Twenty398

More random observations working with RED and Premiere CS4. Some of these might be obvious issues for folks who work with Premiere all day long, for me it’s been a while. Now on the Quad Core with 4GB of RAM(still below the reported min requirements but this is more machine than most folks have already).

1- Performance needs to be tuned carefully. Got a nice little G-RAID feeding footage and still seeing a lot of dropped frames with all quality settings set to defaults. With resolution set to Quarter, Quality to Medium, Chroma DeNoise Off, Debayer set to Leading Lady(might want to change that to something a bit more understandable in terms of quality) and OLPF Compensation off- I get nice smooth frame rates and the footage looks pretty solid.

2- 16:9 Performance suffers a bit more. 16:9 has always been a problem for REDCode playback because it doesn’t scale nicely down from 4K the way 2:1 does.

3- Load times for complex projects can be long. I’ve got one project with about 2 hours worth of .R3D files that takes forever to load if it loads at all. It’s a little scary to see the progress bar sit there at almost loaded, forever.

4-The unsupported format warning is a little bit annoying. Essentially you drag your entire RED folder into CS4’s project window for a quick import. It sorts through, pulls out the .R3D and ignores the other files in the folders, such as the digital magazine profiles. However it then complains about these being unsupported formats. The option to never warn me about this again would be greatly appreciated.

5-Spanned clips are not marked. For example, if I have one long take that the camera split into several .R3D files, each shows up in the project as a separate clip. It’s smart enough to join them back into a single take but it would be more useful to automatically either- only import the first .R3D of a spanned take or make an obvious note in the project window that a clip is spanned.

6- It seems reasonably easy to crash CS 4.0.1. For example if I have one clip open and I bring up another and scrub through it that will give me a SPOD and then hang. Brings back those somewhat scary memories of the old Premiere which I spent years on and battled crashes and hangs every step of the way… but this is different. Right? More later….

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24p, 4K, adobe, os x, RED, windows, premiere, native

Been working a little more with RED in CS4. I had a little bit of trouble exporting a finished RED edit. I’m now updating the Adobe Media Encoder CS4 now, which should hopefully do the trick.

Scott Simmons is on the case as well with some more in-depth tests and performance analysis with Adobe CS4’s new native RED .R3D plugin which you can check out here.

http://www.scottsimmons.tv/blog/2008/12/11/kicking-the-tires-on-r3d-editing-in-premiere-pro/

Scott also provided a nice link to Adobe’s Dave Helmly who has a 30-minute video and text description of the best workflow practices. It looks like Adobe has its eye on being out front with the RED post workflow and it’s a very welcome development. Grab a coffee and then check it all out here.

http://blogs.adobe.com/davtechtable/2008/12/native_red_camera_files_cs4.html

And to back up a bit, here’s an older post from Studio Daily looking at a beta version of the plugin and its potential implications last summer.

http://www.studiodaily.com/blog/wp-trackback.php?p=622

along with their current update:

http://www.studiodaily.com/blog/wp-trackback.php?p=756

Technorati Tags:
24p, 4K, adobe, os x, RED, windows, premiere, native

So I’ve spent the last evening and morning playing with the new RED native .R3D plugin for Adobe Premiere CS4. Some initial observations:

1- It actually works as advertised, drag drop and edit .R3D. I’m sure some serious magic is happening behind the scenes but it is one of those holy grail moments.

2- Performance is slow. Here’s the min requirements:

Minimum System Requirements
3.0 GHz Quad core system with 8GB RAM
Hard drive with 40MB/sec sustained throughput is required; RAID striped array recommended
Windows Vista 64 Service Pack 1 or Mac OS 10.5
Premiere Pro 4.0.1 update
After Effects 9.0.1 update

Now I’m running this on a 2.6 Ghz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM and I can load .R3Ds, hit play and see stuff. Playback loses frames and ultimately freezes(though not crashing). It’s about the same as you get in FCP working from the M proxies on this sort of machine.

3- The Global RED decoding settings are a little clunky to call up- requiring a right-click on a .R3D clip where a System Preferences pane would be more apropos. But that’s a minor nitpick.

Next up I’m working on the 3Ghz Quad Core Mac Pro we have sitting here. I’ll expect to see performance take a big leap with any luck….

Technorati Tags:
24p, 4K, adobe, os x, RED, windows, premiere, native

An exciting moment for the RED workflow world- native support for .R3D files has arrived. So don’t just stand there. If you’ve got Premiere CS4 for Mac or PC, go get it.

http://www.red.com/support/index

Provides native REDCODE media (R3D) support for Premiere Pro CS4 (4.0.1 and later) and After Effects CS4 (9.0.1 and later). Includes: REDCODE importer (v1.3.0), After Effects Settings Dialog and workflow guide. Note: Supports RED ONE cameras up through Build 18.

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24p, 4K, adobe, os x, RED, windows, premiere, native

Adobe has made no secret of their intention to natively support .R3D files directly in Premiere CS4. It looks like they’ve taken a step closer with the release of Premiere 4.0.1 with that ability supported. The one piece of the puzzle missing is the actual plugin from RED itself that’s necessary to complete the picture. Soon? Details from Studio Daily.

Native RED R3D support: Both Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 version 4.0.1 and Adobe After Effects CS4 version 9.0.1 provide a true file-based workflow for RED R3D files, without transcoding or rewrapping, via RED’s beta plug-in available at www.red.com/support. Native handling of RED R3D augments Adobe’s existing support of Sony XDCAM EX, Panasonic P2, and AVCHD tapeless formats, providing users with software-only HD workflows from capture to output. In addition to downloading the RED plug-in, customer must update their software to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 version 4.0.1 and Adobe After Effects CS4 version 9.0.1, accessible for free throughout the Adobe update manager in the Help menu of the applications. To learn more about RED workflows with Adobe video solutions go to: www.adobe.com/products/premiere/pdfs/red_adobe_cs4_beta.pdf

Technorati Tags:
24p, 4K, adobe, os x, RED, windows, premiere, native