Recommended Preview Files for R3D Footage?

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Are you rendering the timeline fully to green? If you aren’t (By selecting Sequence > Render Entire Work Area) then your computer is still playing the RED raw files directly.

There are three ways of going about things:

1) Make sure you render your timelines to green. I would select ProRes proxy as the preview format. I don’t recommend it since you’ll have to render every time you lay an effect or transition, and Premiere is prone to “losing” render files…. you open a project and the timeline is back to yellow/red.

2) Keep things as-is. Under your program monitor, instead of full quality playback try 1/2 or 1/4. I believe this also controls the debayer/decode quality of the RED raw file, so you may find greater benefits. You may need to jump to full to preview focus-critical shots.

3) In Redcine-X Pro, just create ProRes copies of your footage like ProRes HQ422. There are multiple techniques to achieve an online/offline process using Speedgrade or Resolve later on in the pipeline.

Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks

[Beau Leland]

Thanks for the tips, Angelo. I actually haven’t done any rendering yet, so all of my yellow bars are still there. I haven’t rendered because Adobe states that if you have yellow bars, it’s not actually necessary to render to have proper playback. Maybe that’s not the case after all.

I’m leaning toward option one. Regarding option two, I’m actually already playing at 1/8 resolution, so I don’t think that’s the issue. And option three isn’t really an option for me since I’m already a week into the cut. Plus, the whole idea of using Premiere is to capitalize on not having to transcode.

Two things though, that I want to double check. Regarding option one, I should leave the preview files at ProRes proxy, and just render out the yellow bars? And finally, would the fact that Premiere is automatically resizing my 5k footage (shot at an aspect of 2:1) to a 1080 equivalent have any impact on this situation? I’ve found that even when I “Create Sequence from Clip” my dimensions are still 1920×810 rather than 5120×2160. Is this just Premiere’s way of dealing with this footage to make it editable, or should it be giving me the actual dimensions if I tell it to?

UPDATE: I actually just tried the render method using ProRes Proxy, and the issue persists. Hmmmm. Maybe it’s just a bug. Thoughts?

Thanks again for your input!

Thanks!

Beau Leland
Editor, Oklahoma City

MacPro 3.33GHz 6-Core
Mac OS Mountain Lion
Premiere Pro 6.0.2
32MB RAM
Quadro4000 Graphics Card
Decklink HD Extreme Output

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Well before going deeper for an issue that may be a simple fix… what is your hard drive setup looking like? Also, and I’m not a OSX expert so you may need to poke around, but do you have any aggressive power saving settings that may throw your drives into sleep mode? This is the common cause of delays between pressing playback and getting actual playback.

The Quadro card/Mercury Playback should handle the load of resizing from 5K to 1080 so I don’t think it’s a bottleneck.

Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks

[Beau Leland]

I’m using a 12TB RAID 5 system from Other World Computing connected via eSata, BUT, a second look at my energy savings and I found that the drives weren’t kept from going to sleep. I unchecked that, and we’ll see if it makes a difference.

Thanks again for your help, Angelo.

Thanks!

Beau Leland
Editor, Oklahoma City

MacPro 3.33GHz 6-Core
Mac OS Mountain Lion
Premiere Pro 6.0.2
32MB RAM
Quadro4000 Graphics Card
Decklink HD Extreme Output

[Tom Daigon]

Set the right /Program monitor in PrP to 1/2 resolution. You should get better playback. If not try 1/4.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid

[Beau Leland]

[Tom Daigon] “Set the right /Program monitor in PrP to 1/2 resolution. You should get better playback. If not try 1/4.”

Thanks Tom. I’m actually running both playback and paused resolution at 1/8th. I’ve tried 1/16th as well, but it didn’t really do any better. To clarify, this isn’t really a traditional playback issue where the system can’t really keep up. That is indeed what I experience when I crank it up to Full res playback. This is different. It’s almost like a buffer issue or something.

Here’s an example (lengthy description, but I hope portrays it accurately): If I play a sequence from say zero seconds to the ten second mark and then stop and decide I want to skip ahead to the 20 second mark, I’ll click on the 20 second mark to position the playhead there and press play via the spacebar or L key. But rather than playing from there, the playhead will want to jump back to where it left off at the 10 second mark. Likewise, it behaves the same way no matter where I want to stop and reposition the playhead. Sometimes I’m able to remedy the problem by doing a quick scrub of the point at which I want the playhead to start. It’s almost behaving like a streaming web video in which you would try to skip ahead while watching, but the video keeps kicking you back to the point where the buffer is.

The fact of the matter is that I can still edit, and once the playhead begins playing, playback is fine. It’s just a horribly annoying issue that affects my efficiency, and every editor knows how frustrating it can be when software doesn’t work at the speed of thought. An issue like this simply shouldn’t be.

And briefly, one other symptom of this problem (I’m assuming is related) is that I’m not able to navigate frame by frame accurately. If I want to adjust an edit to the accuracy of a frame (which is obviously a common practice for an editor), the program monitor isn’t responsive to frame by frame advancement using the left and right arrow keys. I can hear the audio advancing, but the visuals don’t advance. It’s similar to how one would navigate through a clip that’s been conformed from 24fps to 30fps in that certain frames would be duplicated. That isn’t the issue here, but that’s kind of how it’s behaving.

I know this is a lot to describe via text on here, and I hope I’m describing the issues thoroughly. It’s always nice when I’m searching for troubleshooting issues to come across people who are having similar issues. Hopefully this post will serve as some help to others who may be experiencing similar issues, or at least let them know they aren’t alone. Premiere Pro is a fantastic program, and 6.0.2 seems to be much more stable, but they still have some work to do to make it truly unstoppable.

Thanks!

Beau Leland
Editor, Oklahoma City

MacPro 3.33GHz 6-Core
Mac OS Mountain Lion
Premiere Pro 6.0.2
32MB RAM
Quadro4000 Graphics Card
Decklink HD Extreme Output

[Tom Daigon]

I see.

Try deleting the cache files.PrP caches larges files like Red and Epic to assist in playback. Deleting old ones can clear up problems like you are experiencing.

Also try changing the setting for you Quadro 4000 card from hardware to software.

Also, just for grins, you might want to download the free AJA app that measures your raid speed to make sure that its handling the 5K files.

https://www.aja.com/en/products/software/

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid

[Beau Leland]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the additional advice. I had actually just cleared the media cache before I checked your post. And though overall system performance appears to be better, my playhead issue remains. I’ve checked and unchecked software only on my mercury playback engine, and the problem remains. I hadn’t tried the AJA software test, and apparently my drive is reading at about 250MB a second if I did the test correctly.

One interesting development is that I found if I advance one frame at a time using the left/right arrow keys and wait a beat, it will advance properly. But if I try to advance quickly, it has that glitch I mentioned above.

I’ve also included a video below of what my timeline looks like when the problem happens (all the time). You’ll see that the playhead just jumps right back to where it left off.

Thanks again for trying to help me troubleshoot, Tom. I’ve also posted in Adobe’s community forums. Hopefully we’ll get this figured out in one way or another.

Jumpy playhead with r3d footage

Thanks!

Beau Leland
Editor, Oklahoma City

MacPro 3.33GHz 6-Core
Mac OS Mountain Lion
Premiere Pro 6.0.2
32MB RAM
Quadro4000 Graphics Card
Decklink HD Extreme Output

[Tom Daigon]

Hi Beau. I dont think 250MB/sec. is adequate for Epic playback. But it might not be whats causing you problems.

You might want to try uninstalling the BMD Decklink drivers. I know lots of folks have been experiencing problems with BMD hardware drives and CS6.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid

[Beau Leland]

Ok, so I decided to do an uninstall/reinstall, delete my preferences and create them again entirely from scratch.

Everything works like a charm. I wish that made me happy, but the fact remains that Premiere seems to have to be maintained constantly. This is the third major issue that I’ve had to resolve by uninstalling/reinstalling. Frankly that’s an extreme inconvenience, and can really kill productivity. I’m ready for Premiere to be the stable workhorse I know it can be.

Thanks again for all of your help Tom and Angelo.

Thanks!

Beau Leland
Editor, Oklahoma City

MacPro 3.33GHz 6-Core
Mac OS Mountain Lion
Premiere Pro 6.0.2
32MB RAM
Quadro4000 Graphics Card
Decklink HD Extreme Output