Conform FCP Red Project to Original R3D’s from ProRes Transcodes

[Margus Voll]

Hi.

I wonder why not edit with small proxy files from r3d as then you do not need to relink
and all falls to its place.

Third party tools are Crimson Workflow for example.
I had some tools more but i do not recall them and have not used them after
going to snow leopard as proxy makes reconnecting simpler.

I think your problem is in fcp not in davinci.

—

Margus

https://iconstudios.eu

[Chris Kenny]

These are the EDL export settings that work for me:

Resolve shouldn’t care about whatever the folder hierarchy around the Red files is, as long as they’ve all been added to the media pool.

Make sure that under ‘Config’ on the ‘Project’ tab you’ve selected to use timecode embedded in the source clip and assist using reel names embedded in the source clip. Also, on the ‘Settings’ tab, check ‘Extract reel names from EDL comments’.

If you’ve already done all of that and it’s still not working, it might be the issue that got me a few days ago. Flip over to the Source tab and make sure timecode is set to ‘Absolute’. If it’s set to ‘Camera’, and the camera was set to show edge timecode, while the dailies were transcoded with the absolute timecode, nothing will match up. (Frankly, I sort of consider it a bug that ‘Absolute’ isn’t the default selection in Resolve rather than ‘Camera’. I can’t conceive of a reason why whoever is conforming a project would ever want this determined by the camera setting.)

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.

[Mikhail Puzyrev]

!!! NEVER GET R3D files out of their RDC folders!!!

You can’t relink in FCP. Save XML from FCP, name it “fromFCP”. Download Clipfinder from https://www.daun.ch/software/Clipfinder_2.2.zip
It’s free.

Open it.
1. Go to “Tools” menu and choose “Run conform from FCP XML”
2. Point it to your saved from FCP XML.
3. Enter the name for new XML (“toFCP” for instance)
4. Check “replace with P proxy” radio button
!!!DO NOT CHOOSE “REPLACE WITH R3D” option unless you are going to open it in Adobe Premiere
4. Click small + and point to the directory containing all your .RDC folders
5. Click “Run conform”
6. Open resulting “toFCP” XML as a new sequence in final cut and save the EDL from this sequence. (EDL will point to _P proxy files – it’s ok. If you wish, you can textedit-replace _P with R3D.

Go to resolve BROWSE-“load folders and subfolders from EDL” – this will load clips only mentiond in EDL

[Chris Kenny]

I’ve never found it to be necessary to replace ProRes transcodes with Red proxy files before sending an EDL to Resolve. What does Resolve care? The ProRes transcodes have the same embedded reel/timecode info as the proxies, and that’s all the clip information that transfers through an EDL anyway.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.

[Chris Armstrong]

Hmm, thanks for the help Chris, I followed what you outlined, but nothing worked.

Every time I load the EDL in Resolve it still shows it as unconnected. I don’t quite get it as I can see the media in the media pool. The EDL has the clip names (though the R3D in the Media pool has an added “_001” to the end of the clips (don’t know if that is throwing it off)).

[Vladimir Kucherov]

With R3Ds it should be fairly easy as long as your ProRes or whatever has the correct name. Essentially you will see:

If your R3D has embedded reels, use those (to avoid the extra _001 with pattern matching) so you should do this:

Note, after you change this setting all footage has to be re-imported into the media pool. (I remember actually having to start a new project once because I couldn’t get it to read right but that might have been some fluke)

Then, as long as your EDL events (with pull reel name from filename comment field enabled)

match the Reel ID (you can double check under clip details

Everything ought to work. I just ran this for a feature conform where everything was renamed to hell, but the ProRes still had the right RED reels in the reel metadata.

Funny, there’s no option in FCP to “use full reel in comment” as opposed to filename. That would have been helpful. I had to use some RegEx TextWrangler tricks to force it to work.

[Chris Armstrong]

Mikhail – Using clipfinder seems to work for me. Thanks.

I had to turn off the option “Assist using reel numbers from the: Source clip file pathname”, but once I did that it connected to the media.

I did this on a test sequence (of 8 clips), so now I guess the question is will it work with a reel that is 75 to 200 clips.

[Chris Armstrong]

Vladimir – I tried your method, but the clips come in unconnected as well.

I noticed in the comments field under “Conform EDL” that it has the file name correct, but then shows “.MOV” at the end. Do you think that could be what’s keeping it from connecting?

[Vladimir Kucherov]

I’m not exactly sure, but could you open up the EDL in a text editor and simply delete all instances of “.mov”?

[Chris Armstrong]

Actually I think the .Mov isn’t the issue.

I just compared the EDL generated from the ProRes, to the EDL I got to work using Mikhail method using Clipfinder.

The EDL’s have very different time codes listed, so for some reason the EDL that FCP generates from the ProRes clips is off.

For example, my ProRes file has this for the time code (which doesn’t work):
14:32:36:01 14:32:41:00

The EDL generated from the proxies (which does work) has:
01:12:05:23 01:12:10:22