4k RAW vs. 2k when creating 1k files

[J. Hansen Colacarro]

Hello,

I'm working as an assistant editor on a film which used a RED camera during production. Now we're in post and we've cut a rough edit and are preparing to down-convert our 2k pro res files into 1k pro res files-- we're just going to need to reduce the clip size for the full-on edit, then conform back to 2k for final export. Is it best to down convert the 2k files using compressor? or to go back to the original RAW files and make them all from them (took 3 weeks last time). Then what do we have to do for the conform? Is there an automated way to do it? Or does it have to be done by hand.

Thanks for any help whatsoever.

Jeff

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Why do you need to down-convert them? Is it a performance issue with the edit system? I guess I'm just trying to wonder why you want to go through the hassle of creating a 1K file to edit with if you're going to conform back to 2K ProRes anyway.

Compressor is an OK way to go, if you're going to conform back to the 2K ProRes, it doesn't really matter does it? You may actually get faster turn-around time generating new ProRes files from the R3D files though. Done through RedRushes you could use 1/4 medium setting out to 720p ProRes or something and burn through the clips pretty fast.

[J. Hansen Colacarro]

Jeff,

Thanks for responding.
after speaking with the director and getting more feedback from him, here is what he said:

it's a performance issue-- as the FCP project gets bigger and the timelines more complicated, the playback stutters and slows down the edit process. We've got a Mac Pro 3.0 ghz, 16gigs of RAM, FCP 6.0.5 and all our media is on 1T drives in the internal bays-- 60% on a RAIDed pair and 30% on a single drive. 10% is on an external RAIDed pair. Stuttering happens with all the footage, intermittantly, at all playback qualities. The exact same footage is being used by the assistant editor, on a G5 with external G RAID drives-- they're 500gig drives RAiDed into a pair. Maybe the size of the drives is affecting read time?

Is one work-around possibility to make smaller files, reconnect the media to them in the same projects so that we don't lose all the work we've done so far. Finish up the edit, then reconnect back to the 2k files? Is anyone doing that? Or will FCP need to constantly render all the smaller files, making that a stupid idea.

[Michael Cioni]

Jeff-
I've worked on 150+ Red jobs and just came across another client experiencing the same issue. The cheapest & fastest compromise was to take all the source files and process them in RedRushes at 1/8th quality to 480p, ProRes SQ. These were rendered in greater than real time, so if you have a couple machines working for you, you can literally do it in a few days (we have a render farm and did it overnight).
Either way, once the files are rendered, we wrote a script to amend the suffix of the ProRes movies and were able to efficiently and quickly relink them to the original FCP timeline.
For offline, this is a good way to save the work you've done and get your kit performance back up. After the picture is locked, one can easily reconform the R3D source files from your XML output since all necessary metadata is retained in the RedRushes outputs.

michael

[J. Hansen Colacarro]

Thanks Michael.
We will try that.
fingers are crossed.
jeff

[affadn]

Thanks Michael.
really a chef idea
lisa