Workflow newbie questions

[Mike N]

Hello guys,

My RED camera will probably be in my happy hands in a couple of weeks and until then I want to educate myself about all things concerning the workflow.
I'm going to use the camera for rental purposes as well as personal projects.
I just want understand as much as possible about this since my own experience with editing and post gues not much further than Adobe Premiere.
I'm sure many of my questions will have been asked and answered many times so even a link to another thread on this forum is greatly appreciated.

So here goes :
1) What are my options on a PC vs MAC regarding editing, grading ?
I understand that the new Premiere has support for R3D files ?

2) What are my options if I don't want to edit in 4K (highly unlikely probably) ? I know the RED camera makes 2 or 3 quicktime files apart from the R3D file called proxies that are lower resolution ? Can I import these to any NLE and start working on them ? Is this a good idea ?

3) If I use REDCINE what are my options when talking about file output and formats ? Can I downrez files in REDCINE to use edit them easily in any NLE ?
When i'm seeing stuff in REDCINE am I actually looking at a 4k video or a lower quality preview to be able to run it on lower end machines ?

4) Are there any major differences (good or bad) between REDCINE and REDALERT . I understand that REDALERT can only be used on MAC whereas REDCINE is cross platform .

5) What is the big deal about NLEs (or other post programs) being able to work with the R3D files directly ? What big NLE's do support R3D files natively ?

6) Is After Effects a viable solution for grading of RED footage ? Someone told me that unlike Scratch, AE can't grade in real time ? What does this actually mean ? That I must make modifications on one frame and then apply these changes on all the material without actually seeing what it would like until after rendering ?

7) What does conforming mean ?

8) I read that RED's sensor shoots natively at 5000K. While this can be compensated electronically in camera or in post i've read that it is better to use a filter to achieve this. Why ? What happens in post if I corect it ?

Thanks very much!

 

[John Tissavary]

I strongly suggest you do not tackle the post production handling of Red on paying projects all by yourself at first - a few dollars spent with people that are familiar with the workflow will save you a lot of anguish on a not-exactly-simple process, and you'll likely learn in the process should you want to try it yourself in the future.

Conforming is an online assembly process, where you take an EDL (or XML, or whatever) from an offline edit and 'assemble' the original camera footage or film.


PC options:

Premiere/AE CS4 are able to directly read r3d files via Redcode import plugin. In premiere the redcode pluging allows one to simply import redcode as another native file format. Works great.

AE is a compositing / motion graphics app, and although it has all the tools you need for grading, I would not suggest it as a grading tool - the interface is just not conducive to that task though it is certainly capable. It isn't real time - you make adjustments based on feedback in a single image, scrubbing through the timeline will render at whatever sub-resolution & speed your system is capable of, and changes cannot be made while footage is playing back.

Scratch can read r3d natively, and is a full-fledged conforming & real-time grading system. It is, hands down, my favorite way to finish Red originated material. It's fast, has a complete set of color tools, is one of the best conforming programs out there, and makes the Red post workflow a real piece of cake (assuming one knows how to use Scratch, of course...)

Digital Vision Filmmaster - online color grading system that now works with Redcode thanks to the SDK, but not directly like Scratch does (which means it's slower).

RedCine is like a little-brother to Scratch - similar interface & same render engine, but very stripped down in that it cannot read anything but r3d files, and lacks many of Scratch's tools, most noteably there's no way to automatically conform offlined material. I like RedCine, it works great on my machine, but some people have had stability issues.

Avid is working on better ways to handle Red, but for now it involves either transcoding to an offline format (DNxHD is the most convenient), editing in Avid, then finishing in Scratch or some other online tool, or transcoding to an online format like DNxHD higher bitrate formats (slow) to finish in Avid.



Mac options:

FCS: Red quicktime proxies in FCP, Log & Transfer for redcode (I think it wraps the actual redcode in a quicktime instead of rendering anything), and Red component for Color. Color has a wonderful toolset for grading, but is not a realtime system, which means it doesn't render the changes and play back footage in full res on-the-fly like Filmmaster, Scratch, Baselight, and other high-end color systems do. Shouldn't be too big a deal outside of 'client supervised' grading sessions. Color is buggy as hell, though, so that can be a bit of a headache.

Premiere/AE CS4: The redcode plugin works on the Mac versions, too.

RedCine: Mac version same as PC.

RedAlert: Stripped down processing interface for transcoding Redcode. Includes Redline & Red Rushes for automated batch rendering (and distributed rendering should you have a renderfarm).

Monkey Extract: Does a bunch of stuff including transcodes select files based on an EDL or XML.

Crimson: Allows user to round-trip footage from FCP to RedCine via XML for grading & transcoding, then back to FCP again.

Avid: same as on the PC as far as I know, but I'm a colorist and don't spend much time in NLE's, so it would be best to ask someone with Avid experience for more detail.


cheers,

JT

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Virtualdub...

Virtualdub...

There is a thread about the new plug in for VIRTUALDUB,

http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?p=357675&posted=1#post357675

It will let you view the R3D files, and pull out frames and sound to edit with, although not at 48bpp yet.

If you do not need 4K some people are getting more speed by using the 1/4 size output modes to get 2K frames, 2K frames are about four times faster to post than the 4K frames and use much less disk space.

You can try out any NLE you like right now by going to REDRELAY and getting some sample R3D files, if you use REDCINE you could be editing and doing CC tonight with my freeish system at 2K or 4K, but 4K is like slower and takes a lot of free disk space, by Brother just got two new 750GB disks to put frames on... See SECTION: 6.20.20.0 for RED ONE (tm) workflow information at my Web site.

BTW: VirtualDub (tm) is freeware so you can play with it tonight also, and you might look at IRFANVIEW (tm) it can batch process 24bpp frames and open 48bpp frames, do resize, sharpen, some color correction, croping, flips, and some other conversions, should work well to down rez the 2K BMP frame out of VirtualDub to 720x480 so you can burn a DVD, you use VirtualDub twice, once to make the 2K frames from the R3D, and again to make an AVI with sound from the 720x480 frames...

 

[MichaelP]

And all things Avid + RED can be found at www.avid.com/red including a Step by Step Guide PDF and XML tools.

Michael

 

[Mike N]

Thanks alot guys. Very helpful.

John, I'm not going to do any post work myself. Maybe just a little for my own projects. I'll most probably the DIT for most of the projects and I don't want the clients to have questions that I won't know how to answer.

Another set of questions:
1) If I import the R3D files into Premiere at what resolution will I be able to see them and work on them ? I know my machine can't handle 4k and I won't be needing this but is there a way to down convert them before importing or does the program do this all by itself ?

Is it a good idea to work with the proxy files that RED creates if I want a lower resolution image ? Are they the same quality ?

2) So John from what you explained conforming is : I take a lower resolution footage onto an NLE I make all the cuts then I give a list to the program with all the cuts and it makes them on the full resolution material ?
Can I also use conforming for Grading and CC or for this I have to work with the original hi res material from the start ?

3) If I import the R3D files into Premiere I will be working with the unaltered RAW files right ? What is the best practice, to first import the R3D files into REDCINE for some basic CC and then onto an editing software or directly importing them into the NLE and make the basic CC there ?
Are the proxy files also the RAW ones or are they compressed MOVs ?

4) Can you tell me if the camera's LCD and EVF are calibrated so what I see on the LCD is about the same thing a calibrated computer monitor will show me ?



Thanks again !