As Red Digital Cinema dramatically expands the scope of its future camera offerings (see the recent story in our sister publication HD Studio for more details), all indications are that it’s going to become easier to post footage recorded using the company’s compressed Redcode file format. In cooperation with Adobe, Red just enabled a CS4 workflow – probably including import/export compatibility with Final Cut Pro. [As F&V went to press, new Red-enabled versions of Premiere Pro and After Effects CS4 were available for download.] And at the end of September, Avid executives announced “a more formal relationship with Red,” signing a license agreement for the Red SDK that should lead to native .R3D support somewhere down the line.

In the minds of many, Red is still associated with Final Cut Pro workflows. But it is possible to work with .R3D files even without formal support in your editorial tools. A recent example is the music video for “Fayah” by Kevin Lyttle, shot with the Red One and then offlined and onlined by Fortitude Editorial in Hollywood, CA, using an Avid Adrenaline and an Avid DS. Owner Rick Souza acknowledges that the tricky part is getting DPX files out of RedCine. “There are a lot of ‘theory’ workflows on the Web, so we had our share of trial and error,” he says. “However, now that Avid is going to be able to read .R3D files, we expect the process to be a lot smoother”

“Fayah” was offlined and finished using Avid’s 10-bit DNxHD 220x codec, maintaining quality throughout the project. “The conform was seamless – we were on an Avid Unity shared storage network, so the media was easily available on the DS in HD,” Souza says. Take a look at the video, presented here with a before-and-after wipe, to see the kind of latitude Fortitude’s colorist had to tweak the look of the final project.