This shell extension allows you to better handle Redcode RAW files
(that is: footage shot with a RED ONE™ Camera) in Windows Explorer. It adds the following
features:
This shell extension allows you to better handle Redcode RAW files
(that is: footage shot with a RED ONE™ Camera) in Windows Explorer. It adds the following
features:
The features of the extension can be used in every application that calls Windows Explorer functions, such as "Open File" dialogs and some third party file managers too.
For an online discussion of this project, see the official RED User forum.
By downloading and using the R3D shell extension you agree to the terms and conditions set forth in this End User License Agreement ("EULA").
The R3D shell extension ("Software") is freeware. You may use it without time or legal restrictions for either commercial or non-commercial purpose.
The Software was developed and tested by Gábor Kertai ("Author") to his best knowledge, however Author takes absolutely no responsibility that the Software works as expected.
You can use the Software at your own risk. This Software is provided to you "as is", and Author expressly disclaims all warranties of any kind, either implied or express, including but not limited to warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. Author makes no warranty, either implied or express, that any part of the Software will be error-free, virus-free, secure, accurate, reliable, or of any quality.
In no event will Author be liable to you for any damages, claims or costs whatsoever arising from this EULA and/or your use of the Software of any component thereof.
The Software uses technology licensed from RED Digital Cinema Camera Company ("RED") in the form of the R3D SDK, however it has NOT been approved, tested or certified by RED. RED makes no warranties regarding the stability, accurateness and performance of their technology. As per licensing instructions of the R3D SDK, the Software is only made available to you in binary format.
You must not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise try to discover the source code of the Software and/or the file formats related to RED poducts, especially the Redcode™ RAW (R3D) file format.
The Software and any authorized copies that you make are intellectual property of Author and also contain copyrighted material from RED. You agree that all copies of the Software reproduced for any reason by you will contain the same copyright and trademark notices as this EULA.
The Software may not be redistributed, sold or otherwise made available through any channel other than a download from this website.
RED Digital Cinema, RED ONE, and REDCODE are trademarks of the RED Digital Cinema Camera Company.
Below is a brief summary of features and how to use them. For an online discussion see the related thread on the Official Red User Forums.
RedShellExt.inf file and choose "Install" from the pop-up context menu.Once installed, you can delete the original ZIP file and the unzipped DLL, INF and TXT files. Copies of these files remain in your Windows system directory.
Open any folder with R3D files and switch Windows Explorer to "Thumbnails" view to see
thumbnails of the Redcode RAW files. The very first frame is displayed for every clip,
even for files that are second, third, ..., Nth segments of the same clip. This
may cause duplicate thumbnails to appear in a folder with multi-segment R3D files.
This is not a bug, rather a limitation in the current version of the R3D SDK.
Since R3D files come off the camera neatly arranged in a separate .RDC folder for each clip, a sensible workflow is to run a Windows Explorer search for *.R3D, then switch the results folder to "Thumbnails" view. This lets you quickly find the clip you're looking for, even if you have thousands of clips in the folder.
Click the image on the right for a larger screenshot.
Hover your mouse over any R3D file for a quick tooltip with important clip
properties and metadata. The information includes:
The screenshot on the right should give you a fairly good idea of what it looks like in action. Click for a larger version.
This information is also displayed in the Windows Explorer status bar when an R3D file is selected. However it is most likely that only part of the information would fit in there.
Right click any R3D file and choose "Properties" from the context menu. The
standard Windows file properties dialog pops up, with a special page dedicated to
R3D video preview and metadata. Clicking the image on the right will bring you
a nice screenshot.
The top of the page has the basics, such as frame size, shooting format, frame rate and audio settings. In the middle there's a list box with all the metadata the R3D tells of itself. This includes exposure and video settings on the camera at the time of shooting, timecodes and miscellaneous tidbits.
The bottom of the page is occupied by a video preview of the clip's very first frame. You can use the slider above the picture to choose any other frame, and it's immediately decoded. A great way to quickly tell what the clip is without having to open a specialized application. Clicking the frame number button on the left of the slider allows you to choose between frame number, timecode, edgecode and percentage displays.
The property sheet handler can deal with only one file at a time. If you select multiple R3D files and choose "Properties", then the "Redcode RAW" tab will not appear.
The shell extension also provides column data and special Redcode column headers for Windows Explorer. Switch the folder to "Details" view, right click the column headers and choose "More..." from the bottom. Here's a myriad of columns you can choose from:
| Video related | Audio related | Image related | RED specific |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
You can use these columns to quickly sort and compare lots of R3D files to find what you are looking for.
The thumbnails are not rendered at their exact size, because the R3D SDK does not allow any rendering size. Instead the next possible, larger-than-requested size is used for rendering, from where a very basic resizer does the rest. By very basic I mean that unnecessary pixels are discarded without being subsampled, which may result in the thumbnail image looking a bit jerky. The aliasing is usually more apparent in the property sheet video preview.
This is not a practical limitation, I'm just mentioning it, in case you noticed. It was a design choice I made in favor of rendering speed over quality.
Thumbnails and previews are always rendered with clip default exposure and color settings, using gamma curves and color spaces configured on camera when the recording was made. This should be OK most of the time.
If this is an issue for many users, I'll think about ways of making it configurable in a not too cumbersome way. Let me know if you'd like to see something like this in a future version.
Already mentioned this at the thumbnails documentation above, but it affects every other feature too: There is currently no way to differentiate between files of a segmented clip (*_001.R3D, *_002.R3D and so on). Whichever segment you work with, you always get the same data. This has the following side effects:
There's also no way to tell in the current version of the SDK how many segments a clip has or should have, that's why you don't see this information displayed anywhere.
The frame guide settings configured on the camera are currently ignored. The thumbnails are created using the entire sensor area with either 2:1 or 16:9 aspect. This will be changed in a next release.
These should theoretically work, but I haven't tested any. I'll put my hands on some samples and test them for the next release.
The code was extensively tested on Windows XP (32-bit, Home Edition), and somewhat on Windows 2003 Server. It should also work on Vista and Windows 2000 machines, but I can't say for sure. I'd like to hear about your experiences.
Update: One user reports that it works fine with Windows Vista 32-bit edition, while someone else says that it fails on 64-bit Vista. I'm looking into the latter.
Latest version: RedShellExt_V0.8.zip (347.5 kilobytes)
This is beta software, meaning that it's still in its early stages of development and probably contains bugs. Since a shell extension becomes an integral part of Windows Explorer, it may occasionally make Explorer crash or it may degrade your computer's performance. If you suspect that random crashes or misbehavior of Windows Explorer can be attributed to this shell extension, try uninstalling it to see if the problem persists. Do please send bug reports if you can.
If you need something to experiment with, but don't have any recordings of your own, you can grab sample R3D files from RedRelay.net or possibly from the Official Red User Forums.
Here are some things you can expect in future builds. I've already written code for many of these, but they have not yet made it to a point to be included in a public release.
If you find this shell extension useful, you might also be interested in my R3D input plugin for VirtualDub.
Should you have any useful feedback, bug report, comment or idea for improvement,
you can reach me at 
.
I reserve the right to ignore any emails with a bad attitude or lack of respect.