Should I have converted to exr before offline?

[ganzou]

Hey guys, so I shot all the footage for my thesis this last weekend using a RED. It is going to be a spec commercial and some shots have vfx and some don't. I transcoded all the .r3d's to MXF's to work in avid for offline. I'm still sorting through shots and creating my subclips...still not near radio edit.

Final delivery will be rec 709, not planning on doing film out.

Question is: before transcoding all .r3d's into mxf's for offline...should I have exported the vfx shots into half float linear exr's for use in vfx and transcode those exr's into mxf's for offline? Or is it ok I'f I just stick to the way I'm working and switch the .r3d for whatever image sequence I export from nuke as long as it has the same name as the original .r3d?

The EDL will still work since it just looks at the name of the file and timecode data. (exr's can store timecode data right?)

[crashd]

Personally I would have identified the plates necessary for VFX and do pretty much what you describe, break the link between the shot and the media by creating a new EXR file which is your "backplate" for the shot, or if there's multiple elements just incorporate it into your naming convention.

The VFX are more than likely going to have to be cut in seperately anyway so when you are cutting your offline just have a seperate timeline/s layer/s for VFX. Pretty much the way it's done in features.

D

[ganzou]

Thanks for the reply crashd,
The reason I was cutting in the vfx plates with the rest of the footage in the rough cut was so I could get an approximate of the frames I would be working with. Then send this rough EDL to scratch and export exr's from the .r3d's that will have effects applied. And switch the resulting final vfx renders for the .r3d for the final cut of the piece. Didn't want to end up rendering frames that would not show up in the final cut of the piece.

But my main concern was if it was possible to begin my rough offline with all plates including vfx ...and just switch the corresponding fx plates with the final rendered sequence for those given shots. So I guess I do have a good workflow....just wanted to make sure before I continued tweaking things. Thanks! Sucks when you screw up and have to go back to square 1.