Welcome to Final Cut Pro X in under 5 minutes. I’m Steve from rippletraining.com. On the
heels of last week’s episode on working with MXF files, this week I wanted to take a
look at how to work with RED footage.
RED cameras record files in a format called R3D, that cannot be played back directly on
many software based editing systems without first transcoding the files; a process often
referred to as debayering.
The reason working with RAW files in the holy grail of image editing is that you have access
to all the 16 bit camera data when you need to adjust the exposure or perform color grading
on the image.
Before you can work with Raw media in Final Cut Pro, you’ll need to download and install
the Red Apple Workflow software available as a free download from Red.com.
On location, I typically transfer all the daily camera rolls to an external thunderbolt
drive. Taking a quick peak inside, we can see the Red Digital Magazine folder containing
all the RDC folders which contain the individual R3D files. Because of this complex file hierarchy,
I find it’s much faster to import the files by dragging them into the Browser rather than
using the Import window.
Select the Event and press Shift-Command-K to create a new keyword collection. I’ll
name this Roll A1. Press Command-Comma to open preferences. Because R3D files are large
and they already exist on my external drive, I’ll choose Leave Files in Place for my
import option.
By choosing Create Optimized media, Final Cut Pro will generate Apple ProRes 4 by 4
media in order to maintain the maximum color and image fidelity of the RAW media for editing,
grading and final output. If drive space is at a premium, you’ll want to choose Create
proxy media. If you have a RED ROCKET card installed, Final Cut Pro will take advantage
of this card’s dedicated chipset to reduce transcoding time.
The thing to remember is that transcoding or not, you always have access to the RAW
media if you later decide you want to color grade your project in DaVinci Resolve.
If however, you decide to transcode now, you won't be able to manipulate the RAW image data
within Final Cut Pro without first deleting the optimized and/or proxy media.
This is because the camera’s exposure and other profiles are baked into the transcoded
media. I therefore suggest leaving the transcending options turned off because you can always
do it later once you’ve given your footage a base grade.
I also recommend turning off any keyword tagging to prevent Final Cut Pro from creating a keyword
collection from every clip that’s imported.
To import a camera roll, drag it onto the keyword collection that matches your roll
number. Because a camera roll will often have more than just clips in it, Final Cut Pro
will let you know which files it cannot import. Just ignore this window by clicking Continue
Import.
With an R3D clip selected in the Event, press Command-4 to open the Inspector and click
the Info button. Scroll down to the section labeled Available Media Representations. Here
you can see that Final Cut Pro has access to the original RAW media, but Optimized and
Proxy media have not been generated as indicated by the red symbols.
To modify the RAW metadata, click the Modify RED RAW Settings button to bring up a window
of image manipulation options. The controls found in this window take advantage of the
RAW capabilities of the R3D media allowing you create a base grade for your footage prior
to editing.
Changes you make here are completely non-destructive to the RAW media as you are only changing
the instruction set of how to interpret and display the media.
You can alter the Color Space, Gamma, ISO and other global image settings. By changing
the Gamma settings to Rec 709 for example, the image in the Viewer immediately reacts
to the change and displays a clip that matches the gamma standards of HD television. You
can also change the ISO, exposure, color temperature and many other settings. At any point you
can revert to the original camera settings or neutral values using this pop up.
Keep in mind that this window is a much smaller subset of the controls you will find in
REDCINE-X software, but most of the core grading controls you would need access to are found
right here. To apply the setting, click the Apply button.
Once you’re satisfied with your image changes, you can then transcode your files to optimized
or proxy media to bake the changes into the media. In the Inspector, click the Generate
Proxy button to create ProRes proxy media. Another option is to select the clip and choose
> Transcode Media from the File menu, where you have the option to create both optimized
and proxy media. I’m going to select Create proxy media and click OK. The background task
window will show you the transcode in progress.
Once the optimized or proxy file has been generated, you wont be able to use the Modify
settings window and you’ll be flagged about this with a dialog. In order to access the
RED RAW settings again and make changes to the metadata, you’ll need to remove the
optimized and/or proxy media by clicking the Continue button. Of course you’ll need to
optimize or create proxy media again with the new settings in order to bake your changes
into the file.
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