What to do while waiting for RedCines release

[Kevin Halverson]

So, I must not be the only one that is waiting for the release of RedCine and was wondering, what it the lowest cost Mac that will support Red Alert? Would a Mac Mini suffice while waiting for RedCine? I have no long term use for a Mac, so I really want to minimize the investment. All I want to be able to do is get the .r3d files converted into either a DPX or TIF sequence so that I can import them into my NLE. I am fairly certain that everyone is running on higher performance machines than a Mini, but would appreciate any feedback as to the applicability of this concept.

If the schedule holds, our camera is still about 6 weeks out, but I really want to hit the ground running and may rent one before hand to shot some tests for an upcoming pilot project.

[Ken Corben]

Good question for Graeme:

Will the $599 macmini with 1.82 Ghz Intel core 2 duo with 1 MB of RAM run Redalert for .r3d file conversions for the windows guys?

[Anders Holck]

1 MB ram is a little low :-)

[Kevin Halverson]

Yeah, 1 MB is a bit small! I assume that is a typo, the minimum configuration is 1 GB of Ram. Question still remains, is this adequate to run Red Alert?

[Rob Lohman]

khmuse: I'm working on REDCINE as we speak. Since you don't have your camera, I would not get a new computer just yet.

More in the coming weeks....

[Kevin Halverson]

Hey Rob,

Thanks for addressing this question, I appreciate it. I can certainly wait a few more weeks to see how far along your coding gets.

I have spent the bulk of today writing a utility to locate and change the gama tag in .mov files so that I can test various players to see how they react or don't react to this attribute. I haven't written high level languages in awhile (normally code DSPs CPLDs & FPGAs), its kinda of a fun project.

Thanks again,

Kevin Halverson

[Noah Kadner]

Good question for Graeme:

Will the $599 macmini with 1.82 Ghz Intel core 2 duo with 1 MB of RAM run Redalert for .r3d file conversions for the windows guys?

I think you'll find that machine slow for the work. If you this kind of dough for a camera- ponying up another 1.5K for a decent Mac Pro will reward you with oddles of extra power and faster conversions. And don't forget you can always run Windows on a Mac Pro if you need the comfort factor. lol

Noah

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

Or a MacBookPro.
Added benefit is on location editing.

(As long as the battery lasts)

Jochen

[Kevin Halverson]

I think you'll find that machine slow for the work. If you this kind of dough for a camera- ponying up another 1.5K for a decent Mac Pro will reward you with oddles of extra power and faster conversions. And don't forget you can always run Windows on a Mac Pro if you need the comfort factor. lol

Noah

Its really just intended to be a stop gap measure, not a production solution at all (we are waiting for RedCine). I have tried running Windows on a Mac Pro and it works OK, but the lack of hardware support makes it useless for anything other than very basic applications. From Rob's post, it sounds like we shouldn't have to wait too long so at present, I am not too concerned. Our editorial department does have a Mac head in the bunch (FCP guy) but I am really trying hard to get him to try out CS3 since its cross platform and what most everyone else will be using on our project (we will be finishing on Scratch).

I didn't want this to turn into another PC vs. Mac thread, I really just wanted some solid advice on a stop gap solution. So, if anyone has actually tried the Mac Mini, I would love to know how it worked and how you had your configured.

[Anthony Davis]

I believe red cine will run faster on a windows platform.

[Curran Giddens]

I believe red cine will run faster on a windows platform.

uh oh. Here comes the platform wars....

[Kevin Halverson]

I believe it will run faster if you stand on one leg, jump up and down three times and spin counter clockwise while whistling Dixie. But until the application is tested and released, who the hell knows where or how it will run on any platform?

[Steve Freebairn]

I'm going to run it on my abacus! Then I'll try it on my xbox.

[Kevin Halverson]

khmuse: I'm working on REDCINE as we speak. Since you don't have your camera, I would not get a new computer just yet.

More in the coming weeks....

Since were a couple of weeks down the line now, I thought I would try and revitalize this thread. Any updates that can be shared as to progress?

[Rob Lohman]

It's up and running but there are some quality issues I'm working through...

[Marc Bachli]

It's up and running but there are some quality issues I'm working through...

Great news. I have been using (beta testing) Final touch (now color) for 2 years and can only imagine the headaches you are having developing this kind of software. Best of luck.

[André Bériault]

Cant find the link on the RED web site and my Google spews out lots of garbage...can any one direct me to the software page....please:waaa:

[André Bériault]

OK..im with Windows....will Quad Cores do ? And what about HD SDI cards...2?

[jbeale]

Cant find the link on the RED web site and my Google spews out lots of garbage...can any one direct me to the software page....please:waaa:

Red Cine has not yet been released, there is no link to it anywhere.

[Kevin Halverson]

It's up and running but there are some quality issues I'm working through...

I had the chance to sit with the latest beta build on Thursday (9-27). Is the release version going to be any different in terms of the UI? Any other updates that can be shared?

[Rob Lohman]

I had the chance to sit with the latest beta build on Thursday (9-27). Is the release version going to be any different in terms of the UI? Any other updates that can be shared?

No major UI changes are planned for the moment. Quality and making sure things are stable and work as they should is our main goal at the moment, closely followed by performance enhancements and new features / tools.

[Kevin Halverson]

I actually thought that the UI was absolutely fine in the version that I saw. Other than aesthetic changes that might be desired, the UI was intuitive and quick to manage. Will the new features include abilities to handle audio extraction (tied to edge code)? I am really looking forward to working with the application, for a beta, it looked pretty mature to me. Great work!

Any ETA estimates?

[Colin Hubick]

Is there any new information about RED CINE?

[Rob Lohman]

What do you want to know? Work is progressing on it...

[Kevin Halverson]

Hi Rob,

My only real questions are:

What are the audio extraction capabilities in terms of supported file formats and how
is related to time code (edge)

&

ETA

Thanks,

Kevin

[donatello b]

so do i assume that out of 100 camera's delivered all are Mac'ers or ended up going to Mac's ???
seems there's got to be some PC'ers in there ??

anything working for a PC without going thru a Mac ??

[Rob Lohman]

donatello: redcine will be out very soon

kevin: the camera is not recording audio yet, so no post tools do either. I'm not sure about your timecode question. Can you elaborate?

[Joel Kaye]

anything working for a PC without going thru a Mac ??

The rumors I heard were that it was all PC and not too much Mac as of a couple weeks ago... so I wouldn't worry about RedCine on a PC. Maybe Rob will clarify if both OSX and XP will release at the same time.

[Noah Kadner]

donatello: redcine will be out very soon


Sweet- can we get a sticky on this board when it's out? Sometimes the Red emails get lost...

-Noah

[Colin Hubick]

Red Cine is said to be a month away now...

[Kevin Halverson]

kevin: the camera is not recording audio yet, so no post tools do either. I'm not sure about your timecode question. Can you elaborate?

Hi Rob,

Sorry that I didn't respond until today, somehow I missed your follow up question and didn't notice it until now.

I understand that the in camera audio is not enabled, but I was assuming that there was a parallel development for the post tools side, but perhaps my questions are premature. On the chance that they are not, let me elaborate a bit.

Are the audio files standalone or interleaved within the .r3d files?
If standalone, what data structure is used?
If embedded within the .r3d files, what extraction tools will be provided?
If embedded, how is volume spanning accomplished?
Will meta data include entries for audio and if so, what information will archived?

And for the big question...

any new ETA for RedCine?

Thanks!

Kevin

[Rob Lohman]

1) interleaved inside the R3D files

2) tools are to be decided, but it makes sense to support writing out to the common audio formats including BWF

3) can you elaborate on volume spanning?

4) yes to audio metadata, but at the moment it's things like number of channels, bit depth, khz, gain setting etc. Are you thinking of some specific metadata?

[Nick Shaw]

It might be useful to have audio metadata which let you label each channel, so you could identify which channel was used for which mic in a complex multi mic setup.

[Kevin Halverson]

1) interleaved inside the R3D files

2) tools are to be decided, but it makes sense to support writing out to the common audio formats including BWF

3) can you elaborate on volume spanning?

4) yes to audio metadata, but at the moment it's things like number of channels, bit depth, khz, gain setting etc. Are you thinking of some specific metadata?

Thanks for the follow up Rob.

Let me expand upon several of these.

Audio formats. I would suggest that the best approach is the simplest and that would be .wav and/or .aif. These are simply headers appended to the raw PCM data and they adequately describe the audio content with an extremely small amount of overhead (44 or 54 bytes in the minimum expression). Between these two data types, beyond the header the only difference is the byte order for each sample block.

Volume Spanning. Since you have confirmed that the data is interleaved inside of the .r3d files, then the fact that a take could exceed a single file's capacity and 'span' across several files will have to be addressed with the tools that Red provides.

Metadata. The list you have is a great starting point.

Another point, one that really bugs me is the use of "kHz" when describing audio sample rates. A better term is kS/s or 'kilo samples/second'. Describing the sample rate as a frequency, though nearly universal across many consumer products, is not ideal.

I have a large number of additional questions, but will save them until we can see what has already been addressed when audio gets enabled and the tools are released.

Kevin

[Kevin Halverson]

I hate to bump my own thread, but...

BUMP.

Hey Rob, any update on RedCine's release?

[Rob Lohman]

yes, it's just been released