Best format from RED to Vegas 8 pro?

jgastelb

jgastelb

Well-known member
I'm currently shooting a short film with the RED. A friend of mine is trying to help me be able to edit the footage at my pc by outputting the files from redcine to something Vegas can edit with minimal image degradation.

I have heard that some people use quicktime motion jpeg a and that they can edit it. However, there are some concerns that when the image is projected onto a big screen theather you will see the lossy codec. It's being shot in raw (4k) but we will mantain a workflow of 1080p.

Any codecs that I should be looking into besides that one? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Jgastelb

BTW - We have posted a thread at reduser.net as well but I thought I would give dvxuser a try as well.
 
RedCine supports lossless quicktime. That would be my FIRST choice. I'll fire up my laptop and see what other options there are. I have RedCine and Vegas 8 on my laptop...

[edit]

RedCine also seems to give lossless options for every quicktime codec. Not sure how that will work. But try the quicktime MJpegA Lossless and see how that does with Vegas. I know Vegas supports that codec.
 
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PerroneFord said:
RedCine supports lossless quicktime. That would be my FIRST choice. I'll fire up my laptop and see what other options there are. I have RedCine and Vegas 8 on my laptop...

[edit]

RedCine also seems to give lossless options for every quicktime codec. Not sure how that will work. But try the quicktime MJpegA Lossless and see how that does with Vegas. I know Vegas supports that codec.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response. I have redcine on my pc but the software opens and nothing ever happens. It doesn't let me get to the files. I'm running a windows xp.

Anyways, we thought about using quicktime prores but I think Vegas doesn't support it. We'll have to run some tests with different formats. Just curious what other people recommend here.

Jgastelb
 
RedCine is VERY picky about the video card. I can't run it on either my primary rendering machine or my ingesting machine because I don't have the right video card. So when I ordered my laptop I made URE to get a compatible video card. There is a long thread on RedUser about what video card to use, however on the PC, just get the best nVidia card you can afford.

Apple has made ProRes proprietary, but if that's all the quality you want, then MJpegA should work just fine for you. In fact, Jim Janard's first mov files from RED were posted this way. Both the Bubblegum (720p) shots, and Milkgirls (1080p).
 
Try Cineform

Try Cineform

I keep hearing about a robust Cineform workflow with RED originated files in Vegas 8.

Seems that's what David Taylor (of Cineofrm) in the RED forum is recommending...

"At the time CineForm is able to offer a Red workflow on Windows we also intend to support Vegas with CineForm RAW in a similar timeframe. This is consistent with our current (non-Red) Vegas workflow today."

Link to original thread in the "other workflows" section of the RED Forums:


http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=12300
 
I've only done one 1080p project in Vegas. Seven individual shorts from 6 to 14 minutes long. In starting the project, I cut DV proxies, and worked with those. Midway through the project, I decided to try Cineform Neo instead. I had a few small teething pains, but overall, I shifted everything to Cineform and haven't looked back.

There are some caveats. Cineform is not lossless, but it is VERY good. It uses wavelet compression much like RED Raw. I also found that the least expensive version of Cineform was not capable of handling 1080 footage. I was delivering 720p so this was ok for that project, but it's something to be aware of.

To test the codec, I generated some clips of color bars, gradients, and other tests, and rendered them with Cineform and brought them back into the NLE. They were VERY good, but not perfect. What they were, were SMALL! Very impressive compression for the visual quality.

If I was going to cut 4k regularly, Cineform would be HIGH on my list of things to own. Right now, when I play with RED footage, I export quicktime out of RedCine and put that in Vegas.
 
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