Twenty398

This blog has been a little quiet for 2009, due to my hard work writing the first and only book on the RED camera. RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera is finally done and available now! From the official press release:

“With the release of the RED ONE™ digital cinema camera, the possibility of recording stunning, cinematic-quality images with an affordable camera became a reality. Now that the industry has embraced the nascent technology and added new tools and workflows, filmmakers—from independents on up—are leading the charge on establishing new rules.

Here to guide newcomers and RED veterans alike, popular trainer and filmmaker Noah Kadner picks up where the manual leaves off. You’ve got the basic operations down and now you’ll learn how to use the camera in a production environment and discover the various options in post. Using a clear, objective approach, he offers best-practice advice on utilizing RED’s proprietary tools, explains the workflows for Final Cut Studio, Avid, and Premiere Pro, and gives workaround solutions where needed. Well-known filmmakers and industry leaders share their own bleeding-edge production methodologies throughout, offering a rare view into this exciting new world of filmmaking.

Here are just a few things you’ll learn to do:
•Build a RED package that fits your budget
•Set up for sound recording and learn which audio tools to use
•Achieve the optimal exposure using RED’s onboard tools and external gear
•Edit your footage with step-by-step instructions for Avid, Final Cut Pro, and Premiere Pro
•Work color correction into your HD, film, or Web projects
•Prep your project for output and archive your footage
•Learn from pros such as Rodney Charters, ASC (DP, 24), Simon Duggan, ACS (DP,Knowing), Albert Hughes (Director, The Book of Eli), and many others using RED”

For more info, visit the book’s homepage here:
http://www.peachpit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321617681

To order direct from Amazon, visit this link:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321617681?ie=UTF8&tag=callboxlive-20

Here’s a little piece from DVICE.com:

The SCI FI Channel’s Sanctuary is the first television series in North America to be shot entirely on the revolutionary RED One camera. The crew up in Vancouver, BC, were kind enough to show DVICE how the camera’s insane resolution and tapeless recording system let them keep all their work in the digital domain — and at four times the resolution of HD.

Video and more after the jump:

http://dvice.com/archives/2009/01/how_the_red_one.php

Technorati Tags:
24p, 4K, digital cameras, filmmaking, high-definition, indie, indie filmmaking, native, new techology, RED, redcode, workflow

Here’s a nice little piece from Digital Facility on PlasterCITY Digital Post’s RED Workflow, which they’ve been perfecting ever since the camera first came out. Here’s a quote from owner, Michael Cioni:

“We’re seeing a lot of production companies and DPs make use of the RED camera because of image quality, compact design, cinema lenses and overall lower costs. RED footage makes up a significant portion of our work,” says Cioni. “As early adopters, we’ve worked closely with the RED team to design and deliver powerful end-to-end tapeless and tape-based workflows. SCRATCH is the ideal post tool for RED footage because it’s the only software that can deliver real time results of color grading, down-converting and window-burn dailies from a soft-mounted firewire drive.”

For the rest of the story click HERE.

Technorati Tags:
24p, 4K, digital cameras, filmmaking, high-definition, indie, indie filmmaking, native, new techology, RED, redcode, workflow

Preparing the timeline, but first…

As this will be a shorter post, I’ll start with a small digression:
Since my last post, the Adobe workflow is out, and I am hangin’ in here with Color and FCP for this project…. What old news one can feel like

After reading up a bit on the Adobe thingy, I think I may as well just stay here a wee bit longer than I thought, though. Seems you cannot get access to the metadata with the Adobe plugin yet. If that’s a fact, then the gain is that you by now can do about the same thing with Adobe as you have been able to since the release of R1 in FCP… But in ”real” 4k. + hangs and crashes.

Seems to me Apple and Adobe have received separate pieces of the RED cake. Apple got metadata control. Adobe got full debayer and resolution. If this is true, you are stuck with the metadata from the cam on the shoot. In that case I’ll still be doin’ my FCP thingy for quite a while.

I do miss full debayer and 4k. Badly (More on that in part 3 of this small series). But not having control over exposure and kelvin is even more scary.

Enough! To the subject @ hand

My project was 9 videotracks high with all kind of speedchanges and a couple of simple comps. I had 4k 16:9 (stock), 4k 2:1 and 3k 2:1.

I sent all cuts down to one videotrack – except for 3k, composites and extreme lowlight shots.
Then made a copy of my timeline to prepare for Color, selected all, rightclicked and chose ”remove attributes.
… and simply ”Send to Color” to see which shots got the repeat frame bug

I spent some time to L&T multiclip shots. To make a long story short:
That’s rather quick compared to developing DPXs, but it feels very unnecessary…

When I had that done, I read that one could edl the timeline out of FCP to Color to avoid the repeat frame bug. Someone needs credit for experimental fantasy!

I’ll just mention one thing, if you choose to follow my work-intensive route: If there’s a spanned shot in there, you can randomly get he bug in both the shot immediately before and the one immediately after.

So here’s a solution for the more effective person… ☺

Thanks to Luca Immesi
1 Shoot 4k/2k 16:9
2 Make your edit in fcp with P or M proxies
3 export the EDL
4 make a new color project
5 import the edl
6 put the right frame rate, resolution (what ever you want), files path
7 resize the clips in the geometry room
8 enjoy

Update2! So I tried with b17 4k spanned files, it works smooth! Also I experimented exporting an xml from fcp and importing into color, it works fine but I noticed a better playback in color with edl method than xml.
But for people can’t load the edl they can try exporting the xml and importing in color.

I haven’t yet tested this myself, but it sorta makes sense (going into conspiracy mode here on how Apple prefers their buggy XMLs over good ole’ EDLs. Self-censorship won! ☺ )

Next:
Preparing the shots that needed reframing, compositing and scaling…
I’ll write a separate post on my thoughts on developing low noise images from RED RAW for grading. BUT that’s not for now.

The important thing is that I had to run 34 out of 142 cuts this way.
Short story is: Despite hassles by having to do this @ all, I saved a lot of time ☺.

The remaining 108 cuts could have been transferred in one batch through an edl. This starts to sound like RED bliss. (Cliffhanger sound…)

As part of this project is to find out whether the new Color workflow holds up against developing DPXs, I have duplicates of some of the ”problem” or suspected problematic shots. Mostly low-light
I feel very comfortable with developing the RAW files and grading AJA wrapped DPXs in Color by now. But will the new workflow hold up? (drum-roll and answer on thursday ☺)

Cheers!
Gunleik

This is part 2 of 3 in a first series of posts.The first is here.