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Questions about Final cut Pro VFX and Red workflow
I’m cutting a short film shot 4K on the Red. We offlined the clips to ProRes and now I’m trying to figure out the best way to get a particular timeline over the the VFX guy. Should I online in color and then send him DPX sequences from there, before any color correction takes place? If so in what format should he send it back to me? Animation Codec, Uncompressed 10bit?
Also I’ve done some reframing and pan-scan keyframes in FCP. Will this translate over to Color?My trouble is I haven’t worked with an offline edit before.
How exactly do large studios handle their workflow when dealing with VFX shots?Thanks.
OSX 10.5.8
Equipment: 2.8 ghz 8 core Intal Mac Pro, 20 gig of ram
Aps: CS3 Production Bundle, FCP Suite 2, Avid Media Composer -
3 Replies
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Have you even talked to the VFX house about this yet? There are 3,545 different ways you can handle post production with VFX. They can tell you exactly what they’ll need and what they can deliver to you. Don’t be afraid to let them know you’re in the dark about procedure – better that than handing them a drive full of junk they can’t make sense of. Also the workflow of a large VFX production probably doesn’t apply to you. A short film shot on RED can probably take a lot of shortcuts and provide you great results.
Just a very general note: don’t give them pan/scans. Give them a reference quicktime and let them recreate the move(s).
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I totally agree with Aaron. I have been in the same situation as you and the best thing is just to ask the post company what they want. In my case they needed dpx files. It all depends on what they are going to do with the footage. They can probably deliver back any format and codec you want and that depends on what the final destination is. I would suggest to get at least 1080 size back if possible so you won’t be stuck with SD material.
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The pan scan ref movie is a good idea.
This project is a labor of love including the VFX so there is no post house and no one to ask, and the vfx guy I’m working with is pretty green when it comes to pro workflow but he can technically do what we need and he’s capable. It looks like I’m basically handling the VFX super position basically because we don’t have one. Even though we could probably get a way with a lot I was hoping to at least emulate a professional workflow. For the training really. If anyone could suggesting what works best for them when roundtripping the footage that would be huge. Or point me to somewhere that has a pretty solid example.
One route I was thinking of is this, let me know if anything looks wacky:
1. Use automatic duck to export timeline to after effects.
2. Do compositing work with pro-res proxies.
3. Nest each clip and re-online the original R3d files for output.
4. Export each clip as Animation codec (or DPX?) with handles and drop back into original FCP timeline.
5. Send EDL to Scratch. Yeah we actually have someone who’s going to run this footage through scratch for final color.
6. Output the final movie back to Final Cut as ProResHQ. Now this is where it gets a little unclear for me. Is it common to render out a final baked movie or should we leave more flexibility with single clips and handles when going back to Final Cut?
Thanks.
OSX 10.5.8
Equipment: 2.8 ghz 8 core Intal Mac Pro, 20 gig of ram
Aps: CS3 Production Bundle, FCP Suite 2, Avid Media Composer
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