RED 5.02 – No compression settings for render

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Scott,

I understand your frustration and respect that fact that you have been patient with us while we work through this. Thank you for that.

So … I wonder if perhaps the 32 / 64 label that we have been assigning to our product installers for RED might be a little misleading. The option is not OS specific, but rather host specific. Currently, Avid MC is a 32 bit application that can run on 32 or 64 bit systems. For RED 5x to appear in Avid MC 5x, you would need to use the RED 5x 32 bit installer. The current revision of RED 5 is 5.0.4.

Quicktime is not currently supported as a movie type in RED 5 64 bit on Windows bit it is with RED 5 32 on Windows. I would like to suggest that you install and use RED 5 32 on your system.

Regarding the alpha issue, here’s something that I’d like to ask you to try.

• launch RED 5.0.4 standalone
• create a new comp
• delete any existing tracks
• import an rgb image or movie clip
• create a text element
• twirl down the image / movie track so that you can access the mask track
• drag the text onto the mask and click on the invert mask button on the mask track so that it punches alpha through the image
• add the comp to the render queue
• open the render settings dialogue box for the queued item
• set the movie type to AVI-VFW
• set the compressor to full frames (uncompressed)
• set the alpha pop-up to straight
• click OK and render

Then I’d like you to check the render and see if it includes the alpha channel. It should. If it doesn’t then I’d like to have someone call you directly and go over this with you live. If possible, can you try this now?

Cheers,

Peter.

[Scott Yarbrough]

And adding insult to injury, the RED5 User Guide insists on being opened in Internet Explorer… even when it’s being opened in Internet Explorer. 64 bit issue?

[Peter Mcauley]

Hmmm … on the systems that I have looked at just a few minutes ago, the help file opens in Explorer as expected. You need to make sure that Internet Explorer is set as the default browser on your system for it to work.

I’ll ask in engineering if we can do something about this – perhaps the help system can either:

• open in any browser

or

• find Internet Explorer and open in that application regardless of whether it is the default browser on that system.

Thanks,

Peter.

[Scott Yarbrough]

Hi Peter, thanks for your understanding.

Yes, that labeling is really misleading. So I would I get any benefit out of using the 64 bit as a stand-alone engine? (Assuming I can get the .avi to render, trying that now) I’m really looking to speed up render times with lots of extruded text graphics… three hours per :30 seconds is rough.

best,
Scott

[Scott Yarbrough]

Hi Peter, I’ve returned. Don’t cringe!

Just got the Media Composer 6.0 upgrade. Is it time to upgrade to a 64 bit version of Boris 5? Which one?

best,
Scott