REDCINE-X Pro Audio Bug

I'm currently doing a bunch of on-set transcodes (literally, RIGHT NOW!), and although the RED EPIC has a small external mic connected for a scratch track, and I could hear it on the raw footage in REDCINE-X Pro, it was non-existent on the Apple ProRes 422 transcodes.

After repeatedly messing with the export audio channel check boxes, doing a bunch of transcode test, opening them in Quicktime, VLC, and FCP, I honestly could not figure out where my audio was going, even after consulting a friend who I equate to being my Jedi Master of DITing.  So I went to the Jedi Council, REDUSER.

Luckily someone on REDUSER was able to understand my confused jibberish and point me in the direction of this setting box.  (Edit Preset > Setup... > Audio)

The way they explained it to me is that there is a bug for pre-existing presets when you update REDCINE-X Pro (which I had just updated to 15) and unless you assign a value to the Render Setting (apparently Normal is like zero), you will not have audio because it will not know to look for anything.

So I changed Normal to Best and all was well.  The end.

Transcoding Canon C300 with Telestream Episode Pro 6: Glitch

Canon C300 footage transcoded with Telestream's Episode Pro 6 causes a 3 frame drop at the end of each clip.

Eventually I will post on this entire process, but for now, this entry will focus on a glitch I seem to have discovered when transcoding Canon C300 MXF files to XDCAM MXF files so than can be transported to post via XDCAM Disk.

The C300 splits the clips into 2.05GB segments, or 5:16 long.  Rather than stitching them back together for or during transcoding, post is having me transcode them all as if there are individual clips, and they stitch them in AVID.  In Episode Pro, I'm using the "XDCAM HD422 MXF 1080p25 50Mbit" encoder, found under "Editing Avid (MXF) XDCAM HD" section of the encoders menu.  Our only goal is to take the Canon wrapper off, and re-wrap it in XDCAM, so I modify it by unchecking anything else it could possibly change besides the wrapper: "Frame Rate", "Deinterlace", "Resize", and "Sample Rate."

This is a show with a high volume of footage, so I don't have time to manually check every clip before sending it to post.  Post eventually reported back to me that all of my transcodes were missing three frames at the end of each clip.  This is a decently big problem when it comes to shots longer than 5:16.  My biggest complaint about this job was the lack of a prep week.  There was actually a lack of any sort of prep, and I feel this is something I would have discovered had I had prep time.

As much as I hate to admit it, my first thought was "Oh god I did something wrong and have probably been ruining most of this footage!!!"  So I frantically checked all of my setting and work and couldn't find anything, and contacted Telestream.  I have to say, Telestream has pretty great customer support!  Unfortunately it was a weekend when this came up and no one was able to respond, but come Monday, I got an email with FTP server information asking me to send in a sample along with all of my settings.  I've also spoken with them over the phone and have to give mad props to Todd, I've pretty much only been working with him and he is awesome, patient, and will answer any stupid or not stupid question I have for him, as well as join in with me on aggravation with computers, bosses, and tricky workflows.  And he used to work for Apple!  BONUS!  Anyway, Telestream was able to replicate the problem (THANK GOD I WASN'T CRAZY) and has sent it to the engineers.

Currently their guess is it has something to do with the C300s metadata since the camera is still fairly new and Episode Pro does not exhibit this problem with any other MXF workflows.  Hooray for discovering new problems!  But double hooray for companies so willing to jump on it and fix it!  A massive breath of fresh air compared to the 3D AVID debacle.

RED Undead VS R3D File Recovery

I've been told of the process of recovering R3D files from an accidentally formatted card but hadn't actually had to do it myself until recently. Having the format and eject buttons right by each other on a touch screen is a terrible idea. My suggestions to RED would be to could keep them away from each other or have it not format or eject unless you hold it down for three seconds. It was a terrible moment when the 1st AC and I both realized which button had accidentally been hit. I think both of our initial instincts were to yank the card, but using our brains for a split second longer made us realize that would probably corrupt the whole thing.

1st lesson learned: Assign eject to a hot key very far from any format buttons, and don't drink too much coffee before using a tiny touch screen.

First I tried the "R3D File Recovery" feature in R3D Data Manager. It only recovered a couple clips out of the eight that were on the card. It kept telling me I needed REDline, even though I re-downloaded and installed it a few times. Probably a human error that I will investigate later.

I didn't really have time to mess with the REDline issue, so I moved onto RED Undead (which can be found in the beta tab on RED support). The user guide is very helpful, but I will summarize and modify it a bit.

1. Open Terminal. You can type "redundead" (doesn't matter if caps is used or not) and it'll show you it is indeed installed. The "Incorrect number of arguments." line looks like it might mean something isn't right, but it is.

2. Enter " diskutil list" and it'll give you a list of disks your computer is using so you can use the name it gave it, like "disk2". For this example we'll pretend it's called disk2. Mentally add an r on the front, "rdisk2"

3. Create a folder where you want the recovered files to go. For simplicity's sake, I put a folder on my desktop called "REDUndead". Make sure you know the path to this folder (ctrl click, "Get Info"). My computer and user is named Data Pengu, so my path looked like "/Users/Data_Pengu/Desktop"

4. Type "redundead" SPACE "dev/rdisk2" SPACE "/Users/Data_Pengu/Desktop/REDUndead"
(the spaces are super important and don't forget to add an r in front of your disk#)

5. Hit enter!

Now is the part where I nervously waited and felt helpless without the visual of a progress bar. It'll go along and do its thing until it triumphantly says "Done!" In my case it recovered everything but the first clip, which I've heard from others that also got everything but the first clip. Actually, not only will it recover everything but the first clip, but also go on to retrieve anything else on the card not already written over. You can stop it from doing this by hitting ctrl + z. Watch the roll # to make sure it's still on the roll you needed to recover.

And voila! You have your zombie clips and can move them where they were suppose to be! I went through all of my recovered clips and found no errors.

This also taught me the importance of using Disk Utility and the end of each job to get everything on the card back to a true 0 since even when formatted, anyone can still pull your footage off cards before shooting on them.