Till now, Red One camera users have had a somewhat limited workflow with Final Cut Pro. Yes, FCP was the first to support editing the Quicktime Proxies of the RAW .r3d footage. It’s a workflow, but a cludgy one. Since then, Apple has been notably silent on the Red front, even as Adobe added native 4k R3D support in Premiere Pro. Well, the wait is over it seems. Red has announced that there is now a Redcode Plugin for Final Cut Studio 2, that enables the use of Log and Transfer to import .r3d’s natively into FCP (and Color). This is brilliant news! Now instead of rendering out one-light grades as ProRes, users can operate on the original RAW data. For grading in Color, this means you’ve got access to all the data. For instance, a grade that clips highlights can be helped along by backing off on the exposure. This really brings out the benefits of shooting in a Raw format like Redcode.

There are some limitations and issues to be aware of, as expected. For starters, as with Red Alert and RedCine, the plugin is only compatible with Intel Mac users. I’d say this confirms that Red has no intention to expand support to PPC users. You’ll also need to grab the latest Pro Applications Update via Software Update, bringing FCP up to version 6.05. Secondly, the plugin requires roughly twice the disk space as the original raw footage to re-wrap in a Quicktime format for FCP. Thirdly, the rewrap takes time. Anecdotally, this has been noted as about the same amount of time to rewrap DVCPROHD footage. Finally, some users are reporting a gamma shift when using with Color. This may or may not be related to the plugin, as Color and Quicktime gamma has been an ongoing moving target (and Color got an update in the latest Pro Apps version). However, it’s worth noting.

The plugin is available at www.red.com/support

Thanks to Chris at Lakeview Productions for the heads up. If you are looking for a good Red rental source in the Chicago area, Chris really knows his stuff and has excellent kit. He’s also a kickass gaffer.