R3D/Vegas workflow for beginner

[Tony Wilkes]

Hi folks,

I'm working on a series of short projects shot on RED which I'll be putting together using Sony Vegas. I've done a lot of audio editing before but just at the start of my foray into video.

My question is at what point should I be correcting the colour and sound (e.g. EQ, compression). My head tells me that I should correct the master files either before or after I edit, so that any changes are then cascaded down to all the subclips I've used. But most things I've read suggest that colour/sound is applied on a clip-by-clip basis, which seems really fiddly to me if I've got a ten minute sequence using subclips from many different files, meaning I'll be repeating the same corrections over and over.

And with sound in particular, processing can only be applied at the track level, which means if I wanted different EQ profiles for different scenes I'd have to put them all on different tracks, possibly ending up with dozens of tracks.

I'm fine once everything's on the timeline, but at what stage should I correct the R3Ds?

And if anyone could point me towards a guide to colour grading R3Ds in Vegas, that would be fandabbydozee.

Cheers for your help,

Tony

[Thommes Ulfeng]

Hi, Im not much of a color-grading workflow expert, but I have learned a lot from reading McGregor and the conversations about Vegas here. Many knowlegeable folks here.

Again welcome, feel at home here, and good luck with your projects

[donatello b]

in general i wait until i have a locked edit until i color correct ..
i might make a slight adjust to clips that are a dark or light while editing ..
i do not create sub clips when editing Red clip's ...

you can select several Red clips and apply the one setting to all the clips you selected ...in Vegas PROJECT MEDIA window choose the clips ( hold down ALT and select several clips by left clicking mouse on each clip ) you want to correct ...after you have selected your clips ...then right click on one of them (be sure to have the curser in the time line on one of the clip you selected so you can see the adjustments in the preview window) and choose file format properties - the Red window will pop up .. now enter your adjustments then click OK ... if you don't like the adjustment you can't hit UNDO .. you have select all the clips again and make adjustment ...

i tend to make a general CC using the Red tool in Vegas .. then i fine tune using V9 CC & 2ndary CC .... you can save those settings within Vegas and give them a name .. IE: if i have a close up in scene 10 of Sue that i used several times .. i 'll CC the 1st time then save the plug-in chain as sc10 cu Sue .. it is then saved and next time i use the shot and i click on event FX i look under filter packages and it will be listed there ... so you might end up with 40-50 saves custom fx's ...

i also usually wait for a locked edit before i start working on audio ...
if it's just a single interview i'll use V9 audio .. Vegas audio FX applys to the audio track ( where's as on video track you can either apply FX to the clip or whole track )
i might have to break the single audio into 5-10 audio tracks depending on the problems ... each audio track will have a special FX settings..IE: track 1 = audio is good ..track 2 =maybe during the interview there was a loud truck that was parked outside for several minutes ...track 3 perhaps at times there was a high pitch sound in background from ? ...track 4 perhaps the fridge went on for several minutes .. track 5 .. perhaps the forced air heater/air condition went on ...etc

if the project is more feature like or drama type ... then i'll use combination of sound fordge & Vegas ... when you use sound forge .. you click on the audio event and right click = open in sound fordge = after you make the adjustments in SF it then saves the audio back in Vegas TL on top of the orginal audio ( labels them as takes 1,2,3,4 etc ) ... sometimes i might make 3-4 different corrections of same audio section, then in Vegas at anytime you can switch between any take ..sound forge allows you to apply audio FX to different clips that sit in same track in TL ( like you can apply video FX to clips in same track )

[Tony Wilkes]

Thanks for that, that's exactly what I needed to read. :)

I can't quite see the point in subclips in traditional take-by-take filming; however I did use them when taking apart a 30 minute interview.

I'll probably colour at the end, but tweak the sound as I go, as that'll give me a better idea of what shots I can successfully splice together. I didn't know about the 'take' functionality for audio, that's something that will really help.

Thanks,

Tony

[donatello b]

i don't use sub clips ..
i do create REGIONs/Markers ( which sort of acts like sub clips) in the trimmer window and save them ..
IE: region = usually give them the name of the questions i asked ...
what is blue? ...what is Red? .... i use markers inside a region as notes on something i like they said etc ...
... now next time you use vegas explorer window ( set to region view) and you highlight your clip - below you will see all the questions( region names) ... you can drag & drop the region ( question) into the TL .. you can always make the clip longer in TL by dragging out the begin/end ( can't do that with sub clips) ...

[Sami S]

how do you guys preview 4K material? I can only preview at 10fps (preview quality auto) on my dual core laptop. Not surprising but am thinking of ccing, then rendering to MXF Full HD for editing.

ss

[Tony Wilkes]

how do you guys preview 4K material? I can only preview at 10fps (preview quality auto) on my dual core laptop. Not surprising but am thinking of ccing, then rendering to MXF Full HD for editing.

ss

I have an i7 PC with Windows 7 and 4GB. I set the preview window to Preview>Auto and it usually runs between 20-25 fps depending on what effects are going on. I'm guessing that performance will decrease as computer power decreases, but FWIW I was nicely surprised that I got this performance out of my PC as I bought it specifically for working with R3D footage in Vegas.

[Cory Petkovsek]

Do sound design and color grading after edit. By the time you know better, you'll have figured out another workflow. For instance one that allows you to grade in another app. This is fine for now. Copy and paste plugins if worried about duplicate work. Set your project to 854x480 or similar, not 4kx2k. That will speed up your edit. Then change to any desired resolution for rendering.
Cory

[Tony Wilkes]

Do sound design and color grading after edit. By the time you know better, you'll have figured out another workflow. For instance one that allows you to grade in another app. This is fine for now. Copy and paste plugins if worried about duplicate work. Set your project to 854x480 or similar, not 4kx2k. That will speed up your edit. Then change to any desired resolution for rendering.
Cory

Sorry, yes, I would never be able to preview in 4K, my project settings were 1280x720 for the edit, and the preview window was often much smaller than that.

[Cory Petkovsek]

Even if you preview at 854x480, there is a great performance difference between project settings at 480p or 720p or 1080p. I set my project settings to my preview size to get the maximum performance during editing, then change it up for rendering.