some workflow help/info needed

[snakedogman]

Hey guys,
I'm an editor and the company i work for has recently started using RED for shooting some commercials.
The first project we did was simple, and had only 2 shots so I used RedCine to do 1st light on those and then exported them directly for use in After Effects.

Now we're onto our second RED project and this one is a little more complicated. So now I've got about 8 shots each with mutiple different takes and I'm looking for the best general workflow for editing this project.

1st thing I tried was same workflow as project one, import all the shots into RedCine and export to ProRes quicktime from there. But this means I have to already select takes and make edit decisions while in RedCine since it doesn't seem very easy to just make it export all the takes of every shot seperately.

Now there's also RedRushes, and maybe this is a better option to convert all my RAW files into quicktimes. But it doesn't have the color options of Redcine... but I'll be doing color grading in FCP afterwards anyway so does it really matter?

I could also simply use the proxies to edit with and export a ProRes quicktime edit directly from FCP. This seems to be the easiest way (and also what is described in Red's worflow diagram on their website) but perhaps not the best in quality?
(the edit is still fairly simple so performance for effects or transitions doesn't really matter to me since I probably won't be using any)

I've also read about other workflows using xml files and seperate software like Crimson. What is the advantage of this?
And then there's RedAlert, which seems to be similar to RedCine... not sure if that's something i should be looking at as well.

Sorry for all the questions, I've read a lot of posts already on this forum but there seem to be so many different ways to work with this stuff and not too much documentation. Any help and suggestions will be much appreciated!

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If a ProRes workflow fits your needs, then you can do your one-light and set in/out points within Red Alert and use Red Rushes to batch convert your clips. Each time you modify the metadata / color info / in and out points, etc.. within Red Alert it creates a .RSX file for that clip. You can tell Red Rushes to use the clip RSX to render with those settings and make use of the in/out points.

Editing with the proxies can be a pain. You have to render all the time and this makes it a real problem for transitions and FX and you're right, the quality isn't all that good. But it's good for a rough cut. You can export an FCP XML and then take that through an application like Crimson Workflow, which will convert it to a REDCINE compatible XML that you can use to generate the clips or stills that you need. This is a good solution if you want something better than Pro Res -- like DPX sequences. You can then wrap the DPX sequences with AJA wrappers or something like GlueTools and then drop that back into FCP to finish your edit.

We should get our first taste of the Adobe CS4 R3D plugin this month. That will let you load R3D files directly and work with them right in Premiere Pro and After Effects. That could be your ideal workflow right there.

Also take a look at Cineform's tools.

 

[snakedogman]

thanks! Didn't know about those RSX files, I'll definitely check that out.