Vegas Pro 13 and R3D Workflow

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BullMooseFilms

Member
Wondering if anyone has any workflow tips, I've looked around and not seen too much on the topic.

I've been using just my Canon DSLR the last few years, but this weekend I'm directing (then editing) a 20 minute short. We've got a DP with a Red Scarlet, so I'll be getting that footage from him. He's told me about REDCine, and I'm going to get that tonight.

I'll be getting the 4k files, and either work with the raw or transcode if my machine can't handle it. (I've got a quad core i7 and maxed out RAM and some fast hard drives, SSD for system and 7200 RPM for media).

After the cut, I need to either output or conform with raw files for the grade elsewhere using DaVinci Resolve.

My plan is to finalize at 2k for this project, since it's mainly for festivals and allow for easier/faster grading work, but have the 4k originals if we get to making the feature version where we will use this footage again.

It's also a 2.4:1 ratio project, and I've already run into the fact that selective pre-render doesn't like anything but preset formats so my scheme to fully use my ultrawide monitor for preview is moot.

I guess I'd just appreciate any wisdom from those that came before and I'll keep this updated with what I learn for those who follow.

Ted
 
I think you'll be fine. I edited my 17 minute short, shot on Scarlet, in Vegas 12 on my i7 Sandybridge 8Gb Ram laptop earlier this year. At times Vegas got sluggish, but not badly so. One useful tip is that changes made in RedCine-X e.g exposure, color are saved in the same folder as the r3d (I think as RMD files) and Sony Vegas does use this information. You can however also change the iso in Vegas. The founder of Red a year or two ago was recommending a little Alchemy, about 0.15 on most footage, it's about half way down on the right in RedCine-X. Alchemy license does expire in older versions of RedCine-x so make sure it's latest version. If someone else is grading in Resolve you may not want to use it though. Also I always add a little sharpening to Red footage in Vegas.

BullMooseFilms said:
Wondering if anyone has any workflow tips, I've looked around and not seen too much on the topic.

I've been using just my Canon DSLR the last few years, but this weekend I'm directing (then editing) a 20 minute short. We've got a DP with a Red Scarlet, so I'll be getting that footage from him. He's told me about REDCine, and I'm going to get that tonight.

I'll be getting the 4k files, and either work with the raw or transcode if my machine can't handle it. (I've got a quad core i7 and maxed out RAM and some fast hard drives, SSD for system and 7200 RPM for media).

After the cut, I need to either output or conform with raw files for the grade elsewhere using DaVinci Resolve.

My plan is to finalize at 2k for this project, since it's mainly for festivals and allow for easier/faster grading work, but have the 4k originals if we get to making the feature version where we will use this footage again.

It's also a 2.4:1 ratio project, and I've already run into the fact that selective pre-render doesn't like anything but preset formats so my scheme to fully use my ultrawide monitor for preview is moot.

I guess I'd just appreciate any wisdom from those that came before and I'll keep this updated with what I learn for those who follow.

Ted
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for the tips. I played with the test footage and my issue is that we are doing over half the movie in split screen, so that means I am running two red shots simultaneously.

My machine was able to run them at full framerate only in draft auto, so it's not anything I'd want to work with, but it will be good enough to use when I conform the raw later if I do an offline edit with proxies. I guess I will just cut for the cut and not worry at all about the look and the grading because I won't be able to do much on the proxies and while redcine seems very powerful I really have no idea what I'm doing in that program lol.

I tried to render one of the test clips to AVID DNXHD, but Vegas couldn't open it (nor could VLC). I did go back and download the codec pack from Avid but same result. I'll have to find out even how to do the proxies that Vegas will take if I can't do an edit with the raw files.

This is sort of a dumb question but with the track motion and all I'm going to need for the split screens and shot reframing which I tend to do lots of, does all that export with any EDL or do I need to use a specific sort to get that over to the colorist with those moves and reframings intact.
 
I have no idea on how you export this to Resolve or similar. IIRC one of the new features in Vegas 13 is the use of proxies, that it creates as needed, see page 102 of the manual.
http://dspcdn.sonycreativesoftware.com/manuals/vegaspro13.0_manual_enu.pdf If half your film is split screen, can your colorist easily grade the two halves differently?

Perhaps not the workflow you're looking for, but if you do your edit in Vegas, keeping your R3d files on one of two identical external hard drives, then give your colorist a list of the files that were actually used and he then graded in RedCine-X using the second hard drive, his work would be saved in each directory as an rmd file. Then go back to Vegas reopen the project but now using the second hard drive with his rmd files on it, all his grading work should show up.

FYI you might try asking at sonycreativesoftware.com, support, community forums, vegas pro video where there are more knowledgable people than I



BullMooseFilms said:
Thanks for the tips. I played with the test footage and my issue is that we are doing over half the movie in split screen, so that means I am running two red shots simultaneously.

My machine was able to run them at full framerate only in draft auto, so it's not anything I'd want to work with, but it will be good enough to use when I conform the raw later if I do an offline edit with proxies. I guess I will just cut for the cut and not worry at all about the look and the grading because I won't be able to do much on the proxies and while redcine seems very powerful I really have no idea what I'm doing in that program lol.

I tried to render one of the test clips to AVID DNXHD, but Vegas couldn't open it (nor could VLC). I did go back and download the codec pack from Avid but same result. I'll have to find out even how to do the proxies that Vegas will take if I can't do an edit with the raw files.

This is sort of a dumb question but with the track motion and all I'm going to need for the split screens and shot reframing which I tend to do lots of, does all that export with any EDL or do I need to use a specific sort to get that over to the colorist with those moves and reframings intact.
Click to expand...
 
I'm a bit farther in now. The documentation would lead you to believe that the proxies get made automatically for 4k material but that wasn't the case for me. It took nearly 24 hours of rendering to make a full set of proxies for the entire project, but wow what a difference. Before when I thought the proxies might be auto, I went from a 4k base project to a 2k base project, which helped fractionally, but I think I may just go back to a 4k base project now. Anyone have opinions on that?

Under export there are options for both Resolve and ProTools. Resolve is an XML so I think that will just reassemble from a drive with raw files, where the ProTools option actually creates a new file including either all raw media or just what was used. I'd probably do the what was used ProTools files but then also give the sound editor a copy of all the raw sound takes along with my notes (9 pages) of what goes with what.

Vegas' track motion and reframing tools have made all the split screen work in this film a complete snap. copy paste event attributes and separate tracks for left and right frame and it's done. I wasn't able to figure out how to get Vegas to see the timecodes (we did a sync cable between sound and the camera so theoretically they should just auto sync) but I'm used to slate syncing so that wasn't too bad.

I've now got the project prepped and ready to start actual creative edit work. Usually when I work QAD myself I just throw everything on the timeline and start cutting and trashing the trims as I go. For this project I had to come up with something a little different as I wanted to maintain a copy of the synced trims after I put a version of a scene together so I could go back and review alternates. My solution is to move all the in order raw clips over to give myself room to work at the beginning and then copy the clips for each scene and then work as normal, leaving another synced copy of raw footage to revew different takes down the road if I wish.

I'll check in again as I get to the oputput stages.
 
quick question, did you purchase the QT pro license from Apple? If not, you can't render out to MOV.
 
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