Speedgrade Raw & DPX Workflow CS-6

[Robert Hart]

Out of curiosity, would a transcode into Cineform allow Speedgrade to then work within the New Premiere. Iridas "Speedgrade On Set" is part of the SI2K image recording system which is natively Cineform. Would SI2K preset "looks" be capable of being applied to raw images from the RED camera family in this environment? Just a random thought.

[Mike Halper]

Is roundtripping between PPro and SG without need for EDL (i.e. Send to Speedgrade and Send to Premiere Pro) to stay with R3D's something we'll see as an update with CS6 like CS6.0.1 or will we need to wait until CS6.5? Is there an option for exporting XML from PPro and importing XML into Speedgreade instead of EDL, or is EDL the only way to stay with the R3D's in this release?

[Lin]

Is roundtripping between PPro and SG without need for EDL (i.e. Send to Speedgrade and Send to Premiere Pro) to stay with R3D's something we'll see as an update with CS6 like CS6.0.1 or will we need to wait until CS6.5? Is there an option for exporting XML from PPro and importing XML into Speedgreade instead of EDL, or is EDL the only way to stay with the R3D's in this release?

EDL is the only way, but it's really painless. It's usually 5 clicks in SpeedGrade to reconnect.

As for the question about Cineform: Cineform is treated like any other Quicktime codec in both Premiere and SpeedGrade. So you gain the Cineform toolset, etc. But there is nothing special as to how SpeedGrade deals with it. In terms of the SpeedGrade stereo workflow, I think it complicates matters, but if you want to stay in the Cineform stereo tools, it's a viable workflow.

Lin

[Sven Seynaeve]

still really don't understand why they have gone the dpx path, if it's actually possible in 5 clicks away, maby i'm missing something. if it turns out that easy would off course prefer going the edl way.
just hope they get this update like they mentioned in the presentation today in a "weekly" update , rather then a semester update.

[Ray Tragesser]

Patience...Rome wasnt built in a day. Not even in 6 months like the acquisition of SpeedGrade by Adobe. Remember its a 1.0 integration. I'm overly satisfied it even made it into the suite in such a short amount of time.

[Sven Seynaeve]

ok , that's right , with this release they did an incredible job, thank you adobe.

[Lin]

still really don't understand why they have gone the dpx path, if it's actually possible in 5 clicks away, maby i'm missing something. if it turns out that easy would off course prefer going the edl way.
just hope they get this update like they mentioned in the presentation today in a "weekly" update , rather then a semester update.

DPX was chosen to have a workflow that always works. SpeedGrade and Premiere are not yet aligned in terms of file format support. While SpeedGrade supports basically everything used in the film industry, including most frame sequence formats such as DPX, Cineon, EXR etc. and basically all RAW formats, including R3D, ARRIRAW, Phanton Cine, WEISSCAM, DNG etc., there are many broadcast camera formats that SpeedGrade doesn't understand. Using the DPX route in Send to SpeedGrade from Premiere ensures that the workflow still works. As we say, in this incarnation the workflow is "Rigid but viable". For RED, the EDL is the faster and more elegant way, as R3D is natively supported, including multiple RED Rocket support, etc.

Lin

[Subhadip Sen]

Yes, Send to SpeedGrade seems like an easy way to work in a broader format support. Stuff like XDCAM-EX or AVCHD is supported by Premiere Pro and not SpeedGrade. For the RAW formats, EDL is definitely the best option for now. I am sure will we see tighter integration in coming years. Would love to see a "Send back to Premiere Pro" from SpeedGrade come CS7 time, perhaps using the .Looks metadata.

Since we have your attention, Lin, can you comment on performance with AMD Radeon and FirePro GPUs? I know Fermi based Quadro is the standing recommendation, but I couldn't find much information on AMD GPUs.

[Mohammed El Sharqawy]

the only thing that I think is needed in the send to speed grade workflow is the ability to choose the format you're encoding to before sending to speed grade.. actually this feature have been in my dreams since version 5 of the cs.. coz when you start moving your project out of PPro you'll face the fact that other platforms simply doesn't support the broad range of formats that PPro does.. so, simply if you're moving the project to resolve or apple color, some formats won't be available in your composition, so, you'll have to render/convert each of the non-supported files individually from your timeline to a format that is supported by the target system..
Well, I know, SG will support the output dpx from PPro, but, the bottleneck with dpx lies on the high performance storage needed to be able to playback those dpx files, and of course the amount of the storage..
it would be great if you're able to choose the output format of the timeline exported out of PPro using the send to sg option or via project manager..

[Lin]

Can't really comment on the performance of these cards. SpeedGrade is OpenGL shader-based and doesn't use CUDA, so generally speaking those cards should be OK. Past experience shows you might need to experiment with the drivers a bit to make it all work right.

Lin