Best workflow for VFX work ? (RED -> DV -> VFX -> DV)

Hi All,

We've been handed a project of a green screen shoot with Pro-Res Offlines and a drive full of the 8K RED source.

I need to get this content to another post house to work on tracking and other VFX work for which they'll be using a combination of tools outside of DV.

I want to give them the ability to work with the cleanest source and be able to grade the log footage, but not have to share all the RED material to save them the headache. Since we're delivering at 1080P I was thinking to re-link the RED source on a 4/6K timeline and output that as picture sequence for them to work on.

Would that be the best way and if so which flavour would retain the log info? I'd then need to take their content back to Resolve to drop in the edit and final tweaks.

Have been looking around on youtube, but wondered if anyone here has a tried and battle tested workflow?

Thx!

gold standard is to work in ACES, send the VFX crew EXR/16float/ 2065, and get the same back
very simple and dead reliable if you are already working in ACES,
a bit of a learning curve if it's entirely new
you did say "best" not "easiest"

Ask the vfx house what kind of format and colorspace they prefer and find a middle ground with what you prefer. As Dermot wrote, depends on your working color management too. Then do a test round trip with your own exported plates to see if you can get them imported again without problems. Do a test round trip. Did I already say do a test round trip? Can’t stress this enough, do a test round trip.

Intermediate delivery format does not have to have log data in it for you to work in log. If you are doing any kind of color management you can just set your working space to some log flavor. If you do want (and vfx house agrees) to export log data I’d suggest prores4444 and some well defined colorspace. Personally I would prefer alexa wg + v3logC because it is well defined and supported everywhere. Could be redlogfilm or something too.

For linearized data do 16bit half-float exr-s with zip1 or zip16 compression. Exr-s are the only reasonable image format, forget dpx-s and the like, they just guzzle storage with zero benefits.

Make very clear notes of what the colorspace of data is and how you generated the plates. Communicate this to vfx side. I have seen too often how plates are exported in ”I just did something” way and stuff varies randomly between shots or even different plate versions of same shot (messed up first exports, let me try another random thing). Makes vfx side think you are dumb and creates headaches when you receive plates back. Vfx won’t fix your errors unless you can actually tell them what you did wrong. Then they can if they know what they are doing.

I want to give them the ability to work with the cleanest source and be able to grade the log footage, but not have to share all the RED material

Those two goals seem at odds with each other.

Which matters more? Best source (original clips) or smaller files?

an intermediate step (instead of ACES) is:

1) put in your timeline all the vf shots you need to work with
2) decide with the VFX facility if they want to work at 8k (most likely not), you might be just working at 4k
3) add some tails to the shots (usually 8)
4) debayer at max quality and collapse to teh resolution you agree on with redwidegamut/log3g10
5) save EXR PIZ compressed

when the material come back, it should be in the same color space (match) and same filetype.

this is an acceptable LOG workflow without the extra ACES complication, while with features we do use either linear light exr or ACES, for TV sometimes is an extra unnecessary complication.

I pretty much agree with what Walter is suggesting in his second post. I would keep the files in "camera native" gamut. However, I don't think it's a good idea to export log encoded data into EXRs. You should set the clips you're sending of to the facility to RedWideGamutRGB/Linear instead. If they rather work on log data directly, render DPX files instead to mentioned RedWideGamutRGB/Log3G10.

But as he said in his initial post. Communicate clearly what the roundtrip should exactly be and maybe even make a simple flowchart showing the entire flow so all people involved are aligned.