ProVideo Coalition.com: Camera Log by Adam Wilt | Founder | Pro Cameras, HDV Camera, HD Camera, Sony, Panasonic, JVC, RED, Video Camera Reviews

For my unfair comparison of three cameras, I had to process RED clips to a greater degree than I had previously, including dealing with odd overexposure artifacts. I relate my experience, both to describe the steps I took to decide on the processing parameters I did, and to show what I ran into when learning to use RED’s tools.

To begin with, the RED shoots R3D files: wavelet-compressed raw data with no in-camera processing applied. The R3D files store metadata—effective ISO rating, white balance (blue/orange balance, as in any video camera) and tint (green/magenta balance, roughly orthogonal to blue/orange balance, so you can really fine-tune white point)—along with the raw image data, so that you have a starting point for grading / color-correction. RED also writes a set of QuickTime reference files (MOVs) alongside the R3Ds, which utilize the R3D codec to extract “proxy-quality” images for quick verification of the shot or direct editing.

RED file structure: each shot has its own directory. The R3D file is the REDCODE raw file; the MOVs are QuickTime proxies at 4k, 2k, 1k, and .5k resolutions. The TXT files were created by R3D Data Manager when copying the CF card to hard disk.

However, the proxy QuickTimes are “one-light” decodes of the R3D data (you can’t tweak the raw data to correct exposure or color); they’re slow to play on the FCP timeline; and their fixed sizes may not match the scale you need. If you’re serious about image quality or editing speed, or you want an output format other than QuickTime, you’ll want to use one of the “digital darkrooms” that RED provides to pull clips out of R3D files, grade and resize them as needed, and write them to another format, whether it’s a QuickTime movie or a sequence of DPX or TIFF frames (of course, you can use the R3D files directly in a finishing program like Scratch, in which case you can skip this article!).

[Edited 2008-03-22 22:30 PDT: I originally said the QT proxies were only 8-bit, and of lower than full quality, based on what I’d gleaned from reduser.net. Graeme Nattress wrote me and said that saying these were 8-bit was “not strictly correct.” So I tweaked it to say “8 bit (in FCP)”, which prompted Graeme to enlighten me further, saying, “in FCP it will decode them as 32bit float YCbCr if you have 10bit or high precision rendering enabled in the timeline”, which is pretty impressive IMHO. I verified that this is the case, and I stand corrected. Thanks, Graeme!]

I started off by downloading the latest versions of tools from RED’s support page: RED ALERT!, REDCINE, and (if you’re a Mac user and you want to play the proxy files) the Final Cut Studio 2 REDCODE plugin.

Observe that the support page sections for both RED ALERT! and REDCINE have the following cautionary warning:

The first part states just what RED has been saying all along, and translates to, “use at your own risk.” The latter part effectively means, “no written documentation to speak of; no help files; support has been crowdsourced—again, use at your own risk!”

RED ALERT! is a clip-at-a-time processor. You can pick one of several gammas, tweak de-Bayering parameters. change ISO, white point, and color matrix, and fine tune both the tonal scale and color. RED ALERT! offers both a three-color histogram and superimposed zebras to help you judge your grade. You can save your settings for use on another clip, or transfer them to REDLine, the bundled command-line utility for batch-processing use. You can export 2k or 4k DPXs or TIFFs, DPX or TIFF image sequences, or QuickTime reference movies.

RED ALERT! version 1.5.6 with histogram and zebras shown.

REDCINE does much the same thing, only with the ability to load multiple shots into a timeline; make multiple versions of shots; transcode to any QuickTime codec you have; and zoom, reposition, and crop your clips to any desired output size.

REDCINE build 90, color tab shown, with superimposed histogram.

One initially puzzling thing about REDCINE and RED ALERT! is that they use different language for similar controls. It turns out that RED ALERT! started life as a diagnostic tool written by RED’s image-processing supremo, Graeme Nattress, and was pressed into service when REDCINE—written by the folks behind Assimilate’s Scratch—was delayed. Different tools written by different people, hence the different terminology. They also have different strengths, and some folks find that one works on their system a lot better than the other, so it’s worth downloading both.

These are excellent as far as they go, but they are only introductions, and they do leave out a critical bit of information… but between the tutorials and just playing around with the controls, it’s possible to figure out most of what’s needed to get generally-acceptible images out of either program.