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Converting R3Ds


Phil Rhodes

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Hi folks

 

I have to cut some stuff together which includes stuff that's been shot on various Red cameras. Is there some straightforward commandline tool I can use to batch process it all into something more normal?

 

I've no interest in getting bogged down in camera-specific workflows for this, nor do I want to deal with 8K material on a timeline.

 

Ffmpeg was able to do it at one point and could have gone directly R3D to ProRes .mov, which would be great, but of course Red started encrypting their files specifically to prevent this from being done. I hate to take this platform to complain, but good grief: something that's trying to be a professional digital cinema camera that produces deliberately-obfuscated data? Madness. I try to avoid all things Red, so I've almost no experience dealing with it.

 

Low-con HD ProRes quicktimes would be fine.

 

P

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It was the classic case of the Tail Trying To Wag The Dog™.
With virtually every other camera format you'd just shoot and present your files to the production house.
You didn't have waste time trying to establish whether your editor-of-choice (or purveyor of facilities for same) could be arsed installing the Red bloatware on their systems, or updating their existing editing software for the benefit of a clientele who probably couldn't afford them anyway, and/or were potentially more trouble than they were worth.
This was particularly so a decade ago when the necessary download bandwidth and hard drive real estate were considerably more costly than they are now.
I suppose the main reason Red started encrypting the R3D files was that FFMPEG conversion spat out what was actually there, rather than letting Red's proprietary "Turd Polishing"™ software get its hands on it :rolleyes:

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With virtually every other camera format you'd just shoot and present your files to the production house

 

except when someone shoots Prores RAW and wants to go with the "normal" workflow with it :lol:

 

anyway, it is quite easy to get prores out of r3d files by running them through Resolve for example. if it's some of the newer sensors it may look quite nice even without extensive raw adjustments... by my experience the MX generation for example (epix-x etc) needed much more adjustments and the redcine was handy at times when other software did not have all the needed controls available

Edited by aapo lettinen
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