[Angelo Lorenzo]

Screenshot? I’m having a bit of a time trying to picture what is going on.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

Need to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
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Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks

[Angelo Lorenzo]

As a note, Creative Cloud doesn’t have many tools for collaboration yet. The best it would have in this scenario is if they took advantage of some of the cloud storage and even then it’s only one-way sharing unless they both sign up for creative cloud teams.

Dropbox would be far more robust for this, I believe.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

Need to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
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

[Angelo Lorenzo]

1. Get updated project files from him when you can through email, dropbox, whatever.
2. Use these projects as a basis for your AE comps, ignore the huge amounts of media offline warnings I’m sure you’ll get.
3. Work on your effects.
4. Render out and send over the internet low resolution copies of just the shots (not sequences) that have VFX for him to place into his edits as place holders. He can also review the effect and give notes.
5. Set up meeting times to exchange/copy full res versions of your effects so you can deliver as the project goes along, or do the exchange near the end of the project.

Color correct to match elements in the composites, but do not add a “look”. The color grading workflow should be handled after your work unless you are on an insane schedule.

Don’t try to do dynamic link or any fanciness… it will balloon the project file if both of you are working on it hand over fist, and it will generally complicate what is a pretty easy workflow.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

Need to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
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

[Angelo Lorenzo]

I assume you mean the projects/sequences and not actual footage.

https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/fcpx-to-premiere/

Since a lot of external programs don’t recognize Final Cut Pro X XML files, you’ll need a 3rd party tool called Xto7

Alternately you could do FCPX XML to EDL, byt the conversion program for that is twice as expensive. https://www.larryjordan.biz/fcpx-create-edls/

Perhaps the others can chime in with non-obvious tricks like maybe DaVinci Resolve will open a FCPX XML and save an EDL…. don’t know if that works but I’m thinking aloud.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

Need to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
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

[Angelo Lorenzo]

When Premiere uses the Quicktime container, it uses the Quicktime h.264 codec. When Premiere uses mp4 as the container, it uses a different h.264 codec.

I would suggest using the mp4/h264 option to encode. Both single pass CBR and 2 pass VBR give far better results in terms of macroblocking over Quicktime’s encoder. I even spread the keyframes further to every 90 frames.

It’s a pretty simple step to re-wrap mp4 to MOV using many tools out there, my personal fave being FFMPEG.

Premiere def isn’t as robust when it comes to encoding options as anyone would like it to be, but there h.264 encoder isn’t bad.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

Need to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
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

[Angelo Lorenzo]

What is your keyframe distance? Single or double pass?

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

Need to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
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

[Angelo Lorenzo]

I agree with Dave. Not a great candidate for auto stabilization because the largest object in the frame is moving counter to the camera. Since Warp Stabilzer is a pixel effect, even if you tracked a version where you mask out the guy, you may not be able to apply it to the original footage.

With that said, it may be worth masking out the guy and trying a 3d camera track. I recall something like making the footage a 3d layer then using expressions to invert the 3d camera’s movement, and you can use the keyframes to ease motion (like your normal operator’s moves) back into the shot.

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/stabilize_shaky_footage/ lays the technique out.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

Need to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
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

[Angelo Lorenzo]

I wouldn’t say there is a huge debate.

In my mind, it simply comes down to editing natively vs editing with an intermediate.

If you want to use an intermediate, your time hit is in the beginning of the process. To be pragmatic, is the amount of time rendering footage < the amount of time you’ll save since you can edit and scrub through your footage with more ease and you have a file that is less CPU intensive to decode (especially in programs like AE). A GPU that supports the Mercury Playback Engine does help greatly on the Premiere side, but it’s not the end-all.

For large programs, it’s usually worth it. For smaller clips and commercials, not always.

Look at Avid, the vast majority of users still use DNxHD as an intermediate codec; I know some TV shows that carry the format through to finishing and never online the camera originals. Avid also has AMA which allows you to mount and use camera originals but it affects their editing speed in similar ways.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

Need to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
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

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Premiere, with a moderately good system just doesn’t stress RAM and GPU like After Effects does. After Effects will use everything you throw at it. If your freelancing work is mostly events which, I’ll assume, are straight editorial then at a certain cross over point you’re simply paying for faster final renders.

If you foresee yourself doing more AE work then I say dive in, if you don’t then don’t spend needlessly.

I knew my clients, I knew the work I do and decided to put my money towards a Red Rocket in a more modest workstation.

Just food for thought.

In terms of Avid, I rarely use their systems and have limited experience with their performance on a handful of computers. I can say that most editors I know on Avid still prefer using DNxHD in comparison to using AMA to link to native media. Their intermediate codec is really friendly on CPU usage. As to what they may use the GPU for or how optimized their effects set is, I can’t say.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

Need to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
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

[Angelo Lorenzo]

That’s overkill for Premiere unless you’re editing 4K, or using After Effects extensively.

The Dell 5600 runs off of a Xenon processor which means it’s server grade hardware. You pay a premium for that and ECC (error correcting) RAM. If it’s within your budget, you wont find a normal i series processor with that many cores so you get an advantage.

If you were doing just editing, then I’d suggest 16gigs of RAM and a single Quadro card or even one of the cheaper GTX cards. Quadro cards have extended instruction sets that make them more valuable for 3D apps. I would check some benchmarking figures vs price.

I have a $2200 Intel i7 2600 based system with 32 gigs of RAM, a GTX level graphics card, a BlackMagic Decklink card, and a Red Rocket (The $5,500 Red Rocket is not included in the price).

The only thing I feel a bit lacking is render time and overall speed in After Effects. Both could be improved by moving to a Xenon level processor. The huge amount of RAM is for some AE work, and Photoshop. I work a lot as a high-end photo retoucher so the RAM comes in handy with 70+ layer files.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

Need to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
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