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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES TO AN ADOBE RED WORKFLOW?

People seem to be forgetting that Sony Vegas handles R3D native editing in real-time and the Sony suite of creative apps is pretty darn good. When considering NLE software, in addition to Vegas, there is native support now with LightWorks and Edius. And several other tools out there can round out a workflow, some supporting native R3D. OTOH, the Adobe software dominates several segments of the market out there. This move by them is going to hit a lot of people rather hard. Funny thing is, most of the complaining comes from the independent or small class of users, or those who are not using the software on a large scale or don't have any need to own more than one seat. For someone who tends to buy a copy of the Adobe software and then not upgrade with every release, this new licensing kinda sucks. For those who continuously purchase every upgrade on one or two seats of the software, it's going to work out about the same. For those who have Volume Licensing or enterprise accounts, the move to CC is a total ball-breaker, yet I see very few of those users really complaining. Maybe it hasn't hit home just yet with the corporate finance people...

Yep, this is a very good point, Vegas and Sony's suite of software is actually very good. I had the privilege of visiting Sony's labs some while ago and several seats were running on Apple hardware running Windows OS. As far as Im concerned if it were native under OS 10 or some flavour of Unix/Linux I would be very interested in it.
 
I've been playing with Lightworks since the first public Beta. The more I use it the more I like it. It accepts AE 3rd party fx plugins and the Boris line of FX products, but most of what I need is already in the base program. $60/yr supports development and pays for codec licenses and a built in basic titling function.
It has pretty powerful node based FX built in , including very decent grading tools, runs reasonably well on modest hardware using both GPU and multi-core multi-threaded processors.
Watch the introductory tutorials.
This is not a new untried product, it has been around for nearly 20 years and was built initially to run on dedicated hardware. It is a mature powerful editor that scales from free desktop app to heavy iron networked studio post facility levels with dedicated hardware console and collaborative team production support. It was developed to edit feature films.

David, are you aware if Lightworks accepts Neat Video plug in?
 
No software can do that. Resolve can export trimmed R3D in the timeline, but that's about it. Once R3D is debayered, you can't go back.

Jake, bear with me... I'm not being argumentative, just trying to wrap my head around things.

In Premiere, I was able to open R3D clips and work on them there as RAW footage. My understanding (although I never did it) was that I could always save as an RDC file (or something) and re-open those clips in Redcine X Pro with the edits I had done in Premiere. Wrong?
 
Jake, bear with me... I'm not being argumentative, just trying to wrap my head around things.

In Premiere, I was able to open R3D clips and work on them there as RAW footage. My understanding (although I never did it) was that I could always save as an RDC file (or something) and re-open those clips in Redcine X Pro with the edits I had done in Premiere. Wrong?

Yes, that is wrong. The only device that can currently create a R3D file is a Red camera. Programs that use the Red SDK can export trimmed R3D clips, but the original file they're truncating can only be written by the camera.
 
To be clear on the Red file formats and expand on Mike's post:


Red File Formats:
.R3D - The proprietary REDCODE RAW file format that is captured within Red cameras.
.RMD - This is a "sidecar" metadata file that contains your color and other adjustments created in Red Cine-X Pro.
.RED - This is the file that is created by encoding with the RRENCODER Plugin for Red Cine-X Pro and is a delivery format, not a capture format.

Red Folder Types:
.RDM - When you download a REDMAG your clips are stored in a folder with the .RDM extension.
.RDC - Each clip captured is stored within the .RDM mag folder in it's own .RDC folder.


You can create "R3D Trims" of any .R3D file via Red Cine-X Pro. The general concept is that the .R3D file itself is your "negative" and it will always be accessible for non-destructive editing via the metadata contained within the .RMD file.

Certain 3rd party apps can also load, create, and edit .RMD files. This file is all metadata. Color Space, Gamma Space, overall color/curve/contrast settings, and "Look Effects" such as Alchemy; all of those "live" in this file and can be changed or updated at anytime.

The .RED format is the new codec developed by Red as a delivery format. It can be played back on the REDRAY Players and the upcoming Red Projectors. Currently it can only be created through a plugin called RRENCODER that works within Red Cine-X Pro, however, it has been hinted that 3rd party support is on it's way in the future.
 
Thanks Mike and Phil. That really clears up something I should certainly have known after this many years with first the R-1 and now the Epic, but all I've done so far is edit in Adobe and export to Blu Ray or DVD. Phil's blueprint really defines the nomenclature and what is possible.
 
You can create "R3D Trims" of any .R3D file via Red Cine-X Pro.

...just as a sidenote you cannot trim early R3d's....i think somewhere around build 16 or 17.....as i recently found out after trying to make some trims on old footage.

**EDIT: meaning build 16 or 17 of the camera software--NOT RCX. ---meaning back around 2008 or 2009.
 
We've always been happy using Adobe product palette so far but since a few weeks ago we've experienced increasingly massive bugs that Adobe seems to be unable to solve. They went as far as suggesting to un-install everything and install the suite from scratch. But not even this is working because the application manager is corrupted. this would mean we'd have to format all system drives which clearly is the most useless problem solver I've ever heard about...

so this has led me to once again explore Autodesk's Smoke (I was not convinced by the pre release trials in terms of user-friendliness) of which I have been intrigued with for some time (I'm no stranger to nodal based stuff thanks to Nuke). I'm still not entirely convinced by alot of things regarding the user-friendliness but I'm sure I'd get over it some time. however, for example the RED workflow as suggested by Autodesk's SmokeHowTo channel on youtube leaves me with just a bunch of question marks floating around in my head. 1/4 debayer for playback friendly timeline, then duplicating the timeline and make it full debayer... all that makes sense to me. but why on earth would you have to manually fix the resizing of the 1/4 debayer connectFX? I seem to be missing something entirely here...

Björn Benckert, care to chip in? Your input is very much appreciated! Or anyone else's for the matter, of course...
 
Has anyone used Lightworks with R3D's much? Any thoughts on the workflow?

Interested to hear any users feedback, as there's now a 30 day trial on the Pro version. I'm in the middle of a big project, so I'm not touching my system until it's done (another 69 days and counting - LOL) - I'll install and test then, but really wondered what people felt about it.
 
...just as a sidenote you cannot trim early R3d's....i think somewhere around build 16 or 17.....as i recently found out after trying to make some trims on old footage.

**EDIT: meaning build 16 or 17 of the camera software--NOT RCX. ---meaning back around 2008 or 2009.

On the bright side those were the good old days when all I needed was a Python Script to trim R3Ds. :P
 
Hehe, back before they went to proprietary wavelet algorithms and we just had to look for the JPG2K structures and chop accordingly. :) The R3D SDK is fairly complete now, but some things are still lingering unfinished. It would be nice to have the ability to re-write metadata -- reason number one would be to correct those incorrectly set project frame rates. Even if we could just get a project framerate override option in the RMD I think that would satisfy most people.
 
When I think about Adobe alternatives, because of Creative Cloud subscription thing, I can't stop myself thinking: What if the "alternatives" choose to follow Adobe?
 
It's a valid concern....
This is the wave of the future for software I believe.

Adobe is making a very smart business decision. Their goal was 40% of revenue to be recurring.

That's why warren buffet loves insurance companies....steady cash flow.

This leaves the corp free to expand elsewhere, and if you look at the shareholder docs....the marketing cloud will likely be bigger then creative cloud by 50% over the next few years, meaning big growth for shareholders.

As much as I dislike this move, I disagree with the doom and gloom about adobe shares.
Long term I actually may invest in the stock, and hopefully profits would offset my now increased CS-CC update costs
 
...

As much as I dislike this move, I disagree with the doom and gloom about adobe shares.
Long term I actually may invest in the stock, and hopefully profits would offset my now increased CS-CC update costs

At first blush I thought this might work as a hedge, but then I realized that as Adobe increases their license charge over time, it's quite possible for a user to be paying more and simultaneously seeing the stock price decline... due to many CC members migrating to a more cost effective solution.
 
I keep finding these Redcine-X Pro tutorials in my inbox (thanks RED!) and the more time I spend learning the ins and outs of this fine app, the more I become intrigued with it.

I'm not sure I would want to use it even as an Indie movie-maker as my sole app for post. But I'm thinking if the editing was pretty simple and no special FX were required, this would be perfect for a short or an Indie B Movie. What I'm really liking about Redcine is that it is made for the sole purpose of working on Red content. I knew Adobe before I knew RED and just haven't taken the time to get really acquainted with Redcine.

It looks like a few more improvements, like allowing something akin to OpenFX plugins... perhaps more options in the timeline editing part, and this could become the software that could fill the space Adobe has occupied in my personal RED-centric workflow.

OBTW, In re: the RED tutorials? If the pointer were somehow made lime green or hot pink and showed trails when moved, it would be a lot easier to keep up with the pace of the tutorial on a smaller screen. That and perhaps ask Dan to slow down the presentation for some of us with thicker skulls who need to let the info soak in a bit? '-)
 
When I think about Adobe alternatives, because of Creative Cloud subscription thing, I can't stop myself thinking: What if the "alternatives" choose to follow Adobe?

Hope things are well with you Elsie. This is a very good thread as we see Adobe laying down deadlines with $10 a month single application "rentals" at the end of this month.

One does not need a crystal ball to see that it is very likely the dragon color science will ONLY be included in CC; you'll have to agree to more monthly charges if you want to edit with Adobe.

I do hope we will see a "non-adobe product" alternative to this that does not involve additional monthly charges but in this regard, I also believe there are perhaps other alternatives to consider first. Simply going the "additional codec" (Cineform, newer DPC or ???) route first; this may now become the best idea, especially for current users with aging hardware, looking at a flat marketplace...

Can anyone give us reviews on the Cineform work flow?
 
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