Lower res than Prores for offline?

Hi there. I'm editing a project:

Shot with RED... Using latest FCP and a MacBook Pro (2.5 GHz, 4 g of ram), 1 TB
G Raid drive. So...


The project (music video) involves a lot of compositing, as it was all shot green screen. I'm cutting using the Prores HQ codec. I have noticed that as I have several tracks of video over top of one another ( between 8-15), my computer is lagging, and my render times are massive.
The only effects are: Chroma key and re-sizing/positioning images.

Question is: Is there a way I can be OFFLINE editing in a lowres codec (lower than prores) so that I can cut quicker/render quicker and then conform back to Prores (or the Raw Red files) for the online later?

Thanks!

Luna

Yick. That's a very difficult question. The simple answer is sure, you can offline all you want, ProRes 422 files at half-K resolution generated out of Red Rushes for instance. But it sounds like what you're doing is mixing the editing, which can easily be done offline for conforming later, with the compositing, which cannot be done offline at all.

Without knowing a lot more detail ? like, being-in-the-room-with-you kind of detail ? it's hard to make a concrete recommendation. My instinct is to say don't composite in Final Cut; as you've seen, the tools aren't very good and rendering takes forever. You're better off doing the compositing in a tool like After Effects, Shake or Nuke. After Effects is more widespread, Shake is the cheapest of the three, and Nuke is by far the best commercially available compositor out there right now. Of the three, After Effects is probably your best choice because it has native R3D support.

But that still doesn't solve the problem of how to do your offline. I think ? and again, this is a recommendation in which I have like zero confidence, because I know so little about what you're doing ? that I'd offline at low resolution, just cutting very simple mattes instead of actually pulling keys. That'll be sufficient to let you stack up all your layers and see how they work together. Then I'd buy Automatic Duck's Pro Import AE, which will let you take your whole Final Cut timeline into After Effects through an XML export-import process. Once you've got the timeline in After Effects, you can replace your low-res proxies with the native R3D files, pull your keys and do your actual compositing work.

Did I mention that that's just an off-the-top-of-my-head suggestion, based on absolutely no knowledge other than what you posted? Take it with a five-pound sack of salt.

as Jef says, YES you can offline at any quality you like.
options for you to consider:

Prores (not HQ)
DVCProHD

you don't give many details about your clip settings.
i'll assume you have converted to an HD format,
so i'll now suggest you offline in Standard Def.

options here are:
ProRes (don't bother with HQ)
DV

i dont see the project as the probelm Jef does.
green-screen projects are off-lined all the time.
as long as you understand that the work you do now is guide only and will be re-created later,
and plan for that,
all will be fine.


nick

Thanks guys...
Well...what I have done, after a day of testing...

Is to use MEDIA MANAGER to convert to whole 'Prores HQ' project to OFFLINE_RT HD . Yes, the files are horribly small (384x216) !! But, I can have 15 clips stacked onto each other with the keys pulled and clips resized, without having to render. Not bad, I guess, I'll just have to get used to the %#$$#% quality of the Offline RT. The Online will look that much more impressive (to me anyways).

Then... After (I'm planning, but open to suggestions) the offline, I'll relink the final cut to the Prores HQ files and take those into After Effects to do all the final work/compositing. Sound legit?

Thanks again!!
Luna