on it.

Audio is still an issue. Avid can't directly import the media from the camera-generated proxy files (something to do with 24bit audio in a 32bit track). The RED Alert generated proxies don't even have audio, and neither RED Alert or REDCINE support audio export at the moment. In fact, if you lose the camera-generate proxy files I don't believe there is currently any way to get the audio out of the R3D files (aiiieeee).
 
PC Avids and Red

PC Avids and Red

Dylan,

The easiest way to get a PC Avid working is to use Redline to generate H264 Proxies of the original R3Ds. You still need a Intel Mac to do the conversion but it is much quicker than Redalert or Redcine.

Then the normal Metacheater ALE generation and Avid import (very slow tho) can occur in the PC if you want. We use a "spare" MC Software only to do it directly to our Unity...but you could simply do it to an external drive if you wanted. If you have an HD system H264 will give you a reasonable HD image or as we do you can simply import the proxies into a SD project.

As far as I can tell there are no Audio issues doing it this way.

I want to try DNxHD but so far Redline does not support that Codec. In theory a DNxHD import into Avid should be very quick.....Michael??

Cheers

Michael
 
c4camera said:
Dylan,

The easiest way to get a PC Avid working is to use Redline to generate H264 Proxies of the original R3Ds. You still need a Intel Mac to do the conversion but it is much quicker than Redalert or Redcine.
Click to expand...

If you have the Mac to run REDline on, why not just import the proxies directly into Avid on the Mac? A single Avid license can be installed on multiple machines (Mac and Windows), you just need to move the Dongle around.

As far as I can tell there are no Audio issues doing it this way.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the limitation seems to be with Proxies, nothing except the camera can generate proxies that include audio. I haven't tried, but I assume that the media exported from the R3D file to a QT file directly includes audio.

I want to try DNxHD but so far Redline does not support that Codec. In theory a DNxHD import into Avid should be very quick.....Michael??
Click to expand...

As long as you have the correct import settings when you bring it in it will 'Fast Import' - this is true of DNxHD generated from REDCINE.

If you want to add another step, ffmpeg has native support for DNxHD. Perhaps REDline -> Uncompressed -> DNxHD (from ffmpeg) might be efficient?
 
Avid on mac

Avid on mac

Ok...fair point...trouble is that I can't run Avid on a New Octo macpro which cannot run 10.4. We are stuck with 10.5 so until Avid release a version that will run I am screwed:)

Have you managed to make DNxHD work?? If so which settings?? Maybe I can get Deanan to take a look at including the Codec in the next ver of Redline.

Cheers

Michael
 
c4camera said:
Ok...fair point...trouble is that I can't run Avid on a New Octo macpro which cannot run 10.4. We are stuck with 10.5 so until Avid release a version that will run I am screwed:)
Click to expand...

Ahh, fair point. Media Composer 3.0 is slated for Leopard support I think.

Have you managed to make DNxHD work?? If so which settings?? Maybe I can get Deanan to take a look at including the Codec in the next ver of Redline.
Click to expand...

DNxHD works out of REDCINE (assuming you have the Avid codecs installed), but you don't get the options dialog, so you have no control over the output settings. I believe it defaults to DNxHD 185 for 50Hz formats.

For REDline it's a little more complex I believe, I think the codecs it supports are hard-coded (it's not interfacing with QT to determine which codecs are available). Avid does licence the DNxHD format, and it's also now a SMPTE format (which is why ffmpeg supports it).
 
what is REDLINE? Don't see it under support on the RED site.

hey...so if the proxies cannot reference that audio on Avid import that sucks! i might as well have production use a normal field recorder instead now, as they were planning on doing sound in camera to save a step for editorial.
 
Redline

Redline

Redlne is a command line utility which you get with your Redalert download.

It allows a number of functions to occur on a batch basis to R3D files without a GUI. It is much quicker and so far a more reliable way of extracting proxies of various types and sizes from the original files.

Check it out...it is our preferred way of extracting both proxies and final dpx sequences.

Cheers
Michael
 
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