FCPX, R3D, and me! NOW YOU KNOW Production Blog

Hey Everyone. I'm just starting work on a TV series that will occupy most of my Summer. It's very exciting and should be a nice change of pace from my usual corporate/commercial work.

I'm working on a nMP, 8-core, D700, 64GB RAM. Material is being kept on a 24TB Pegaus2 RAID.

Show is being shot on RED, and I'm planning on editing using the R3D for the most part.

I'll be jumping into RedCineX to create my grades. If I understand correctly those setting will automatically transfer over to FCPX via the RMD file.

Green-screen elements for graphics will be exported at 2.5K ProRes444 to be animated in AE. Then they'll be delivering me back 1080p ProRes444 final elements.

Onset logging was done via MovieSlate, and merged with FCPX event using ShotNotes. I tried to keep the on-set logging light, so I wouldn't get too much resistance from the production. Using this process, I was able to capture EPISODE, SCENE/SHOT, and TAKE. At present, FAVOURITES and REJECTS can't be immediately translated, but using the "Picture rating" info, a 1-star and 5-star ratings are translated into keyword collections- which I can then use to very quick add FAVOURITE and REJECT tags.

Smart Collections are used to gather all the relevant footage for a single episode.

Much like other in the "sluggish" thread. I found I was getting some UI lag after editing for a couple hours. A quick FCPX quit and relaunch solved the problem.

In terms of RED performance, while I can play full debayer R3D files using the RedPlayer, RedCineX and now Resolve, within FCPX I get stuttering and have to use "Better Performance" vs "Higher Quality". I imagine this is because the other applications have been updated to take advantage of RED's new 3rd party GPU acceleration. While we're still waiting for that update to FCPX.

I'll probably post my experience here occasionally if anyone is interested.

39 x 7min episodes.

Hey Marcus,

Congratulations. And I would be very interested in hearing about your progress with this project.

-Ronny

Thanks Ronny. I think I've hit my first snag.

Sam Mestman is pretty clear in his demos that you need to open RED footage in RedCineX before importing it into FCPX in order to get the benefit of being able to jump back and forth and have the RMD info translate across. Theres obviously more fine-grain controls for the RAW image in RCX than FPCX currently offers.

I'm needing to start editing now, but won't be able to sit down with the director to come up with agreed pre-grades for at least a week.

If I'm right that the RMD files need to be created in RedCineX, this may mean I have to reimport the first weeks' worth of shooting, but that's only a few hours work and isn't the costliest mistake I could make.

Cool, sounds very exciting with that project! I'm curious to know if you're having any hiccups in your workflow. We had a 30 min RED show where almost all clips are multicam, and got sluggish performance as the timeline has gotten more complicated. However, this project happened right at the time of the transition to 10.1, so it was transferred over. There were just too many advantages to 10.1 not to do it. For FCPX to make real inroads into long-form, they really have to fix the performance issues that crop up for longer projects.

One notable difference is that we didn't do the whole RedCineX rmd generation process because we are going to Resolve. This hasn't happened yet, so I'm not exactly sure if it will affect anything!

Yes, if you want to be able to use the RCX controls in FCP X you absolutely need to save an RMD file for every R3D clip prior to importing the clips in FCP X. This can only be done in RCX.

It's a bit of a learning curve, but once you get used to the workflow you will find editing R3D in X quite a pleasant experience. I have done some complex R3D work using the FCP X proxy media workflow as well. Super-smooth editing even on long projects, but you have to be aware that if you want to do first-light corrections in RCX it is best to do them before creating the proxies, otherwise you need to recreate them after each correction.

Keep us updated.

- Ronny

Hey Ronnie.

So, if I'm now in the situation where I've imported several days worth of material into X, but I haven't done any RED RAW modifications yet- I can't just open RedCineX now and create RMDs now, can I...?

How far back do I need to go. I've only got one partial edit going. Assuming that importing the R3Ds into X doesn't create RMD files (until you make modifications in the RED RAW HUD), do I just need to create a new library and start re-importing again? Once I've opened all the files in RedCineX first, that is...

I haven't done anything irreparable to the RED camera files, have I?

No, you haven't done anything irreparable to the R3D files. You just need to open RCX, select all of your RED clips in a bin, right click the selection and choose “Save RMD.”

As you haven't done any corrections yet I think you won't have to re-import the media again. The RMD files are just metadata files that store the RAW color adjustments you make to your R3Ds and FCP X only links to the R3D clips, not to the RMDs. But as I have never been in this situation I would test this if I were you.

Create the RMDs in RCX, then launch FCP X, do some raw corrections on a clip in the RAW HUD and see if the corrections appear on your clip when you click Apply in the RAW HUD. If they do you will be fine, if not you will have to start all over again and import the clips in a new Library after having created the RMDs in RCX.

Maybe an interesting detail: If you have the Real media player installed on your computer you may want to remove it. I have seen cases in which the .RMD extension that is associated with the R3D files in the Finder was being referenced to Real Player and this caused FCP X to not update to the changes made in the RAW HUD. This might not be the case anymore, but just telling this for safety.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

- Ronny

You don't need to go into red cine x first.

images.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/RED_..._Final_Cut_Pro_X.pdf

Page 5 is going to be of interest. The Red workflow plugin acts as a mini version of red cine x within fcpx.

Unfortunately I'm away from my computer until Sunday- so I won't be able to test this until then.

Oh well. At worst I'll have to do a couple hours of re importing.

Hey Darrin. The RAW HUD in FCPX is nice- but it's a limited subset of the controls available in RedCineX. There you can do way more detailed work, including curves.

Yep, hence the 'mini' description. I'd like to see it have the same abilities as the Premiere version someday.

I find the RAW HUD very effective for first-light corrections (actually that's what RCX is meant for). For any serious grading I would never use RCX (no secondaries) but a dedicated grading application.

-Ronny

My situation is this. The show is about half green-screen puppets to be put into artificial backgrounds, and half them on-location talking with people.

The location material I can come up with a temp grade that's just for presentation purposes. The final grade IS being done in resolve by someone other than me.

For the green-screen material, we'll have to come up with a grade we're happy with for when I export the ProRes files for compositing and animation. I think we can do this pre correction in RedCineX, rather than having to go to Resolve and back before going to the animators.

What is the compositing app going to be?

After Effects.

So. I found a simple R3D clip to download and opened it in FCPX. I even opened up the RED HUD, thus creating a RMD file.

I then Opened RedCineX and opened the same clip and made some obvious modifications. I jumped back over to FCPX and... low and behold, the changes were there.

Someone else can confirm my findings, but it doesn't look to me like you need to open clips in RedCineX before starting work in FCPX anymore.

It's completely true. There is a default RMD file embedded in the r3d file. Adding a setting in the fcpx HUD creates an external RMD file just like red cine x.

You really just have to drag and drop the red files into the library, then get to work!

Based on the documentation at the time RED support was introduced with 10.0.6- all the information seemed to point to the fact that if you let FCPX create the RMD files, that you couldn't bound back and forth between FCPX and RedCineX. That creating the RMDs in RCX was mandatory.

Perhaps something has changed with 10.1. But based on my testing that no longer seems to be the case.

Which would certainly make my life much easier.

Well I'll be damned! Just tried this and it works. Ever since R3D got supported I have been using RCX to create the rmd files and I didn't even know they got created automatically now. Thank you for the tip, gentlemen. Very useful.

-Ronny

I spent most of NAB at the Red booth demoing Red workflow in FCP X for FCPWORKS. I'm very impressed by how hard Red is working to make this workflow as easy as possible in FCP X.

The white paper from Apple I posted earlier is a very good and quick read. This is for two different suggested workflows starting at 10.1 in December last year.