Dpx Editing

[Videoteque73]

Hi!

I have been given some DPX sequences to play with and I never before edited them. I'm on Mac and FCS2, how can I work them?? :cold:

Thanks!

[RivaiC]

Gluetools for FCP

[Marcus Vasques Osorio]

you can view them in XNview... as individual shots then make an action in Photoshop and convert to tiff then import directly into FCP... tedious but high quality results

mahvo

[jbeale]

I doubt you want to spend the time to get up to speed with it just to play with some frames, but Blender does run on a Mac (PPC or Intel) and it does import and export DPX (and a large number of other formats). And you can't beat the price. Free download at http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

http://www.bealecorner.com/D30/misc/RED-Blender-DPX.jpg

Question: I downloaded Blender, but I can't find where to go to get DPX>Quicktime conversions??

Answer: Blender is hugely powerful, but not necessarily intuitive at first. Originally it was made for creating 3D animation; only later did it get a video sequence editor. There is quite a learning curve. For understanding the windows and user interface, start with this Blender tutorial: http://www.blender.org/tutorials-help/tutorials/tutorial-folder/blender-user-interface-tutorial/ and then for the video sequence editor specifically: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Video_Sequence_Editing

You can configure blender with any number of subwindows or panels. By default it comes with two; upper and lower (plus a third very thin one along the top). At the lower left of each window is a box icon to "Display Current Window Type".

In the main window, click the Window Type icon to pop up the menu showing the 16 options, and select "Video Sequence Editor". Now, on the bar to the right of the window type icon should be pulldown menus labelled View, Select, Add, and Strip. Select Add->Images, this opens a file browser. You can add any kind of still image to your timeline including .DPX. Once you hit the "select images" button you can position the image as a video item on the timeline. Click above or below it to position the cursor (thin vertical green line) over the item.

Now, back to that same menu bar, click the icon box to the right of "Strip" and select "Image Preview". That replaces the timeline view with a video preview screen so you can see what the image looks like. Now, normally you'd have that view set up in a separate window, but creating windows is another story.

As for export to quicktime, in the "Buttons" panel window on the "Scene" subpanel (hit F10) you will see a button group on the right called "Format" and the default output is JPEG. Click that and see all the output options including Tiff, DPX, PNG, OpenEXR, AVI, Quicktime etc. Select Quicktime which pulls up the next menu for codec (if not, hit the "codec" button below it), and within Quicktime you can select H.264, Motion JPEG or whatever codec you like. Also in the "Format" group are buttons for resolution eg. 2048x1024, or anything else. As far as I know there is no resolution limit except for your computer memory.

Much more detail is here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Video_Sequence_Editing

[Siva Kollipara]

How about the reverse way..?
How to make convert movie into DPX files..is it the same way?

[Simon Blackledge]

What kind of movie?

Red ? iuse RedCine

From FCP.. use gluetools Export...
s

[RivaiC]

movie to DPX ?

Any DI package, REDCine, AE, Gluetools, AJA Software, etc etc A lot !

[Mike Prevette]

AE CS3 can read them natively. i'd just make a off line with quicktime and cut that.

[Clark Dunbar]

You can import the sequence directly into 'COLOR' - grade and export as any quicktime codec that's on your system.

[Videoteque73]

Wow! Thanks!!! ;-D

Lot's of options, I have to experiment! What codec do you recomend for making a Quicktime movie?? Apple ProRes??

Jbeale, I can't find where to go in Blender??

I'll also try Color, even if it's UI it's not for me!!! ;-DD

[Videoteque73]

bump! ;-D

[Thomas Mathai]

It's unfortunately that FCP is purely a Quicktime based app. I been wanting native support of DPX/Cineon in FCP for a long time.

[GlennChan]

Does Glue Tools add the DPX support that you need Thomas? (*I haven't used it so I can't give you much useful info on it.)

[Bal Deo]

If you have the aja KONA
Other option is to use the AJA KONA QT To DPX Translator for going from Quicktime to DPX
OR USE THE AJA KONA DPX To QT Translator AS THE NAME IMPLIES.
DPX TO Quicktime.
this way you use the quicktime as the wrapper for your dpx files.
and it's free to down load

[Thomas Mathai]

Yes Gluetools and the AJA DPX to QT translators are the workaround, but I always wished for native DPX support.

I am hoping that with Color and Shake having native DPX import/export, this will start migrating to FCP, Motion and Compressor.

[RivaiC]

For lifetime saver, i prefer very much to use Gluetools for FCP, as the software improves, it gives you lots of option when you want to import things out from FCP to DPX like

1. Log to Lin
2. RAW Data (meant for HD)
3. Adjustable Log Data
and lately lots of function added like different coefficients to match source, and DPX file's Pixel Chromaticity function and some others. And also i found out Gluetools YPbPr to RGB has a spot on color, no difference found in the source and after you export it out. Safe for film output.

You can't do stuff native with DPX in FCP tho. Just not meant for that. You can open DPX Sequences in FCP and see frames, but playback and edit won't be realtime.

And as for AJA QTtoDPX, if your source is RGB 4:4:4, then it's ok. If your source isn't then you have to convert it to 4:4:4 RGB file before you can export out to DPX. I got hit before and lose hours just for the conversion since our source isn't 4:4:4 RGB. The other way is to switch your easy setup to capture full SMPTE.

Regards

[Videoteque73]

Lot's of interesting info!!!

I would love to know where to go inside Blender to make the conversions...??

[Dane Brehm]

RED CINE works the best and tutorials are up too. They've also been posted on vuze.com.

[Videoteque73]

After Effects seems the easiest way!!!