RED Help

Hi gang

So yesterday I shot a spot where we used a RED in three different formats: 4K HD for most things, 4K 16:9 for some plate shots where 4K HD turned out not to be big enough, and 3K for some slow motion. The director is going to cut it and he can't get the files to import into Final Cut Pro properly: he wants to ingest them as 1920x1080 and while the 4K HD files come in fine the 4K 16:9 comes in at 2K and the 3K comes in at 3K.

He wants to ingest the clips this way so that he (or I should say we) can go back to the original R3D files in Colour for the grade.

On top of that, DPX frames exported from Colour don't open up in After Effects or Photoshop. He doesn't trust Colour’s Cineon format due to discrepancies he experienced when working on a previous RED project.

Anyone have any thoughts on workarounds or solutions?

We shot on a RED running Build 30, RedColor and RedGamma, 23.98p.

Thanks-

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Art Adams | Director of Photography
4 1 5 . 7 6 0 . 5 1 6 7
San Francisco Bay Area

showreel -> www.artadams.net
trade writing -> art.provideocoalition.com

ICG, SOC, NWU

Art Adams wrote:

>> He wants to ingest the clips this way so that he (or I should say we) can go back to the original >>R3D files in Colour for the grade.

Art,

I would transcode everything to Prores, placing the HD 1080 editorial prores files in the directory with the R3D's and then all he has to do when conforming is a simple cut and paste operation in the xml passed into colour.

That's what we do for conforming in Baselight or Piranha. If it's only editorial that will use the QT's you can go with 1/2 debayer or rougher since he's finishing with the r3d files.

Jonathan Flack
Cinematographer

Thanks, Jonathan! I've passed that along.

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Art Adams | Director of Photography
4 1 5 . 7 6 0 . 5 1 6 7
San Francisco Bay Area

Art,

I meant to say Search and Replace instead of cut and paste but you get the idea.

I used to use rushes to generate the transcode script and then modify it by hand and submit via the command line interface. Not sure what facilities he has at his disposal. If he's got a rocket it should be trivial to do the conversion of the whole days shooting in no time.

All that's needed then is a search and replace of "mov" for "r3d" and Bob's your uncle, pass the xml to baselight or piranha or whatever and it's golden.

Jonathan Flack
Cinematographer

>> I used to use Jonathan's method to XML stuff into after effects, but clipfinder does the find and >>replace function with intelligence ao you don't have to have every pro res transcode in the same >>folder as the r3d which is a complete pain.

I can elaborate on this when not on the iPhone...

Aaron Owen
San Francisco based Production/post

Aaron Owen wrote:

That ultimately depends on your pipeline. We're on a SAN so it's better for us to house all the shot data in one directory. We can offline shots more effectively this way and scripting (I actually still do almost all my work from the command line using |, grep and sed. Can rip out a script to transcode a day's shooting in about 30 seconds. A lost youth pays off.

It's really good to know clipfinder can do this though as explaining how to write a sed script to someone in the office from set is usually an exercise in frustration for both parties.

Jonathan Flack
Cinematographer

Hi Art,

Can't write much with this phone, but use Clipfinder to transcode to Quicktime and then later to assemble the R3D clips to match your EDL. When you bring the R3D's into Apple Colour, use the Geometry Room to adjust their sizes properly before rendering out. They'll have different size values in there, depending what format you shot. The Geometry Room has useful features for easily applying the same settings to multiple clips or all clips.

Clipfinder is great for transcodes, too. Easy to get all your settings together, add RSX looks from RedAlert, etc. I used it to extract a 2.40 Off-Center framing and create letterboxed 16x9 dailies,
and it was easier than I thought. You could also use RedCine X, which seems like a great dailies tool to me but I haven't tried it yet.

Best,

Graham Futerfas
Director of Photography
web www.GFuterfas.com

Thanks, Graham. I've passed this on as well.

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Art Adams | Director of Photography
4 1 5 . 7 6 0 . 5 1 6 7
San Francisco Bay Area

showreel -> www.artadams.net
trade writing -> art.provideocoalition.com

ICG, SOC, NWU