Sony EX-3 RED Workflow

[Ravi Kiran]

We're considering shooting a movie with the Sony EX-3, with some scenes on the RED. What is the best workflow for this? Convert the EX-3 footage to ProRes 422 HQ? My thinking was that if I transcode the RED footage to ProRes 422 HQ and convert the EX-3 footage to ProRes 422 HQ, I will not be editing with mixed file types on the timeline. When I re-link the RED footage to the 4K files and then go into Color, I can color correct the RED footage from the R3Ds and I will have high quality files of my EX-3 XDCAM footage to correct. What do you guys recommend? We would not be mixing the two cameras within a scene. Scenes will either be shot with the RED or the EX-3.

 

[Uli Plank]

Sounds good. What's your delivery?
We did a project for TV with R1 and EX-1 and went ProRes 422 HQ too.

 

[John Marchant]

Make sure you test your workflow through color on the actual machine/s you'll edit with. The workflow all sounds good to me, but I've come across obscure render issues with color in the past that only occur on certain configurations, due to RAM and graphics card limitations.

Only other suggestion: have you tested Prores 4444? If your storage and system can handle this then you may be able to remove a step: do a simple one-light in RedcineX that doesn't kill any detail, then grade straight from the Prores 4444 in Color at the end.

 

[Ravi Kiran]

Uli, our delivery format is likely to be DVD and/or Blu-ray.

Only other suggestion: have you tested Prores 4444? If your storage and system can handle this then you may be able to remove a step: do a simple one-light in RedcineX that doesn't kill any detail, then grade straight from the Prores 4444 in Color at the end.

I've never used ProRes 4444, but tomorrow we're doing some camera tests, so I can try it with the footage. I'm going to try a few different configurations and go through FCP and Color.

I'm also trying to keep the amount of hard drive space we take up down as much as possible. Transcoding all the RED footage to 4444 would take up a lot of space. Is there an easy way to transcode to ProRes 422 or ProRes 422 HQ for the offline edit and then replace just the clips we used with ProRes 4444 versions? How bad would it be to grade 422 HQ clips in Color if I did a one-light in RedCine first? What about transcoding the EX-3 footage to ProRes 4444 and graded the Red footage from the R3Ds after reconnecting the ProRes offline files to the H proxies? Has anyone here done this?

 

[John Marchant]

You're right 4444 is heavy on storage, but not necessarily on data rates: I regularly buy bog standard 1Tb internal drives to use for this stuff in our Mac Pros... I know its not the fancy high speed RAID system everyone thinks you need, but if it works, it works.

I guess grading the 422HQ directly might work, assuming that your one-light is pretty close and you're more going for clean correct images than a heavy look of any kind.

Test test test

 

[Luca Immesi]

Is there an easy way to transcode to ProRes 422 or ProRes 422 HQ for the offline edit and then replace just the clips we used with ProRes 4444 versions?

Clipfinder

 

[Antony M]

We will also have to mix EX-3 and Red soon, but on PCs in Premiere CS5.

What would you recommend?

 

[Uli Plank]

Premiere CS5, lots of RAM, an approved NVidia card and fast drives…