So I TC'd my Dragon footage into DNxHD files and finished in Avid, what now?

[Frank Hague]

Hey, guys. I'm curious as to what my best route is now that I've finished my sequence in Avid with TC'd Dragon footage. I'm used to just doing some quick coloring in Symphany and then exporting from Avid, but that's usually with Epic footage that I've AMA'd and thus I don't think the quality of my footage is being lost. I'm worried with the initial transcoding and then an additional compression my footage is going to be compromised form its full potential.

Should I export my sequence as an AAF or EDL or something that will allow me to open it again in Redcine or Resolve and thus allow me to get greater color controls and a higher quality export for the web? Or am I just being paranoid and the DNxHD 175 files at 10bit H264 will still look indistinguishable?

Thanks as always, everyone.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Should I export my sequence as an AAF or EDL or something that will allow me to open it again in Redcine or Resolve and thus allow me to get greater color controls and a higher quality export for the web?

Yes. Export an AAF and reconform the project with the R3Ds in Resolve, and the end result will look better. Scott Freeman had a good piece onAvid/Resolve workflows:

https://library.creativecow.net/freeman_scott/AVID-Framerate-Metadata/1

 

[Frank Hague]

Yes. Export an AAF and reconform the project with the R3Ds in Resolve, and the end result will look better. Scott Freeman had a good piece onAvid/Resolve workflows:

https://library.creativecow.net/freeman_scott/AVID-Framerate-Metadata/1

Awesome, thanks so much, Marc. My only concern is that DaVinci always crashes when I try to color with it. Are you saying to just open and export it with DaVinci because it will export at a higher quality or do I need to color with it to actually make it look better?

And if I need to color with Resolve, is there a way I can just bring the sequence into Redcine instead and color there?

 

[MichaelP]

Redcine X is not ruly designed to be a conform device as it is not aware of transitions, layers, effects, etc. It does take a straight cut type EDL (pull list for example) and allow you to color correct, trim, do further pulls, and operations. A common workflow with Avid would be to create that pull list type EDL, relink to original R3D in Redcine X if you feel you can color correct there better than elsewhere.

Resolve (and oher dedicated grading solutions) are designed for professional level grading with lots of tools, nodes, layers, tracking to take care of all your color correction needs and surpasses the feature set of a Symphony color correction. If you material does not need that kind of treatment, then Symphony may be fine with a first pass grade in RedCine X.

If you have not read the Avid whitepaper, you should. It will at least give you a head start on these types of workflows and has a pretty expansive RED section.

http://www.avid.com/static/resource...whitepaper.pdf?elq_mid=10041&elq_cid=10546672


Michael

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Redcine X is not ruly designed to be a conform device as it is not aware of transitions, layers, effects, etc. It does take a straight cut type EDL (pull list for example) and allow you to color correct, trim, do further pulls, and operations. A common workflow with Avid would be to create that pull list type EDL, relink to original R3D in Redcine X if you feel you can color correct there better than elsewhere.

Resolve (and oher dedicated grading solutions) are designed for professional level grading with lots of tools, nodes, layers, tracking to take care of all your color correction needs and surpasses the feature set of a Symphony color correction. If you material does not need that kind of treatment, then Symphony may be fine with a first pass grade in RedCine X.

If you have not read the Avid whitepaper, you should. It will at least give you a head start on these types of workflows and has a pretty expansive RED section.

http://www.avid.com/static/resource...whitepaper.pdf?elq_mid=10041&elq_cid=10546672


Michael

And it has been updated for 2014, with some changes in Media Composer 7. Thanks for linking to that.

 

[Frank Hague]

Redcine X is not ruly designed to be a conform device as it is not aware of transitions, layers, effects, etc. It does take a straight cut type EDL (pull list for example) and allow you to color correct, trim, do further pulls, and operations. A common workflow with Avid would be to create that pull list type EDL, relink to original R3D in Redcine X if you feel you can color correct there better than elsewhere.

Resolve (and oher dedicated grading solutions) are designed for professional level grading with lots of tools, nodes, layers, tracking to take care of all your color correction needs and surpasses the feature set of a Symphony color correction. If you material does not need that kind of treatment, then Symphony may be fine with a first pass grade in RedCine X.

If you have not read the Avid whitepaper, you should. It will at least give you a head start on these types of workflows and has a pretty expansive RED section.

http://www.avid.com/static/resource...whitepaper.pdf?elq_mid=10041&elq_cid=10546672


Michael

Great advice as always, MichaelP. Thanks a bunch for all this.

Just one question: if I'm not worried about my color correction options as much as the actual export, should I still bring it to Redcine to finish (my computer can't handle Davinci unfortunately)? My real concern is just in the export, I worry that transcosding to 10 bit mxf175 and then compressing that into a x264 export isn't giving me the highest possible quality of my finished sequence. I don't mind the coloring with Symphony really, I just want to make sure my export is of the highest possible quality and clarity. Does that make sense? If so, would it loot better as a finished product if I sent the whole EDL to Davinci (colored and everything) and then simply exported from DaVinci immediately? Or from Redcine?

 

[MichaelP]

I don't think that you will notice any noticeable difference going through either path. But that is a quick test you can do yourself to see what the end result would look like with a shot that has lots of detail and motion. Ensure that H.264 encoder parameters are the same and let your eyes be the judge. I am assuming a 1080p encode...

 

[Frank Hague]

I don't think that you will notice any noticeable difference going through either path. But that is a quick test you can do yourself to see what the end result would look like with a shot that has lots of detail and motion. Ensure that H.264 encoder parameters are the same and let your eyes be the judge. I am assuming a 1080p encode...

Awesome, thanks so much, man. You're always so helpful to everyone on here and I really appreciate it.

 

[Frank Hague]

So I've noticed that sometimes my test grades in RedCine will show up on the footage that I AMA into my Avid Project, yet when I tried to change a certain file's look in RedCine afterwards it still has the original import settings in Avid. I tried deleting the AMA clip, then going to RedCine and editing a certain file (while saving the Project in one attempt and discarding the changes in another since these grades always seem to reappear even when I don't save the RedCine Project, and I'm sure I didn't earlier when these grades came through to Avid in the first place) and then relinking to AMA again, but for some reason the AMA file in Avid is reading with the same original color grade I had.

Does anyone know how to solve this issue? I know Michael mentioned there's the EDL route at the end, but wouldn't it be simpler to just get the filenames and then correct the specific ones in RedCine and then simply relink to AMA with those grades? Or is this even possible? And should I be worried that these grades aren't going away in my Avid timeline? How can you get each in their raw setting, for instance?

Ugh, so confused... (lol Merry Christmas, y'all)

 

[MichaelP]

It seems that you have Redcine X Pro set up to automatically save the RMD files (XML file for all parameters). Media Composer on the other hand, can apply all the RMD parameters (make sure it is selects when looking at Source Settings and not camera metadata for example). Media Composer does NOT save out a new RMD if you make any changes to the subset of parameters in the source settings. So those changes will only appear in Media Composer, and not back in RCX for the same file (unlike an Adobe PPro workflow).

In Media Composer, once you have updated RMD files from RCX that you like, you might need to "refresh sequence" for changes to apply. Sequences do not automatically update (which is a good thing) but you need to do this manually. With sequence active in record monitor, go to "clip menu" and find "refresh sequence". Any updates to FrameFlex, color, etc, can be applied all at once, or individually.


Michael

 

[Frank Hague]

Awesome, Michael. That sounds easy enough, can't wait to try it out. Thanks, boss

 

[Frank Hague]

It seems that you have Redcine X Pro set up to automatically save the RMD files (XML file for all parameters). Media Composer on the other hand, can apply all the RMD parameters (make sure it is selects when looking at Source Settings and not camera metadata for example). Media Composer does NOT save out a new RMD if you make any changes to the subset of parameters in the source settings. So those changes will only appear in Media Composer, and not back in RCX for the same file (unlike an Adobe PPro workflow).

In Media Composer, once you have updated RMD files from RCX that you like, you might need to "refresh sequence" for changes to apply. Sequences do not automatically update (which is a good thing) but you need to do this manually. With sequence active in record monitor, go to "clip menu" and find "refresh sequence". Any updates to FrameFlex, color, etc, can be applied all at once, or individually.


Michael

Hey, Michael. So I've tried to Refresh the sequence and nothing seems to change. It seems for me that the only time I can get the new Grade settings into an AMA file is when I completely remove the AMA files from the project entirely first. I have to not only delete the AMA files, but also the clips from my timeline as well! This is obviously really problematic for me though... I think I even have to delete my selects and subclips as well and then link to the AMA files from scratch in order to get the updated RM3 data. There has to be an easier way than this right? I can't find anything online though...

Any chance you can help me with this? This is a real problem for me thus far unfortunately... And I can't seem to figure out how to even export an EDL to go back into Redcine either, so I'm stuck using Symphony right now with the poor grades I baked in unknowingly when I was first messing around before even starting an Avid project and getting ready to cut

 

[MichaelP]

sure - let me check my schedule and get back to you.

Michael

 

[MichaelP]

Hey, Michael. So I've tried to Refresh the sequence and nothing seems to change. (

Is the sequence edited from the AMA linked files, or from a transocde? A sequence refresh is directly related to the source clips that made up the sequence. If you want to relink the sequence from a transcode to the original AMA linked files you can try selecting all the clips and the sequence, right-click the sequence, select relink and in the dialogue box select "relink to selected" and see what happens.

Michael