Autodesk Autodesk and the RED ONE™ Camera Workflow Guide ® Efficient Workflow from Shooting to Online into Autodesk Visual Effects, Finishing, and Grading Applications.
The introduction of the RED ONE™ digital camera has taken the world of cinematography by storm. Its low cost and ability to output high-quality, high-resolution digital images have created great demand for RED ONE™ cameras. The RED ONE™ camera is a high-quality, cost-effective digital camera from RED Digital Cinema Corporation that makes high-resolution digital cinematography accessible to many productions.
RED ONE™ and Timecode The RED ONE™ camera records each clip with two timecode tracks: Time of Day (TOD) and Edge Code. When shooting, choose one of these settings for the primary timecode because some applications cannot read both timecode tracks. The timecode you choose is set in the TimeCode menu of the camera and shows up on the camera’s external displays. The camera’s displayed timecode is also the one used in the QuickTime proxies that the camera generates.
Working In Final Cut Pro Import QuickTime proxies into Final Cut Pro There are several methods of editing your content in FCP. One reliable method is to use the QuickTime proxies generated by the camera. These proxies contain the synced audio from the shoot. Make sure that you do not modify your proxy filenames or the R3D™ filenames. Instead, use the various comment columns to identify your clips.
Exporting DPX Sequences Using Crimson Workflow Use the Crimson Workflow application to convert R3D™ media to DPX sequences. Open the Crimson application. At the top of the interface, click Choose to open your XML file. Then, carefully follow the steps for each of the following sections. Match section Click the + button to select the root folder where your R3D™ files reside. Click the Match button to reconnect your original media to your edits.
Finishing with Smoke or Flame Create a new project Create a new project with settings that match the exact frame size of your DPX sequences. HD projects use the usual HD formats, but for film use these values: • Aspect ratio: 2 or 1.
Appendix A: RED Applications The RED applications are an integral part of this workflow, as they are necessary for opening R3D™ files. They can be downloaded freely from the RED website. Be sure to check www.red.com to get the latest versions of their applications. RED ALERT!™ RED ALERT!™ is an Intel Mac-only application that is used to quickly look at footage and apply a color correction or color space change before exporting an R3D™ file to another format.
Appendix B: Crimson Crimson is a third-party Mac-only application that contributes to an efficient RED workflow by providing a method to turn your Final Cut Pro XML data into a virtual telecine pull list, with handles. This new telecine XML file can then be used in REDCINE™ to perform a best-light color correction on edited selects and batch export the footage in whatever format is required for finishing.
Figure 1. The result of setting gamma to Linear. This graph shows some residual dark current, since the minimum pixel value is about 800 (out of 65535). The behavior near black is dependent upon the black shading operation, which is done as part of the camera calibration. We ran the black shading several hours before this part of our testing was done, and the camera dark current may have risen during that time. Figure 2.
Figure 3. The log-style options PDLog985, PDLog685, and REDlog™ along with a reference to illustrate where a film negative would fall in a typical Cineon scan (ignoring the toe and shoulder of the film). Figure 4. Our recommended settings for log-style projects (as discussed on page 6), PDLog985 and PDLog985 with an Exposure setting of -2.
Figure 5. The video-centric Gamma options Rec709 and REDspace™. (We repeat the Cineon reference line to ease comparison between the figures, although this is less relevant for the video-style curves.) It is interesting to note that the Rec709 gamma option preserves as much of the highlight headroom of the camera footage as any of the log-style options.
