I'm in pre-production on a 30 minute short film being shot this upcoming weekend on a new RED camera. We did a camera test yesterday, and the editing side of things looks to be a bit more complicated than I imagined. Here are some of my notes, along with my thoughts on how I plan to tackle the project.
More after the jump...
Aquisition
The camera can currently record to compact flash cards, or 320GB hard drives (the RED drives have USB, firewire400 and firewire800). Footage was easy to move over to the computer from both storage mediums. The files
Each shot is stored in it's own directory as an .R3D file. Additionally, there are three quicktime proxy movies in the directory: a high quality designated by "H" (1/2 the shooting resolution), a medium quality designated by "M" (1/4 shooting resolution), and a low quality designated by "P" (1/8 resolution). So, if you're shooting 4k, those files would be 2K, 1K, and 512x256, respectively. These proxy files are actually quicktime reference files in the REDCODE format (go to red.com support to get the quicktime component), and refer to the 4K .R3D file, which can't otherwise be opened. Playback
In Quicktime Pro (I've tested both 7.3 and 7.4.1), all three sizes of proxy files stutter on playback on my Mac Pro 8-core 2.8GHz w/ 2GB RAM playing off Internal drives, eSata, or Firewire800 (disappointing). On my macbook, they play back for about four seconds and then stop playing (expected). The speed problems on the Mac Pro are disapointing. Some of this may be due to the RAM (which I plan to boost to 8-10GB), but I'm not so sure, as activity monitor reports about 75% RAM usage during playback. We'll see what happens when each core has 1 GB of RAM to work with. I should also note that we recorded sound in our test yesterday, and it sounds great. Format Notes
We recorded in 4K 16:9, 4K 2:1 and 2K 2:1. The 16:9 is not yet working in the codec, so 2:1 should be shot for now (although you could probably rescue 16:9 in the RedCine if you had to). Editing - the instant gratification method
You can edit directly from the quicktime proxies. The REDCODE setting (which for some reason I don't even have a preset for) is apparently not useful because you can't render transitions, etc. So the solution is to edit the multi-format way on a ProRes 422 timeline. To edit the "H" proxy (the high quality, 2K one), I used the following sequence settings:
In order to actually see the footage as you're editing, you have to change your real-time settings as follows (I've changed RT to Unlimited, and Playback to Dynamic). This will give you an orange bar over unrendered footage, which allows you to playback with an acceptable viewing quality for editing.
I should also note that the stuttering is gone. So it stutters when I try to just play back a file, but it doesn't stutter when it's on a timeline getting transcoded to ProRes in realtime. Go figure.
So that's the "Drag RED files into FCP and edit" method. It sort of works, and most importantly offers instant gratification, but I find it really buggy. For some reason shots in the timeline seem to randomly change their exposure properties, which would make it impossible for any sort of colour corrections, and therefore something I don't really want to get involved with, especially since this is a 30 minute short with a tight timeline for rough cut.
Editing - the tried and true method
I've decided a much safer and more reliable way to cut this film would be in 2K ProRes. That way I can concentrate on the cuts, and not feel like I'm plowing through technical issues. There are two main ways to convert the videos to ProRes: by using REDCine (super slow), or by using Quicktime or Compressor. Using Compressor's ProRes 422 (High Quality) setting for progressive, it takes about four minutes to encode one minute on my Mac Pro. For a dramatic production with one camera setups, I think that's acceptable, as I should be able to keep up to production over the four day shoot when I'm on set. So I've created a droplet for the setting from Compressor, which I'll just keep in my dock, and drop the "H" proxy files files onto one by one as I review them. When done, I'll have a directory full of shiny new ProRes 2K files that I can edit with in peace and colour correct to my hearts content. Outputting the rough cut
This short has to be output to DVD in some form or another in a couple weeks. For now, we'll just output directly from the ProRes timeline to Compressor's DVD compression settings. If the aspect ratio gets messed up, I may have to nest the sequence in a 16:9 ProRes sequence first. What happens next
There is currently a way to send an EDL (via an XML file) to REDCine so that you can work with the 4K files... colour correcting, reframing, etc. I'm going to keep my hands out of that process until after this years NAB, because RED is expected to announce new software offerings than might help the whole workflow. Fingers crossed
So with that plan, hopefully everything will go well next weekend. I'll report with issues along the way.
The camera can currently record to compact flash cards, or 320GB hard drives (the RED drives have USB, firewire400 and firewire800). Footage was easy to move over to the computer from both storage mediums. The files
Each shot is stored in it's own directory as an .R3D file. Additionally, there are three quicktime proxy movies in the directory: a high quality designated by "H" (1/2 the shooting resolution), a medium quality designated by "M" (1/4 shooting resolution), and a low quality designated by "P" (1/8 resolution). So, if you're shooting 4k, those files would be 2K, 1K, and 512x256, respectively. These proxy files are actually quicktime reference files in the REDCODE format (go to red.com support to get the quicktime component), and refer to the 4K .R3D file, which can't otherwise be opened. Playback
In Quicktime Pro (I've tested both 7.3 and 7.4.1), all three sizes of proxy files stutter on playback on my Mac Pro 8-core 2.8GHz w/ 2GB RAM playing off Internal drives, eSata, or Firewire800 (disappointing). On my macbook, they play back for about four seconds and then stop playing (expected). The speed problems on the Mac Pro are disapointing. Some of this may be due to the RAM (which I plan to boost to 8-10GB), but I'm not so sure, as activity monitor reports about 75% RAM usage during playback. We'll see what happens when each core has 1 GB of RAM to work with. I should also note that we recorded sound in our test yesterday, and it sounds great. Format Notes
We recorded in 4K 16:9, 4K 2:1 and 2K 2:1. The 16:9 is not yet working in the codec, so 2:1 should be shot for now (although you could probably rescue 16:9 in the RedCine if you had to). Editing - the instant gratification method
You can edit directly from the quicktime proxies. The REDCODE setting (which for some reason I don't even have a preset for) is apparently not useful because you can't render transitions, etc. So the solution is to edit the multi-format way on a ProRes 422 timeline. To edit the "H" proxy (the high quality, 2K one), I used the following sequence settings:
In order to actually see the footage as you're editing, you have to change your real-time settings as follows (I've changed RT to Unlimited, and Playback to Dynamic). This will give you an orange bar over unrendered footage, which allows you to playback with an acceptable viewing quality for editing.
I should also note that the stuttering is gone. So it stutters when I try to just play back a file, but it doesn't stutter when it's on a timeline getting transcoded to ProRes in realtime. Go figure.
So that's the "Drag RED files into FCP and edit" method. It sort of works, and most importantly offers instant gratification, but I find it really buggy. For some reason shots in the timeline seem to randomly change their exposure properties, which would make it impossible for any sort of colour corrections, and therefore something I don't really want to get involved with, especially since this is a 30 minute short with a tight timeline for rough cut.
Editing - the tried and true methodI've decided a much safer and more reliable way to cut this film would be in 2K ProRes. That way I can concentrate on the cuts, and not feel like I'm plowing through technical issues. There are two main ways to convert the videos to ProRes: by using REDCine (super slow), or by using Quicktime or Compressor. Using Compressor's ProRes 422 (High Quality) setting for progressive, it takes about four minutes to encode one minute on my Mac Pro. For a dramatic production with one camera setups, I think that's acceptable, as I should be able to keep up to production over the four day shoot when I'm on set. So I've created a droplet for the setting from Compressor, which I'll just keep in my dock, and drop the "H" proxy files files onto one by one as I review them. When done, I'll have a directory full of shiny new ProRes 2K files that I can edit with in peace and colour correct to my hearts content. Outputting the rough cut
This short has to be output to DVD in some form or another in a couple weeks. For now, we'll just output directly from the ProRes timeline to Compressor's DVD compression settings. If the aspect ratio gets messed up, I may have to nest the sequence in a 16:9 ProRes sequence first. What happens next
There is currently a way to send an EDL (via an XML file) to REDCine so that you can work with the 4K files... colour correcting, reframing, etc. I'm going to keep my hands out of that process until after this years NAB, because RED is expected to announce new software offerings than might help the whole workflow. Fingers crossed
So with that plan, hopefully everything will go well next weekend. I'll report with issues along the way.
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