Red Footage: How Do You Watch This Stuff?

[John Brawley]

Not true. I can work with digital film scans just as well from my laptop as I can from my workstation (neither of which is a high-end grading suite), it's also possible to work with cineon/dpx files on even older machines. Funny that even in the digital world, technology centred around film just happens to work.

 

 

C'mon Will.

 

You still have to PAY someone to do the scans. That was my point.

 

jb

[Matthew Rogers]

Oh yes I will need to see shots back with Red for sure, mainly because this frame dropping has me worried. You can fix a lot of things in post, dropped frames isn't one of them.

 

If your operator is worth their salt, they should be able to tell you when there are dropped frames. At the bottom of the screen there is a little meter that tells you if there were any dropped frames in the last take. However, I do wonder if someone couldn't write a small program that could read through the R3D file quickly to confirm no dropped frames. Seems pretty simple.

 

For those members telling me that I need more high end gear to view Red footage and that is the same as having a post house do film processing and telecine, two things I can't do myself now. Yes you have a point, I do have those steps involved when shooting 35mm.

 

All you need is an iMac with a graphics card. Th 20" Intel iMac works great for viewing footage (not fully quality mind you, but 8 core MacPro can't do that either.) You should be able to what 1/2 Rez Med. on an iMac with no problems (4Gb ram would be suggested though). An iMac will set you back around $1200 USD.

 

However my view is that if I still need steps that are financially equivalent to those two steps when shooting with Red then I might as well shoot on 35mm. I want to SAVE money, I don't want to spend the SAME amount of money only to end up with a movie on Red and not 35mm.

 

As has been pointed out in this thread, and dozens before it, whether it's Red or 35mm all the other film production costs stay the same, i.e. talent fees, crew costs, hotels, food, location fees, etc etc etc.

 

But the question is, does the RED let you work faster than with film? Yes, all those fees still exists, but do getting two extra setups each day, over 30 days, shorten the shoot by one day? Because one shoot day on a film is quite a bit of money. But of course, there's a lot that factors into that. In reality, what saves you money is owning some of this gear. I own a RED for my company. I decided to go out an shoot a short film with film students as my crew. Shot 10 pages over 2, 10 hour days. Total cost: $800. $400 for the plane ticket for the director and $400 for food and other stuff. The film looks beautiful btw. Yes, because I owned all the gear it was cheap to make. However, if I owned all the gear and just needed to buy and process film, the film would have easily cost $3k WITHOUT the plane ticket or food. To me, that's a big savings.

 

So in order to "sacrifice" the beauty of 35mm and go with Red, the over all savings for me need to be substantial, I'm not sure that they are as of this writing. And this is not "anti-Red" at all, I am looking at dollars and cents here, & cost vs what I end up with.

 

What exactly are you talking about shooting with the RED? Are you talking about a feature film, or commercials, or docs, or etc? It seems like with just one shoot that has a decent budget that your raw stock and processing costs would equal what it costs to get a nice MacPro. Could you give some more details.

 

Btw, sorry if this post seems disjointed. I wrote it over an afternoon and haven't gone back to see what I wrote earlier (yeah, I'm lazy today!)

 

Matthew

[Tenolian Bell]

If your operator is worth their salt, they should be able to tell you when there are dropped frames. At the bottom of the screen there is a little meter that tells you if there were any dropped frames in the last take. However, I do wonder if someone couldn't write a small program that could read through the R3D file quickly to confirm no dropped frames. Seems pretty simple.

 

Not that I'm all that old. Between film school and growing my professional career, I've been using professional video cameras for about 18 years. I've never seen a meter that informs you of dropped frames. I have to ask, is this really progress?

 

 

 

But the question is, does the RED let you work faster than with film? Yes, all those fees still exists, but do getting two extra setups each day, over 30 days, shorten the shoot by one day? Because one shoot day on a film is quite a bit of money. But of course, there's a lot that factors into that. In reality, what saves you money is owning some of this gear. I own a RED for my company. I decided to go out an shoot a short film with film students as my crew. Shot 10 pages over 2, 10 hour days. Total cost: $800. $400 for the plane ticket for the director and $400 for food and other stuff. The film looks beautiful btw. Yes, because I owned all the gear it was cheap to make. However, if I owned all the gear and just needed to buy and process film, the film would have easily cost $3k WITHOUT the plane ticket or food. To me, that's a big savings.

 

 

This is all situational of course. Depending on the film and the budget the cost of film stock and processing could be a small budget line. A situation where digital can prove at least if not more expensive is if the film has a theatrical run and you need to make prints.

[Josell Ramos]

[in true Canadian fashion, the Toronto Film Festival said no to this short, and Sundance said yes. It's called Captain Coulet (sp?) Any one at Sundance next year, should have a look.

 

 

From what I know Toronto doesn't accept shorts outside of Canada. Did they change the rules?

[Guest]

[in true Canadian fashion, the Toronto Film Festival said no to this short, and Sundance said yes. It's called Captain Coulet (sp?) Any one at Sundance next year, should have a look.

 

 

 

From what I know Toronto doesn't accept shorts outside of Canada. Did they change the rules?

 

Eh? This IS a Canadian short film, that is the irony....TIFF said no like they usually do to any thing Canadian that is well made and will please an audience. Compared to a major US fest like Sundance that said YES to this Canadian film.

 

I would be quite surprised if the TIFF shorts must be made in Canada?

 

R,

[Matthew Rogers]

Not that I'm all that old. Between film school and growing my professional career, I've been using professional video cameras for about 18 years. I've never seen a meter that informs you of dropped frames. I have to ask, is this really progress?

 

Have you ever shot on a camera that shoots to a hard drive? Wouldn't you like to shoot on a camera that tells you when there are tape dropouts and other recording errors? I'd say a camera that tells you those things as they are happening is very progressive--and very helpful.

 

BTW, if anyone doesn't know the dropped frame counter turns red when dropped frames happen. It's fairly obvious when it happens. Plus, that stays up there until you hit record again. That said, it would be nice to have a full frame message come up when dropped frames happen. But when I am shooting on the hard drive, I just do a glance to the bottom to see if the red square fame comes up--not a biggie.

 

Matthew

[Matthew Rogers]

(tried to put this into my last post but it wouldn't let me edit it!)

 

This is all situational of course. Depending on the film and the budget the cost of film stock and processing could be a small budget line. A situation where digital can prove at least if not more expensive is if the film has a theatrical run and you need to make prints.

 

Ummm...if you are doing a DI, wouldn't it cost the same to do a film print from the DI as it would the RED? Of course, if you are finishing without a DI, then I could maybe see your point. However, how much would raw stock & processing for a 90 minute feature? I would guess $30,000 to $60,000. Seems like I've see the avg price for a film out at $40,000 to $50,000. Maybe I am totally wrong on these numbers, but I don't think I'm too far off. $50,000 in a $500,000 budget film is a lot. In a $50 million film, not so much.

 

Matthew

[Paul Bruening]

.

[Tenolian Bell]

Have you ever shot on a camera that shoots to a hard drive? Wouldn't you like to shoot on a camera that tells you when there are tape dropouts and other recording errors? I'd say a camera that tells you those things as they are happening is very progressive--and very helpful.

 

Yes I've shot with cameras that record on hard drive. No I've never dealt with or heard of anyone else dealing with dropped frames while shooting. As many problems that can happen on set to worry about a take being blown because the camera dropped frames is one that is unnecessary.

 

Dropping frames is more of a concern while capturing footage from tape. This is a problem because a computer has to capture footage while the tape is running in real time. Their is little to no room for error.

 

Recording on a hard drive should eliminate dropped frames. Footage is not captured in real time. Its simply a transfer of a digital file.

[Tenolian Bell]

Ummm...if you are doing a DI, wouldn't it cost the same to do a film print from the DI as it would the RED? Of course, if you are finishing without a DI, then I could maybe see your point. However, how much would raw stock & processing for a 90 minute feature? I would guess $30,000 to $60,000. Seems like I've see the avg price for a film out at $40,000 to $50,000. Maybe I am totally wrong on these numbers, but I don't think I'm too far off. $50,000 in a $500,000 budget film is a lot. In a $50 million film, not so much.

 

Matthew

 

 

You certainly don't have to do a DI. My point is that creating an optical print from negative is cheaper than a digital blow up to print.

 

As far as the cost of film stock and processing in relation to a budget. There is no one size fits all. Its all relative as each situation is different.

[Matthew Rogers]

Yes I've shot with cameras that record on hard drive. No I've never dealt with or heard of anyone else dealing with dropped frames while shooting. As many problems that can happen on set to worry about a take being blown because the camera dropped frames is one that is unnecessary.

 

Dropping frames is more of a concern while capturing footage from tape. This is a problem because a computer has to capture footage while the tape is running in real time. Their is little to no room for error.

 

Did you use that camera handheld or on sticks? Personally, I've never had a single dropped frame while using the RED drive on sticks. I've also never had a dropped frame using the RED drive handheld either. I've shot more on sticks then with the hard drive, but they pretty resilient. The hard drive issue with the RED is the same that you would have on any other camera that uses a hard drive--it all lies in the hard drive. Dropped frames with the RED really isn't an issue unless you are using in a environment that would cause it to drop frames--but again, any other camera would do that with a hard drive. However, RED lets you know if there is an issue. A poorly designed camera wouldn't let you know. Plus, if you are in those situations, just use either a 8gb/16gb CF card, or a 128 GB SSD RED Drive.

 

I don't know what kind of computer you are using, but I haven't had an issue with my computer or hard drives being too slow since I was editing on my 400Mhz Powerbook G3. Unless you are capturing 10 bit uncompressed 1080P, an iMac with a 2 drive RAID-0 will capture most HD formats. However, I have had issues in the past 5 years with tape dropouts (as in, the information is just not on the tape.) To me that is a much bigger concern since I don't know there was an error on the tape until I start to capture it the next day. At least with the RED I know there was an issue and can ask for another take.

 

Recording on a hard drive should eliminate dropped frames. Footage is not captured in real time. Its simply a transfer of a digital file.

 

Do you know how a hard drive works? It's got disks that spin around at either 5600 or 7200 RPM with a needle that floats about, I believe, the width of a human hair above the platters. Bumps, drops, vibrations, and many other elements will affect their operation. The issue is not the camera getting behind, the issue is with the drives operating correctly. I hope you understand this because your statement to me is not communicating that.

 

You certainly don't have to do a DI. My point is that creating an optical print from negative is cheaper than a digital blow up to print.

 

As far as the cost of film stock and processing in relation to a budget. There is no one size fits all. Its all relative as each situation is different.

 

Correct, an optical print is cheaper to do if you shoot on film. However, if you ever want to go to DVD/Blu-Ray, don't you have to have your film scanned? In reality, I don't see how film would be cheaper to do. With the RED you've got hard drive storage space costs (which is now dirt dirt cheap), and the print out to film if your movie goes that far (most don't). With film you've got raw stock costs, developing, telecine (if you want to edit on a computer--which most do), an optical print, and if you go to home video, a scanning charge. I don't see quite how film would be cheaper (costs would be closer with a film print of digital footage though.)

 

Matthew

[Tenolian Bell]

Did you use that camera handheld or on sticks? Personally, I've never had a single dropped frame while using the RED drive on sticks. I've also never had a dropped frame using the RED drive handheld either.

 

I haven't seen a properly operating camera dropping frames in any situation.

 

I don't know what kind of computer you are using, but I haven't had an issue with my computer or hard drives being too slow since I was editing on my 400Mhz Powerbook G3. Unless you are capturing 10 bit uncompressed 1080P, an iMac with a 2 drive RAID-0 will capture most HD formats. However, I have had issues in the past 5 years with tape dropouts (as in, the information is just not on the tape.) To me that is a much bigger concern since I don't know there was an error on the tape until I start to capture it the next day. At least with the RED I know there was an issue and can ask for another take.

 

I didn't say I had a particular problem with dropping frames during capturing. I just said that capturing is where that problem primarily happens.

 

Frames can be lost while shooting. That generally is symptomatic of an unusual problem with the camera or tape.

 

 

Do you know how a hard drive works? It's got disks that spin around at either 5600 or 7200 RPM with a needle that floats about, I believe, the width of a human hair above the platters. Bumps, drops, vibrations, and many other elements will affect their operation. The issue is not the camera getting behind, the issue is with the drives operating correctly. I hope you understand this because your statement to me is not communicating that.

 

I'm not exactly sure where you are going with this. I did not say that the camera falls behind. The camera continues to run and send information irregardless of the computers capabilities. The problem with dropped frames is that the computer cannot keep up. Their are other parts of the computer that have to work, other than only the hard drive.

 

In the past few years computers have gotten fast enough that dropped frames is not the problem that it was 10 years ago.

 

Dropping frames should not be an issue at all with hard drive or solid state storage. The ability to transfer a digital file doesn't necessarily have much to do with speed. The file is either transfered quickly or its transfered slowly. But you don't drop frames in a digital file transfer. Either the entire file is transfered or its not.

 

 

 

 

Correct, an optical print is cheaper to do if you shoot on film. However, if you ever want to go to DVD/Blu-Ray, don't you have to have your film scanned? In reality, I don't see how film would be cheaper to do. With the RED you've got hard drive storage space costs (which is now dirt dirt cheap), and the print out to film if your movie goes that far (most don't). With film you've got raw stock costs, developing, telecine (if you want to edit on a computer--which most do), an optical print, and if you go to home video, a scanning charge. I don't see quite how film would be cheaper (costs would be closer with a film print of digital footage though.)

 

Matthew

 

I did not say film was cheaper than RED. I said depending on the circumstances, shooting on RED is not necessarily cheaper than shooting film.

[Matthew Rogers]

I haven't seen a properly operating camera dropping frames in any situation.

 

You've never used the Focus Hard Drive systems then. As far as I'm concerned, they are pieces of crap. I would have them drop frames and stop recording all the time. Handheld with them was just not possible.

 

 

Frames can be lost while shooting. That generally is symptomatic of an unusual problem with the camera or tape.

 

I ask again, do any other camera you know tell you when there is a tape dropout while shooting? The thing with the RED is, the frames can only be lost during shooting and not during both like with tape (although, with digital capture you can go back, restart your capture and frame match up where it started dropping frames.)

 

 

Dropping frames should not be an issue at all with hard drive or solid state storage. The ability to transfer a digital file doesn't necessarily have much to do with speed. The file is either transfered quickly or its transfered slowly. But you don't drop frames in a digital file transfer. Either the entire file is transfered or its not.

 

With solid state, you are correct. Shouldn't be dropping frames (and won't.) However, hard drives are still a problem because, as I said before, they can get bumped, dropped, get hit with vibrations while recording. When that happens the camera can't write data so it will just ignore writing those frames. It has nothing to do with copying the data off the hard drive, but with writing. That's the nature of hard drives. They are designed really to sit still and spin--not be jostled around (although, I believe the RED drive does a pretty good job considering it's 2 HD's in a RAID-0 config.) If your shoot requires handheld running, jumping, etc., then the the CF cards or SSD is the way to go.

 

Maybe we are talking about two different things, I'm talking about dropped frames while recording and maybe you are talking about when copying the footage to the computer?

 

 

I did not say film was cheaper than RED. I said depending on the circumstances, shooting on RED is not necessarily cheaper than shooting film.

 

I can only see it being cheaper if you got a killer deal on stock, processing, and telecine (if you edit that way.)

 

Here's a real world example that maybe would help both of us put out costs (and maybe I'm totally wrong on shooting film prices, I will be happy to admit it if I am.) For the short I just shot on the RED, my neg cost was $0 (I shot 3:56:39 of footage.) Developing/telecine $0. To print this 14:14 minute movie, it would cost me $350 a minute. 14.25x350= $4987.50.

 

Shooting Kodak 5205 35mm at 3 perf, how much would basically 4 hours of raw stock be? I don't know how many feet per minute at 3 perf, so you will have to figure that out. Plus processing 4 hours of footage. What would that run?

 

Matthew

[Guest]

I can only see it being cheaper if you got a killer deal on stock, processing, and telecine (if you edit that way.)

 

Here's a real world example that maybe would help both of us put out costs (and maybe I'm totally wrong on shooting film prices, I will be happy to admit it if I am.) For the short I just shot on the RED, my neg cost was $0 (I shot 3:56:39 of footage.) Developing/telecine $0. To print this 14:14 minute movie, it would cost me $350 a minute. 14.25x350= $4987.50.

 

Shooting Kodak 5205 35mm at 3 perf, how much would basically 4 hours of raw stock be? I don't know how many feet per minute at 3 perf, so you will have to figure that out. Plus processing 4 hours of footage. What would that run?

 

Matthew

 

Ok a few things a 14:14 minute movie AKA a short film, which I'm assuming was very low budget as 99% of all shorts fall into this category.

 

You shot four hours of footage for a 14 minute short film? The reason you did that was because you could. If you where shooting on film you would have shot a lot less raw footage because film disciplines you to use far fewer takes, especially when you're on a budget.

 

Raw stock, processing and telecine, differ from state to state and country to country. Yes I'm sure your over all cost would be lower with video, no question there. However, in the end you don't have an image captured on film and you would not have shot any where close to four hours worth of footage for a 14 min end product. I mean you are talking about a 17:1 ratio there, 5:1 with short film production is quite reasonable.

 

So 70 mins of raw film stock would make you a nice 14 min film.

 

R,

[Tenolian Bell]

You've never used the Focus Hard Drive systems then. As far as I'm concerned, they are pieces of crap. I would have them drop frames and stop recording all the time. Handheld with them was just not possible.

 

No I haven't.

 

 

 

I ask again, do any other camera you know tell you when there is a tape dropout while shooting? The thing with the RED is, the frames can only be lost during shooting and not during both like with tape (although, with digital capture you can go back, restart your capture and frame match up where it started dropping frames.)

 

I've never worked with a camera that needed to inform you of drop outs because they don't typically happen. They only happen when something is wrong.

 

 

 

Maybe we are talking about two different things, I'm talking about dropped frames while recording and maybe you are talking about when copying the footage to the computer?

 

I see what you are saying now. I've only used solid state drives for acquisition, I've never used hard data drive in the field. You are right they are too unstable and too much risk.

 

 

I can only see it being cheaper if you got a killer deal on stock, processing, and telecine (if you edit that way.)

 

Here's a real world example that maybe would help both of us put out costs (and maybe I'm totally wrong on shooting film prices, I will be happy to admit it if I am.) For the short I just shot on the RED, my neg cost was $0 (I shot 3:56:39 of footage.) Developing/telecine $0. To print this 14:14 minute movie, it would cost me $350 a minute. 14.25x350= $4987.50.

 

Shooting Kodak 5205 35mm at 3 perf, how much would basically 4 hours of raw stock be? I don't know how many feet per minute at 3 perf, so you will have to figure that out. Plus processing 4 hours of footage. What would that run?

 

Matthew

 

 

Again I did not say film is cheaper than RED. I said RED is not necessarily always cheaper than film.

 

You gave a specific example where RED worked in favor of your situation. One could have free access to a super 16 camera. While they would have to rent a RED and all of its support equipment. Their isn't always a need to shoot 4 hours of raw footage. You can find deals on film stock, processing, and telecine.

[Matthew Rogers]

Ok a few things a 14:14 minute movie AKA a short film, which I'm assuming was very low budget as 99% of all shorts fall into this category.

 

You shot four hours of footage for a 14 minute short film? The reason you did that was because you could. If you where shooting on film you would have shot a lot less raw footage because film disciplines you to use far fewer takes, especially when you're on a budget.

 

Raw stock, processing and telecine, differ from state to state and country to country. Yes I'm sure your over all cost would be lower with video, no question there. However, in the end you don't have an image captured on film and you would not have shot any where close to four hours worth of footage for a 14 min end product. I mean you are talking about a 17:1 ratio there, 5:1 with short film production is quite reasonable.

 

So 70 mins of raw film stock would make you a nice 14 min film.

 

Correction, we shot 2:56:39 (forgot my FCP timeline started at 1:00:00). For the most part we didn't just leave the camera running (the most takes we did for any shot was 6 takes and the avg was 2) We did have a few things about this film that did cause us to shoot more--greenscreen footage that appears on a TV in the movie and we shot footage of our actor with a horse. If we had shot film, would we have gotten the best performance? Most of the time yes, but for some, no. Personally, I rather be limited by DR than by performance and money. I have a friend who just shot a short film on 16mm film (he was actually the AC on my short) and I will see what he spent on stock, processing and telecine for editing.

 

Matthew

[Guest]

If we had shot film, would we have gotten the best performance? Most of the time yes, but for some, no.

Matthew

 

Yes, you would have got better performances with film. The reason is that the actor knows they only have 1-2 takes vs un-limited with video. Here's an excellent example, when I worked for a TV network we would have the news anchors do news updates through out the day, some where live some where taped.

 

The anchors always did the live updates perfectly, because they knew that if they screwed up they where live and they'd look stupid, there are no re-takes on live TV. When we did these taped the anchor would always do 3-5 takes to get it right! They knew it was being taped so they simply didn't try as hard to do their best. Their brain kept telling them it's ok you can do it again.

 

Also, the crew never screwed up on live updates either. On taped updates it was common for the camera operator to mess up his opening move or the TD to punch the wrong graphic, etc etc.

 

So when it's live the entire crew and talent where much more disciplined to get it right.

 

Film has a similar effect on a cast and crew, it's a bit like adding "live" TV onto the film set.

 

R,

[John Sprung]

I've certainly seen screw ups on live TV news. Putting up the wrong chyron seems to happen a lot. Some of the anchors are secret smokers, one time I saw one take a drag and look up to see the tally light on the camera. The "Oh s--t, busted" look on his face was priceless. ;-)

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Chris Kenny]

The amount of fear mongering and disinformation in this thread is pretty astounding.

 

We have Red #404. We got it February, and have shot quite a lot with it. I'm with the camera virtually every time it's used.

 

I've never seen the camera overheat.

 

I've never seen a Red Drive drop a frame, even in fairly jarring handheld use. We had a shoot a couple of months ago with the operator basically running through the bottom floor of a house doing whip pans -- no frames dropped over about 20 takes. About a month ago we were using the camera handheld on-stage at a rock concert. I was keeping a close eye on the frame drop readout because sound becomes a real physical force at those intensity levels, but the drives held up fine. Red Drives are known to drop frames when there's substantial mechanical vibration, such as with vehicle mounts. The simple solution is to not use them in those applications. It's not as if Red doesn't provide alternative recording mechanisms.

 

I have seen occasional boot failures -- maybe one in 20 times the camera will freeze during boot. But you can tell that it's frozen about 10 seconds into the boot process, and a quick power cycle resolves the issue. Total time lost, maybe 15 seconds.

 

As far as workflow goes... there have been perfectly workable Red workflows from the beginning. If you're finishing in an HD video format, a $3500 Mac Pro tower can convert 4K Red footage to 1080p ProRes, DNxHD or uncompressed video at a rate of about three hours per hour of footage using the "Half Res High" decoding mode (which I believe is the same thing as "Standard" decoding in RedCine). On most shots this is nearly indistinguishable from doing a 4K debayer and downscaling, except that it's about four times as fast.

 

Three hours per hour of footage means that you have your footage in online quality by the next morning.

 

For DI-style workflows, 2K DPX transcoding takes about the same amount of time (assuming you're writing out to disks fast enough to write about 8 2K DPX frames per second -- which isn't all that hard these days).

 

A 4K DPX transcode might be more like 12 hours per hour of footage, but hey, two frames a second is, as far as I'm aware, a lot faster than any 4K film scanner in the world. And you could build a commodity hardware cluster which could do such transcodes in real-time for under $50K, probably, if you were so inclined, which is rather less than a 4K film scanner.

 

There are, of course, post houses which will provide these transcoding services if you don't want to keep the infrastructure in-house. Though it would be a little silly for an individual or organization working with footage from high-end cameras to not keep a recent-model workstation in at least the $4000 range kicking around.

 

And, you can, of course, work with the footage on any Intel Mac (any Intel Mac with non-integrated graphics, for RedCine). You probably don't want to transcode hours of footage on an iMac, but there's nothing stopping you. And a MacBook Pro is pretty standard equipment on Red sets of checking footage on-set. You can play back 4K as 1K and output full-resolution stills. And play with one-light grades in real-time in RedCine to check if you can push the footage the way you want to.

 

The reason there's so much discussion about Red workflow isn't because there's no practical workflow. It's for two reasons.

 

One is that, because the model for the camera is to shoot in a proprietary format and then transcode, and because the camera is used for a wide range of productions, there is no one obvious workflow. This isn't DVCPRO HD, where the standard workflow is to capture tapes (or download cards) and drop into Final Cut. You might want an HD workflow (compressed or uncompressed), or a DI workflow. You might want an offline or an online workflow. You might be happy with a workflow that requires you to transcode all the footage you shoot, or one that only requires you to transcode the shots you use in the final edit, or maybe only with one that only requires you to transcode the specific frames you use in the final edit. All of these, in many combinations, are possible, and they have different implications for quality, cost, and technical ability.

 

The second reason Red workflow gets discussed so much is because a lot of people aren't happy with traditional HD and DI workflows, when they can see that Red's compressed raw capture makes something better possible.

 

If you just transcode all of your footage to an HD video format, you lose the full range of the raw files before you've even started. You can do some grading in RedCine before you convert, but RedCine is pretty far from being a fully-featured grading environment.

 

You can mostly avoid this problem by transcoding to 10-bit (log) DPX or 16-bit (linear) TIFF, but workflows based around those formats require tens of terabytes of very fast storage and many commodity-priced software tools can't work with them, so costs can quickly escalate to traditional DI levels as soon as you start to go this route.

 

What many people have been waiting for is the ability to work with all the data in those compressed raw files without having to transcode them into an unwieldy uncompressed format before feeding them into editing and grading tools. This has taken a lot longer to emerge than I think some people expected, which may have more to do with third-party vendors than Red itself, but has nonetheless been unfortunate for Red's customers.

 

But in the last couple of months -- last couple of weeks, for Final Cut -- we've finally started to see this.

 

As of a couple of weeks ago, after I edit 1K or 2K proxy files (of 4K footage) in Final Cut Pro (an old capability), I can then send the edit to Color (the Final Cut Studio grading app), grade in a fairly capable environment with full access to all the data in the raw file, and then render out in any format up through 2K DPX.

 

And while it's certainly nicer to do this on a $5000 8-core Mac Pro at the office, I can also do this on my $2000 laptop. I could do it on a $1200 iMac. With no external disks other than consumer-priced external FireWire 800 drives. And no software other than Red's free tools and Apple's $1299 Final Cut Studio.

 

It's now not at all implausible to take a feature through the editing, grading and conforming processes, ending up with a 2K DPX conform, with less than $10K worth of hardware and software.

 

That's the workflow everyone has been waiting for. And while there's still room for quite a bit of refinement, it's here now on the Mac with Final Cut, and while I haven't kept such close tabs on the Adobe side of things, I gather things are moving along there as well (on both platforms).

[Brian Drysdale]

Raw stock, processing and telecine, differ from state to state and country to country. Yes I'm sure your over all cost would be lower with video, no question there. However, in the end you don't have an image captured on film and you would not have shot any where close to four hours worth of footage for a 14 min end product. I mean you are talking about a 17:1 ratio there, 5:1 with short film production is quite reasonable.

 

I think the shooting ratio will depend on how demanding the performances are, how experienced the actors are and how many angles you're going to cover the scene from. However, shorter doesn't always less, commercials have relatively high shooting ratios and the trend towards faster cutting increases this on all productions.

 

Certainly mostly shooting a couple of takes on each with the odd up to 6 takes isn't going mad. Perhaps the levels of coverage could be looked at, which something that TV directors do to excess (often to keep the producers happy) and they tend to have a 17 to 1 shooting ratio with a similar number of takes.

 

You do have to keep the shooting ratio within what you can afford in your budget and if you can only allow mostly single takes, you'll just have to live with that. I know one award winning student short like that and the director felt sorry for the actors in that she know they could do better, but that unless it was a mess, she just had to move on.

[Matthew Rogers]

So you guys want to know about real world performance of the RED drive? I just got back this afternoon from shooting a concert last night in Charleston, SC. Yesterday, after we shot all the close ups in rehearsal handheld (about 2 hours worth of shooting), we did a 90 minute concert handheld. Two cameras, both on RED Drives, zero dropped frames. I was slinging the camera up and down because the crappy RED shoulder mount was killing me and yet no dropped frames. Running backstage, all across the stage, jumping off platforms (3ft), standing in front of concert speakers, and accidentally smacking objects could not make the drive mess up. Pretty impressive I think. Still, if it had dropped frames, I would have know instantly.

 

 

Matthew

[Keith Walters]

I think the shooting ratio will depend on how demanding the performances are, how experienced the actors are and how many angles you're going to cover the scene from. However, shorter doesn't always less, commercials have relatively high shooting ratios and the trend towards faster cutting increases this on all productions.

 

Certainly mostly shooting a couple of takes on each with the odd up to 6 takes isn't going mad. Perhaps the levels of coverage could be looked at, which something that TV directors do to excess (often to keep the producers happy) and they tend to have a 17 to 1 shooting ratio with a similar number of takes.

 

You do have to keep the shooting ratio within what you can afford in your budget and if you can only allow mostly single takes, you'll just have to live with that. I know one award winning student short like that and the director felt sorry for the actors in that she know they could do better, but that unless it was a mess, she just had to move on.

 

Commercials typically have higher shooting ratios, because even for the longest ads, the stock and post production cost is usually pretty miniscule, compared to what the overall campaign is going to cost. Also, with commercials the same short sequence is normally played over and over again, and small errors tend to get magnified with repetition. Remember with a film, the audience is paying to see your work; with an ad, the company is trying to persuade you to buy something.

 

Videotape tends to make this worse of course. Long before I had anything much to do with film I used to suffer long and terribly in a certain edit suite with a pair of agency imbeciles, trying to wade through sloppy take after sloppy take, trying to decide which one was the "least worst". The "shotgun" approach is simply not a substitute for good preparation. Endless takes simply wear out the crew, the actors, and the editors.

 

I've never done any film editing but at Panavision I used to marvel at the video assist tapes that would sometimes come back inside the assist VCRs. With film there would usually be far fewer takes, and most of them tended to be useable.

 

My eyes were really opened when I was sent to sort out a problem on a film starring Marlon Brando. Until that time I could never see what was great about Brando, (and quite a few other "bankable" names for that matter).

 

Then I saw the some of the rushes. Typically there would be 3-4 takes of each scene, and Brando did each one completely differently, but any one of his performances would have been fine as far as I could see. Not so his Himbo-of-the-month sidekick....

 

So really, actors are just machines like anything else on the set. You hand them a script, they spit out a performance. A good actor is like a reliable camera; you just press the button and it works. No amount of re-takes is ever going to change that.

 

Time is money. I think people don't realize just how much money :lol:

[DJ Joofa]

One is that, because the model for the camera is to shoot in a proprietary format and then transcode, and because the camera is used for a wide range of productions, there is no one obvious workflow.

 

Chris, that is the incorrect view to take. I think Red is a great camera with a potential for future. However, you have to admit where Red made mistakes also. You can go over my posts at RedUser to have an inkling of some of the shortcomings. I can't write anymore at RedUser as the over-zealous moderators have banned me so I shall identify a few for you here.

 

During my tenure working in high-tech industry I have seldom seen a product go out the door without having an obvious workflow as you seem to suggest. And, you must be aware of that is one reason the Red camera owners are so petrified because of buggy software (at least when Red One was initially released) and poor workflow options. It is encouraging to see that Red has certainly caught up with many of those issues now. However, to date many concerns by owners are not fully addressed.

 

Remember, people have a tendency to take software as being free. That is why many hardware companies give the software workflows that run on their products as free, because that actually results in increased sales of the hardware, as people can see accompanying software solutions. Unfortunately, Red did not capitalize on this obvious model that has been in place for a long time.

 

But, since the Red hardware itself seems promising, especially considering the new models announced, that shall give it a traction for sometime, but sooner or later Red must develop appropriately complete software solutions.

[Paul Bruening]

What do you have to do to get kicked off of Reduser?

[Matthew Rogers]

Not really.

 

Wow. That is incredibly rude. If you don't care, then don't don't read this thread and don't post on it.

 

Matthew