Current Red>FCP Workflow Thinking- Almost Perfect.

[Noah Kadner]

Noah's piping hot 2K Workflow for Red to FCP edit/finish:


Open Red Alert
Set Default Export QuickTime folder where you want the new proxies to go. You will load into Compressor from here.
Set Color Space in Settings Menu to Camera RGB
Set Matrix to Rec 709 Gamma
Correct .R3D in Red Alert(save settings as a Preset if working on many similar takes.)
When each shot is corrected, Make "High" QuickTime from File Menu.
When all shots are corrected, switch to Compressor.
Drag all proxies from QT Default Export directory into Compressor
Set to High Quality Pro Res 422 Progressive Preset.
Submit.
When Batch is complete, drag all ProRes shots into FCP and edit at 2K ProRes.


All great, except my playback in FCP is still exhibiting this gamma shift:

http://www.highroadproductions.com/red/fcp01.mov

Any ideas?

-Noah

[M Most]

Noah's piping hot 2K Workflow for Red to FCP edit/finish:
...

All great, except my playback in FCP is still exhibiting this gamma shift:


Not great if you care about retaining original time code or other metadata in the QT files. If you're never going back to the higher resolution versions, I guess that doesn't necessarily matter.

[Gunleik Groven]

Thanks Noah!

mmost:
Correct me if I am wrong, but:
Currently only Scratch (or maybe not even Scratch yet?) offers offline/online tools based ont the RAW files?

Without scratch, (and basically for 4k) the workflow would look something like:
1. export dpx
2. convert dpx to offline format
3. offline
4. online with the dpx's as source format.

(I'd love to be wrong here)

What I've seen a couple of times now, is that you can do a lot to the RAW files (in respect of recovering highlights and do basic color/contrast choices) that it may be too late to do from exported DPXs. People seem to treat the RAWs as a "filmscan" and not the RAW + metadata after basic corrections.

This is exactly why we need RedCine with built in EDL functionality.

For 2k, you could drop the qt files directly into FCP (sidestepping the Compressor stage) and choose an offline format for the sequence and render. Edit, and reset sequence presets to deliveryformat for final render/output to Color/whatever.

The drawback is FCPs poor handling of render-files, so you might find yourself hitting render more often than what you want.

But - hey -;)
I'm just a curious dude asking questions with little to none hands-on experience with the tools. (None with Scratch)

Or maybe there is a better workflow out there?
As I said: I would love to be corrected on this.

Cheers!

gunleik

[Noah Kadner]

Gunleik-

Exactly, this workflow is what you can do with the versions of the software available as of today. Going the Red Alert .R3D to DPX route is higher image quality yes. But the non-batch nature makes it a more manual task and it takes a long time to output frame by frame. And you still need to go DPX(or TIF) to QuickTime anyway to get something to cut with in FCP.

If the ultimate output is 1080p or 720p, then IMHO you're ok image-quality wise going Red Alert> Proxy High> ProRes via Compressor. You can batch ProRes from the proxies in Compressor and have something ready to cut in FCP without too much manual effort. You still have the ProRes gamma shift(or at least I do) but you're cutting 2K in FCP and at very nice image quality, that you could finish out with in 2K and below. You could even go ProRes 2K to Color for finishing there.

More ideal is of course take your proxy EDL to Scratch and conform and finish there, but that's a somewhat costly option.

-Noah

[Gunleik Groven]

Thanks again Noah!

How disappointing to be right, at times... -;)

I am happy with the 2k/1080 route, though. I just have clients who are interested in the higher end route, and as I think workflows is what is going to give me Red $$ and not the cam in itself, I have to dress for different occations (knowledgewise).

Or to stay in RedLingo:
I need to ninjafy myself -;)

Stuart said RedCine will be out in a week on another thread.
Keeping my breath (and trying to find a cam for rent)

Gunleik

[M Most]

Thanks Noah!

mmost:
Correct me if I am wrong, but:
Currently only Scratch (or maybe not even Scratch yet?) offers offline/online tools based ont the RAW files?


Scratch is not an offline editing system. It is a picture finishing system. There are significant differences. Trying to do serious creative editing in Scratch would be futile, in part because of a serious lack of audio support, but also because that's not what it's designed for. On the other hand, conforming, playing, and manipulating full sized, uncompressed 2K or larger frame sequences with real time multiple lookup tables and support for dual link digital cinema projectors, along with multiple choices for color calibration to ensure that the digital cinema, film, and HD video deliverables all match - along with doing the actual creative color correction, complete with unlimited secondaries and area isolations - all in real time - would be completely inappropriate for Final Cut.

Editing and finishing are very different things with very different needs, regardless of how hard Apple - and some of the users here - want to think that they're not.

[Gunleik Groven]

Thanks Michael!

Gunleik

[Noah Kadner]

Editing and finishing are very different things with very different needs, regardless of how hard Apple - and some of the users here - want to think that they're not.

I hope *some* is not referring to me. :) I'm well aware Scratch is a grading application. The ideal workflow is locked picture edit 'offline 2K- who ever thought we'd be saying that' in FCP and then 4K finish... somewhere. Ideally included in Red Cine but if not I suppose for a premium in Scratch.

-Noah

[Michael Ragen]

Should Redalert be run in a 2.2 monitor gamma setting and then switch back to 1.8 for FCP6?

[Cüneyt Kaya]

noah did you find a solution for the gamma shift?
And what about deadmikes question?

[roryhinds]

Compressor retains the time code info.

you'll still need to input the REEL NAME in FCP manually as RED don't supply this info yet.

[Cüneyt Kaya]

you'll still need to input the REEL NAME in FCP manually as RED don't supply this info yet.

is red working on this?

[Noah Kadner]

No luck on the gamma shift yet.

Noah

[Mark L. Pederson]

is red working on this?

Fear not. Good things come to those who (are forced to) wait.

[Kip Hewitt]

No luck on the gamma shift yet.

Noah

Hey Noah,

I feel your pain on the gamma shift issue. Here's what I have discovered so far:

1. FCP out of the box does not "support" anything bigger than 1920 x 1080. Meaning, you can play it, but it's not really in Real Time glory mode. So if you are making direct 2k files (2048x1024) in Compressor that might be a problem. I'm hoping I'm wrong about this...

2. The particular blend of gamma shift you (and I) are experiencing is, I believe, somehow caused by the RT pull down settings, and/or the Quicktime Quality settings (Sequence> General > Quicktime Video Settings> Quality> ---%).

I don't even think this is technically a gamma shift. If you load the footage into the Viewer window it plays fine, right? I think this has something more to do with Timeline Frame Size or Pixel Aspect Ratio.

I do not have the total solution yet, these are simply my observations so far. The only real solution I have found is to convert the footage to PROREZ 422 (HQ) 1920x1080 24p 48kHZ. Once imported into FCP 6, I can drop the footage into a Sequence. The sequence conforms to these settings just fine and I have no problem.

What tipped me off to this was the ProRez version of the Crossing the Line trailer. If you have it, try bringing into FCP and see for yourself.

No 2K footage (including my own) has worked for me any other way. I hope someone can help fill in the blanks here for us. I would love to be able to edit in a native 2K sequence (without a Kona/Blackmagic) upgrade.

Hope this helps get the dialogue going. This is an annoying problem with little to no documentation.

99

[Noah Kadner]

Ah good suggestions, I'm going to try this. One thing I noticed is that if you encode to AIC rather than ProRes at the same resolution you get no shift so it's a ProRes RT situation or so it seems.

Noah

[Jannard]

Solution has been posted. FCP2, QT7, new pref. to check in QT.

Jim

[Cüneyt Kaya]

got it

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?p=83312#post83312

[Kip Hewitt]

The Quicktime "Enable FCP Studio Color Compatibility" gamma preference doesn't seem to have any effect on this particular issue.

Noah, is this your experience as well?

[Simon Blackledge]

it's rubbish.. it works on one mac.. not on another.. Apple.. needs sorting@£$@£££

[Ed Watkins]

O.k, can someone help me out here (I apologize if this has already been answered)?

I have been trying to comprehend the FCP work flow in light of all the postings about REDCINE.

I want to go from a 4K 16:9 capture to HD 1080p finish (for broadcast) using FCP to edit.

What is the most efficient route (not using Scratch or the AJA IO HD)?

[Rob Lohman]

Load the 2K reference QT movies and crop them to 1080p. This will give you a pretty high quality but might show a bit of aliasing (it's not ultra high quality). This will change in the near future.

[Ed Watkins]

Load the 2K reference QT movies and crop them to 1080p. This will give you a pretty high quality but might show a bit of aliasing (it's not ultra high quality). This will change in the near future.

Thanks Rob,
Currently, what about if I don't want to crop the movies, just output them at 1080p or 720p?

[Rob Lohman]

In general you tend to not want to down sample 2K (2048 x 1152) to 1080 (1920 x 1080). It's such a small down sample that it probably will not look very good. Hence most people seem to crop the 128 x 72 difference.

Obviously if you want to down sample then I'm sure FCP provides in that option too. But I am no FCP usage guru outside how the REDCODE codec integrates with it.

[M Most]

If the ultimate output is 1080p or 720p, then IMHO you're ok image-quality wise going Red Alert> Proxy High> ProRes via Compressor. You can batch ProRes from the proxies in Compressor and have something ready to cut in FCP without too much manual effort.

I did some thinking about this and other alternatives over the last couple of days and tried some things to see what was possible. Here's an alternative to your method that involves less conversion time for projects that have a quick turnaround.

1. Make the Quicktime wrappers for all 3 extractions (i.e., P, M, and H), either by getting them from the camera (is that possible now? I don't really know...) or creating them in Red Alert.
2. Create 3 subfolders inside the folder in which you have the QT wrappers. Call them, perhaps, Proxy, 1K, and 2K. Move or copy all of the "P" files to Proxy, all of the "M" files to 1K, and all of the "H" files to 2K.
3. Go into each of the 3 subfolders and rename all of the files to get rid of the last 2 places in the name - i.e., drop the "_P," the "_M," and the "_H." This will make all of the folders contain files with the same name - and, importantly, the same name as the original R3D file they point to. This is OK because they're all in different folders. Its importance will become obvious in a moment.
4. Go into Final Cut and create a Standard Definition, 23.98 project with the ProRes 422 codec. This will make the default sequences NTSC/SD, 23.98, with ProRes encoding.
5. Import the QT files from the Proxy folder and begin cutting. If you need to sync double system sound, you can do that here. Make sure the RT settings are set for Unlimited RT, and Playback quality set to either Dynamic or a setting that allows smooth playback (Low should almost always work). This will give you a sequence in which the Red material is sized in Letterbox format within a 1.33 frame. The images will be a bit small, but here's the advantage: You can use a laptop (although if you do, you might want to consider using a faster drive, such as a G-raid connected by FW800). Everything will play at real time with little to no skips. And you can do real time simple effects, such as dissolves - even color corrections - that will play very smoothly, with no rendering at all. You can also render very quickly to do a SD playout if you wish, to make viewing DVCams or DVD's.
6. When the picture is locked, media manage your final sequence to create an offline project in a proper delivery format - say, 1920x1080, 24p, either uncompressed or ProRes or something similar.
7. In the new project, select all clips in the Master Clips bin and reconnect them to the files in the "2K" folder. This should be straightforward because the clips have the same names as those used in the original offline project, and any sound files can either be reconnected, or the final cut track exported from the offline and reimported here.
8. Resize everything as necessary. Color correct shots as needed. Render All or export to a self contained QT movie. Or export a QT reference movie to Compressor for further options.

This workflow has the advantage of avoiding the file conversion time for all but the final sequence, much as you will likely be able to do in the future when Pull List functionality is available in Redcine. It allows you to start cutting almost immediately, and get more familiar real time functionality and feel during creative editorial. The only real hitch is the quality of the debayer when done via Quicktime directly from the 2K QT wrapper. However, in the tests I did, it seemed to be pretty good - and I was using some "worst case scenario" shots involving trees, moving ocean water, and the like.

Thoughts?

[fightordie]

mmost. That is brilliant. The first to address creative editorial as a priority. Wonderful post.
How would you approach greenscreen shots for quick laptop editorial, if possible.

[Rainer Fritz]

what i have done is, that i made sequence in fcp with redcode... imported all H proxies generated from the camera...
then it was edited and playback was very ok...
the problem is, that the H proxies of the shots which has a framerate over 25 F/s, are only 1k in original. So I exported them via Redcine as a 2k Tiff sequence. Then I opened them in QT and converted them to a Animation codec file. Because when I export them direct from Redcine to a animation codec file there are at the end of the files artefacts.
After that I onlined the slomotion sequences with this QT animation codec files and I had the hole Timeline in 2k.
Then I copied the redcode timeline to a animation codec timeline, that i have the timeline in a exportable codec with a good bit depth and bandwidth.
With this timeline you can add speedramps and other nice stuff which is not possible on tiff sequences for example...
Color also didn't recognise the animation codec, so color correction can't be done...
So I put a 3way color correction in fcp on the clips and saw, that the color depth going rasterised. In Austria we say "bandagierung"...
so it would be very fine to handle tiff sequences in fcp and color....
would be very fine to get from camera and from redcine high quality proxies....


regards

[zak forrest]

7. In the new project, select all clips in the Master Clips bin and reconnect them to the files in the "2K" folder. This should be straightforward because the clips have the same names as those used in the original offline project, and any sound files can either be reconnected, or the final cut track exported from the offline and reimported here.

By "or the final cut track exported from the offline and reimported here" do you mean import the final edit's audio as a single track instead of re-importing all the audio files?

[Brenton]

This will give you a sequence in which the Red material is sized in Letterbox format within a 1.33 frame. The images will be a bit small,Do you loose the realtime playback if you make it 1.77 aspect? this'll at least give you a smaller letterbox...

B

[M Most]

By "or the final cut track exported from the offline and reimported here" do you mean import the final edit's audio as a single track instead of re-importing all the audio files?

Yes. That's a pretty common way of conforming in the professional world these days, and has been for some time. In most high end production, all of the production tracks are reprinted (well, re-imported would be a better term today) from the original elements by the post sound team, so the picture editor's track is really a guide track. This isn't always the case, but it is very common.

[M Most]

Do you loose the realtime playback if you make it 1.77 aspect? this'll at least give you a smaller letterbox...


On most machines, probably. I would recommend just leaving it in its original aspect ratio for basic editorial and fixing all of that in the "conform" (i.e., when you reconnect to the 2K version).