RED music videos and DNxHD 36
By S Simmons. Filed in Avid editing, Editing, RED |
I’ve had the chance to now cut number of RED music videos in both Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer. I wasn’t really having a contest but Avid has won as my software of choice for cutting RED music videos. There’s a couple of things to know first. Most RED jobs that comes through our house end up being conformed on high end systems like a Quantel eQ or Avid DS with color grading done on a DaVinci. It is this kind of workflow that requires good tracking of metadata and that is something Avid excels at. There is an extra step involved in the setup, using MetaCheater to get all of the proper info into the Avid, but once it is there the media management is rock solid (something that Avid has always excelled at) and there is never a problem with EDLs.
The other thing that has made the Avid > RED editing such a pleasure is Avid’s DNxHD 36 codec. Like Apple’s ProRes, DNxHD is a compressed HD codec that is both efficient and of great quality. Unlike ProRes you have a number of choices for quality. DNxHD 36 is the lowest quality, running at 36 megabits per second, but calling it “low quality” for offline is really doing it a disservice as it looks fantastic and the low data rate makes it feel like you are cutting with DV25. Since DV has a data rate of 25Mbps you can see that DNxHD 36 isn’t that much greater. I’ve been running the high quality RED Quicktime proxies (QT reference files is what they really should be called but everyone is calling them proxies), the _H clips, through Apple Compressor, then creating and ALE file with MetaCheater and then a batch import into Avid. It’s important to run the proxies through Compressor as Avid is then able to fast import the QTs which takes a fraction of the time as opposed to directly importing proxies. This isn’t acceptable IMHO as a 4 minutes clip was taking something like 20 minutes to import at to DNxHD 36. With the recent release of REDrushes as a batch processing application of RED files this will become a much more pleasant experience once it supports DNxHD. This thread at reduser.net discusses that very issue. Couple the speed and efficiency of DHxHD 36 with the screaming performance of the new Avid 3.0 software upgrade and you’ve got one kicking offline solution for the creative editing of you RED jobs.
Wednesday, August 6th 2008 at 5:21 am
We have also been doing the exact same thing at our house and i agree that it has been flawless so far. Also you dont need to compress the “H” proxies…use the “M” proxies since the H proxies arent true 4k files but double sized sized 2K files (not the same). We use the “M” proxies and the files are smaller and look just as good. especially if you arent finishing in the AVID.
Also we have finished in the avid using Magic Bullet Looks as our primary grader and let me tell you it is fantastic. Try taking a pass with it (assuming you have hi-res cross converst of your proxies DNxHD175 or higher) and see what you think. Pretty great.
Friday, August 8th 2008 at 5:32 am
Can you elaborate a bit on your FCP experience with RED? To be honest I\’ve barely tried in FCP – when I did I found the performance to be greatly lacking, and had a render-tastic time.
I\’ve been using Avid since then.
REDAlert (and line and rushes) now support DNxHD directly, although no option to pick datarate so 36 won\’t be available. However (there had to be one) it requires a new version of the DNxHD Quicktime codec, which apparently hasn\’t been released by Avid yet…
Thursday, August 14th 2008 at 9:45 am
You wrote that you run the high quality reference files through compressor, but what codec/video settings are you exporting to?
Tuesday, August 19th 2008 at 11:17 pm
Unable to find DNxHD 36 for 720p?
Missing Something?
Friday, August 22nd 2008 at 7:42 am
Gopal, I don’t think there is a 720 DNxHD setting, at least I didn’t see one. I went with the default DNxHD 36 settings which are 1080. They are really small files so drive space and playback shouldn’t be an issue.
Friday, August 22nd 2008 at 7:43 am
rejean, I ran the proxies through Compressor to Avid’s DNxHD 36 codec. It must be installed on your system but it’s a free download from Avid.
Friday, August 22nd 2008 at 7:46 am
Dylan, I’ve found that for music videos I really like Avid’s grouping methods much more than FCP. If I am just doing cuts and dissolves then I can work faster on Avid. FCP has worked great with RED but I always transcode and don’t cut the proxies due to performance issues.. you just can’t multiclip and edit with real speed. Other than that they are similar.
Tuesday, August 26th 2008 at 11:19 am
Just started a feature and have been using the QT ref and DNXHD36 import from medium method. The article is right. Looks great, takes long.
Will be jumping on this tomorrow. Stay tuned.