So, I’ve decided to write up what’s fast becoming Nice Dissolve’s standard Red workflow, after finding about four different occasions on which to describe it over on Red User in the last week alone….

Workflow

• On your transcoding/conforming machine (needs to be an Intel Mac), transcode R3D files to 720p ProRes SQ with the “quarter res” setting (“Draft” process in Redcine). You can do this from Redcine, Red Alert, Redline, Clipfinder, etc.
• Edit with 720p files in Final Cut. These files can be pretty easily edited on just about any Mac hardware you’d consider running FCS2 on in the first place, including laptops or those old G5 towers you still have kicking around.
• Back on your transcoding/conforming machine, export your edited sequence from Final Cut as XML. use Clipfinder to swap references to your ProRes files for references to _H proxies, and let Clipfinder change the resolution settings on your sequence to match. Import the newly generated XML file back into your FCP project. It will come in with the same name as your ProRes sequence, so rename it so you can tell them apart.
• File -> Send To -> Color in Final Cut with your newly imported sequence.
• Immediately save your Color project and close. Use the “looping bug” fixer in Clipfinder (in the Tools menu) on the project.
• Re-open the Color project and grade.
• Render out of Color to ProRes or Uncompressed HD and send project back to Final Cut for titling, etc. or render to DPX and handle further processing in After Effects, Shake, etc.

Notes

• We typically use Redcine to export the ProRes files. It lays everything out on a timeline for you and makes it easy to do a quick one-light grade.
• When transcoding your ProRes files, make sure they have the same names as your R3D files (except, obviously, with a .mov extension rather than a .R3D extension). Redcine might add an extra underscore to the end of file names; use a script or batch renaming utility to get rid of it, or it will cause trouble when you try to conform. (If it’s already too late, then before you process your exported XML sequence though Clipfinder, open it in a text editor and do a search/replace of “_.mov” to “.mov”).
• If you haven’t used Color before, be sure to read the section of the user guide that discusses its limitations when working with transitions, filters, still images, etc. from Final Cut timelines.

Analysis

This is basically my favorite low-cost Red workflow. It’s the first commodity-software workflow that, in my opinion really has all the essential pieces in place.

Pros:

• Fully compressed (except possibly the final output, if you choose to output in an uncompressed format) — you could plausibly finish even a feature with just a couple of terabytes of storage and you don’t even really need a RAID array.
• Transcoding to 720p files from a 1/4 resolution de-bayer is quick. It can be near real-time on a single 8-core Mac Pro.
• 720p ProRes files are very lightweight, only a little more than twice the data rate of DV, making it easy to take projects with you. Edit on your laptop, conform on the Mac Pro back at the office.
• FCP on just about any modern Mac is very responsive while editing 720p, unlike with the comparatively much heavier workload of editing R3D proxies.
• You can do a quick one-light when creating the 720p files, so your editor can look at nicer footage than R3D proxies with whatever look metadata they happen to have.
• You’re grading in an environment which provides access to the full range of the R3D data and also provides vastly more powerful color correction tools that Redcine or Red Alert.
• Only the precise frames used in your final edit ever have to be transcoded at high-quality (happens when you render out of Color).
• If you have a Mac Pro and set Color to quarter-resolution playback, you can even get real-time playback of R3D in color projects, at least if you don’t get too carried away with secondaries, and it doesn’t look terrible on a client monitor.
• No messing around with Media Manager or Log & Transfer in Final Cut.
• This workflow doesn’t require any software other than Red’s software (free), Clipfinder (donationware) and Final Cut Studio.

Cons:

• Limited to 2K finish or below. (Then again, even most Hollywood features still aren’t finished above 2K.)
• Footage is fed into Color via the equivalent of a “half res high” decode, not quite as good as decoding full 4K and scaling. (But good enough for almost any HD finish, in my opinion.)
• Requires up-front transcoding, unlike R3D proxy-based workflow.
• Because of decoding overhead, Color is not as responsive with R3D files as with uncompressed HD or DPX (if you have a RAID fast enough to handle those formats in real time).