Re: new to RED and FCP to finish in HD...help please

I think the simplest way to deal with RED footage for beginners is to convert it to ProRes HQ and then use those files for finishing. It maintains an excellent quality for color correction and FX. But this decision really needs to be based on what your output is and what resources you have.

If you have a fast computer and plenty of time, I like to use REDCINE to apply a basic grade and then render out to ProRes from there. This takes a long time though (20-30 hours for every one hour of footage depending on your machine).

You can also just dump the proxy files into Compressor and render them out to ProRes.

This next part is from an earlier post of mine:

Basic workflow for 4K 2:1 R3D (2048x1024) files to ProRes.

INTEL MAC REQUIRED

1. Take the _H QuickTime into compressor. NOTE: The actual proxies need to stay in the same folders as the R3D file that they reference.
2. Create a ProRes HQ setting at 1920x1080 with audio pass-through.
3a. If you want the footage letterboxed in a 16x9 frame, enable the letterbox filter and set the manual letterbox to 89.0.
3b. If you want to crop the sides to fill the 1920x1080 space, then under geometry, change the crop to setting to 16x9 1.78.
4. Compress the files and use those for masters from here on out.

Variation 1:
Before compressing in Compressor, open each clip in RedAlert and do basic image color/exposure adjustments. Then create new QuickTime proxies.

Variation 2:
Once you've compressed the footage to ProRes for editing, open all clips in RedCine. Make your color/exposure adjustments. Set it up to render to whatever you want and let it go for a really long time (anywhere from a day to a couple of months depending on your machine, what format you're rendering to and how much footage you have.) Once you're done, reconnect the first back of Compressor ProRes files to the new files from RedCine. This is where changing names using automator is really, really useful if you accidentally named your clips different names.

My opinion is that for HD or SD masters, a ProRes workflow is acceptable quality for many shows. If you're going out to film or Digital Cinema, then using 2k dpx files or 16-bit tif files is better.

So what are you finishing to, what's your timeline and what type of computer do you have access to?

-Russ


Russell Lasson
Kaleidoscope Pictures
Provo, UT