The combo of RED and Apple recently introduced tools to allow us to work with native RED footage in Final Cut Pro and Color. This is awesome, and it’s got tremendous potential. But it’s not perfect.

First of all, the log and transfer process with this new plugin from RED and the latest FCP updates works really well, looks great, and is easy to use. 

You have two choices when transferring: Native or ProRes HQ. You choose these from the little gear dropdown menu in the Log and Transfer window.

Advantage to Native:
When you transfer your footage over in Native, you get to use a new tab in Color’s primary room that lets you alter the ISO and other fun things ala a mini Red Alert application. This is HUGE, because it means you can change exposure and make other RAW adjustments in Color.

Disadvantage to Native:
It may not play back on your Mac (and you have to enable Unlimited RT in your timeline to get it to work at all). For us, on a quad-core Mac Pro with 8 GB of RAM and our footage on a SATA array we were unable to get smooth playback consistently.

Advantage to ProRes HQ:
It looks great and it plays back smoothly.

Disadvantage to ProResHQ:
No RED tab in Color. It’s grayed out. Damn.

 So, for now we’re sticking with ProRes HQ as our option. I know this is version 1.0 of the software, so I’m hopeful that the playback issues will be solved eventually. The RED One gives us footage that’s utterly amazing, and our clients love it. Having mature versions of these essential tools from Apple and RED will let us take things to a whole new level with the kind of ease of use one would expect from technology leaders.