Trying to make Avid friendly conform

[Paul Steinberg]

I've been hacking around with RedCine-X trying to make Avid friendly files but I've come to the point where I need to ask for help.

I shoot for many large broadcasters all of whom have big Avid plants in-house. They're not keen on doing the Red conversions/ingestion themselves so I'm working on developing a workflow to deliver Avid ready files for their use. The main goal here is to deliver files that quickly load into their system, or better yet that they can just link to. Ideally they would like 1080 29.97p or 59.94i files as they're working in a 30fps world of TV. While Avid can accept a lot of files my goal is to deliver Avid ready files that can just be linked and without any transcoding. These are large edit facilities and hanging up a system to do hours of transcoding can make you really unpopular.

So I'm shooting a mixture of 4K 24fps, 3K 40fps and 2K <120fps all with a 23.98 base rate. I first tried the Avid MXF/AAF option using the 145 1080/29.97 8-bit DNxHD codec but those files were unreadable (I tried loading the AAF into PremiereCS5 that I have at home and it would not load it either). Next up were Quicktime files using DNxHD 29.97 codec but this produced Quicktimes with 32-bit audio and an alpha channel even though 16-bit audio and no alpha channel were selected in the codec output options. This meant that the Quicktimes needed to be transcoded into Avid and not just linked.

I should first ask if it's even possible to export 29.97p or 59.94i files from 23.98p material using RedCine-X?

Does anyone have RedCine-X export settings that successfully produce Avid friendly files? I'm finding it frustrating that the files being produced aren't following the options selected in the codec output options.

FYI: I'm running Win7/64. RedCine-X v356/64

Thanks in advance,

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

did you try to converse the timebase after it was exported from redcine x?

 

[Oliver Peters]

You might try using Avid's MetaFuze utility instead. It's free, but PC only.

- Oliver

 

[Jason Diamond]

you should make you AVID MXF Aware files out of RC-X at 23.98 timebase.
AVID will remap the time for you to 29.97 on the fly if you bring the ALE and AAF files into a 29.97/59/94 project.

Jason

 

[Paul Steinberg]

Thanks guys, I've downloaded Metafuze, will it use the Rocket card when it arrives?

I'll also try the Avid AAF/MXF option with 23.98 frame rate. I did try to output with 29.97P but Avid wouldn't accept the file.

These are the options I'll send the network:
Test 1 - RedCine-X 356 - Avid AAF/MXF - 1080p/23.976P DNxHD 115 8-bit

Test 2 - RedCine-X 356 - Quicktime Animation - 29.97fps - Millions of Colours - Quality High - Sound Compressor 24-bit integer - 44.100 Khz - 16 bit - stereo

Test 3 - RedCine-X 356 - Quicktime h.264 - 29.97fps - Quality High - Multipass - Data rate auto - Sound Compressor 24-bit integer - 16 bit - stereo

Test 4 - RedCine-X 356 - Quicktime DNxHD - 59.94fps - Millions of colours - Red709 - Alpha None - Relolutions 1080i/5994 DnxHD 146 8-bit - Sound Compressor 24-bit integer - 16 bit - 32.00Khz - stereo

Test 5 - Avid MetaFuze 2.5.0 - 1080 59.94i(8bit) - Choma Off - Debayer High - OLPF off 0 - ISO 800 - Resolution Full Premium

Test 6 - Avid MetaFuze 2.5.0 - 1080 23.98p 8-Bit - Choma Off - Debayer High - OLPF off 0 - ISO 800 - Resolution Full Premium

 

[MichaelP]

What you're looking for is a feature that adds 2:3 pulldown to the MXF/DNxHD media during the transcode process. This is not a feature of RedCine X. MetaFuze can do a frame rate conversion, but it is only frame for frame, meaning it will speed up or slow down.

If they are hardware based Avid systems, playing a 23.976 file from a 23.976 project type can be done with 2:3 insertion to 1080i or NTSC. If they are on v5 or later, they can always open the files in a 23.976 project and then open that bin in their 29.96 project. Media Composer will automatically apply a frame rate conversion as well as progressive to interlace as needed. Audio will remain in sync.

Michael