How to reconform to original R3D’s after working with ProRes422 proxies

[Ben Rojas]

Yep, that QT has whatever look you gave it in REDCINE (or Storm) or whatever look the DP gave it. Maybe they just want it for reference, which then the ProRes Proxy would be fine. DPX, I can understand because an extremely high-res still that retains a lot of the color spetrum; thus allowing for good CC’ing. QT, on the other hand has a more limited color spectrum… Not to mention the whole Gamma shifting issue. Then agian Arri Alexa’s Log-C quicktimes are amazing and color correct extremely well. Speaking of Alexa, I believe Storm’s next update will let us work Arri files. Storm is really a strong product and for the price, it’s a steal.

Good look w/your film! I’m actually sitting working on a film as well… Lol, makes for such a fun Saturday night ;o)

Ben Rojas
Editor|Artist|Dir. of Post Production
KSC KREATE
3850 N 28th Ter. Ste. 101
Hollywood, FL. 33020
P. 954.326.7600
F. 954.326.7766
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E. ben.rojas@ksckreate.com
http://www.ksckreate.com

[Michael Reese]

Hey so I got a message back from the colorist who said “We grade with a Davinci 2K. Depending on what room we use, we either use a Clipster or work directly off of a Resolve.” If I get him everything in dpx will it be comparable to giving him the r3d files? Or are they night and day in terms of quality/image data?

I just don’t get why they want to grade off of a qt. The more I learn about it, the more it doesn’t make any sense. You did say before though that a dpx would make sense on the “old school” system. Let me know what you think.

Thanks!

[Ben Rojas]

Basically, folks still have Davinci 2K’s around and want to make use of them. These were million dollar investments that in many cases became outdated before they could make an ROI on them. Now, the Clipster/Davinci combo is very powerful, but the only downfall is that you are not working w/RAW files. The short answer, no, DPX’s are not RAW files. The long answer, while not RAW, a DPX is a very high-res file that maybe all you need to use for your project. My question to you, how hard do you need to push your colors? Your whites & blacks, are they clipped? If so, w/RAW those values may still be there and you maybe able to work the exposure to salvage a shot. Once your footage is processed to create a DPX, Cineon, TIFF and especially QT, you’re limited on what you can recover from the whites and shadows. Michael, if your film was shot well and you don’t have extreme lighting going on, you should be OK. What’s your final deliverable? You going for a film festival?

Ben Rojas
Editor|Artist|Dir. of Post Production
KSC KREATE
3850 N 28th Ter. Ste. 101
Hollywood, FL. 33020
P. 954.326.7600
F. 954.326.7766
C. 305.301.2771
E. ben.rojas@ksckreate.com
http://www.ksckreate.com

[Michael Reese]

Our film was shot really well… except for one shot, the last shot of the film, the most important one. It’s a night exterior that is pretty much unlit. That shot has values between 0-30 (on the 0-100 scale). The colors in that will have to be pushed a lot.

We’re going for a film festival run, output to HDCAM is what’s been recommended to me. If you have a better suggestion please let me know. I’d like to output at the highest quality I can if it will be displayed in theaters at festivals.

[Matt Lyon]

Hey guys,

Coming late to the party here, but I was curious about how Storm compares to reconforming directly in FCP? Using the RED FCP plugin, it is possible to re-ingest your footage as “native” files. Have any of you guys tried this approach? It is outlined in a RED whitepaper you can download on their site. I’ve only tested it out with short sequences, but seems promising. IIRC, this gives you RED native files in quicktime wrappers, so maybe there are limitations with handing off this kind of media to other finishing systems? Curious to hear if anyone has handed off a film in this manner.

Thanks,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Michael Reese]

Matt, that was the first method I tried. It turned out to be pretty tedious and if for some reason you had a rogue editor that decided to change file names, you’ll have to sit there manually reconnecting all the clips. I mean, if you are staying in color, I know that you can access the RAW file data via the RED tab when you ingest as native.

For me storm was just a breeze to use, automatically located and reconnected all the clips based off of an xml. Now I did have a few weird problems I had to work around… had to take out all the audio and speed FX before exporting xml for it to work in storm, but once I was there everything else was a breeze…

[Neil Sadwelkar]

An EDL from FCP when imported to Color will conform to the R3D files. Make sure you select ‘clip names’ in the EDL.

Then you set your Color project setting to Uncompressed QT, set the Red tab to color space as you need, and render. You’ll have uncompressed QT clips one for each timeline clip.

After that, you could do a ‘send to FCP’ from Color and you’ll have an FCP timeline that is connected to the QT clips. The Uncompressed QT .mov files will have names like 1g1.mov, 2g1.mov and so on. But the timeline in FCP will show original Red file names.

You can now select all clips in the FCP timeline and drag them to the browser. Then highlight all the clips in the browser and right-click and select Rename > File to match clip. So the Uncompressed QT files get renamed to timeline clip file names.

Now make an EDL out of FCP and hand that to the colorist. This EDL will refer to the Uncompressed QTs of the Red files made by Color.

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Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India