What to do with the RED

Jase Ryan · February 29, 2008

Okay, so if you have a shoot that wants to go with the RED at 4k, then how does the workflow happen? So we shoot the footage onto a drive. Then, where does it go? Can we simply import it straight from the drive to our home computer with final cut? That must be wayyy to much information. Even if we have terabites of space.

Or, do we import a low res version, then print and EDL of our edit and take it to a editing company who can handle the full 4K footage and put it together then? And if thats the case, how do you back up all that footage? Can you dump it straight over on set from the drive?

Thanks,

Jase.

John Sprung · March 1, 2008

You need a post facility that can deal with Red data, just as with film you need a wet lab. Here's a place that's set up for it:

http://www.plastercitypost.com/

-- J.S.

David Mullen ASC · March 1, 2008

Okay, so if you have a shoot that wants to go with the RED at 4k, then how does the workflow happen? So we shoot the footage onto a drive. Then, where does it go? Can we simply import it straight from the drive to our home computer with final cut? That must be wayyy to much information. Even if we have terabites of space.

Or, do we import a low res version, then print and EDL of our edit and take it to a editing company who can handle the full 4K footage and put it together then? And if thats the case, how do you back up all that footage? Can you dump it straight over on set from the drive?

Thanks,

Jase.

First remember that it's compressed 4K RAW, so it's not as huge a data load as you'd think. You can edit the lower-rez Quicktime files that I believe the camera generates alongside your RAW files. Then I assume you take the EDL and then only process the 4K RAW files used in the final cut into 4K or 2K RGB, so that's maybe 2 hours of footage, not 20 or 30 hours. As for backing up the original data, obviously that's recommended.

There are some workflows published on the RED site and RED User site probably.

Christopher Arata · March 1, 2008

Actually yes you could import it straight from that drive but I would not recommend it. The workflow for the RED in the begging is really simple actually. At the end of each day get the drive then dump all the footage on to another external drive, I like G-Raid drives but thats just me. Treat the drive as a mag. The RED Drive should be labeled as ROLL ONE the first day and so on. Keep this in mind when transferring your footage, make sure to label correctly. How many drives you need to transfer your footage to will depend on how much you shoot, ultimately you will still want to back up all those drives. Then if using final cut to edit you import it from those drives to final cut, I believe final cut studio 2 already has the RED codec included in it, from there you edit in final cut pro, then you do your Output. And yes you can do this all on set, that is transfer the files from the RED drive to the other external. For backup you generally do that latter and you probably don't want to edit on set but you could start logging all the clips.