offline and Online FCP Workflow.

[tj williams]

This is a set of basic questions. My RED is getting close to delivery. The discussions here seem to be concerned with a much higher level of finishing than I am interested in.

Using Final cut Pro and Redcine on a pre intel mac. for offline With access to an Intel mac for online.

What are the minimum versions of qt and the minimum speed of processors and amount of memory to allow offline and HDCam compatable online?

1. is it possible to apply the quick time wrapper and use a lowest level proxy to edit offline on a pre intel mac?

2. How much time does it take to apply the quicktime wrapper? minutes oF rendering per minutes of material?
Does this vary by machine?

Once the off line edit is finished, and I want to make an online RGB color corrected output without going out of house.

1. Can I somehow render my edit list in a codec which will allow me to record from hard disk to Sony HDCam.

2. Then can I take my completed program on disk down to a service organization and record out to HDCam?

3. At what step in all this should I do the color correction
can I color correct in RED Cine before rendering to a codec which will allow me less correction.

4. Is there actually any way to automate the rendering so that only the part of the clips used in the timeline are rendered into the final codec?

5. Are there at this point other software rather than FCP and RED Cine which would be prefereable to do Offline/Online to HDCam tape as the final output?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

This is a set of basic questions. My RED is getting close to delivery. The discussions here seem to be concerned with a much higher level of finishing than I am interested in.

Using Final cut Pro and Redcine on a pre intel mac. for offline With access to an Intel mac for online.

You can't use Redcine, Red Alert or the QT wrappers (proxies) on a pre-intel Mac. Intel only.

To answer your Q's...

1. No. Pre-Intel Macs are not supported...

2. Proxies are created instantly. By the camera at record time and by the post apps. No processing time, they're just a loadable QT header with a pointer to the R3D file.


Once the off line edit is finished, and I want to make an online RGB color corrected output without going out of house.

1. Lots of options here. But you will need an Intel Mac to do any rendering or processing of the R3D and QT wrapper files. But you can go out to ProRes, XDCAM, etc.. ProRes is a good choice and it can be played out through AJA and Decklink cards or their external boxes like the IOHD. It seems that the upper end AJA cards like the Kona3 can play back the _H (2K from 4K) proxy and 2K proxy inside FCP in real time over the SDI output to go direct to an HD deck.

2. If they support the codecs and formats you bring them, sure. Talk to them first and see what they take. Once again, if they're a Mac supportive shop, ProRes will be a good answer.

3. Redcine is good for primary CC, but may or may not fit your needs. Supposedly, we will eventually be able to create color grades and LUTs (or "looks") in Redcine that can be applied to the QT proxies. But I think your workflow may be best suited by editing the proxies in FCP with primary CC done in redcine or FCP and then conforming back to Redcine via something like RedTrip to output ProRes files. Or you could do your primary CC in Redcine, output to ProRes, edit and then render final to ProRes or whatever HD codec you need.

4. Yes, generate your XML for your offline edits in FCP and use RedTrip to conform back to Redcine. Another way is to do your edits in FCP, replace your _M or _H proxies you're editing with the full res _F proxy and render out from there.

5. See SCRATCH

[twotallmen]

If you conform back to Red Cine what happens to dissolves, wipes, of other fx that have been added at offline stage?

[Scott Simmons]

they are gone. RedCine isn't really made to conform, I'd say. It's more made to do grading and then get those R3D files back out into some other high end format for true conform. Like DPX or TIFF sequences. Or there is Scratch.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Yep, transitions are gone.

Transitions in FCP are also rendered at 8bit with most current workflows too.. So there is no real clean answer just yet.

For most practical purposes, the best answer just yet may be to do a preliminary CC in Redcine and output to ProRes HQ. Take those ProRes files into FCP and do your edit, complete with transitions and output to your final desired format. To go beyond that, we start talking about getting real technical or finishing in SCRATCH.

Hopefully many new options will come to light at NAB.

[tj williams]

Hi Jeff
So I color correct the Qt proxies and this carries through to the final rendered Pro res files? or I render to prores then color correct those files in Red Cine???

So my offline contains no transitions or overlays and I put those in onto the Pro res files after they are rendered in FCP6 and are the transitions still 8 bit? What about overlays does the underlying video then render as 8bit also?

Seems like a minimum system to edit this would be a intel mac with a kona card. Is there any laptop solution for out put to tape? Good if so since I will have to buy a mac laptop in any case for field monitor and download from the cards/mags use.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

TJ, there's a lot of possibilities here, someone could really write a book on this.

FCP rendering for RGB is limited to 8bit. But YUV is 10bits by default or can also have a "high precision colorspace" option (16bit?). So you can get 10bits or higher when working in a YUV format like ProRes 422.

If you have the time to process into ProRes before editing, a good option would be to do the preliminary CC in Redcine and output to ProRes 422 HQ with a full debayer. Then you can edit your ProRes footage right in FCP, have full access to your transitions and other effects, footage already had a color pass and exposure tweaking, etc.. before being converted and down-sampled to ProRes.

The other option, which is quicker, is to dive right into FCP and edit with the _H proxies. They still produce great results, but will show some aliasing and other effects because they're not derived from a full debayer operation on the footage. You can do transitions like dissolves, wipes, etc.. just like other natively supported codecs and render out to your desired format. But CC will have to be done in FCP or Color or other application that fits in that loop. It's a more convenient workflow, but you sacrifice some image quality. The _H proxies are still quite good since a 2K proxy is still derived from a 4K source.

_H proxies can be played out real-time on a Kona card (and presumably Decklink as well) over SDI. I'm getting real-time performance on _H proxies on my new Mac Pro, but I haven't done any serious editing just yet and I don't know if that would hold up with more than one stream or not. I personally don't have a Kona card or similar to test. I'm waiting for my camera and NAB before I buy any more gear. If you switch over to ProRes, then there's a lot more known factors to the workflow. The only real catch is you have to pre-render out of REDCINE or RED Alert to create your ProRes files in advance (but theoretically gain some quality over the _H proxies if you do it right).

ProRes can be handled in real-time from a laptop via FW800 to an AJA IOHD and output to SDI, DVI, etc.. So if you're going to be cutting on a laptop and will be sending out to tape, ProRes to IOHD may be a pretty good option for you.

I would wait and see what happens at NAB before spending a bunch of money though. I'm expecting to see some new workflow possibilities.

[Uli Plank]

Have a look at these papers, from Eskatonia, a fellow lister here at reduser:

http://www.coremelt.com/support/workflow/

They explain very well how to preserve 10 bit quality in FCP.

If you want to stay in Apple's FCS, your only choice is Color for grading, which is currently limited to 2K.

While it may sound strange to do RED on a laptop, it's absolutely possible in 2K or 1080 HD with a current Intel MacBookPro. The cheapest output option to tape is the Matrox MXO, it will give you up to 1080 via HD-SDI.

Regards,

Uli

[tj williams]

Uli and Jeff thanks for taking the time to help lay out simple ways to make good looking HD output. As you can see I'm not an editor but must become a dit to some extent. Most of the jobs where there is not someone onboard to manage media will end at HD or SD output, for TV spots etc.
Many times I will be asked by producers what workflow to recommend and I will just about cut and paste this.
Tom

[William Wedig]

If you have the time to process into ProRes before editing, a good option would be to do the preliminary CC in Redcine and output to ProRes 422 HQ with a full debayer. Then you can edit your ProRes footage right in FCP, have full access to your transitions and other effects, footage already had a color pass and exposure tweaking, etc.. before being converted and down-sampled to ProRes.

The other option, which is quicker, is to dive right into FCP and edit with the _H proxies. They still produce great results, but will show some aliasing and other effects because they're not derived from a full debayer operation on the footage. You can do transitions like dissolves, wipes, etc.. just like other natively supported codecs and render out to your desired format. But CC will have to be done in FCP or Color or other application that fits in that loop. It's a more convenient workflow, but you sacrifice some image quality. The _H proxies are still quite good since a 2K proxy is still derived from a 4K source.

_H proxies can be played out real-time on a Kona card (and presumably Decklink as well) over SDI. I'm getting real-time performance on _H proxies on my new Mac Pro, but I haven't done any serious editing just yet and I don't know if that would hold up with more than one stream or not. I personally don't have a Kona card or similar to test. I'm waiting for my camera and NAB before I buy any more gear. If you switch over to ProRes, then there's a lot more known factors to the workflow. The only real catch is you have to pre-render out of REDCINE or RED Alert to create your ProRes files in advance (but theoretically gain some quality over the _H proxies if you do it right).

I thought someone had mentioned that compressor also works with the _H and _M files. Couldn't you load into that for your down res to something completely crappy (perhaps mini DV for editing's sake or whatever else you like) then use FCP to match back to the _F files for your sequence. You most likely won't be able to play it through anything (an AJA or something else), but to finish you could load that into something like After Effects which has a good down res-ing to then output to tape at whatever you like. I'm only guess-timating that this would work. Can somebody confirm or not confirm it?

I'm thinking that the advantages of doing something like this is that you can create your own self-contained QTs so you don't have to hold all the RAW files in one place on your machine or a server something like that. You could edit a whole feature on a simple external 500gb drive (that costs around 130 bucks now) and then match back (using the Media Manager in FCP) to the larger full res _F files to get optimum res at that point. What are the pitfalls of this? Again, I'm only speculating that this would work..

[Cüneyt Kaya]

1. asfaik the reference files are 8 bit only
2. you cant send the proxies to AE...not implemented
3.if you use 10 bit pro res as final and send this to AE, after effects will render out as 8 bit (anybody knows a workaround?)

[Aneitz]

I'm thinking that the advantages of doing something like this is that you can create your own self-contained QTs so you don't have to hold all the RAW files in one place on your machine or a server something like that. You could edit a whole feature on a simple external 500gb drive (that costs around 130 bucks now) and then match back (using the Media Manager in FCP) to the larger full res _F files to get optimum res at that point. What are the pitfalls of this? Again, I'm only speculating that this would work..

This is what I'm doing on a current project. I personally think editing with DV res self-contained files is a more reliable way to go. Working in unlimited RT seems like disaster waiting to happen when there's clients in the room, ya know? Plus you can carry the entire edit on a FW drive home with you, etc...

What I'm doing is initially creating my DV files with Compressor and having them write to the source folders. Then I hand drag and copy these files to my editing HDD's "capture scratch" but I don't remove them from my .r3d folders. Time consuming, yes. After edit is done you tell FCP to reconnect media for everything and force it to look at your drive with the .r3d files. Then you can RedTrip.