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editing, color-grading, film-outs at Charbon-Studio

• FCP-Color workflow for RED
  • introduction
    • How can one judge what a shot looks like
      • Not in Quicktime Player : only in Final Cut Pro or Color, using an hd video card (Blackmagic, Aja, Matrox…) and an hd monitor.
      • Quicktime Player often shifts gamma impredictebly, even more so with a monitor calibrated with a 2.2 gamma rather than 1.8
  • Transcoding solutions
    • R3d directly in Color vs.Transcoding in FCP to Prores
      • An r3d media in Color is slightly lighter than the same media transcoded to prores from Final Cut Pro
    • Transcoding in FCP to ‘native’ vs. to ‘prores’
      • Seen in Quicktime Player : the native transcoding is much darker
      • Seen in FCP : exactly the same
      • Seen in Color : the native transcoding is slightly lighter : we have exactly the same difference as in .1
    • R3d in Color vs. ‘native’ fcp transcoding
      • In Color : exactly the same
      • --> the FCP ‘native’ transcoding truly is native and the redcode plugin behaves the same way with it than with r3d files. Absolutely no loss of quality
    • RedAlert/RedRushes transcoding, vs. r3d in Color
      • In Color : almost the same, the transcoded media does have a little less contrast
      • --> the FCP transcoding is not as good as the RedAlert/RedRushes transcoding, because transcoded media with RedAlert/RedRushes looks almost the same as r3d, and not transcoded media from FCP
    • in pictures
      • r3d, no transcoding
      • transcoded to proresHQ with FCP, plus color-correction to match the exposure
      • r3d, no transcoding
      • transcoded to proresHQ with FCP, plus color-correction to match the exposure
    • conclusion
      • we know that to edit in FCP one has to transcode…
      • transcoding alters the shot
      • transcoding in FCP alters the shot more than transcoding in RedRushes/RedCine/RedAlert
      • --> the color-grading should be using native files
      • --> one should edit offline and conform
      • --> or at least transcode outside of Final Cut Pro
      • --> r3d files or ‘native’ transcoded quicktimes are exactly the same for Color
  • which workflow?
    • which tool for transcoding ?
      • transcoding with FCP
        • to Prores : ok if hd monitoring and powerful computer : FCP will do 2K, no resize is possible
        • to ‘native’ : cumbersome for editing
      • RedAlert orRedCine
        • One can conform to Color, do a pre-grading pass so as not to burn the whites or crash the blacks, render to linear DPXToo slow : 1 second per image = 1 day for 1 hour
      • RedRushes
        • pros
          • can be very fast (more than FCP) : depends on the Debayer Quality used
          • can resize (to hd or sd)
        • why resize ?
          • the files are much lighter for the computer ; no need to have 2K files to work on if monitoring in SD ! And anyway one will have to conform in the end to get the absolute max quality
    • how to conform
      • with an edl
        • export an edl from FCP, import it in Color
        • Color finds automatically the r3d files and work with them
        • Tested, works
      • From FCP
        • Once editing is over, hide the low-resolution media
        • Setup List and Transfer to transcode to ‘native’
        • Launch “batch capture” of the media
        • Note : it is absolutely necessary that the names of the low-resolution media match the names of the r3d files
          • This is automatic with FCP and RedRushes
          • RedCine should be setup to use ‘#C’ as the file name
        • Tested, works
      • Conform for other systems (Baselight, Lustre…)
        • One can conform to Color, do a pre-grading pass so as not to burn the whites or crash the blacks, render to linear DPX