Mixing RED and HD formats

[Steve Phillipps]

I'm hoping to use RED in a production which will be mostly shot on Varicam, and the main stumbling block would be whether it'll fit in easily with post. It'll be FCP, offline from tape, then onlined myabe in Smoke I think. I have visions of the editors sitting down with a timeline in front of them as normal, mostly Varicam, then dragging R3D clips in and dropping them straight into the timeline to mix with the Varicam shots. Then at online they obviously take the source tapes to Smoke or whatever, re-digitize and grade. But where do the R3D files fit in?
If they can't make this work painlessly they won't do it, so any clear, easy workflow here?
Many thanks,
Steve

[M Most]

I'm hoping to use RED in a production which will be mostly shot on Varicam, and the main stumbling block would be whether it'll fit in easily with post. It'll be FCP, offline from tape, then onlined myabe in Smoke I think. I have visions of the editors sitting down with a timeline in front of them as normal, mostly Varicam, then dragging R3D clips in and dropping them straight into the timeline to mix with the Varicam shots. Then at online they obviously take the source tapes to Smoke or whatever, re-digitize and grade. But where do the R3D files fit in?
If they can't make this work painlessly they won't do it, so any clear, easy workflow here?

Give the Red files to a facility (maybe the one that has the Smoke you're using) and have them record the material to an HD tape format. Proceed from there as you do with the Varicam material.

Sometimes there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

[Steve Phillipps]

How would they do that, through REDCine? If so would they "grad" in REDCine and then transfer to tape? Problem with that is obviously time spent grading material that won't be used. Or can you edit FCP with proxies etc. then just transfer the neccessary shots to tape after processing in REDCine, then into Smoke?
Steve

[M Most]

How would they do that, through REDCine? If so would they "grad" in REDCine and then transfer to tape? Problem with that is obviously time spent grading material that won't be used. Or can you edit FCP with proxies etc. then just transfer the neccessary shots to tape after processing in REDCine, then into Smoke?
Steve

That depends on what equipment they have, how much time you give them for turning it around, and how they want to do it. "Grading" is no more necessary than it is on your Varicam footage provided the exposure is sensible and the camera was set up properly. If they have a Scratch system running on one of the new platforms that allow full debayered playout in real time (or a "Scratch Cine" system, which does the same thing) they can really just load and play directly from the R3d files to whatever tape format they support (HDCam SR, HDCam, D5, whatever). No processing required. If they don't have that, they might do a simple conversion using either Final Cut or Compressor. If better quality is required (depends on both the material and your specific requirements) they can use Redcine or Red Alert, then play out the result using Final Cut. It's up to you and them.

In most offline situations, you want all the footage to be available to the editor, so in many, if not most cases, you would play all the footage out to tape, do your offline, do an online conform, and then do tape to tape color correction (or some variation of that) to pull it all together and do whatever color tweaks you require. Of course, there are many options, and what you do should be determined by how much material you have, how much time you have, the level of perfection expected and required, and what equipment is available to both you and your post facility.