I recently posted info about a quick test I did with the newly released RED Log and Transfer plug-in for Final Cut Pro that enabled one to use that tool to directly import RED footage into the ProRes codec without ever (thankfully) touching RedCine. All seemed well (except for the fact the footage was brought in at half the resolution at which it was shot) but today I noticed something that may be a bit more troubling.
When shooting RED footage it records two different timecode tracks; what they call Start run record / edge timecode and Start time of day/ext. timecode. You can see this in the image from RedCine below:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
I would say that this is a good thing since more info is better than less … but it has to be used properly. When you open a Quicktime reference clip created by the camera in Quicktime player you see the edge code:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
This seems perfectly normal as that is the timecode you see when you drop the QT reference file into Compressor as if you were using it to transcode to stand-alone ProRes files (all these images were grabbed from the same QT reference generated by the RED camera from the same .R3D file):
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
But I got the time-of-day code when bringing the clip into the Log and Transfer tool:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Okay, not good. I wouldn’t want one timecode displayed via one method and a different timecode displayed by another. At least I can’t think of why I would want that. I can transcode the clip via Log and Transfer and then import the QT reference file from the camera and I see different timecodes:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
This is not a good sceneraio. I can’t find any kind of setting in the Log and Transfer tool to look at the other timecode that has been recorded either. I’m not sure if a Scratch system can conform to the time-of-day code or not. Nor do I know if you could use this type of timecode in Crimson. I posed this question on reduser.net but haven’t seen a response at the time of writing this. It’s true that this L&T plug-in is in beta at version 0.0.1 (!) so maybe this will be addressed as it isn’t mentioned in the release notes. In the meantime, I think it’s important information to note. If anyone has any wisdom as to why this is or if I just have done something totally off the track, please post below. This L&T plug-in is very handy so I think we all want it to work right. After all they say RED is a work-in-progress … right?
