Using RED generated _H and _F proxies

[zak tucker]

wondering why i don't see much posting about using these proxies. I am able to use the _M just fine, but I am having trouble getting full frame playback using the _H proxies even though I am on an 8-core mac with fibre channel storage. can anyone weigh in? Also, do these proxies maintain access to all the R3d information or is some lost? thank you.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

wondering why i don't see much posting about using these proxies. I am able to use the _M just fine, but I am having trouble getting full frame playback using the _H proxies even though I am on an 8-core mac with fibre channel storage. can anyone weigh in? Also, do these proxies maintain access to all the R3d information or is some lost? thank you.

Big can of worms there.

Storage is not your issue at all, its that it takes an awful lot of processing power to debayer RED images.

If you need to work with RED images in high quality right now with access to all the features, the only solution is Adobe Premiere CS5. Make sure you have a video card supported by their Mercury playback engine- preferably one of the Quadro cards.

If you can live with 1/2 debayer and 2K imagery, then you may be able to use CS5 with a lower end mercury supported video card.

Premiere gives you access to most, although not all, REDCODE RAW tools.

The other alternative is to use REDCINE X with a RED Rocket card. That workflow involves transcoding from REDCODE to some other easier to manipulate codec, like ProRes. This gives you all the tools you might want to work with REDCODE, but it imposes a way of working on you.

The Proxy files are a view of the RED file with certain options already set, usually the camera metadata. You do not have access to the full REDCODE RAW toolset.

This is just the beginning of the journey though... there is a huge pile to learn to get the most out of this footage.

In fact I'd argue that there is a pile to learn just to get acceptable results from this imagery. One or two bad choices could really change how your footage looks.

Definitely read the full camera and REDCINE manuals.

Have fun learning!