RED Dailies in Avid with MetaFuze

This video tutorial explains the process of preparing RED camera material for offline editing in Avid Media Composer. The tutorial is available in English and Spanish.

English tutorial

Tutorial en Español

This process uses the recently released Avid MetaFuze 1.3 or higher to transcode RED RAW files into MXF files encoded with DNxHD 36. RED clips are immediately available in Media Composer as soon as the transcoding is finished.

MetaFuze 1.3 is available to Avid customers eligible for Avid DS 10.1.2 upgrade. Legacy versions of MetaFuze are available at avid.com/metafuze free of charge.

The basic steps in MetaFuze are:

  1. Press CTRL+F, locate the root of your RED files and add to “Selected Paths.”
  2. Under “options” make sure that “Include Subfolders” is checked and that R3D is the only file enabled under “File Types.”
  3. Press CTRL+A in the “Group” view and select your HD format and debayering options in the “Detail” view.
  4. Click on “New Transcode” button.
  5. Press SHIFT+CTRL+A to select all transcodes.
  6. Select the desired path for MXF files in the “Detail” view. If you intend to edit the transcoded files on the same computer you’re using for transcoding you may want to place the files in Avid MediaFilesMXF media storage.
  7. Click on “Export ALE” and save an ALE file.
  8. Click on “Transcode” button. This will start the process.

In Media Composer:

  1. Create a project with the same settings as your transcoded RED footage, i.e. 1080 23.976p.
  2. Right click on a bin and select “Import” to import the ALE file created in MetaFuze.
  3. Select all master clips in the bin, right click and select “Relink.” Disable the checkbox that limits relinking to the current project only. The clips will immediately relink to the media.