HD For Indies

As of last Thursday night, all Red Ones can shoot 120fps. Wanna see? Of course you do.

: )

I've got a little sample posted over at ProVideoCoalition, as well as some of the details of the new build's features. Some coooool ones. Go read! Now. Cuz I sedd so.

: )

There is also Art Adams' Red One Lattitude Tests, which clearly illustrates the differences between shooting under tungsten or daylight lighting conditions on the daylight optimized Mysterium sensor. CTB is your FRIEND to get the red, green, and blue histograms to line up nicely, and not have the red channel clip early.

Art also has articles about Red up discussing the mixed blessings of "I never knew how much processing cameras did for me, until I used a camera that didn’t do any." (opinions vary on to how good a thing this is - I relish it as a post weenie who likes to tweak things to the nth degree to get best results)

Art and Adam Wilt in Discussing RED, uncensoRED - they both start wrapping their heads around the nitty gritty of RAW image processing, Redcine, ramifications of daylight vs. tungsten lighting. I didn't chime in as I was in transit during that conversation, but a lot of stuff going on in there for the techies.

...and some others in the Stunning Good Looks by Art Adams category of PVC. Art is digging into some of the differences between Red and traditional cameras - I like a lot of those differences.

UPDATE - Be sure to check this out too - workflow software for Red from a third party. Expect LOTS more in the future.

Labels: Red, Red Alert, Red One, Redcine

Hey all -

just a reminder that my Red One presentation is at 1pm today at 501 Studios, here's a link to the original post with all the details, maps, etc.

Zane points out the google map is WRONG - it is 5th and IH-35 - the map pointed to San Marcos, my sincere apologies!

Labels: Red, Red Alert, Redcine

Redcine Publicly Released!

For those who haven't kept score, Redcine (think telecine for Red footage) is Red's software tool to convert native Redcode to other formats for you to use - such as to any codec you have installed on your system. You can also think of Redcine as Red's answer to having a hardware deck...sort of. It is how you move and convert footage to other useful formats.

REDcine download page - available for both Windows XP and Intel based Mac OS X.

They've also posted a bunch of user interface overview videos, which I strongly recommend:

http://red.cachefly.net/redcine/interface_overview.mov
http://red.cachefly.net/redcine/project_settings.mov
http://red.cachefly.net/redcine/shot_settings.mov
http://red.cachefly.net/redcine/color_settings.mov
http://red.cachefly.net/redcine/output_settings.mov
http://red.cachefly.net/redcine/library.mov

It is quite geeky and not for the casual, shoots once-in-a-blue-moon user. If you want to get optimal results, spend a lot of watching, reading the release notes, and testing. But the good news is that it has a lot of power and flexibility well beyond what Red Alert offers. I'll be posting more in depth analysis later.

Final Cut Studio 2 REDCODE Plugin

Final Cut Studio 2 REDCODE Plugin Page

From the page:

When you transfer media from your CF cards to your hard drive for editing, please be sure you take the Native .R3D files, the QuickTime Reference movies and the Magazine Profile from the CF card. They should all live together in the same folder to allow for offline/online editing and finishing. After you have imported your QuickTime Reference movies into Final Cut Pro do not move the original files to another location. If you move the RED files and media after importing the QuickTime Reference movies into FCP you will lose the connection to the FCP master clips and will have to reconnect the files manually.

Import the QuickTime Reference movie size you wish to edit with (2K or 1K) and ensure that your clip parameters match your FCP sequence parameters. FCP will prompt you to automatically match the sequence settings with your clip when you make your first edit into a new timeline. Set your timeline to Unlimited RT and Medium or Low quality playback using the timeline’s RT pulldown menu.

For this release, import your 2K or 1K QuickTime reference movies into your project by using File: Import Files or File: Import Folder. The advanced RED Log and Transfer interface is in the final stages of development and the installer package will be available from RED at this web link in the coming weeks. RED’s integration for full FCP Studio 2 functionality with RED camera workflows is in continuing development.

Depending on your system configuration, you may see less than full frame rate playback. RED recommends the current top end configuration of a MacPro with 8 cores, fast RAID 0 striped drives and a minimum of 4 gigabytes of RAM if you plan on editing the 2K QuickTime Reference movies. RED recommends for RT editing on a MacBook Pro that you use the 1K QuickTime Reference movies or smaller frame sizes that can be generated with the RED Alert! Program provided to camera owners by RED.


Note that this isn't the ultimate solution of importing directly nor converting to ProRes. Note the NAB discussed plugin to alter the Redcode attributes is not mentioned....yet.

RED ALERT! 1.3.0 page - RELEASED TO PUBLIC (wasn't working earlier today)

RED ALERT! page

From the page:


RED ALERT! is an image processing tool that allows you to load REDCODE RAW footage, adjust image exposure and color correction settings, and render selected frame or image sequences images out to 4K or 2K resolution DPX and TIFF file formats. It will also generate QuickTime reference movies from original REDCODE RAW data(.R3D) files for use by 3rd party QuickTime compatible applications.


Latest version of the simpler tool to convert Redcode to proxies, and alter their Redcode color settings. This can do some tricks Redcine can't, like make new QT reference files (proxies), so is definitely worth downloading.

Red QT codec

RED codec download page - still requires a Red camera owner login, so I'm presuming this comes with some of the other tools, would be silly otherwise. Will update this line when I know more.

OK, so now what?

There's already a thread on Redcine feedback:

RedCine feedback.. - Reduser.net

Jarred tells us where to get some Redcode source clips to play with:

1st clips - Reduser.net

Questions and discussions: go to town here:

Redcine Workflow - Reduser.net

Redcine tidbits from Lucas at Assimilate:

REDCINE tidbits - Reduser.net

More good notes on current Redcine status:

REDCINE Information - Reduser.net

This has been the "just the facts, ma'am" post, analysis and hands on to follow later.

-mike

UPDATE - Apple released updates to all parts of the Final Cut Studio 2 suite, OS X 10.4.11 and 10.5.1, read about it here and here.

Labels: Red, Red Alert, Redcine

My Red presentation the other week in Sitges, Spain at the IFA Conference with Jendra Jarnagin, Steve Tammi, and Pol Turrents went very well, I was very happy with it. We ran for about 2 1/2 hours and covered a lot of ground and answered a lot of questions.

This was the first public viewing of a production Red camera in Spain (after Soderbergh shot his movie over the summer there), so interest was high.

For those who couldn't make it, a DiVX version will be posted soon (I'll update when I have the link), and here is the PDF of my Keynote slides (4.27MB), and annotated stills taken during the presentation. The stills have a text walkthrough that actually goes into more detail, worth looking at - many things not in the Keynote slides.

MONDAY UPDATE:
Here's part 1 - good news is that it is all of it, bad news is you have to have DiVX installed to watch it:



Here's part 2:



(if you're having trouble watching the streaming embedded version above, you can download the DiVX clips to your local drive from the IFA page on Stage 6. Go to the page with the video you want, and there's two buttons over the video itself - one to play, one to download.)

Big, BIG thanks to Utopic and Service Vision for their aid, equipment, and support, and to the local Blackmagic Design folks for jumping in at the last minute as well. We couldn't have done this presentation 1/10th as well without them, and huge thanks to Steve Tammi for having the faith to get on a plane with his Red One #17 in Tennessee to join us and help us in Spain. Pol Turrents was critical to all this pulling together as well, it was his contacts and resources that got us what we needed.

And of course special thanks again to Juan and Inga, the organizers of the IFA Conference, for inviting us over, putting us up, and treating us so well, without whom NONE of this would have happened.

Here's how it went down:

After the crowd filed in, we introduced ourselves, gave a little history of Red and the philosophy behind it, and jumped in with with "Why Red Matters." I broke it down into six categories:

Image Quality/Resolution
Modularity/flexibility
RAW & Redcode
Filmless/Tapeless
Cost - both buying and integrating

After going through those categories in detail, we went into the workflow from both a DoP's perspective (Jendra) as well as the techie/post side (mine), talked about the camera a bit, then showed the differences in resolution between the primarily available formats. After that I showed a draft of an edit of the stunt car shoot OffHollywood shot when I was in NYC with them last month, and then showed a split screen before/after grading version - very effective.

Then the fun part - a live walkthrough of how the camera works - shooting, ingest, editing, grading, the whole deal. Since Steve Tammi had brought a Red over, he and Jendra fired it up, rolled a few seconds of the audience, then Jendra walked the CF card over like Vanna White - no tricks up our sleeves.

I put the CF card into a CF reader ("THIS is your HDCAM SR deck for Red."), pulled it into the Mac Pro (kindly provided by Utopic, a post facility in Barcelona, many thanks to Oriol).

I showed how Red set up their naming structure to try to prevent duplicate file names, showed the file/folder structure created on the card, and then opened up the clip in Red Alert. There I showed how RAW images could be manipulated beyond what a regular electronic camera can do.

From there I made QuickTime proxies, showing how 2K, 1K, and 1/2K proxies could be made on the fly from the 4K source instantly, then converted the 2K proxy to a 1080p ProResHQ file for ease of use in Final Cut Pro (including window burn for assurance during conform later). I dropped that into Final Cut and showed that playing, then went back to Red Alert and exported it as a DPX sequence, then conformed that simple shot from Final Cut into Color, and showed how much far you could push Red images around with a 10 bit log version of the audience shot.

After that, we did a Q&A, with Pol Turrents translating the techie for us between English and Spanish (with a bit of Catalan thrown in their too.).

Then we packed up and headed out to shoot 4K in Barcelona...but that's another story (forthcoming).

Labels: Red, Red Alert, Redcine, Sitges, Spain

Been busy, had intern collect up a bunch of links, apologies if some of these are repeats. I'm organizing another batch of uncompressed 4K TIFFs to go up.

-mike

Some tips... - Reduser.net

Some tips... - Reduser.net - have latest everything, calibrate your monitor.

"Film is dead!" discussion on Reduser

RAW RULES and 720/1080 debate - Reduser.net - Mark starts it off with a cowboy style, guns a blazin' statement about "Film is dead!" full of passion and enthusiasm for the work we've done over the last week with 4K.

I come back to say something very similar with a fistful of caveats and "under these circumstances" included.

But it amounted to the same general thrust - while there are a number of reasons to shoot film, Red 4K is reallllllllly compelling on a number of fronts:
-fantastic image quality
-simple/direct/easy/fast post
-low cost, huge quality
-the unmentioned (in this thread) physical camera infrastructure Red is launching
-oh - and Redcine's gonna be free (more on that later when I have time to transcribe a Ted interview recording)


Red threads of interest

Now that cameras are out in the wild, the forums on Reduser.net are going nuts. Here's some of the more interesting posts I've come across. Not a complete list, but what I've found of interest.

Macbeth... final test shot. - Reduser.net Jim Jannard shows how they test the cameras, and the charts they use to do so, and posts a Macbeth chart sample.

Prague... a prototype rig. - Reduser.net Jim Jannard posts about his favorite config of a Red in the field so far. Note the carbon fiber rods. It says "Prague" on the side because there were 25 pre-production cameras made given city names.

Delay... - Reduser.netJim Jannard announces a slight delay for units 51-100:
"We are going to delay the 51-100 delivery until September 28th. We need the time to catch up on accessories. The bad news... 51-100 will have to wait a bit longer. The good news... we aren't delaying any other release dates (as of yet). And this is not a camera problem. We want to serve our customers well and that includes accessories. Delivering a camera without an LCD or viewfinder just isn't good. And we are having delays on both. Bummer. I hate it. "

Biggest Camera Problem So Far - Reduser.net Mark Pederson (guy I'm working with) chimes in on the biggest problem encountered so far shooting with a Red, and I chime in on agreement. I don't know that there is any fix for this in the near future. And I don't mind that there isn't one bit. : )

See the video report of RED in IBC �07 - Reduser.net

Premium Package... once and for all. - Reduser.net Tweaked configs from Red, Jim explains:
"The Premium Package is gone. And that is a good thing. 1. The parts have changed for the better. 2. You are not stuck with every piece in the Premium Package (why anyone would want 4 side rails is beside me). 3. Duplicating the package costs only a few dollars more ($75 I think). But now you can get exactly what you want. 4. The Base Package has not changed in price and is the foundation to build the system you really want. "

What will *you* rent it for? - Reduser.net Poll. Current results: most want to rent between 500-1200/day. Hugely divergent rates, so the low ones will probably pull rates down hard for everybody. Good for renters, bad for owners.

Quick trick... - Reduser.net - exporting H.264 from QuickTime Player.

Ya know, there aren't that many billionaire industrialists posting their own notes and tricks online about how to do stuff....Jim's posted about 800 times on Reduser - FAR more than I have (factor of 4 or so I think). Pretty amazing circumstances.

RED Alert! info... - Reduser.net - Red Alert tip from Jim, I ask a follow up question.

Offhollywood Red Camera Test Shoot - Reduser.net - same thread as before, LOTS of discussion.

Hd For Indies - Reduser.net - thread on the images I posted, including some graded versions (more in the Offhollywood thread above).

REDAlert Settings - Reduser.net - Master Grame makes some suggestions on how best to process using Red Alert, and be SURE to read comment #4 from Stu Maschwitz.

RED History... - Reduser.net - Jim shares a list of the names of all the pre-production prototypes.

And from elsewhere:

Quint nabs the first interview with Roger Avary about CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN!!! -- Ain't It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news.: "I might try to squeeze in a quick micro-budget movie I've been planning to shoot with my new RED Camera. Since I'm financing it myself I don't need to worry about the bond company restrictions on drop dates. "

So Avary has a low #, or a friend that has one, or thinks he's getting his soon, or something.

-mike


Red Day Zero - Cameras. Real. Shipped.

I just had the most thoroughly incredible day today.


eSATA to RAID until RedDrive ships? - Reduser.net

eSATA to RAID until RedDrive ships? - Reduser.net

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3908

Motu V3HD - Reduser.net

Recine Processing Times - Reduser.net

Rendering Fisheye to Rectilinear? - Reduser.net

Is the RedCode codec available this Friday? - Reduser.net


Other articles of interest:

Labels: Red, Redcine

Native Final Cut Pro support of 4K Redcode RAW

Yep, as I originally reported here, here, and here Final Cut Pro WILL natively support 4K Redcode RAW footage, on the timeline, with full support (RT engine for realtime effects, etc.). That's the good news. The bad news - it'll support it....at some point in the future. While Peter Jackson's short was cut with a pre-release version of FCP, hinting that it must be pretty far along, it ain't done cookin' yet. Consider it akin to what we saw last year at NAB - 24p HDV was shown in the booth, but didn't ship until later in the year. So it'll happen, but not quite yet, and I've no idea what the timeline might be.

The good news is that it'll be fully supported on the timeline - it CAN be as simple as shoot some footage onto your Red Drive (or Red Flash or Red RAM), disconnect from Red One, sit down in the field with your MacBook Pro or back at studio on any Intel Mac, plug in via FireWire, and the drive will mount. Drag files over to FCP and drop'em on a timeline and away you go - you're editing 4K.

Huh/how/whaaaaaaaa?

Here's the deal - Red has built a QuickTime codec that understands Redcode RAW (or perhaps calling it a wrapper might be more technically accurate). If you're on an Intel Mac, a FUTURE version of Final Cut Pro, presumably 6.x, will natively read the Redcode RAW files from a Red Drive or any other media/drive fast enough for realtime performance (count on needing circa 30 MB/sec to leave headroom/safety margin - so FW400 JUST fast enough for single stream 4K@24p).

You just drop it on the timeline and go, don't think about it.

If you DO want to think about it, here's what's happening - Redcode RAW uses wavelet based compression. With wavelets, it is easy to extract fractional resolution versions of the whole frame quickly - so extracting a 1/2 or 1/4 res version is (relatively) cake to do. If you're on a MacBook Pro, you get a 1K version. If you're on a sufficiently pimped Mac Pro, you get up to a 2K version of the 4K source. (Final Cut is limited to 2K max res, can't handle 4K. Don't sweat it - only time you ever need 4K is for theatrical distribution). You'll be able to, with that future FCP version, cut, edit, cross dissolve, add effects, titles, color correct, whatever - just like any other codec. What is happening behind the scenes - the RAW Bayer pattern is being demosaiced - converted from a checkerboard of individual R/G/B pixels into a "normal" RGB image, at the fractional resolution desired. Any nondestructive look metadata that was assigned while shooting with the camera is applied - so any while balance, curves, tint, etc. as set on camera are applied to that footage as a default look. From there it is delivered to timeline and away you go.

"What if I want to have all that coolio color control that I had in Redcine in Final Cut Pro?" - no problem, they are making a special Red FX plug that will allow you to adjust exactly the same color paramters (not scale/repo though) in FCP that you could in Redcine. Only difference is that those controls are presented as the FX plugin architecture allows. Same controls, different looking UI. So that would still access the 12 bit RAW data, manipulate it in a 32 bit floating point color space, and then deliver it back to the timeline in whatever the timeline settings were.

One thing that is a little fuzzy is what happens when you need to bring in other files, or render a cross dissolve, etc. - what should new material be brought in as? What format are renders being done to? As for the first question the new Open Format Timeline feature makes that easy, since you can mix frame sizes, frame rates, and codecs on the same timeline (finally!). The answer for what does stuff get rendered to is a fuzzier - I'm guessing Redcode RGB? But I don't know. That may make sense, but I don't have a definitive answer for that yet. Perhaps it would depend on the timeline settings? Not entirely clear how that'll work in FCP 6.

You can still use FCP's 3 way color corrector and other coloring tools in FCP if you want to, even in conjunction with Red's FX plugin for coloring (note I'm not saying Red FX plug for Color, the new standalone app - more on that later). There's always nine ways to skin any cat - if you have questions on best workflow, I'm available for consulting on that (use link top of page).

If that doesn't sit well with you, or a 10 bit 4:2:2 deliverable is as good as you need, there's another option:

Transcoding Redcode RAW to ProRes with a Red Import Module

For those who want something even more straightforward, or want a little more rendering horsepower available (not being taken up by the de-Bayering etc. of processing 4K Redcode RAW), there will be a Red Import Module. Apple was demonstrating taking 4K Redcode RAW and transcoding on import to their new ProRes422 codec. Redcode RAW gets read into FCP, but what gets written to scratch disks is ProRes422. (Kinda like the HDV==>AIC transcode on capture option if you've ever used that). ProRes422 looks pretty damn good, I'll have more to say on it after I can research it some more, but if all you want is a 10 bit, 4:2:2 or lesser deliverable, ProRes looks like a really good choice - transcode to that and just edit that for your offline and your online if you have the space. With 750 GB drives around $400 online, and 1TB drive hitting the market, 1080p24 ProRes422 (which is full raster, FYI - 1920x1080 is actually that size, not 1440x1080 or 1280x1080 like some OTHER codecs) is about 22 MB/sec. That's a 10 bit, full raster, 4:2:2 codec. That adds up to about 80 GB/hr. So that 750GB drive for $400 would hold over 8 1/2 hours of footage - about $45/hr for storage. For shorter form or tight shooting ratios, offline/online with one codec starts getting viable. You may say "Well, I only have 500GB of storage on my current machine." but start looking around at what it really costs to triple or quadruple that...and what it'll cost in 6 months from now.

When importing, you can also pick what size you want - 2K, 1080p, 720p, 576p, 480p, etc.

It may also be possible to transcode to other codecs, don't know at this time. It may not be possible to transcode to another codec for online later, so check workflows carefully - I'm looking into all of this myself still.

So that gives you three ways to get footage into FCP, depending on release schedules:

1.) The first option to be available will likely be just using Redcine to convert to whatever codec you need for offline or online work as laid out above. For this example, let's say ProRes422.

2.) Next likely option will be to use the Red Import Module to transcode to ProRes422 (or possibly other codecs) at the size you need right into Final Cut Pro (future version), no other apps required - if you don't need 2K/4K, why deal with the overhead? Convert to something high quality that lets you work fast - and ProRes422 will do that.

3.) Or, for big work, just cut 4K Redcode RAW natively in a future FCP 6.x on an Intel Mac.

Note ALL of the above choices require an Intel Mac, and choice one you can use any Windows box (but may not be able to render to ProRes on Windows, dunno yet)

If you don't have an Intel Mac for your FCP work, isn't the end of the world, there are workarounds (I'm in that boat - three G5s in this room where I'm typing)

So you can edit 4K natively.

You can transcode 4K to 2K/1080/720/576/480 res as needed to edit.

You can transcode, via Redcine, to any codec, for any Mac/Windows NLE that has a "normal" codec (see previously posted Redcine article for more on that).

A few downer tech notes:

-From what I've been told and understand, FCP STILL does not properly manipulate RGB on the timeline at better than 8 bits RGB. That means for RGB content, cross dissolves, text overlays, etc. are still delivered to timeline as 8 bit RGB at best. You can do 10 bits/channel, but only with 4:2:2 content. While internally 32 bit float is used for the FX plug architecture, there is still a bottleneck for what gets delivered to the timeline. There may be workarounds, I'm researching them (in my copious spare time...yeah right - but if anybody wants to hire me to figure it out...).

-Apple's New Color Application- as cool as it is, as powerful as it is...it doesn't support Redcode RAW yet. It also is limited to 2K at this point in time. Talked to some Apple folks for whom the Redcode RAW support announcement was new to them just the other week too. Apple compartmentalizes very effectively for security, but that does introduce some bottlenecks when folks don't know what's happening down the hall and aren't able to support new features/formats right off the bat. In any case, Color CAN do RGB. Color CAN do 10 bit log...but only from DPX files (there's ways to there, I can help). Color can't, at this time, nor with the first shipping version of Final Cut Studio 2, read Redcode RAW in natively. After having rendered 10 bit RGB files (using AJA or BMD codecs) out of Color...FCP still can't render a proper 10 bit RGB cross dissolve. So there are issues. But what CAN be done is to work with Uncompressed or ProRes422 10 bit 4:2:2 codecs, and THAT will work properly. I'm mentally already designing workflows to start with 4K and switch over at the proper stage in the workflow...mental gears churning...

What about high end post work? There's been another announcement of note:

Assimilate's Scratch can read in Redcode RAW files and grade them natively, and even access the nondestructive look metadata from camera.

This gives maximum control with the absolute minimum of bandwidth required to read in and play back the Redcode RAW files. This is a biggie - If you wanted to make a 4K feature, shoot 4K Redcode RAW, edit, then take EDL, Redcode RAW clips, and metadata to a Scratch facility - they can conform and color from that. There are other ways to go about this, too, but that's a damn handy option to have!

Of course, if you want to work with any other traditional DI tool, you can work with DPX files, and there's ways to get you get there.

As always, if you have any questions on Red workflow, be it Red gear, editing/VFX hardware or software, codecs, storage, archival, etc., I'm doing my best to the the Go To Guy on all these matters. Buying a Red? Thinking about it? Trying to figure out how it will or might fit into your facility, studio, or workflows? Contact me at the email address at the top of the page (in the header), and I'll get you sorted out, be you a starving indie barely able to afford a Red with still lenses, or a high end shop wondering how to integrate this into your heavy iron and/or realtime-centric facility workflows. I gotcha covered. I charge by the hour, my rates are indie viable/affordable. My overarching theme is to be flexible and accomodating to the budgets, time sensitivity, equipment available, level of technical sophistication/comfort, etc. and find the best match for each individual circumstance.

-mike

PS - I've had a couple of folks voice concern that this is turning into the All Red, All The Time site - hang on, hang on, I'm just going one at a time by vendor through all my copious notes here. I want to get the biggest one that most folks were most interested in done FIRST, and then move on from there. Apple, Dalsa, Sony, Abel Cine, JVC, Panasonic, Canon, Band Pro, Arri, storage, etc. are alllllll coming...I can only type just so fast...

Labels: Red, Redcine, software, workflow

OK, let's talk workflow with Redcode RAW and Redcine.

Some background for those not up to speed:

Redcode RAW is the native compressed recording file format of Red, recorded as data to files in a folder structure on a Red Drive, Red Flash, or Red RAM. Redcode RAW is a 12 bit linear RAW (Bayer pattern, color filter array) wavelet based compression scheme.

All above recording media have about the same performance envelope - based on public statements, all can record the same frame sizes/rates as all the others - so long as you have a properly spec'd CF card, for instance, the only limit as compared to Red Drive is the recording capacity. Recording quality, frame rate/size, etc. all the same. Red gives you LOTS of recording options - single/dual link HD-SDI to deck or DDR/DFR, uncompressed 4.5K out the high speed link, or the more likely/useful Redcode RAW to one of two external recording modules (320GB, $900 Red Drive or 64GB, $4500 Red RAM), or to one of three $500 internal Flash RAM based adaptor modules that fit on side of camera body (CF, ExpressCard 34, or eSATA).

Anyway...after you record all this stuff, how do you use it? Redcode RAW is the native format, but it is also proprietary - nobody else's camera generates it, it is specific to the Red One at this time. How to edit it, do VFX work with it, etc.?

Redcine

If you hadn't heard, Redcine is the tool to convert Redcode RAW to...whatever you want (I'll skim over the basics previously covered and get to the juicy stuff here shortly). Standard image file format sequences or any "normal" codec you have installed on your Intel Mac (no PPC Mac support, drat) or Windows based system.

Click the pic above for a larger view of what Redcine looks like.

As you can see, there are four tabs, and I'l zing through what they are for:

Project

In the project tab, you set up your, well, project. What is a project in Redcine? If you're used to working with film and the telecine process, think of this as your telecine session, saveable to disk, same as you'd save your color grades for a given tape on your daVinci setup. If you're a software jockey, you can think of a project as being akin to an FCP timeline settings or an After Effects composition settings (not exactly for either of those, but that's the general idea).

From here you can load a shot or a full mag - one of the nice features of Red One is that on camera, during the shoot, you can do some digital slating - specifying shots, takes, etc. The files are filed in folders that fall to that order - takes inside shots inside scene folders, etc. Redcine understands this struture, so when you import, shots are stretched out horizontally, and multipe takes are stacked vertically - just like Scratch, which this owes a very obvious debt to. So much so that the UI (user interface) pretty much IS a very cut down version of Scratch's toolset with some modifications.

One of the coolest features of Redcode, which makes it more like anybody else's v3.0 software than a beta release, is the use of gestural controls - if you flick the mouse pointer (no clicking involved) towards a screen edge, controls and UI elements will appear or dissapear (or even build/reduce in terms of how many/how simple things are shown). Sounds a little complicated/scary at first, but once you start using it, is super fast and easy. It's the little touches - things like you can click and drag horizontally to control some things where they make sense, but in other areas you click-hold and twirl mouse clockwise or counter-clockwise to increase/decrease values...just like a knob or wheel. Very clever.

Anyway, in the project, you can set things like your format, your aspect ratio, your frame rate, etc. You can also control display reticles and masking areas (opaque or transparent, your color of choice), show timecode, all kinds of useful stuff and powerful stuff.

It is important to remember that Redcine is a prep/conversion tool, not intended to be an editor or full coloring tool. It is a pre-grading tool for one light type color corrections, and a prep tool to deliver assets in format of choice.

You can flip between Library View which shows all your shots (horizontally) and takes (stacked vertically atop each other) - is a pre-editorial organizer so you can get a sense of your shot coverage - instead of a long vertical text list for your to organize, is thumbnails in a timeline like interface. Fast and efficient.

Next up, you can proceed to the Shot portion of the application. In here you can see and edit the shots metadata, name, position and scale. Want to crop? Want to scootch it around in that cropped area? All doable, and those shot-by-shot decisions get saved in your project for later recall and usage (handy when it comes time to generate your online res copies). You can play back, even on a laptop. That's right - play back 4K footage without pre-rendering - it is extracting a fractional res version on the fly. You have pop-ups for playback quality at full/half/quarter res, in preview through high quality. Higher res, higher quality slower to process. Wanna see realtime playback as you adjust scale or whatever? Quarter res preview is your friend. Wanna zoom in on that blown highlight for subtle tweaks? Crank up the res to see all the detail. The wavelet nature of Redcode makes it cake to extract fractional resolutions on the fly, no problem. So scale and repo as it is playing back - nice! Can't keyframe though - for that kind of subtle work, just take it to Motion, After Effects, or tool of choice at full res and manipulate it there.

In the Color tab, you have control over a bunch of the color attributes of the shot - you've got three point curves (toe/gamma/shoulder), you've got tint, exposure (measured in stops, very nice), white point (measured in Kelvin and properly executed without just chopping channel data), color channels, a special highlight recovery tool that manipulates digital blowout (ever see a magenta highlight in an overexposed area? This tool can fix it!), and several other things I can't recall.

One major feature of this: the color controls on camera, and in Redcine, and in the FCP plug (more on that below), are all the same, on purpose...because you can save in any one of them and move them to the other. It takes a little time for the full meaning of that to soak in, but do so. Hypothetical: imagine shooting a few test frames, throwing on laptop, previewing the shot there. Tweak color until you like it using the convenient mouse/keyboard interface (could do all same stuff on camera UI, just harder, like iPod vs. iTunes playlist organization...in fact VERY much the same metaphor). Save those settings as a file, put on an SD card, and load back into camera. Bang! Your tweaked nondestructive look metadata now rides shotgun with all footage shot with those settings...and gets baked into the HDMI and HD-SDI outputs. Doing a live shoot? Save those settings and put it on all 8 (or however many) cameras used for them to match. Calibration issues in what I just suggested, but you get the general idea.

Anyway, as you tweak the color settings, you're working from the 12 bit RAW source, manipulating in a 32 bit floating point color space - very precise. And of course, GPU accelerated as well. You can adjust colors WHILE the footage is playing back - very handy.

Oh - you can also define the color space you're working in - be it Rec 709 for HD destined work, or Camera RGB for the native color space, Adobe 1998, etc. as desired.

When you're done there, you can go to Output. From the Output settings, you pick what size you want to generate, what file format, what bit depth (auto-governed by what's possible with the format, so you can't try to create something impossible), and what codec. Now, for everyone who's concerned about will their NLE be supported, the answer is pretty much yes. If you can write to the codec you want to edit with on an Intel Mac or a Windows box, you're in luck. If you need a high end image sequence like TIFF, DPX, OpenEXR, JPEG2000, etc., you're also in luck - as all those formats are already working in the build shown at NAB. As for codecs, here's the drill - if you have a codec installed on your box that you could "normally" use, such as with After Effects or similar programs...you can write to it from Redcine. Simple as that. If you're on a Mac running FCP 6, you could convert to the brand new ProRes422 codec. If you're on a Windows box running Avid, you could convert to DNxHD 36 for your offline, and then later DNxHD 220 for your online. Or the same from a Mac with Avid stuff installed. Just bought the Sheer codec from BitJazz.com, or any other third party codec? Install in on your box, and you write to it from Redcine, no new version of Redcine required. It is that simple.

I mentioned offline/online - if you aren't converting to your final format (and if you're doing an indie feature, you probably aren't, or shouldn't), then convert the first time to your offline codec, save your Redcine Project, and Red is working on something they'll call a Red Pull List to help with your conform - you kick an EDL or XML out of your NLE, then bring that back to Redcine which parses it for all the shots and selects you used - those selects can then be processed to your online format of choice (frame size/codec/etc.) Software conform (easy with FCP I know, I'd imagine so with Adobe, dunno enough about Avid to say), and you're in bidness. Redcine and Red Pull List don't DO the conform for you, they just HELP in the conform process.

Or, if that all seems to complicated, there's another option...read next article posted.

If you have workflow questions about how Redcode RAW will fold into your existing pipeline, be it editorial, VFX, offline, online, hardware, software, whatever, I do exactly that kind of consulting for a living - contact me at the email address at the top of this page in the header. I charge by the hour, rates are indie viable/affordable.

-mike

UPDATE - I'll keep adding extra bits of info to this post -

Q: What about subclips?

A: you can "dupe" the shot in Redcine (doesn't replicate any data on disc, just makes another instance of it in the timeline...like making a copy of a clip in your NLE - no new media generated). You can set separate ins and outs for that VERSION of that shot...this is a big deal for doc makers that roll for an hour and want to pre-slice into shots, but not have to process that one hour shot for the online if all they need is 5 second subclip.

Q: What about conversion times in Redcine?

A: They haven't released official stats, because it'll depend on a lot of things - what clock speed your CPU/s, how many cores, what GPU, what bus speed, what read/write storage & speed; then on top of that what size frame are you rendering to, what color/cropping/repo are you doing, what quality and scaling settings are you using....lotsa factors. What they want to avoid is posting a "it took my box x.y secs/frame" on some pimped out 8 core box doing draft quality SD to a RAID, and some Moe Ronn getting upset stating "Hey! It took WAY longer than that for me!" ....on his Core Solo Mini cooking 4K Hi-Q DPX files to a USB 1.0 drive or somesuch. So they need to get organized and test in an appropriate fashion, and then publish the results in a detailed, well documented and qualified fashion.

All that said...if they are managing to play back at 1K on a Macbook Pro and 2K on a Mac Pro in REAL TIME...I'm not too worried about how long conversion is going to take in Redcine. Rob's on the job.

-mike

Labels: Final Cut, post, post equipment, Red, Redcine, software