OpenEXR from REDCINE-X

[Evan Warner]

Hey all,

I'm helping a production finish a show that was shot on a red cam. They edited using M proxies in Final Cut Pro and I am now pulling VFX shots to be sent to the VFX artist. He has requested Linear OpenEXR sequences. This is my first time working with EXR and am still trying to wrap my mind around them let alone figure out how to convert into them from the raw R3D. From searching the forums it is my understanding that I can export from the R3D files in REDCINE X to OpenEXR but I can't for the life of me figure out how. Under the export options I only see DPX, TIFF, Quicktime and Avid. Is it possible to export into openEXR using redcine? If not is there another program (something free or inexpensive, we can't afford smoke or nuke or anything like that)

Assuming that I can figure it out I'm going to do the rest of it as follow.

- Assemble all of the VFX shots in a FCP sequence
- Export a XML
- Import XML into Clip finder to add handles and reconnect to R3D
- Export out of Clipfinder and into REDCINE
- Export to openEXR

Does this make sense? Am I missing something?

cheers
Evan

[Deanan]

Not yet. The nearest equivalent would be to export linear tiffs and then convert to openexr.

[Mark L. Pederson]

Just an FYI - you can make OpenEXR directly from R3Ds in Scratch.

[jake blackstone]

Just an FYI - you can make OpenEXR directly from R3Ds in Scratch.

Or FilmMaster

[Evan Warner]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the responses. There is nothing free out there is there? We really can't buy scratch or FilmMaster just to do a file format conversion.

cheers
Evan

[Jean-Charles Wolfarth]

The cheapest one would be to batch convert with Photoshop the TIF files exported from Redcine-X to OpenEXR. Thanks for your post, I didn't know about OpenEXR, it looks like a great format... Another request for Deanan ! :patriot:

[Virgil Kastrup]

xnview is free and has a free plugin for openexr
edit: sorry. was a bit fast on the trigger there. the plug only reads openexr.

[Evan Warner]

I have photoshop so I will try doing that. Thanks for the help!

I'm just a bit curious about this. Is EXR a common VFX format? If so, why is it not built into more workflow utilities from red and others? It is my understanding that it is a Open format as it's name suggests so are there shouldn't be licensing issues. Is it still quite uncommon for anyone without access to a high end composition app to be using it?

Thanks all for the help so far!

[Wolfgang Woehl]

ImageMagick is for free and handles EXR.

[Nick Shaw]

The user guide for REDcine-X talks about rendering to EXR, so I'm sure it will come in time. They just have a lot on their plates and are working through things one at a time.


ImageMagick is for free and handles EXR.

The problem though is preservation of meta-data. To use free tools you need to go via 16 bit TIFF, and that means losing timecode and other meta-data. The most affordable app I know of which can go from R3D to EXR, preserving meta-data, is Nuke.

[Evan Warner]

Hmm, that's very interesting. Well I imagine that my VFX artist is going to need metadata so that probably rules out the TIFF > photoshop workflow. Even still I just gave it a try and I'm not sure exactly what my problem is but I can't seem to figure out how to save openEXR out of photoshop. I'm running CS3 on OSX 10.6 (which does support openEXR) but it is never choice is my save dialogue boxes. What am I doing wrong...? I output my TIFF with Camera RGB color space and linear gamma space out of Clip Finder and brought them right into Photoshop and then without touching a thing and tried to save them out as openEXR but the option is not available.

Thanks again for all the help, you have all been amazing

cheers
Evan

[Charles Angus]

Hmm, that's very interesting. Well I imagine that my VFX artist is going to need metadata so that probably rules out the TIFF > photoshop workflow. Even still I just gave it a try and I'm not sure exactly what my problem is but I can't seem to figure out how to save openEXR out of photoshop. I'm running CS3 on OSX 10.6 (which does support openEXR) but it is never choice is my save dialogue boxes. What am I doing wrong...? I output my TIFF with Camera RGB color space and linear gamma space out of Clip Finder and brought them right into Photoshop and then without touching a thing and tried to save them out as openEXR but the option is not available.

Thanks again for all the help, you have all been amazing

cheers
Evan

What software is VFX using?

[Deanan]

Hmm, that's very interesting. Well I imagine that my VFX artist is going to need metadata so that probably rules out the TIFF > photoshop workflow. Even still I just gave it a try and I'm not sure exactly what my problem is but I can't seem to figure out how to save openEXR out of photoshop. I'm running CS3 on OSX 10.6 (which does support openEXR) but it is never choice is my save dialogue boxes. What am I doing wrong...? I output my TIFF with Camera RGB color space and linear gamma space out of Clip Finder and brought them right into Photoshop and then without touching a thing and tried to save them out as openEXR but the option is not available.

Thanks again for all the help, you have all been amazing

cheers
Evan

set the bit depth to 32bits and then you can save an exr in PS (CS4).

If you guys want EXR or 16bit DPX, we do accept bribes.
Fine Scotch, Chocolate, Hot Sauce, and good beer all work :)

[Jean-Charles Wolfarth]

Hmm, that's very interesting. Well I imagine that my VFX artist is going to need metadata so that probably rules out the TIFF > photoshop workflow. Even still I just gave it a try and I'm not sure exactly what my problem is but I can't seem to figure out how to save openEXR out of photoshop. I'm running CS3 on OSX 10.6 (which does support openEXR) but it is never choice is my save dialogue boxes. What am I doing wrong...? I output my TIFF with Camera RGB color space and linear gamma space out of Clip Finder and brought them right into Photoshop and then without touching a thing and tried to save them out as openEXR but the option is not available.

Thanks again for all the help, you have all been amazing

cheers
Evan

Evan, you can download a free plugin to install directly from the official website : http://www.openexr.com

I'm on PC, it works great and you'll be able to save to OpenEXR within Photoshop.

Mmm Deanan, spring is here, soon summer, chocolate isn't a good thing for you, you have to take care now... Californian beaches seem to be quite a nice place to carry on coding...

[Mark L. Pederson]

If you guys want EXR or 16bit DPX, we do accept bribes.
Fine Scotch, Chocolate, Hot Sauce, and good beer all work :)

I have been told that just because an app supports DPX does not mean it will support the 16bit DPX file type - and in fact, most apps won't support it. Is this correct?

I'd LOVE EXR out.

I'll start working on the bribe.

[Evan Warner]

Thanks guys,

I set the bit depth to 32 bit in photoshop and it worked! Awesome! I also have asked the VFX artist what software he is using.

I second the bribe too, it would be way awesome to export right out of redcine or clip-finder or something in EXR.

Thanks for all the help guys, I was pulling my hair out before this!

cheers
Evan

[Curran Giddens]

What address do we send the bribes?

I haven't made it out west for any of the events, but I've been meaning to say thanks to the Red Team for all their excellent work.

[Nick Shaw]

I set the bit depth to 32 bit in photoshop and it worked! Awesome! I also have asked the VFX artist what software he is using.

Do send a test frame to the VFX artist to make sure it is correct for him. You may find that Photoshop does not realise your TIFF is already linear, and does an sRGB to linear conversion when saving as EXR, which will be wrong.

If you have After Effects, you could ensure that TIFFs are interpreted as linear, and render as EXR.

May also be worth sending the VFX artist a TIFF as well. You won't gain any quality by converting TIFF to EXR (although with Zip compression on the file size will be smaller) and it adds an extra conversion step, and small rounding errors.