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RED 5K will not key in FCP X
I have not dealt with RED 5K files before and I’m having major issues of which I cannot find an answer on the net to. I have FCP X 10.0.8. My footage is Epic 5K. My timeline is 29.97 4800×2700. All of my talking heads are green screen. When I drag my keyer effect over on top of clips in timeline I get nothing. It will not key out. I am so frustrated. Will FCP not key 5K. Please help. Thank you.
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6 Replies
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You are working in an odd and very non-standard timeline spec. You are likely exceeding GPU parameters. What happens if you put the media into a standard 4K timeline or if you transcode the media to ProRes4444?
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I don’t have my 5K Red Camera with me (come to think of it I don’t have a 5K Red Camera) but I grabbed some 1080 green screen footage, up-resed to 5K prores, and brought back to FCPX and it keyed fine.
iMac 27″ 3.4 GHZ i7, 24GB Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB
Why don’t you try to create an optimized version of a clip and see if it keys.
Also, if you try a lower resolution is your keyed working?
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
Thanks for the response. Yes a ProRes 422 clip will key but the whole point of me shooting in 5K is for a better key edit. FCP X is supposed to handle this. I have no choice now but to figure that out now. Although my 3TB Thunderbolt HD does not have enough room for both the 5K/RED CineX Pro files and optimized media as FCP X told me. Thanks for the help.
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Bryant,
I was able to find some 5K R3D footage (not converted to prores), and it does key with the excellent built in Keyer. What are the specs on your machine, especially the video card?
WIth that said, unless you are working on something really short you don’t want this as your workflow in as Red files are played back in FCPX at 1/2 resolution depending on your machine (unless you have a RedRocket card which has other options). FCPX might find a way around this in keying but you’re performance will be horrible, and at least your preview key will look quite bad unless you render.
Instead I would highly recommend optimizing just the shots you need to key, which will be transcoded to ProRes 4444 files (not ProRes 422 as you mentioned). Those are going to be big files, but working in high resolution takes some investment, and you might need to invest a bit more (i.e. in HD space) to pull off what you are trying to do.
On the other hand if these keys are just rough and will be handed off to a compositing department for final work, then you might event consider doing your editorial work in Proxy. The keys will still look decent, but you’ll be gaining alot of speed.
Hit me up with any questions.
– T.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
Thank you Mr. Payton for the response and insight. I finally found out what it was. My MB Pro isn’t powerful enough to handle it. I thought having 8GB of RAM would carry me three years ago. I now know I need a more robust machine with at least 16 RAM and video card. I ended up transcoding clips in timeline to the format you suggested and they seem to work. Thanks again.
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I was having the same issue with 4K RED footage. I am working with the footage natively and trying to avoid transcoding. The keyer was frustrating but I eventually was able to dial the color in manually to make it work. Looks good! I will then paste the attribute to the other clips I have to key.
There should be a tutorial somewhere on how to use the Color Selection wheel in the FCPX keyer.
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