New Zealand's first red feature. Avid / Color Workflow

[Nigel Stanford]

We're just finishing up post on the first New Zealand feature shot on Red - "Until Proven Innocent".
The true story of David Dougherty, a famous criminal case where a man was wrongly convicted and spent several years in jail until he was freed after a long campaign by a journalist, lawyer and scientist.

Director was Peter Burger and the cinematographer David Paul.

Here's the workflow breakdown:

- Shoot on build 15, 4K 2:1, internal audio
- Copy footage from Redrive to network using finder
- Retrospect: backup to LTO3, dual copies, and verify
- Red Rushes: create Quicktime Proxy '_h' in one folder
- Metacheater: create an ALE file from the Quicktimes
- Avid media composer: import ALE, then import Quicktimes as DNxHD 120 1080p
- Avid: edit film, export EDL file
- Monkey Extract: Load EDL, export DPX 1080p files from the cut
- Apple color: Import EDL and DPX files, grade
- Apple Color, export uncompresed quicktime
- Final Cut Pro: Import Prores and 5.1 audio, play down to HDCAM SR master


During the shoot, DVD rushes were created using this workflow:

- Red Rushes: Create Quicktimes 1080p prores
- Apple Compressor: load "_p" files and batch convert the audio to AIFF
- Final Cut Pro: load the Quicktimes and AIFF, add a slate, export using compressor as M2V and AC3 files
- DVD studio Pro: import M2V and AC3 files, export DVD PAL 16:9

The movie was shot at 25fps so there were no time compression steps for the DVD or the final deliverable.

All in all, worked pretty smoothly. All footage fit on 7 LTO3 tapes. Media costs are therefore pretty much non existent. The cost to shoot on film would have been about $380,000.
Footage is stored on the network on a RAID 6 dual parity drive, on 2 LTO3 tapes, and also copied another copy to a RAID 5 drive for added paranoia :)


Issues:
- M2V takes a long time
- DVD gamma was a bit washed out, could have experimented with gamma settings in compressor
- The initial copy step from Red Drive to the network used finder. We had no problems, but we have before - if something fails it doesn't exactly deal with it very well. We're going to build something simple with some verification steps, which will also save to lto3.

If anyone would like further info on the setting used, let me know!

[Alex Carr]

For your DVD Dailies, it would be faster to just Drop the _P proxies into a SD timeline and export Straight to M2v. Only if you need DVD Dailies before you need Pro Res Files to Edit with.

I was in charge of doing Dailies in the Production office ON Location. I wasn't doing any Conversions to Pro Res, just DVD's

[Greg Huson]

Been using 'Extract' to work in Avid with help from your monkey-man Craig, and Michael P @ Avid. Pretty great little tool you came up with there, and it gets a little better each day.

How was the move to Color? Did you have to 'pregrade' the red-raw any before going to DPX? I'm finding issues with both 4:2:2 and DNXHD with stepping/banding in the image when I stretch the blacks. So far, using different scaling filters is helping a lot, but can still has a real '4-bit' look on underexposed stuff. Pre-grading the image has helped- essentially lowering contrast and stretching the usable image over the whole 'envelope,' then adding contrast back in in final correction.

I like color in concept, but prefer Avid to FCP - (although we use both.) So, you graded 2k DPX- or 1080? 4:4:4 to the SR, or 1080 4:2:2 uncompressed. No 'banding' in the dark areas or subtle gradations? What about monitoring? What image were you watching while grading, scopes, etc.
(We did dailies viewing DVDs simply by tossing the _m resolutions on an FCP timeline, turning down the playback quality, hitting play- right into a DVD recorder. Worked great- FCP did viscode like the new avid plug in.)

[Greg Huson]

Point of correction- the 'banding' I'm referring to is clear in the _H proxies and even redalert, don't mean to impune uncompressed 422 or DNXHD.

[Nigel Stanford]

For your DVD Dailies, it would be faster to just Drop the _P proxies into a SD timeline and export Straight to M2v. Only if you need DVD Dailies before you need Pro Res Files to Edit with.

I head ya. The client actually watched the dailys on a projector in our theater, so in our case we weren't in a huge hurry. The DVDs were sent to continuity / production.

[Nigel Stanford]

Been using 'Extract' to work in Avid with help from your monkey-man Craig, and Michael P @ Avid. Pretty great little tool you came up with there, and it gets a little better each day.

How was the move to Color? Did you have to 'pregrade' the red-raw any before going to DPX? I'm finding issues with both 4:2:2 and DNXHD with stepping/banding in the image when I stretch the blacks. So far, using different scaling filters is helping a lot, but can still has a real '4-bit' look on underexposed stuff. Pre-grading the image has helped- essentially lowering contrast and stretching the usable image over the whole 'envelope,' then adding contrast back in in final correction.

I like color in concept, but prefer Avid to FCP - (although we use both.) So, you graded 2k DPX- or 1080? 4:4:4 to the SR, or 1080 4:2:2 uncompressed. No 'banding' in the dark areas or subtle gradations? What about monitoring? What image were you watching while grading, scopes, etc.
(We did dailies viewing DVDs simply by tossing the _m resolutions on an FCP timeline, turning down the playback quality, hitting play- right into a DVD recorder. Worked great- FCP did viscode like the new avid plug in.)

We didn't do a lot of pre-grading prior to color, basically found a setting we liked and stuck with it. Occasionally there would be a shot that needed some work, we would load that into Red Cine or Red Alert manually re-export it. Mostly night shots.

We graded at 1080p, the final deliverable is for TV. It will be 4:2:2 to the SR. The grading suite has a scope from harris videotek and a JVC LCD DT-V24DL monitor.

[Kjetil Haugen]

- Red Rushes: create Quicktime Proxy '_h' in one folder
- Metacheater: create an ALE file from the Quicktimes

Just wondering.. Is there a reason why you need metacheater still now that RedRushes can do export an ALE? Are there things metacheater can do that RedRushes can't?

Love that monkey extract app! Keep up the good work.

[Nigel Stanford]

Just wondering.. Is there a reason why you need metacheater still now that RedRushes can do export an ALE? Are there things metacheater can do that RedRushes can't?

Love that monkey extract app! Keep up the good work.

At the time of the shoot the ALE function of Red Rushes wasn't reliable...

It's amazing how quickly all this stuff changes. Every week it seems like you can remove a step from your workflow :)

FYI we wrote Monkey Extract for this project, previously we had been generating redline scripts in a spreadsheet. I'm an excel ninja but it wasn't a great way to do things, an application version was the natural progression.

[Scott Webster]

Congratulations Nigel. Can't wait to see David's work.

[Sanjin Jukic]

Thanks Nigel.

Great software for all type of RED users.