Mac Pro Workflow

[Matt Setnes]

Will the new FCP 2 be efficient enough to edit 4k Red on a Mac Pro with 2 dual core?

I know quad came out, but no sense in buying the quad core until Leapord is released.

[Jabez Olssen]

Will the new FCP 2 be efficient enough to edit 4k Red on a Mac Pro with 2 dual core?

I know quad came out, but no sense in buying the quad core until Leapord is released.


I cut 'Crossing the Line' on a dual dual-core Mac Pro with FCP5, using native 4K redcode files in 1k proxy mode. It never dropped a frame.

Also my Assistant Editor was working with the native 4k files in FCP on a MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo). That too worked fine.

cheers

-Jabez Olssen

[M Most]

I cut 'Crossing the Line' on a dual dual-core Mac Pro with FCP5, using native 4K redcode files in 1k proxy mode. It never dropped a frame.

Also my Assistant Editor was working with the native 4k files in FCP on a MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo). That too worked fine.


I'm curious as to whether you were able to compare the performance of this approach to, say, transcoding to a lower overhead codec, possibly DVCPro or ProRes. Although there is certainly a significant amount of convenience to be achieved by using the 4K footage directly (less copying, no transcoding time, etc.), I would think that for creative flexibility and more editing fluidity, there might be some advantages to the transcoding workflow, especially if one is using transitions and/or multiple layers of video.

[Jabez Olssen]

I'm curious as to whether you were able to compare the performance of this approach to, say, transcoding to a lower overhead codec, possibly DVCPro or ProRes. Although there is certainly a significant amount of convenience to be achieved by using the 4K footage directly (less copying, no transcoding time, etc.), I would think that for creative flexibility and more editing fluidity, there might be some advantages to the transcoding workflow, especially if one is using transitions and/or multiple layers of video.

I'm sure there are many advantages to transcoding to another codec, such as ProRes. But we were facing a daunting deadline and could not spare the time it would have taken to transcode the eight hours of rushes. We had to start working on the offline as soon as possible.

cheers

-Jabez Olssen

[Christian Berg]

Jabez, did any effects work in realtime? Like a dissolve? How responsive is the playback in FCP using 4k redcode raw? What was yor sequence settings?
Thanks!
/Christian

[M Most]

I'm sure there are many advantages to transcoding to another codec, such as ProRes. But we were facing a daunting deadline and could not spare the time it would have taken to transcode the eight hours of rushes. We had to start working on the offline as soon as possible.


Yes, I understand, hence why I mentioned the time savings in the original question. And it's nice - really nice - to actually have that choice at all.

I'm still curious, though.

[Trevor Meier]

Cogito,

What were you using for monitoring, since you were editing for a projected image? Do you know what the final cut was mastered to? What colour space/file format? Were you able to accurately monitor for your final output on your edit station?

[Corrado Silveri]

Cogito,
you actually cut Crossing the line?
Please, explain all the process in depht! Ingest, off_line, on_line, plug used, render times, grading, fx, delivery.

We need to understand all that you can explain (without loosing your job)...
Please!

[REDAndWhite]

Cogito,
Please, explain all the process in depht! Ingest, off_line, on_line, plug used, render times, grading, fx, delivery.

We need to understand all that you can explain
Please!

Yes, cogito. That would be a useful piece of information for all of us. I hope you can find a couple of minutes to post a quick summary.


Thanks in advance.

[Jay A. Kelley]

Same here sir!
Jay

[Jabez Olssen]

What were you using for monitoring, since you were editing for a projected image? Do you know what the final cut was mastered to? What colour space/file format? Were you able to accurately monitor for your final output on your edit station?

We were pretty much using nothing for monitoring except a second Apple monitor. The final cut was mastered to 4K DPX files on a Quantel Pablo at Park Road Post, for various reasons we mastered in rec709 colour space.


Please, explain all the process in depht! Ingest, off_line, on_line, plug used, render times, grading, fx, delivery.

Ok, On set we (Deanan) copied each magazine onto a large esata/firewire800 harddrive (Actually several copies were made). After the last day of shoot Deanan handed me a 750 gig hard drive that contained all 8 hours of rushes shot, plus the reference quicktime wrappers for the media which turned the 4k Redcode files into 1k Proxies. I attached the drive to our Mac Pro via eSata, and the quicktimes were imported (very quickly) into an FCP project.

There were several teething problems which I'll skip over as it was all part of the teething process and will all be rectified by the time the camera is shipping. But something I should mention is that at the time the redcode codec could not be rendered in, this will be fixed, but it meant that we had to either cut in a sequence set to the redcode codec and never do anything that that would require rendering, or else cut in another codec and have to render every bit of footage. So we cut in redcode, then when the cut was locked we changed the sequence settings to MJPEG-A and rendered the cut so that we could do some resizing etc in FCP.

Going back a bit, as soon as the footage was loaded in we copied the drive of footage onto another empty drive so that we had two copies and my assistant editor could sync the production sound to the rushes on another machine (a macbook pro). We were under a great deal of time pressure so we started cutting before the sound was synced to the picture, and we just grabbed sound as we needed it. Then when the cut was locked we went through and added in the sync production sound.

Making a long story slightly shorter, we eventually finished the offline cut and created a quicktime of the sequence for our Sound Editors, and for Weta Digital. We held a handover meeting to explain which shots were to be VFX and how PJ wanted the audio to sound etc.

All the quicktimes we were cutting with had the original Magazine and file name as part of their clip names, so we were able to refer back from the timeline (or EDL) to which parts of the original redcode files we required for the online.

The Online process basically involved manually going into redcine and extracting in a useable 4k format all the shots that we had used in the offline. This task was bravely tackled by Weta Digital and their editorial and I/O teams. This part will be much easier in future once REDcine Pull List is working. Anyway, once the frames for the 11 minute final cut were extracted at full quality they were sent to Park Road Post to be conformed in their Pablo system. Weta also kept hold of the shots that required vfx and got to work on those.

The Colour Grading was done on the Pablo at Park Road Post whilst the sound editors were track laying, recording ADR and doing the mix, and also whilst Weta was doing the VFX.

The VFX were dropped straight in the cut in the Pablo when they were done and once it was all finished the 4K data was rendered out and copied to a 750GB hard drive (actually this was done twice so we had two copies). I carried one copy and Richie Bluck the other, Chris Ward the Sound Editor carried the final sound mix and we all traveled to Las Vegas where we handed the drives to Jarred in his hotel room on the Friday afternoon before NAB. They then had to copy all the frames on to the 4K playback server and build the cinema (!) and we finally got to test the picture and sound and saw that it was all working on Sunday (!!).

I hope this helps.

cheers

-Jabez

[Mark K.]

Thanks Jabez, sounds like a relatively straightforward process (no telecine!) and all done with only: 1 Mac Pro, 1 MacBook Pro, A few eSata HDDs, and 1 Weta Digital! :biggrin:

Now I just need to see the footage! Nice work on King Kong by the way, that must have been epic.

Cheers,

Mark

[fightordie]

After the last day of shoot Deanan handed me a 750 gig hard drive that contained all 8 hours of rushes shot, plus the reference quicktime wrappers for the media which turned the 4k Redcode files into 1k Proxies. I attached the drive to our Mac Pro via eSata, and the quicktimes were imported (very quickly) into an FCP project.

Could some explain this part to me and how you get the 1k proxies. Thanks

[Jabez Olssen]

Could some explain this part to me and how you get the 1k proxies. Thanks

I believe once the camera is shipping it will create the reference quicktime wrappers for you as it shoots. For this project Deanan had a little utility that opened the 4k Redcode files, looked at them, and made the QT wrappers. We chose to use the 1k versions, but 2k and half-k (512 pixels) versions were also created. As long as the QTs were in the same folder as the 4k redcode media that they pointed to, there was no problem.

[fightordie]

Cogito thanks much for taking the time to explain in detail the process. I hope you stay and check this forum regularly. If you're open to it I think most readers would love the opportunity to ask you more questions with or without RED workflow.

[GlennChan]

We were under a great deal of time pressure so we started cutting before the sound was synced to the picture, and we just grabbed sound as we needed it. Then when the cut was locked we went through and added in the sync production sound.
Curious: Was this very time consuming to sync sound?

Would it be much faster if there was specifically a tool for audio sync?

[Trevor Meier]

Thanks for the info Jabez! Great to get some first hand accounts while we wait...

[Ken Corben]

That is an impressive behind the scenes achievement - thanks for sharing and pulling it off - WOW!

[Seán_T]

I believe once the camera is shipping it will create the reference quicktime wrappers for you as it shoots. For this project Deanan had a little utility that opened the 4k Redcode files, looked at them, and made the QT wrappers. We chose to use the 1k versions, but 2k and half-k (512 pixels) versions were also created. As long as the QTs were in the same folder as the 4k redcode media that they pointed to, there was no problem.

Hey Jabez, one quick question.
How responsive did you find final cut at 1K?

[Chris Kenny]

I believe once the camera is shipping it will create the reference quicktime wrappers for you as it shoots. For this project Deanan had a little utility that opened the 4k Redcode files, looked at them, and made the QT wrappers. We chose to use the 1k versions, but 2k and half-k (512 pixels) versions were also created. As long as the QTs were in the same folder as the 4k redcode media that they pointed to, there was no problem.

I'd guess one of Red's workflow guys would know better, but... can this trick deliver online-quality footage to QuickTime apps? That is, can I just create 2K proxy wrappers, and then use that footage like 2K QuickTime footage in any app that supports QuickTime, eventually rendering out straight from the proxies? Or is the image data presented to QuickTime apps using this trick lower bit depth, with a fast low-quality debayer, etc.?

[Simon Blackledge]

From what Ted said I gather the proxy mode simply looks at every other block/pixel to get 2k.. so it misses out some.. 1k miss more out in the read etc.. but is fast.

Pretty sure you'll get better quality actually down sampling full4k, rather than skipping over data. Though if it downsamples hats off :)

Thanks for the rundown!..

S

[Corrado Silveri]

Thanks for your quick reply, Cogito.

Hoping to hear you soon...

[Deanan]

Could some explain this part to me and how you get the 1k proxies. Thanks

The Quicktime codec decodes the original 4k file but only sends 1k to
the app (FCP in this case).


Thanks for the great explanation Jabez!


Deanan

[Deanan]

Pretty sure you'll get better quality actually down sampling full4k, rather than skipping over data. Though if it downsamples hats off :)

S

For final quality 2k/HD, yes you do want to do the bayer
conversion from the full 4k. We're still working on it
so it's hard to talk about it at the moment (because
it'll end up working differently than it is now).


Deanan

[Deanan]

The Online process basically involved manually going into redcine and extracting in a useable 4k format all the shots that we had used in the offline. This task was bravely tackled by Weta Digital and their editorial and I/O teams.

We ended also writing a very quick conform tool that was unfortunately
finally working a few hours too late for Weta Digital to use
(they were almost done with the rendering at that point).
It simply took the edl and batch output all the frames
matched to the edl. (not really rocket science)

I'm still in awe at all that Jabez and everyone else at PRP / Weta
did in such a short timeframe. Really amazing.

Deanan

[david farland]

I wish all responses were as clear as yours....Jabez!!

You've help a lot of people (not wasted their time) with clear, simple & complete explanations.

Cheers,

PS: thanks Deanan

[david farland]

Okay,

Just to summarize editing native RED 4K in FCP.

Ans: It’s pointless!

For 4K Finish

Step 1. Ingest down rez native 10bit 4K Raw onto the FCP timeline. (Use REDRAD to select Rez)

Step 2. Offline edit. Produce EDL/XML for Red RPL to produce 4K online files (Cuts etc must be compliant with RPL & online ingest)

Step 3. Online on 3rd party grading system.


FCP can’t do any more than this for a 4K finish! Apple Color can only handle 8bit RGB 2K!

Cheers,

[Nick Shaw]

Apple Color can only handle 8bit RGB 2K!

Is this definitely the case? Apple are a bit vague on this on the Color spec page. They talk a lot about 32-bit float internal processing in Color, and that it supports reading and writing 2k Cineon and DPX files, but they do not mention the bit depth. I know FCP is still restricted to 8-bit in RGB, but does this also apply to Color? Anybody…?

Final Touch 2k could work with 10bit Cineon and DPX files. I kind of assumed this would still be the case with Color.

[Graeme Nattress]

Colour is not restricted in that way, and does RGB at 32 float.

Graeme

[Nick Shaw]

Thanks Graeme. You answered while I was still typing.

Nice to meet you at NAB by the way, and apologies if I was rather over sycophantic about your genius!

[david farland]

There is no support for 4K on the spec sheet.

Color spec's say 4:4:4 @ 2K.

Also no mention of RGB output bit depth. happy to assume 10 but.....

If anyone knows of a way to edit native 4k in FCP/Color...please tell me!!

Also I hope that Redcine may have the same EDL compliance from Color to Redcode API as FCP to Colour but 4K effects/cc.....nah!

Cheers,
DF

[Mark K.]

Just to clear this up for my uneducated self - so to edit your 4K footage what you do is make a lower-resolution (1K) copy of your 4K footage, edit that 1K footage (because it's much faster to edit with), and then output your 1K edit using the 4K footage? (the 4K timecode matching that of the 1K edit?)

[Chris Kenny]

Just to clear this up for my uneducated self - so to edit your 4K footage what you do is make a lower-resolution (1K) copy of your 4K footage, edit that 1K footage (because it's much faster to edit with), and then output your 1K edit using the 4K footage? (the 4K timecode matching that of the 1K edit?)

Sort of. The 1K isn't actually a copy; it's being extracted directly from the original 4K files, using wavelet decoding tricks.

[Graeme Nattress]

That's right Chris - one file, the 4k master file can be viewed as 1k, 2k or 4k (or 0.5k or postage stamp size too for that matter).

Graeme

[Anders Holck]

I think the confusion started because Cogito (In his excellent post, btv.) mentioned 1k Quicktime reference files.
But it really is the 4k raw file, just decoded to a 1k image buffer, right?

[Graeme Nattress]

Yup, the 1k quicktime movie is a couple of k in size, and just points to the 4k data file and tells quicktime to decode it as 1k rather than 4k.

Graeme

[Anders Holck]

just points to the 4k data file

Sorry for being thick headed.....so the camera records in a custom datafile format+a quicktime file referencing that?

[Graeme Nattress]

Yes, that's right. Native apps like REDCINE can read the data files direct, but for convenience, the camera makes a Quicktime reference file so that any app can read the data as 1k, 2k or 4k. Works great.

Graeme

[Chris Kenny]

Yup, the 1k quicktime movie is a couple of k in size, and just points to the 4k data file and tells quicktime to decode it as 1k rather than 4k.


What would be insanely useful is if there were both preview and high-quality modes for this process. In 'preview' mode, the QuickTime wrapper would instruct the decoder to use wavelet tricks to extract footage of the appropriate resolution and pass that to the app. In 'high quality' mode, the QuickTime wrapper would instruct the decoder to decode the full 4K, do a high quality scale to the appropriate resolution, and pass that to the app. This would make it really simple to get maximum quality 2K into QuickTime apps for desktop 2K finishes.

It something like this implemented/planned?

[Graeme Nattress]

There is sort of that in there at the moment, and we're in the process of refining it further.

Graeme

[Nick Shaw]

Yes, that's right. Native apps like REDCINE can read the data files direct, but for convenience, the camera makes a Quicktime reference file so that any app can read the data as 1k, 2k or 4k. Works great.

Graeme

That presumably also helps get round the 2GB file size limit

[Chris Kenny]

There is sort of that in there at the moment, and we're in the process of refining it further.


Nice.


That presumably also helps get round the 2GB file size limit

One of the Apple guys was saying on Digital Production Buzz that FCP6 is also going to have a "Log & Transfer" mode (the tapeless equivalent of "Log & Capture"). When importing footage that way, FCP could presumably concatenate files. I don't know if it will, but that would be the ideal case. Having a QuickTime wrapper that hides from apps the fact that footage is spread across multiple files is nice, but actually not having the footage spread across multiple files is even better.

I'd assume Redcine would be able to concatenate while ingesting as well.

[Anders Holck]

Actually FCP 5 has this as well, but it's only for P2 imports.
It will automatically append files spanning across multiple cards.

I believe the new "Log & Transfer" or RAD window is pretty much identical to the P2 import window, but it now imports more filetypes and gives the ability to transcode as well..

[Anders Holck]

Got a screenshot of it in FCP 6:
http://www.holckowen.com/red/import.jpg

[Jared VanLeuven]

Yup, the 1k quicktime movie is a couple of k in size, and just points to the 4k data file and tells quicktime to decode it as 1k rather than 4k.

Graeme

Graeme, so would one be able to successfully use REDCINE out in the field with a MacBook Pro?

[Graeme Nattress]

I use REDCINE on a macbook pro and it works great.

Graeme

[Deanan]

Colour is not restricted in that way, and does RGB at 32 float.

Graeme

I am curious... Will Color be called Colour depending on the
country it's sold in? :)

[M Most]

Yes, that's right. Native apps like REDCINE can read the data files direct, but for convenience, the camera makes a Quicktime reference file so that any app can read the data as 1k, 2k or 4k. Works great.

Graeme

I think I already know the answer to this, but since you're here...

I assume Scratch is what you would consider a "native" app, and also reads the Red data files directly, a la Redcine - bypassing the Quicktime approach. Is that correct? Either now or in the future ;-) ?

[Adrian T.]

Native apps like REDCINE can read the data files direct, but for convenience, the camera makes a Quicktime reference file so that any app can read the data as 1k, 2k or 4k. Works great.

Graeme

I heard that the native files have the file extension .jim!
Is that correct? Nice touch, in any case. :biggrin:

[Graeme Nattress]

No, native files are not .jim. That was just a little joke between friends.....

Yup, REDCINE handles the files natively.

I'd hope Apple don't change the name of Color to Colour in other countries or I'll have to write a seperate installer.....

Graeme

[Jabez Olssen]

Hey Jabez, one quick question.
How responsive did you find final cut at 1K?

It seemed fine to me. But I wasn't doing a great deal of effects or anything, just plain old cuts.

[lddj]

hi everyone
its mac pro intel dualcore enough for editing 4K ? and disk storage space?

[R Fogg]

lddj films, check out the first page of this thread...




I cut 'Crossing the Line' on a dual dual-core Mac Pro with FCP5, using native 4K redcode files in 1k proxy mode. It never dropped a frame.

Also my Assistant Editor was working with the native 4k files in FCP on a MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo). That too worked fine.

cheers

-Jabez Olssen

[Mark L. Pederson]

Hey Graeme -

So, you got 1T of 4K Redcode RAW media on your raid - you cut inside FCP using the 1K extraction QT's in realtime - what happens when you hit MEDIA MANAGE ...?