HD For Indies

Got a press release:

R3D-to-DPX Conversion:

R3D2DPX.exe is a Windows (only) shell-based tool that converts R3D files into the following formats:

DPX
CineForm RAW
CineForm 444
CineForm Intermediate (4:2:2)
Think of R3D2DPX as a format converter for RAW data, where in this case RAW means the Bayer sensor data.

R3D2DPX does not extract color profile or white balance information from the R3D file.

It assumes that all color processing will be performed later.

If color processing as performed in RedCine is necessary for your workflow, then continue to use RedCine!


It is a good and healthy sign that a third party is offering a conversion tool, and especially for the Windows side of the world.

I emailed David Taylor of Cineform some questions and here's what I got back:

Question 1.) My understanding was that Redcine could convert to any standard installed codec - is it not possible to write to the formats R3DDPX supports directly from Redcine?

Not completely, no. RedCine will only support Quicktime based codecs, there are still limitations to that interface. Also PC users of CineForm primarily seek AVI files. When we do use QuickTime under RedCine, we are one of the few codecs to support 16-bit per channel RGBA, yet the memory footprint for 4K frame seems make the conversion unreliable for many users. It could be running out of memory due to issues inherent to all 32-bit applications, or issues with the graphics card or drivers, it has been hard to debug for the users that experience this. On RedUser.net it is the repeated frame or failure to write problem. There is also been issue that RedCine can't export 16-bit per channel Quicktime to any codec at 4096 in my testing, yet 4095 works in many cases (I've also tested using Sheer to confirm this.) I'm sure these glitches will be addressed, but there are presently in RedCine Build 74, as tested on Mac and PC.

2.) If not, what is the barrier to making that happen?

Just like us, I'm sure their software team is extremely busy. So time is the barrier.

3.) Under what circumstances does this offer capabilities that are unique or better than Redcine?

It has a significantly lower system requirement. It will prefer conversions without needing the GPU, therefore there is no minimum system requirement for the graphics card. This helps those with existing blade servers/render farms that may have underpowered GPUs. I think it threads better for higher performance, although each system will perform differently, so I would suggest users try for themselves. Direct AVI encoding, the preference for most CineForm users. And finally, and likely the most controversial, it can directly transcode to CineForm RAW for significantly smaller files than CineForm 444, at the same quality. We have always had the issue that RAW cameras should not develop to RGB, as that increases the datarate 3 times, without any quality benefit. Both Redcode and CineForm RAW exploit this efficiency, yet the Redcode workflow still in its early days, CineForm RAW has been running real-time under Premiere Pro (PC) for a long time, and is recently supported under FCP.

In the end it is about workflow choice. RedCine does so much more than R3D2DPX, but the CineForm tools simplifies the bridge into workflow and NLEs not yet supported by Red.
David Newman
CTO, CineForm


Thanks to David for taking the time to respond.
-mike

Labels: Cineform, NLE, post, software

About the Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update - looking at the description, I didn't see anything vital for editing purposes, BUT, only after you update can you see Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 as an available update (see article on those changes here).

So, YES, you MUST have 10.4.11 to update to 6.0.2. The MANY benefits of that are outlined in the article above.

Other updates:

Apple - Support - Downloads - DVD Studio Pro 4.2.1

-Compatible with 10.4.11 and 10.5
-Still images added to DVD Studio Pro project now encode correctly
-Now correctly supports following HDV formats for native use in NTSC HD projects:
-720p24/30/60
-1080p24/30
-1080i60

DVD Studio Pro now correctly supports the following HDV formats for native use in PAL HD projects:

720p25/50
1080p25
1080i50

-Now correctly supports following H.264 formats for native use in NTSC HD projects:

720p24/30/60

Apple - Support - Downloads - Color 1.0.2

LOTS of meaningful changes in here, thanks to intern Gideon for summarizing and quoting below:

-Compatible with 10.4.11 and 10.5 (what about 10.5.1? Anybody try it yet? Let me know in the Comments, please!)
-AVCHD and AVC-Intra formats are transcoded by FCP on import as either ProRes 422, ProRes 422 (HQ), or Apple Intermediate QT files.
-XDCAM EX media is imported by Final Cut as XDCAM HD, which is supported by Color for import, but not as Original format or as an Export Codec.
-Improved Round Trip Support for Upconverted Media Rendered by Color.1.0.2

Improved Handling of Aspect Ratio and Field Dominance
The following issues with Aspect Ratio and Field Dominance handling have been fixed:

After a Final Cut Pro to Color round trip of a sequence combining standard definition and high definition HDV clips, the aspect ratio of each clip rendered by Color now matches that of the original media.
Instances where interlaced sequences sent to Color and then back to Final Cut Pro would have their interlacing set to None have been fixed.
Instances where sequences with non-square pixels sent to Color and then back to Final Cut Pro would have their pixel aspect ratio set to Square have been fixed.
Improved Image Processing
The following improvements have been made to image processing:

Improvements have been made to address color and luma shifts appearing in some formats.
Visible noise introduced by adjusting the Luma curve has been reduced.
Instances of artifacts in mattes created by the HSL qualifiers have been eliminated.
Improved Project Reconforming
Color’s Reconform command has been improved:

Instances where the Color Timeline did not match an updated Final Cut Pro sequence after a reconform operation have been fixed.
Instances where Color would send a version of the project that existed prior to a reconform operation back to Final Cut Pro have been fixed.
Color now properly reconforms altered Motion parameters from Final Cut Pro sequences.
Improved Rendering of Clips with Speed Effects
The following improvements have been made to the handling of clips using speed effects from Final Cut Pro:

Keyframed secondary vignettes now work properly with clips using speed effects.
Clips using the reverse speed effect now render with the proper frame range in Color and are sent back to Final Cut Pro with correct In and Out points.
Any Volume Can Be Used to Save Color Projects
Color will now function properly on systems with home directories saved on any volume or partition, and the Default Project Directory can be set to any volume or partition you choose.

Improved Media Handling During Final Cut Pro to Color Round Trips
The following improvements have been made to media handling during Final Cut Pro to Color round trips:

Clips that start with 00:00:00:00 timecode are now sent back to Final Cut Pro with the correct timecode.
Final Cut Pro programs containing nested sequences with cross dissolves on the first clip no longer cause problems in Color. This corrects the issue covered in the Color 1.0.1 Release Notes.
Improved Handling of Motion and LiveType Clips, and Offline Media
The following improvements have been made to the handling of Motion and LiveType clips:

Motion templates, Motion projects, and LiveType projects all appear as offline shots in the Color timeline, instead of as gaps as in previous versions of Color. These media types, although unsupported in Color, reappear when your sequence is sent back to Final Cut Pro.
Offline shots in the Color timeline no longer obscure shots in video tracks underneath them.
Fixes to Undo
The Undo command has been fixed in the following instances:

You can now undo operations in the Render Queue.
The Reset Secondary and Reset All Secondaries buttons can now be undone.
In the Primary Out room, using the Undo command after clicking the Reset Primary Out button now properly restores the Ceiling Red, Ceiling Green, and Ceiling Blue parameters to their former state.
Attaching and Detaching shapes can now be undone.
You can undo the application of a saved effect in the Color FX room.
Operations in the Shot List can now be undone.
Creation and removal of shapes in the Geometry room can be undone.
Many of these fixes correct issues covered in the Color 1.0 Release Notes.

-Superimposed text tracks no longer affect playback
-copied and pasted grades are now autosaved properly
-Improved text fields

Click once within any field to place the text cursor at the position you clicked.
Double-click within any field to select the word at the position of the pointer.
Triple-click within any field to select the entire contents of that field.

-Adjustments and corrections made in the Secondaries room now appear correctly in the Color application's video scopes
-Keyboard Shortcuts fixed and updated

The keyboard shortcuts for Copy Grade > Mem Bank 1-5 (Control-Option-Shift-1 through 5) have been fixed.
The keyboard shortcut for Set Beauty Grade has been changed to Control-Shift-B.
The Rooms > Shot List command (Command-9) has been fixed.
The Rooms > Project Setup command (Command-0) has been fixed.

-Hiding Color no longer causes rendering to pause
-Modifications to supported keys for the CP100 control surface include:

F4: Alternate panel encoders
F5: Set scope resolution to 100%
F6: Set Scope Resolution 25%
F7: Parade Waveform
F8: Histogram Waveform
In the Secondaries room:

F4: Alternate Panel Encoders
F5: Toggle Secondary
F6: Toggle Secondary In/Out Control
F7: Toggle Vignette
F8: Previous Secondary
F9: Next Secondary


Apple - Support - Downloads - Compressor 3.0.2

-Compatible with 10.4.11 and 10.5
-Compressor and Apple Qmaster updates may disable any existing clusters you have configured, so set'em up again
-To use Compressor distributed processing feature with 10.5, you must manually enable NFS
-filter pane of Inspector now includes Color tab for adjusting color space settings. Only available for H.264, Apple ProRes 422, Apple Intermediate Codec, and JPEG output formats. HOPEFULLY THIS FIXES THE GAMMA ISSUES!
-Square Pixels Pop-Up Menu is now called Correct for Pixel Aspect Ratio


Apple - Support - Downloads - CinemaTools 4.0.1

-Compatible with 10.4.11 and 10.5
-Pull lists show the correct value in Footage length, Time length, and Count length for speed changes
-Exported film lists includes information and warnings about issues occurring during export process
-Change lists exported from FCP and Cinema Tools now support same PDF formatting as other lists that you are able to export
-When importing an ALE file, the frame rate for the sound timecode now matches the Sound TC rate of the database you are importing

Apple - Support - Downloads - Motion 3.0.2

-3.0.2 compatible with 10.4.11 and 10.5
-Supports 50fps
-60fps Drop Frame Timecode Support
-Master templates playback performance enhanced
-Master templates can be moved and scaled without render problems
-Master templates used in FCP sequences with mixed frame rates or rates that don't match master template are no longer improperly scaled.
-Field dominance settings are correctly reported in PAL FCP sequences containing master templates
-Printing to video renders properly in FCP sequences containing master templates with drop zones
-In FCP, opening a master template containing drop zones that have been cut and pasted no longer causes FCP to stop responding

Apple - Support - Downloads - Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2 - I'm not enough of an audio guy to detail the changes, but go knock yourself out....

Also see Red public software updates here

Labels: Apple, DVDs, Final Cut, Final Cut Studio 2, software

Reader Robert Ashe sent this in:



- The AJA IO HD is NOT an accelerator of any kind nor will they ever claim to be (cough cough Avid)
- Can be used as a converter as long as it is hooked up to a computer (a future version will allow it to be flashed into a setting, and then disconnected, keeping the setting intact)
- You cannot (as it stands now) have both a AJA IO HD and a kona card running simultaneously on the same system. They suggest doing a dual boot partition (Leopard may change this)
- If you add Virtual VTR to the mix you "probably" could use your system as a slave (they haven't tested it)
- It is designed for pro res PERIOD.
- If your machine is fast enough however it will support play out of anything from dvcpro hd to uncompressed
- There is a solid one frame video delay for digitizing (not surprising)
- Just like the adrenaline the IO HD dominates the firewire box, you MUST install a pci-e or pci-x firewire card for other devices.
- AC Power supply (this is nice, in case you lose the supply)
- Supports video output in the usual applications, however in color, it CURRENTLY only supports SD...for now.
- No Look up table support. Kona 3 will remain the "film" card
- Purely designed for broadcast television
- Has same chip set for the FS-1 as far as up-conversions and cross conversions which look really great.
- Does NOT convert frame rates, it works in hertz so that will be very tricky for 720p 60 (wasn't clear about this part) Seems like it may have the same problems with 59.94 and 60p shows that the adrenaline has
- Will not overheat, they've done all the testing, the thing is gold
- Does have LTC input but some changes will have to be made in quicktime to accommodate
- Ready to ship, just waiting for green light from apple
- 1/2 Rack size, same size as HVR-1500. They WILL sell a rack for it later, other wise the sony rack for half rack decks "should" work
- Any speculation with redcode compatibility is currently only speculation

So I pretty much think that this one is almost completely on par with the adrenaline (only missing a 35mbit pro res) and it's about 1/6.5 the price. Pretty much a no brainer for any small shop or film.



Thanks Robert!

Mike's Comments: For field usage and broadcast work, this is a very useful and capable box, FOR CERTAIN APPLICATIONS. For those looking to have a portable converter, a field capture device, a field ingest device to work with a laptop, etc, this thing is GOLDEN.

For those looking to work with Color as well as possible, or get maximum performance, or do LUTs, or 4:4:4 work, or uncompressed HD, this is not the ideal tool.

But it is a GREAT tool to have in the arsenal from what I've heard so far.

As Robert alluded, Apple (with the ProRes codec) and AJA (with the IO HD) have taken solid aim at Avid's DNxHD codec and Adrenaline hardware - and come up with a winner in terms of bang for the buck.

Avid still has some well liked options in terms of software features, but in terms of high quality ingest and export and realtime mixing of formats and codecs, the price performance winner is looking strongly like Apple on this one.

Further emails - Rob suggested that Apple needs an equivalent to DNxHD 36 - a low bandwidth, full raster codec for offline HD editing. I agree! But that's a relatively easy addition that can be done at pretty much anytime they want. They COULD include it in a .0x update, or wait for marketing reasons to roll it into next NAB's version, whatever that may be.

On my wishlist: GPU acceleration for format mixing, better frame rate conversion done in GPU (3:2 pulldown not repeating 4th frame please!), cleaner Compressor functionality, bug fixes, better EDL/XML interaction & integration with Color, DVD SP Blu-ray support (and the drives to go with it!), etc. Personally, I don't care as much whether they support HD DVD or Blu-ray or both, as long as it is soon. Well yeah, I do care - Blu-ray seems to be taking the lead, although slowed by the recent Paramount buy-out/buy-off. Hate to see Apple back the wrong horse exclusively. Although they seem well set to handle both. The hat trick would be to offer a combo burner - burns CD/DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray. Pricey, but would RAWK.

-mike

Labels: AJA, FCP, Final Cut, hardware, Mac, NLE, software

P2 Contents Management Software | DVCPRO P2 Series | Broadcast and Professional AV

Hey all -

Panasonic has released a Mac version of their P2 browser software. It lets you display, ingest, search, categorize, display/edit properties, view/play back, add text or voice memo, export, back up, archive, and restore footage.

Along the lines of yesterday's post about having proper versions, it requires OS X 10.4.10 and QT 7.1.6 (but NOT 7.2, is incompatible at present!).

More info on this page as well.

Download Mac version with this, manual here.

And its free!

-mike

ps - thanks to those who sent in the link!

Labels: HVX200, P2, software, workflow

Apple put some birdseed type up on their website changing the FCP specs not too long ago, and at present, appears that while AVCHD is supported, some gotchas:

-no native support - only transcoding
-no DVD based
-Sony/Panasonic hard drive based supported ONLY
-transcoding to Pro Res is Mac Pro only
-AIC only option on others, and even then some minimum hardware requirements

...so if you are thinking you want to take advantage of the latest/greatest tech by transcoding to ProRes....you'll have to have a Mac Pro. And your AVCHD camera better say Sony or Panasonic on the side, AND better be hard drive not DVD based.

As always, research your solutions carefully.

-mike

Labels: FCP, Final Cut, Final Cut Studio 2, NLE, software, workflow

Posted on CML, reprinted with permission of author, looks interesting if you're in or can be in San Diego on Tuesday from 2-4, wish I could be there. Anyone that can take notes or video, please let me know as I can't make it.

Title:
An Update on the Academy Image Interchange Framework

Session description:
The status of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ image
interchange project describing a color-managed framework for digital
motion picture images.

On Tuesday August 7, 2007 from 2PM – 4PM at the Omni Hotel in San Diego,
CA, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Science and
Technology Council will deliver an update on its project to develop a
color-managed framework for production, post-production, and archiving
of digital motion pictures.

The presentation will provide an overview of the proposed framework,
best practices for digital encoding of color from film negatives, key
image transforms, considerations in the choice of color encoding methods
and metrics, and a description of a tone rendering algorithm for film
style images. A preliminary workflow example, implemented using OpenEXR
and CTL (the Color Transformation Language), will be discussed in
detail.

All those involved in any aspect of digital motion picture production
are encouraged to attend to learn more about the work of this Academy
project.

Date: August 7, 2007
Time: 2PM – 4PM (PDT)
Location: San Diego Omni Hotel - Salons A & B
675 L Street
San Diego, California 92101

Map:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=omni+hotel+san+diego+ca&om=1&ie=UTF8&ll=32.709185,-117.160306&spn=0.008775,0.015342&z=16&iwloc=A

Contact: councilinfo@oscars.org

Labels: software, workflow

This one's perfect timing - I spent a big chunk of today working with Jen White, a DP friend of mine, introducing her to Color and having her run it through the paces on a music video she shot. So then I see this:

Creating Node Trees in Apple Color at FreshDV

"The lovely and talented Wendy Gribble (Graeme's better half) has shared an informative tutorial on Apple Color over at Ken Stone's site. The article talks walks you through creating node trees and dealing with interlaced sources. She also shares a quick example of the G Smart Denoise plugin, part of the Nattress Advanced Plugins for Color package. And while you are over at the Nattress site, snag the free G Blend blending mode plugin for Color."

I STILL think that indie DP's should be looking at Color as the back half of their process (if they can't afford to have a serious colorist do it for them) - I think there is a lot of talent to be found (as well as a lot of egregious beginner's mistakes to be made) from folks shooting video and then treating it in Color - much like there was a LOT of bad Photoshop art & retouch in the 90s, but out of that came some fine talent and a new ethos about image making.

-mike

Labels: Apple, Color, post, software

Apple Developer Connection - iPhone for Web Developers - Optimizing Web Applications and Content for iPhone

Thanks to commenter Evan for sending this link in. Digging around, found this bit of direct bit of specs goodness from the Ensure a Great Audio and Video Experience section:

Encode Video for Wi-Fi and EDGE

You can use the QuickTime Player Pro Export command and the following exporters to prepare video content for iPhone:
The Movie to MPEG-4 exporter with the following settings prepares movies for Wi-Fi.
In the H.264 video options, make sure you restrict the encoder to use the Baseline profile, and select "Faster encode (Single-pass)" encoding in the Video Options dialog.
Video settings: 900 kbit/sec, H.264, 480 x 360; frame rate: current; preserve aspect ratio using: Fit within size
Audio settings: 128 kbit, AAC-LC
.mp4 file
The Movie to 3G exporter with the following settings prepares movies for EDGE.
Video settings: 64 kbit, H.264, 176 x 144; frame rate: 10 or 15; preserve aspect ratio using: Letterbox or Crop
Audio settings: 16 kbit, AAC-LC
.3gp file
In each exporter, turn off streaming; iPhone does not stream media using RTP/RTSP.

Size Movies Appropriately

In landscape orientation, iPhone screen is 480 x 320 pixels. Users can easily switch the view mode between scaled-to-fit (letterboxed) and full-screen (centered and cropped). You should use a size that preserves the aspect ratio of your content and fits within a 480 x 360 rectangle.

Don’t Let Bit Rate Stall Your Movie

When viewing media over the network, bit rate makes a crucial difference to the playback experience. If the network cannot keep up with the media bit rate, playback stalls.

Use Supported Movie Formats

The following movie formats are supported:
H.264 Baseline Profile Level 3.0 video, up to 640 x 480 at 30 fps. Note that B frames are not supported in the Baseline profile.
MPEG-4 Part 2 video (Simple Profile)
AAC-LC audio, up to 48 kHz
.mov, .mp4, .m4v, .3gp file formats
Any movies or audio files that can play on an iPod.


Note that 2 pass VBR is NOT supported for H.264, darn it.


Create a Reference Movie

A reference movie contains a list of movie URLs, each of which has a list of tests. When opening the reference movie, a playback device or computer chooses one of the movie URLs by finding the last one that passes all its tests. Tests can check the capabilities of the device or computer, and the speed of the network connection.

For more details on reference movies and instructions on how to set them up see Applications and Examples in HTML Scripting Guide for QuickTime.



You can download the MakeRefMovie tool from:
http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/quicktimeintro/tools/index.html


The article goes on to explain how to set up your code to get that full screen playback action luv like on the Apple Trailers site (if you have an iPhone and visit that page, you'd know what I'm talking about - clicking movie link makes it play fullscreen, but only on iPhone).

Compressor 3.0.1 has some presets mentioning iPhone, but they aren't REALLY optimized for iPhone. I didn't realize EDGE versions of movies (on YouTube and Apple trailer site) were different bandwidth than WiFi versions, but that makes total sense.

SOMEBODY should alter/build a preset to the above specs for Compressor, save and post them, hint hint hint...I'll host'em. EDIT - wellllllll....I just tried, and it isn't that easy - the settings don't match, can't get there from here to get fully optimized settings, can't set datarate low enough in the Apple Devices preset, etc. - looks like doing it manually in QT Pro is the way to go until Compressor 3.0.2 comes down the Software Update pipe. Poop - no batch processing for you. But wait - somewhere, somewhen, I recall an app that let you batch process with QT Player Pro - anybody remember what that was or where it came from? Somebody search versiontracker.com and look it up and test. Consider this the "Tag, you're it!" moment - I got us this far, somebody else figure out the rest and I'll post it up here.

Gentlemen, start your optimized en/coding engines...

-mike

Labels: iPhone, software

-resolution independent
-new format support
-improved plugin capabilities
-WMVHD, VC1 and Windows Media Format 11 file writing support
-VST audio filter plug-in support
-DVCPro HD (MXF) file reading
-Real-time Output support for NewTek video hardware cards
-Time Code burn-in for both local and project timecode
-Advanced Crossfade types
-"Improved performance, quality, and stability"
-Floating point HDR image reading
-Expanded DVD-format writing capability
“Working with multiple formats, frame rates and resolutions is a must in today’s production industry. At the same time, speed is paramount to staying competitive.” said Ted R. Ruiz Sr., Owner, Ad-Venture Video Productions “With NewTek’s SpeedEDIT handling DVCPro files of all types on one timeline in real time, I can’t think of any reason to use another product. My workflow just got more effieicent with SpeedEDIT 1.2”.

-$495

I'm not a fan of using off-major software for serious narrative projects. But good to know fast, affordable stuff is out there.

But I can think of lots of reasons to use another product.

: )

-mike

Labels: NLE, software

ProLost: Tour The Bullet

"Studio Daily has an exclusive demo of the new Magic Bullet Looks by some muppet-sounding dude."

Labels: NLE, software

How many gigabytes of space does 3 1/2 hours of 1080p23.98 ProRes HQ take up? Now you can quickly answer that - Digital Heaven's VideoSpace has been updated, and now includes settings for Apple's new ProRes codecs and DVCPROHD 720p50 codecs. It also now offers automatic selection of fps for PAL & NTSC codecs. The big deal with this OS X Widget is that it can calculate time or storage space requirements (based on the other).

I use this thing DAILY, and other than Safari, Final Cut, TextWrangler, etc. is probably one of my most used pieces of software. Simple but perfect for the task of figuring out how much space and/or how much time is a given codec, frame size, and frame rate. I emailed to whine about lack of ProRes inclusion a few weeks ago and they said they were working on it - excellent answer.

If you're an editor (or producer) trying to figure out how much space you'll need, this is PERFECT. You can even specify how many tracks of what type of audio for perfectly accurate datarate calculations. Also useful to figure out how fast your storage needs to be. Can I say any more nice things about it? I don't know, I just Luvs It - and it is Free As In Beer.

Other handy info as long as we're talking datarates -

MB/sec * 3.6 = GB/hr

What's that mean? If you multiply the megabytes per second of a given datarate by 3.6, you get gigabytes per hour. MB/sec is handy for figuring out how fast your storage needs to be (add 25-35% for healthy QuickTime overhead room), and GB/hr is handy to know how MUCH storage you need. (Yes, I figured that out by myself, and am thusly proud of it - see the screen grab above for an example of MB/sec as compared to GB/hr) : )

Other Digital Heaven news:

DH_Grid and DH_Guides are two other bits of FCP related freeware you can download when getting VideoSpace.

-----

Digital Heaven's Final Print:

"Final Print is a standalone application which prints a list of clips in a bin or markers contained in a clip or sequence. This provides a very useful workflow enhancement when handing off a project to someone else for further work.

NEW! Version 1.5 now available
Adds printing of bins and markers on source clips"

Not free, but still darn handy.

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut, OS X, software

The Editblog - Helpful Avid tips site

"A recent post on Splice Here pointed to a great blog called Avid Tips. Coming from Grant way down under in Sydney, Australia the site is a treasure trove of all things Avid tips, tricks and techniques. For a complete list if tips, click on over."

See? I can try to be less Apple centric.

: )

The site is Avid Tips.

-mike

Labels: Avid, NLE, software

AppleInsider | Apple prepping major Xsan update

"Specifically, the Mac maker hopes to allow Spotlight searches within Xsan and guarantee a seamless experience with Leopard when it launches in October. Many of Leopard Server's new server programs such as iCal Server and Podcast Producer will be recognized out of the box by the update, those people say."


This would be darn handy for workgroup stuff.

-mike

Labels: Apple, software

In a previous article, I'd linked to a useful article that discussed how to substantially increase your Compressor 3 encoding times. They made brief mention of how to make the necessary adjustments "in System Prefs" but I went and looked and at first blush (10 seconds spent) didn't see how to do it. Then I was encoding some 720p24 footage on the Mac Pro to high def H.264, and realized, after seeing it still had a couple of hours to go "Ya know, I really should figure that out...right about NOW." So I went and figured it out, and for your edification, here's a walkthrough of exactly how to do it, click by click, as a screen grab walkthrough.

Click here to go to the picture page, and Start Slideshow will walk you through the Step By Step.

Wave the mouse over the picture to see the pause/forward/back controls - da usual iWeb stuff.

How many instances to launch? Depends on your machine, but if you're a dual or quad core box, 2 is almost CERTAINLY going to be an improvement over the default single instance. The BareFeats article's chart showed an 8 core Mac Pro doing best with 8 instances, so as many as you have cores is one possible answer - but It Could Depend, I don't know yet, and I don't know exactly WHAT it depends on as well - bus speeds? Source clip datarate & disk transfer rate? How compute intensive or light the encoding is per frame? Long GOP vs. I-frame only - does it substantially affect optimal # of cores? I'll have the interns do some benchmarking next week hopefully to learn some more, but I'm certain whatever answers are learned, carefully qualifying those answers with details on testing methodology will be key.

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut Studio 2, NLE, software

Slashdot | Apple Confirms No ZFS in Leopard: "'Despite recent rumors about the possible inclusion of ZFS as the filesystem of choice for MacOS X 10.5 'Leopard', an Apple executive has denied this possibility. "

So there you go.

BIG IMPORTANT UPDATE - the article has been updated, ZFS WILL be an option in Leopard.

What Apple meant to say was, "ZFS would be available as a limited option, but not as the default file system."

Labels: Apple, OS X, software

Color/Final Touch - lots of heavy bugs and issues. - Reduser.net

Poster "laguun" did a nice job of organizing a bunch of quotes from the manuals relating to workflow related issues, and discussing their possible ramifications. Nice work, sir or madam! Further discussion ensues. If you're thinking about doing serious work with Color and never used Final Touch, you really ought to read this.

-mike

Labels: Apple, Color, post, software

WWDC turned out to not be as warm-n-fuzzy special as I'd hoped - just a bunch of Leopard demos and iPhone details, and Safari 3 beta for Mac & Windows. Good, but not spectacular.

My thoughts on the biggies as they apply to what I/we do:

-full 64 bit support - good - means faster apps for us
-Time Machine - automate backups - we need these, and by far not enough folks do it
-Spaces will be nice when you're doing several things at once - It is entirely reasonable to imagine having FCP, Photoshop, Motion in spaces, or for later in the production pipeline Compressor, DVD Studio Pro, and FCP
-new Finder & Desktop are nice but not stupendous
-searching across the network will be handy (maybe Spotlight integrated next year?)
-Core Animation promises more pre-scripted motion graphics goodness in the future
-Boot Camp improves for running Windows apps on your system for those apps not on OS X
-Safari 3 beta for OS X...and XP and Vista as well - yep, Apple is making a free Windows web browser. Apple probably realized that iTunes was a tease of the Mac experience on Windows, and since iTunes already had so much web connectivity, it probably wasn't that hard to make the port.
-new and improved iChat may make remote work more viable. Somewhere I have a link about how to use a second Mac to stream Final Cut Pro video output to a client over iChat..improvements may make it work better
-Back to My Mac will be nice for remote work - your laptop on the road and your machines back home know each others' IP address (syncs via .Mac) - if you forgot something you can snag it (if not too big to pull it over broadband)

A lot of this stuff I don't particularly care about, but the thing that'll make me buy it for all my machines will be 64 bit support, Time Machine, and the ability to Spotlight search across the network.

Here's Engadget's posts on the matter, good summaries:

Apple's Mac OS X Leopard fully unveiled - Engadget

iPhone to ship on June 29th at 6pm - Engadget - 6pm, drat! So does that mean the line builds all day? I'd been planning on hanging out with some friends in line in the morning, this puts a dent in that plan.

That also makes it awkward - 6pm California time? Local time in each time zone? How will that work?

-=====

Apple announces third-party software details for iPhone - Engadget - third parties have to be a web app - therefore have to have a data connection, either WiFi or burning minutes/kbytes on your plan. Less than optimal, but it does let 3rd party developers in.

==========

Safari 3 for Windows - Engadget - yep, Safari for Windows, Apple - Safari 3 Public Beta - download it here for OS X, Vista, or XP.

MONDAY NIGHT UPDATE - I went to dinner with one of my oldest friends who is developing software that iPhone's presence potentially affects. I asked him what he thought of this third party developer situation, and he said it was excellent spin on Apple's part - they get to pitch it as "We were listening to you, and here's how we're going to support you." when in fact it is a "feature" that iPhone has had all along - the ability to load fully functional, Web 2.0 + AJAX type pages. But it still requires a web connection, and it isn't any new functionality whatsoever - 3rd parties are relegated to only what can be done with the sandbox of web pages. To me, that fits into the "Gee, that's mighty white of you." category.

I also talked to this same friend about geting an iPhone, and was equivocating saying I wanted to play with the software based touchscreen keyboard before I plunked down $600 for the thing. He was already shaking his head before I got to the end of the sentence. "Dude - you're talking to someone who bought a Newton." After I finished my laughing fit, he further elaborated - not MessagePad 1.10, NEWTON. He also bought an original Macintosh. Not a Mac 512KB, a MACINTOSH, back when there was precisely ONE product in the lineup.

I'm sure Jobs loves guys like that. (And I love him too, just for slightly different reasons).

Other comments - new folder icons - eh, not so great to me.
-mike

Labels: Apple, OS X, software

Apple - Boot Camp - new version 1.3 released (still in beta):

Changes in Boot Camp 1.3 beta
Boot Camp 1.3 beta contains several updates and is intended for all new and previous Boot Camp beta users.
Boot Camp 1.3 beta includes:

Support for keyboard backlighting (MacBook Pro only)
Apple Remote pairing
Updated graphics drivers
Improved Boot Camp driver installer
Improved international keyboard support
Localization fixes
Updated Windows Help for Boot Camp


274 MB download

Labels: Apple, software

Adobe's Creative Suite 3 Master Collection is now available for pre-order.

It includes ALL of the Adobe Creative Suite applications, including:

After Effects CS3 - compositing/motion graphics
Premiere Pro CS3 - video editing
Encore CS3 - DVD & Blu-ray authoring
Soundbooth CS3 - audio manipulation
Indesign CS3 - print design
Photoshop CS3 - do you really need to ask?
Illustrator CS3 - vector based draw package
Acrobat 8 Professional - for PDF creation/manipulation
Flash CS3 Professional - for Flash animation authoring
Dreamweaver CS3 - for HTML editing & creation & layout
Fireworks CS3 - for web graphic dicing/etc.
Contribute CS3 - for content management

It is available from a variety of sources, but I'd appreciate it if you bought your versions through my online store in order to support HD for Indies.

Full version Mac OS X
Full version Windows
Upsell version for Mac
Upsell version for Windows
Upgrade version Mac
Upgrade version Windows

New Versions available on this page for Mac & PC, and updates are available here for Mac and Windows. Read the upgrade requirements CAREFULLY to make sure you get the correct version - there is an Upgrade version for about $1400, and an Upsell version for about $2000.

If you want another CS3 bundle, or any other Apple or Adobe software, it is all on the HD For Indies Amazon Store Software section.

Labels: Adobe, NLE, post, software

Any Given Tuesday: Fixing Apple Color and Tangent Devices CP100 Control Surface functionality

My buddy Torrey Loomis from Silverado Systems emailed to say that there is a potential issue with Tangent control surfaces (buyers of Final Touch HD might have bought these in the past), and that he has the fix - details on his personal blog.

-mike

Labels: Final Cut Studio 2, software

Final Cut Studio 2 and 8-core Mac Pro

Rob-ART, ever on the job over at barefeats.com, has updated his 8 core Mac Pro testing compression - three cores dedicated is not hugely slower than 8 cores - 692 vs 586 seconds.

The odd thing is comparing to a 4 core box - 3 cores there took 1096 seconds for presumably the same test.

I'll email him and see if I can figure out what's up - anybody else with relevant info, do please share.

-mike

CORRECTION - NOT 3 or 8 CORES, 3 or 8 INSTANCES of Compressor - NOT the same thing!

My bad - I'm trying to govern the throttle on this how much news, how much detail thing today.

Labels: Apple, Final Cut Studio 2, software

TED | Talks | Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Photosynth demo (video)

Check out this image manipulation tech - the first part (Seadragon) is interesting, the second half is Photosynth, and that's, hmm....what's the technical term for it? F*****g AMAZING.

Imagine throwing the keyword "Notre Dame" at Flickr, and then building a 3D representation of it, a navigable space.

Just watch, and be amazed. And keep in mind, he's driving it not from some supercomputer, but from a laptop....WOW.

-mike

PS - Thanks to Jim Geduldick for sending this coolness in.

Labels: software

Sony Creative Software Launches Free Update for Vegas 7 Professional NLE %u2014 Complete with Support for Sony's New AVCHD High-Definition Camcorders
: "Sony Creative Software Launches Free Update for Vegas 7 Professional NLE %u2014 Complete with Support for Sony's New AVCHD High-Definition Camcorders"

Labels: NLE, software

Final Cut Pro: FxPlug - Working with high RGB values in High-Precision YUV: "Many FxPlug filters in Final Cut Pro and Motion are able to generate very high RGB values, even extending beyond the gamut of traditional video. When these values are converted from their native RBG color space to the YUV color space in a High-Precision YUV sequence, the results will be mathematically accurate, but due to differences in the available values between these color spaces, it's possible for the result to appear differently than intended.


In some cases this may result in bright, saturated colors in the highlight areas of the rendered result."

Read on for the fix.

Labels: Final Cut, NLE, software

ProLost: Mythbusting 1 2 3: "Mark Christiansen, author of Adobe After Effects 7 Studio Techniques, has complete the third installment of a series of articles about the state of compositing software for visual effects, and how Adobe After Effects fits into the picture."

General Specialist - Tips, Tricks and Tinkerings: Troubleshooting After Effects 7: "Having problems with After Effects? Here's a collection of tried and true remedies:"

Thanks to intern Andy for all his help today getting the news pre-filtered for me.

Labels: After Effects, software

Final Cut Studio Warp Speed Workflow # 1: Applying a transition to multiple clips at DVcreators.net

A NICE little video tutorial that shows how to apply the same transition to a bunch of clips. Also nicely illustrates some good keyboard shortcuts, so there's a lot of good info in this one short little video tutorial (a couple of minutes or so).

Time well spent.

-mike

Labels: FCP, NLE, software, tips, workflow

Big Announcement #2:

Short version:

Did you see that DV Magazine article * I wrote (cover story April '07) about uncompressed HD workstations?

Did you wish there was a simple way to get exactly that gear in one place, from one vendor, customizable, who could sell & support it all?

DONE.

Meet the HD for Indies configurations over at Silverado Systems!

I've been buying my own gear for a couple of years from Torrey Loomis over at Silverado, and we've partnered up to offer the configs I wrote about in the article. They are:

System 1: for the truly starving indie type - the bare minimum to capture, edit, & monitor uncompressed HD.

System 2: for the moderately budgeted indie who wants a proper setup but doesn't have tons of cash.

System 3: for the well heeled solo operator that needs bulletproof reliability, or perhaps for a small single room facility.

System 4: Probably (I hope) of most interest to a lot of readers - my Best Bang For The Buck recommendation on a system to do feature length uncompressed HD editing & finishing (up to 1080p RGB 4:4:4) on a budget.

They are all accessible from this page on Silverado Systems' website.

The configs are a little different than what I wrote about in the article, I've tweaked & improved since I originally wrote it.

LONGER VERSION:

I've been formally & informally recommending systems to clients, employers and friends for about 15 years or so. For a brief time during the desktop publishing revolution, I was a VAR (value added reseller) myself, but I don't do that any more as that isn't where my interests and passions are.

But in the meantime, I've been recommending system configurations for HD editing for a few years now, and it usually boils down to me recommending a list of gear. Then the client asks where should they get it, and I say say try this that or the other vendor, and inevitably the client comes back to say that they can't get all my recommended gear in one place from one vendor. All too often it seems there's always a substitution or two, or a vendor recommended substitution or upgrade is of dubious value, or more likely a component or three that simply isn't available from that vendor. Which means if there's trouble, it is all the more likely that there will be finger pointing between Vendor A & Vendor B and much gnashing of teeth will ensue. And nobody wants that.

So I decided that the only way to get simple, turnkey, one click, gimme-that-one-right-there simplicity was going to be to partner with a VAR and give them the mandate that they'd need to provide exactly the spec I recommend without substitutions, and ALSO offer the upgrades that I wanted to provide, in the order that I recommended them. And after a LOT of work from both sides, that's what Silverado and I have worked out.

If you go to, for instance, the Indie Bang for Buck system, you'll see a list of gear and options. All of the upgrade options are ONLY those that I recommend - I've deleted a lot of what I consider bogus upgrades. The upgrades that ARE offered are also in the order that I recommend them - so while a 17" JVC HD CRT is the recommended monitoring choice, there's also a 24" professional LCD listed, as well as both, or a "step down" option of the JVC CRT and an HDLink/Apple 23" LCD option listed as well. I recommend a 2nd internal drive, but if you want to remove that you can. Or if you want to step down from the default 8GB config to 4GB of RAM, that's possible as well if it makes sense for your setup.

If any of this doesn't make sense, just scroll down the Silverado page for the config you're considering and each of the optional categories is explained in depth, with recommended options for different usage scenarios, when it is worth getting those, etc.

So you're getting the benefit of my latest and best advice, as well as turnkey solution from a known & trusted vendor. I was buying my own gear from Torrey at Silverado for two years before we set this up, hopefully that carries some weight with you folks.

What do I get out of this? Yes, I do get a cut out of the deal, which is why I've spent many days and late nights getting all this set up, but it comes out of Silverado's end - you're not paying any more than if you approached them with this parts list on your own.

Over time, I'll be putting up other configurations for other usage scenarios, and I'll be announcing them here. The options listed here will work for most folks for most scenarios, but as always, if you'd like a fully customized solution to your particular project's unique challenges, I'm available for consulting.

Personally, I'm really excited to offer this service, I think it makes for a good marriage of good advice, a trustworthy single source vendor, and solid gear that can get the job done - at an entirely reasonable price - that should make everybody happy.

And yes, this is that bigger deal I was mentioning several days ago about buying a new Mac editing setup. But I also still have at least one more announcement to go...

* For the record, DV Magazine is not involved in this deal, nor do they officially endorse, recommend, or have any role in this in any way shape or form. I'd just received a lot of requests about where to buy such a config, and folks were having difficulty getting all those exact parts in one place, so this just seemed like a good idea.

Labels: hardware, Mac, Mac Pro, NLE, online store, original, post, software, workflow

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

This is a crazy busy week for me - all the press releases for NAB are rolling in at the same time I have a lot of other stuff to finish up. So when in doubt, punt! Thus what I call a blogwad - a buncha news all piled into one article, in no particular order or significance. Here's my pre-NAB blogwad on software. This isn't a comprehensive list by any means, just some stuff I haven't talked about before:

SOFTWARE:
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The big news, of course, will be from Apple and their press event Sunday - YES I'll be reporting what happens there.

I'm also looking forward to seeing the new Adobe CS3 stuff - Premiere Pro & After Effects in particular, but also what's up with Encore, their DVD authoring software.

Avid as some new goodies as well, I have an appointment with them next week at the show to get all the latest scoopage.

As far as stuff you haven't heard me talk about before, read on:

Cineform offers new cross platform NEO family - cross platform codecs for video work aren't quite there for HD work, so Cineform is introducing NEO. NEO is cross platform, Mac or PC. It has three products for different levels of production: NEO HDV, NEO HD, and NEO 2K, guess what those are for. You'll be able to work cross platform with the same files, moving between apps like After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut, Motion, Combustion, Vegas, etc.

NEO HDV is for HDV & DVCPRO HD folks, and handles 3:2 pulldown and 24p cadence issues, over/under cranking, spatial resampling, etc. as needed for JVC, Sony, Panasonic, Canon, etc. cameras. I'm guessing 8 bit.

NEO HD is 10 bit, full raster for higher end production.

NEO 2K offers up to 12 bit 444