3D Mux with RedcineX Cineform and ProRes

Hello,

developing a 3D pipeline for features shot with Epic R3D. Working with Cineform Codec which is great when using the utility FirstLight that comes in the Cineform package. All works great with FCP.

However, I'm trying to make 3D muxed dailies from R3D with RedcineX. The 3D clip in Redcine looks great in the Redcine clip player, seeing both the L & R clips.
When exported using Cineform, I get two LEFT clips muxed together, not LEFT and RIGHT.
RED is asking me to do some tests with ProRes Codec as well.
So far, I seem to only get a SINGLE stream of the LEFT clip in the ProRes export.

So my QUESTION:

Has anybody figured out a way to make a 3D muxed clip from RedcineX using either Cineform or ProRes?
And if ProRes, how to view the 2 clips in the muxed file?

I know I can make my own custom side by side 3840x1920 QT ProRes and view with Kona 3G Dual Stream HDSDI on a real 3D monitor,
and make Cineform muxed with Cineform's FirstLight,
but ultimately hoping to use RedcineX 3D Clip option with Cineform codec for FCP offline cutting.

Paul Buhl
Feature Film Editor
774-521-9000
www.paulbuhl.com
Staff Editorial
www.hydraulx.com

I'm not 100% clear on what you're asking. It sounds like you're trying to keep your footage in two different codecs simultaneously (R3D and Cineform). My suggestion would be to do your 1st light color correction in RedcineX and then export the clips as Cineform, assuming you are planning to use Firstlight and Neo3D.

Once you have your clips in the Cineform codec, you need to bring those into FirstLight and do the Muxing there. It's more than one step. You have to put your separate Left and Right into Cineform (many different ways to create this export from various programs), then sync and Mux the eyes in FirstLight.

I'm not using your workflow, so correct me if there's something I'm not understanding.

Also, what about bypassing RedcineX altogether and going straight to Cineform via ReMaster? Then syncing and Muxing in Firstlight, where you could do your color correction.

Jake,

thanks for the reply.
The pipeline here is pretty large, and for VFX heavy 3D features. We'll be making an insane amount of dailies from R3Ds with multiple stereo camera set ups.
So although I love the Cinefrom codec to edit with, we have to figure out a mass production approach to making the dailies for editing.
RedcineX has a "make 3D clip" option, so you just import the left and right R3Ds, make into stereo pairs with the simple command, then export with Cineform Codec. This way you don't have to first make single left and right Cineform files, then pair them together and make a separate muxed file from there. you can make the muxed file in one shot.
The problem is the mux ends up with 2 lefts, instead of a left and right combo.

RED is doing some tests for us as well. There would be no point to having the "make 3D clip command" if it didn't work!
We want to use RedcineX because we can run it command line style on a linux system for max power.
May be possible to run FirstLight that way as well, not sure, but then we have to make the single Cineform lefts and rights first, adding that step, and a lot more storage needs because we are now making three clips (single left, single right, muxed left-right). We can trash the singles once we are muxed, but all of that adds a huge amount of work on a large feature project.

We are also syncing a muti-track second source audio wave file to the dailies in RedcineX upon export so the editing dailies have the real field audio embedded.
So a pain to have to go with FirstLight on this type of workflow.

Hope that makes more sense!

Paul Buhl
Feature Film Editor
774-521-9000
www.paulbuhl.com
Staff Editorial
www.hydraulx.com

JAMES (not Jake...sorry!!)

Paul Buhl
Feature Film Editor
774-521-9000
www.paulbuhl.com
Staff Editorial
www.hydraulx.com

I understand a little better now.

It sounds like you have things sorted, other than a bug in the RedcineX program. The one question I would pose is whether or not you need to take all of the footage through RedcineX before doing an offline to pare down your dailies? I believe there's a workflow on Cineform's site for matching back the raw RED. I'm not sure if that saves you anything in terms of time or storage though.

I remember back when people used to capture on film, the workflow took much longer: process negative, print dailies, telecine, log and capture, select sections for scanning, line-up negative, scan negative, composite fx, produce new negative, process new negative, print daily of new negative, telecine new negative, log and capture vfx, etc...