Looking For a Brief Explanation

[Todd Sanderson]

OK guys... I dig this product a lot... but I'm trying to understand how it will fit into our current work flow. We currently shoot commercials on 35MM... we dislike Hi-Def. So once, the shoot is finished, the film is sent to Duart to be processed. As the editor, I then go to NYC, get the developed stock, take it to Riot, get it color corrected and then dump it off to DVCPro50. I know some of you hi-end folks just winced, but for our small shop in Hartford, and with all the TV stations wanting BETA SP final masters, that's how we currently do it.

So if Red replaced the 35MM camera in this scenario, how would my work flow change? Actually... what the heck would the work flow be period? I would presume our DP would initially want to shoot 2K, 24P... I presume he could do that? If so, how many MB/GB per second/minute would that format eat up?

We edit with Avid Media Composer Adrenaline, v. 2.7 on a MAC.

Thanks for the helping the newbie,
Todd Sanderson
fcp2avid

[Clayton Harper]

1) You never call Du-art or drive to NYC to develop film.

2) You plug your Reddrive into a Mac running Redcine, do your one-light pass, convert to whatever format you want.

3) You switch to Final Cut Pro from Avid and skip the converting from the previous step.

4) You sign up for the first class on Apple's Color or make a relationship with somebody with an Assimilate Scratch set-up to grade your footage (such as http://www.offhollywooddigital.com).

5) Edit.

6) Keep a bunch of money you used to pay to Du-art and Riot and blow it on drinks and strippers.

[Jay A. Kelley]

You have a few different ways to go here, but to keep is close to what you are used too:

1: Buy your camera and other items (And buy me one too for this great advice!)
2: Shoot your spot in REDCODE RAW dumping to REDDrive
3: Make a back up of the footage on another hard drive (Just need a laptop and some external drives for this)
4: Take footage to a SCRATCH shop for color correct.
5: Take footage to your office, ingest, then edit, then dump to tape or whatever.

Final cut does have "color" which is a good color corrector, but learning that software may be more than you want to mess with.

Finished.
Hope this helps
Jay

[garageman]

3) You switch to Final Cut Pro from Avid and skip the converting from the previous step.

This seems unecessary and hopefully will be sorted out.

[Todd Sanderson]

Switching to FCP is flat-out not an option. I've no fear Avid will get it all sorted out soon enough. So RedCine is a conversion tool? I can flip the Red RAW data directly down to whatever I need? Say 16x9, 1-1 OMF? Then I import and edit away... just like that?

How much drive space would 2K, 24P footage take up per minute?

I'll check out the RedCine software now.

[JD Holloway]

....shoot 4K 35mm redcode raw
downconvert to 2K or 1080P or whatever in redcine for avid...
colour correct, edit, effects...
downconvert to deliverables...
beta sp?
Blech!

Start a local revolution!

[Anders Holck]

2k resolution is only available with the sensor cropped to s16mm.
The best format to match your 35mm prints is 4k Redcode Raw.
That format is ~27 MB/s which is 4x Dvcpro 50, or just about what uncompressed 10 bit SD is.

Current path to Avid is thru RedCine, where you can convert to whatever format you have installed in your quicktime folder.
With an Avid that includes DVCPRO 50, IMX, DNxHD and Avid 1:1x.

There has been no statements from Rob or Graeme that RedCine will export to either OMF or XMF, only Quicktime has been mentioned. That means that you have an extra import step inside Avid although it's pretty fast with the "Fast Import" option.

Remember that the files you now get are not color corrected, as you do in the telecine session. Only a basic correction should be possible inside RedCine.

If you still want this job done by a colorist, there are tools to conform your offline edit into an uncompressed version that you can hand off to a third party after the edit is done.

So no there is really no reason to switch tools right now, but of course be aware that other tools will work more efficiently with red footage at this point. And as you know time is money :-)

[Steve Gibby]

You'll also find a ton of answers to your workflow questions by reading through the threads on the 4k Workflow Forum here on RED User, starting with the sticky: Overview Diagram at the top of that forum page.

[Yash Keough]

If you can, take a look at Mike Curtis's page at www.hdforindies.com. He just did a workflow writeup on RED where he talks about all the options. I may be wrong but I think that he does discuss what to do besides Final Cut. He also does consulting if you're looking to get everything fully worked out. Hope that helps.

[Todd Sanderson]

Thanks guys... this gives me a great starting point. My shop has been waiting and waiting for this type of camera. We just didn't like HD and preferred to keep shooting 35MM. We held onto our SDX900 DVCPro 50 camera for the lower end stuff and stuck with 35MM for the high end stuff. But after my 2007 trip to NAB, our DP is quite interested in Red. And so the journey begins.