Long (spanned) R3D files, frame not found errors

Conforming a timeline from Premiere that is all RED .r3d files. Comes into Flame just fine. Setup debayer and apply FX the way I want. Good. Now to start exporting clips…

Some clips export fine. No errors. Other clips throw up an error right away with a message about not being able to access frame xxxxx and then a path to the .r3d file. The drive hasn’t been unplugged, nothing changed. Now I start seeing the checkerboard pattern on the clip with an export error. Same thing happens if I try to cache the clip or render any timeline FX.

After some digging, it looks to me like Flame is unhappy dealing with RED material that spans multiple .r3d files. So, if a long RED clip is made up of several .r3d files on disk (camera automatically segments at 4 GB files), Flame wants to puke when processing those.

These same files export fine out of Premiere and the disk is healthy, etc. Prior to trying to export the clip, Flame sees the frames fine in the viewer. But after an export fails, it takes a relaunch of Flame to see the clip again, then the export fails again, blah blah blah.

I’ve tried importing one of the spanned RED clips directly into Flame (not conforming) and it shows up fine. I then cut this in to replace the problematic clip and export again. Same thing. So I don’t think it is an issue with the conform. Flame is seeing the correct length of the spanned clip in media hub, too.

My workaround for now is to use REDCINE to export R3D Trims of each clip that is a problem. This consolidates it into a single .r3d file, generating new media. Then I can relink the clip in Flame against that and the export works. This, of course, is quite time consuming when I have a couple hundred clips to do. I’m hoping there is some little box I need to tick to make this work like it should.

Thanks for any ideas,
Matt

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Hmm I have lots of RED in multiple segments (as many as 27 for one clip, at a quick glance) and it’s not been an issue.

Are your R3D files for a given clip in a corresponding .RDC folder? I seem to recall having an issue with that a long time ago; I have my own consolidation scripts that copies all used media files referenced in an AAF to a single directory, and I vaguely remember at some point having to tweak it to keep the .RDC folder structure to keep Flame happy.

I could be reading this wrong, but this seems to me that it IS an issue with the conform timeline if recutting in the good clip still has issues.

Any chance the clips were dragged and dropped into the premiere project? I’ve experienced plenty of spanned r3d wackiness from clips that weren’t imported thru premieres media tab.