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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 :)

workflow(s) overview..

D

Denis Buhot

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I know this may not be the best forum to post on... Red owners come from very different worlds : pro dps, prosumers moving to a durable high-quality "format", etc., and long-time owners as opposed to recent serial numbers... A specialized forum tends to loose the general overview, and to forget most basic needs/informations...

What I've read about workflow(s) until now rather adds to my confusion than really helps. I happen to know what an edl is, but there's no shame in not knowing, I guess. Nor asking what crimson is for ! I'd love it if someone with experience and patience undertook to summarize the subject from scratch, i.e, from downloading to final editing, starting with an "established" workflow, such as fcp + crimson.

I must be dumb, but I must say I found nothing crystal clear here...
 
There are too many possibilities here, could you please elaborate on a few points first:
- Are you shooting for cinema or TV/BluRay ?
- Are you on Mac or PC ?
- Are you on low-budget or pro-budget ?
 
not only speaking for myself...

not only speaking for myself...

nomad said:
There are too many possibilities here, could you please elaborate on a few points first:
- Are you shooting for cinema or TV/BluRay ?
- Are you on Mac or PC ?
- Are you on low-budget or pro-budget ?
Click to expand...


answers are :

- flexible, desktop usage, plenty of time for single, long-run project at a time, editing "format" 2K,

- budget : plenty of time, not plenty of money, and I like to do myself, including coloring

- mac

In short, wildlife documentaries : I want to be able to cut, color-correct, add some sharpness if necessary, mix 2 k and 4 k original medias, add sound, all at home... No special effects needed, except slo-mo

thanks for caring to answer !
 
I shot my first TV commercial so I'll tell you my workflow as simple as possible with FCP 6.0.4.

Shot in 2K 2:1.

Transferred rushes from CF cards to NEXTO drive on location.

Transferred rushes from NEXTO drives to my Mac (2.8Ghz MacIntel with 8GB RAM)

Created FCP project and imported all the _M movies (these are in the same folder as your individual clips. They are just reference clips). I let the sequence settings be dictated by FCP when I dropped the _M movies in the timeline.

I edited the sequence.

Since I don't have Crimson, I noted down the name and time code of each clip in the sequence.

In Redcine I imported these clips and set my IN and OUT points manually. I colour corrected and output the movies in QT ProRes as 2K, 2:1.

I went back to my FCP project and imported the 2K ProRes clips and set them out in the timeline. You have to make sure your sequence settings match the new 2K clips.

Finetuned and output via firewire to DV tape (my client wanted it that way).

It was really not difficult at all. I just wish there was a detailed manual on using Redcine.

I'm sure there is a better workflow but this is how I did it for a final project which was 45 seconds long. I shot about 25 GB worth of footage.

Hope this helps.
 
Here's a brief synopsis of what we're doing using an 8-core MacPro and an AJA Kona-3 card.

1. First shoot with RED and dump CF card contents to 2 FW drives on location.
2. Bring FW drives to studio and dump contents to SAN (or local storage on the editing system in lieu of a SAN) back up to LTO for permanent archiving.
3. Import the proxies into FinalCut (use the M files for the 4K clips and the H files for 2k clips)
4. drag all the clips onto a timeline and accept conforming your sequence settings when prompted by FC.
5. Import audio (if captured seperately on set) and match to clips on the timeline via slate clap, and link video and audio for each clip.
6. At this point you can add timecode overlay in FC and lay back the timeline to tape/DVD via the Kona card for director selects if required.
7. Next Select the entire time line and drag to a new bin.
8. Make clip selections from this bin and edit your spot.
9. With a final edit locked, export an XML file from FC.
10. Launch Crimson and open your XML file from the previous step (9).
Lot's of potential workflows in Crimson... Crimson website has a video and links from within the application as to it's many uses So I'll leave this to you to explore.
A. We use only the basic functionality in Crimson. We link to our r3d files in the "match" tab. We skip the frame, color and redline tabs.
B. In the "roundtrip" tab we point to a preferred path for our rendered clips and specify a location for the roundtrip-XML file we'll generate in this tab by clicking the "generate roundtrip XML" button.
C. The intermediate tab defaults to cowboy intermediate and we change nothing in this tab.
D. In the RedCine tab we specify handles and export a "RedCine XML"
11. Next launch RedCine and click "load all". We navigate to the "intermediate" files directory generated by Crimson (just small alias files pointing to the full-res media). Crimson puts them in the user>documents>Crimson workflow documents>your project directory. Select the directory. RedCine will load all the clips from your edit.
12. Next select "Open" and navigate to the XML file generated from Crimson called "yourprojectname.telecine.xml" click open. Clips in the timeline of RedCine now conform to match your edit (plus optional handles).
13. In the "project" tab in Redcine set your desired output format i.e. HD, 2k, SD.
14. In the "shot" tab in Redcine, you can scale and pan/scan your shots as desired.
15. In the "color" tab do a first-light grade to all the clips and set any pref's for sharpening etc.
16. In the "output" tab select your desired output file preferences. We generally go to ProRes HQ (which behaves best in Color). Set up Redcine to save to individual "event" folders (study Redcine docs/videos for clarification here). Set your output path to the path you specified in Crimson (in step B)
17. Click "GO" take a coffee break, you deserve it. Save and quit RedCine when finished rendering.
19. Tab back to FinalCut. Import the "roundtrip" XML file generated by Crimson (step B) It is probably located in your project directory with our FC project file. It's called "yourprojectname.roundtrip.xml
18. A sequence is generated in FinalCut. Open it and voila you have your conformed spot. You may have to select sequence settings and set them to the format you specified in step 13. i.e. HD 1080, 720, SD... ProRes HQ etc....
19. Drag your "offline" edit sequence into this "online" sequence and scale it down and check that your edits match etc. (we've had some issues with screwed up "handles" from Crimson XML. Easy to slip clips back into sync if this occurs)
20. From here call it good or "send to color" for final grading.
21. Once round tripped back from Color, send to Compressor to change to 29.97, insert pulldown etc. etc. etc... if required.

Accept kudos from wildly happy client and invoice the balance.

This is by no means an exhaustive/comprehensive explanation and certainly not the ONLY workflow to use FCP/Crimson/RedCine/Color, but it's working great for us. Crimson is really a integral tool in all this. Ian Bloom, I thank you!!

Hope this helps

m
 
Some forum...

Some forum...

great help, really, thanks to all... I'm reading it through... I'll be back if I'm stuck :-)
 
ONe question. easy way to import proxies

ONe question. easy way to import proxies

So, how are you guys going about importing your proxies? Are you manually opening up each folder and importing them? Or is there a trick I'm not aware of. It would be great to use Redrushes to spit out proxies in a single location, but it only works sporadically for me.
 
bobbystone said:
So, how are you guys going about importing your proxies? Are you manually opening up each folder and importing them? Or is there a trick I'm not aware of. It would be great to use Redrushes to spit out proxies in a single location, but it only works sporadically for me.
Click to expand...

One of the quick and easy ways without creating a script is to use Search function to look in the directory/folder that contains your Red clips and just type in _M.mov (if using medium proxies) and then drag those into FCP.

Fairly painless.
 
M,
That's what's I'm talking about. Excellent workflow description.
Pitched perfectly!!
Provide a good starter for anyone starting to use FCP.
Great for people of all edit skills levels who are interested, but don't have days of reading spare to give it a go and build upon.
Well done!
D
 
thermiksurfer said:
Here's a brief synopsis of what we're doing using an 8-core MacPro and an AJA Kona-3 card.

1. First shoot with RED and dump CF card contents to 2 FW drives on location.
2. Bring FW drives to studio and dump contents to SAN (or local storage on the editing system in lieu of a SAN) back up to LTO for permanent archiving.
3. Import the proxies into FinalCut (use the M files for the 4K clips and the H files for 2k clips)
4. drag all the clips onto a timeline and accept conforming your sequence settings when prompted by FC.
5. Import audio (if captured seperately on set) and match to clips on the timeline via slate clap, and link video and audio for each clip.
6. At this point you can add timecode overlay in FC and lay back the timeline to tape/DVD via the Kona card for director selects if required.
7. Next Select the entire time line and drag to a new bin.
8. Make clip selections from this bin and edit your spot.
9. With a final edit locked, export an XML file from FC.
10. Launch Crimson and open your XML file from the previous step (9).
Lot's of potential workflows in Crimson... Crimson website has a video and links from within the application as to it's many uses So I'll leave this to you to explore.
A. We use only the basic functionality in Crimson. We link to our r3d files in the "match" tab. We skip the frame, color and redline tabs.
B. In the "roundtrip" tab we point to a preferred path for our rendered clips and specify a location for the roundtrip-XML file we'll generate in this tab by clicking the "generate roundtrip XML" button.
C. The intermediate tab defaults to cowboy intermediate and we change nothing in this tab.
D. In the RedCine tab we specify handles and export a "RedCine XML"
11. Next launch RedCine and click "load all". We navigate to the "intermediate" files directory generated by Crimson (just small alias files pointing to the full-res media). Crimson puts them in the user>documents>Crimson workflow documents>your project directory. Select the directory. RedCine will load all the clips from your edit.
12. Next select "Open" and navigate to the XML file generated from Crimson called "yourprojectname.telecine.xml" click open. Clips in the timeline of RedCine now conform to match your edit (plus optional handles).
13. In the "project" tab in Redcine set your desired output format i.e. HD, 2k, SD.
14. In the "shot" tab in Redcine, you can scale and pan/scan your shots as desired.
15. In the "color" tab do a first-light grade to all the clips and set any pref's for sharpening etc.
16. In the "output" tab select your desired output file preferences. We generally go to ProRes HQ (which behaves best in Color). Set up Redcine to save to individual "event" folders (study Redcine docs/videos for clarification here). Set your output path to the path you specified in Crimson (in step B)
17. Click "GO" take a coffee break, you deserve it. Save and quit RedCine when finished rendering.
19. Tab back to FinalCut. Import the "roundtrip" XML file generated by Crimson (step B) It is probably located in your project directory with our FC project file. It's called "yourprojectname.roundtrip.xml
18. A sequence is generated in FinalCut. Open it and voila you have your conformed spot. You may have to select sequence settings and set them to the format you specified in step 13. i.e. HD 1080, 720, SD... ProRes HQ etc....
19. Drag your "offline" edit sequence into this "online" sequence and scale it down and check that your edits match etc. (we've had some issues with screwed up "handles" from Crimson XML. Easy to slip clips back into sync if this occurs)
20. From here call it good or "send to color" for final grading.
21. Once round tripped back from Color, send to Compressor to change to 29.97, insert pulldown etc. etc. etc... if required.

Accept kudos from wildly happy client and invoice the balance.

This is by no means an exhaustive/comprehensive explanation and certainly not the ONLY workflow to use FCP/Crimson/RedCine/Color, but it's working great for us. Crimson is really a integral tool in all this. Ian Bloom, I thank you!!

Hope this helps

m
Click to expand...

Great informative post... thanks for taking the time to write that out step by step.
 
Very good explanation Mr. M. Thank You...Thank You Guys
 
Another question...what about without Crimsom??
Any Pro workflow??
 
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