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How to edit RED footage


Jay Oxley

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Hi,

 

I shall be shooting our new short on RED in about 8 weeks and I seek advice on how to edit the RED footage. I know RED uses its own codec .R3D and we shall be editing on Mac using Final Cut Pro. My editor is away at the moment and it will be the first time he will have edited RED footage.

 

I need to get the plugins for the footage off of the RED site? Can somebody please inform me of how we go about editing the footage, also how do we work with the proxies?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Jay

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bring your red raw files into RED ALERT and do your "one light" coloring there, then render them as whichever codec you want, ProRes, DVCPROHD, etc. This does each clip one at a time or you can batch them using RED RUSHES but you can't do any coloring in that program that I know of. Either way you'll need to color the clips. I DP'd my first RED shoot about a month ago and was very nervous when I saw the RAW footage. It looked very blah...not much contrast, washed out color, not much saturation. Then I tweaked the footage in COLOR and brought the life back into it. Kinda like a film negative that has not had anything done other than to develop it.

 

As far as the editing workflow, I re-sized the footage and cut it in Final Cut but I know that there is a way to do an Offline edit with smaller versions of large files. Since My final output was going to be for the web I didn't bother looking into that.

 

By the way, both of the programs I mentioned are downloadable from the RED website.

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David,

 

Thanks you for that, that is very helpful. You mentioned about bringing the footage into RED ALERT and giving it an initial 'one light' colouring there. Is that the final grading as I plan to use both Color and Magic Bullet Suite for the final grading so am I able to leave the footage in its RAW state and manipulate it after it has been processed through RED ALERT?

 

It seems as if you've aided me with the first initial step of getting the footage on the computer and into the right codec. I'm sure I can look into working with proxies, I've got a couple of friends I can speak to.

 

Thanks,

 

Jay

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I did a "one Light" just to bump up the contrast/saturation and adjust the exposure a bit. If you render from that program, yes what adjustments you've made will be on the footage, but WILL NOT effect the RAW. You can still color the footage how ever you want and if you decide that you don't like the one-light, you still have the R3d files.

Edited by David Desio
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  • 1 month later...

Why would anyone use Red Alert anymore? It's not supported by RED, and it doesn't utilize Red Rocket Hardware rendering.

 

That being said, the only way to go is to use Redcine-x to grade "one-lights" of your footage. I'd highly suggest using the SDI out with a calibrated monitor, as making any kind of critical adjustments on a computer monitor is not going to transfer through your pipeline well.

 

I suggest using Redcine-x to render out Pro Res files. Use LT if you will conform to the R3D files; LT will give you a smaller file. Use 422 HQ if you plan to finish on the ProRes files (commercial productions are doing this. it's totally fine).

 

Do not ingest using FCP. FCP does not give you control over what flavor of ProRes that you want. It also DOES NOT SUPPORT the new color science (build 30+). FCP log and transfer is also software based and will take quite a while to transcode the footage; albeit incorrectly.

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Careful with that frank, I'm not entirely sure, but I think that CS5 doesn't support the new color science, so you won't get getting FLUT control or the new features from the firmware upgrades.

 

If you plan to do CC at a telecine facility, then nothing matters as long as you EDL-conform.

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Premiere Pro supports RED R3D content in its native form, eliminating time-consuming

file transcoding and rewrapping. By selecting an appropriate RED R3D sequence

preset, you can immediately start editing RED R3D.

You can change a wide variety of decoding parameters, including debayering detail, ISO, color balance, and more.

 

Adobe just released a new RED importer plug-in for After Effects CS5 and Premiere Pro CS5 on the Adobe Labs website. This new set of software supports the current RED firmware (#30) and new color science.

 

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/redsupport/

http://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2010/05/cs5-mysteriumx-red-update.html

 

You may also have a look at the Adobe-RED Workflow Guide

 

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/redsupport/pdfs/red_workflow_guide.pdf

 

Frank

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Premiere Pro supports RED R3D content in its native form, eliminating time-consuming

file transcoding and rewrapping. By selecting an appropriate RED R3D sequence

preset, you can immediately start editing RED R3D.

You can change a wide variety of decoding parameters, including debayering detail, ISO, color balance, and more.

 

Adobe just released a new RED importer plug-in for After Effects CS5 and Premiere Pro CS5 on the Adobe Labs website. This new set of software supports the current RED firmware (#30) and new color science.

 

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/redsupport/

http://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2010/05/cs5-mysteriumx-red-update.html

 

You may also have a look at the Adobe-RED Workflow Guide

 

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/redsupport/pdfs/red_workflow_guide.pdf

 

Frank

 

I agree with Frank completely. I have the new Red plugin for CS5 and it works as advertised. The whole workflow is so much easier than FCP.

 

Start thinking outside the Apple :)

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  • 7 months later...

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