Thursday
May272010
Magic Bullet Grinder
Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 4:35PM 
OK, another blog post to pimp a Red Giant product. To those who wish for a little more balance between these kinds of posts and my more philosophical rants, I hear you. But Red Giant’s been busy, and I think a lot of you are going to like this.
Grinder is an easy to use batch processor for footage from your Canon DSLR. It can convert to ProRes, add timecode, and even create low-res with window burn proxies for offline editing. You can also use it to conform (not convert, i.e. no frame blending or motion interpolation) a bunch of clips to one frame rate, so your 30p and 60p shots can become slow-mo clips at 23.976fps.
Grinder 1.0 is US$49 and available now.
Reader Comments (70)
Thanks Stu. Will give it a closer look. What is the best process to follow re: using proxies?
Hi Stu,
I think this is a terrific idea for a product, and this represents a great start. However, I find the current release a bit rough around the edges and like other posters would be interested in when we can expect updates. If there was say, a major update planned before the end of 2010, I would be more inclined to purchase now, imperfections and all.
Some of the features I'd really like to see:
-Support for more camera types. As mentioned, GoPro mov files, AVCHD (this would be huge). A lot of shooters are using more than one camera, or need to work with incorporating footage from other sources into their project. If MBG could support more camera types, I think it would be a much easier sell. Right now, supporting only Canon, I really have to ask myself whether I need to buy this since I already have the EOS plugin for free. (As previously mentioned by another poster, it is totally usable even after the footage has been downloaded off the card).
-Reel number would be huge for FCP workflow
-ProRes LT is essential
-It would be great to have the ability to store hi-res and proxy footage in separate folders. Right now everything is dumped into the same folder which is really inconvenient. It would be nice, for example, to have the option of storing the Proxies on an internal laptop drive for editing, while storing the hi-res on external storage.
Again, great start. Would love to see this mature quickly. I think there is definitely a huge market for this once additional functionality has been added.One thing I love is using a digital asset management tool like Lightroom or Aperture to handle my downloads, and then just dragging and dropping onto MBG. Great workflow.
Great ideas Sterling, thanks for posting them!
Where's the rebel at!!!
We're needing mor faiah!!!!
BIg up to the big master
Thanks for sharing all that knowledge
Hey all, after giving all that a closer look I realized I was missing something.
COuld someone to the less experienced ussers the benefits of converting the canon cmaera to ProRes?
Is that done with the final files provided by the camera?
Is that done by pluggin the camera to somewhere and capturing it?
How is that done? I don't even Know how to record more than 30 minutes (that I was told) of video in the 5D II at a high quality.
So whatever the feedback I will be welcome by me and maybe by other users that could understand a bit more what we have here
Thanks in advance.
This seems like a great idea.
I'd love to see letterboxing as an additional option.
Transcoding to Apple Intermediate Codec would be great for those of us at the lower end using Final Cut Express. That would get a sale from me!
Plus an extra vote for GoPro HD support!
Nice interface!
Three fixes that need to happen.
1. Can only add files from one source directory, when adding files from more than one directory the program crashes.
2. Same file made from Grinder vers MpegStream Clip results in Grinder making this file larger using same output settings.
3. Optimize speed of program to match Mpegstream clips processing.
Hey Stu,
The Canon plug in does work from directories, not just CF cards. Just copy the whole folder structure from the card into a new folder, which I'm sure is what you do anyway.
The conform feature looks good though, I'm getting some bugs with the FCP plugin.
Cheers,
Toby
So, confirm to 25fps would be nice or am I missing something?. Still not a one stop solution for PAL users if this is not supported but a great product never the less. Thanks Stu.
Ready to purchase. When will you support Nikon Motion JPEG avi??
Feature requests:
-appending file output name, as to add / remove information from original file
-QT frame numbers start at 86400 if TC starts at 1 hour, could this be set to 00000 indifferent to TC
-option to turn audio off / i.e. not use the audio to keep file size smaller
-ability to read time of day off camera to use as TC alternate
Thanks,
Matt
How do you conform the originals in FCP or AE? Having issues connecting originals back in FCP because of the different file name(MVI_2000-ProRes-Proxy - MVI_2000-Original).
Thanks
hey stu
thanks for all your articles and great software. i recently bought colorista 2 and am loving it. i also just purchased grinder probably should have tried the demo first.
my main problem is not being able to conform to 25 frames. will that be a feature in future releases? also would be great to not have to upscale 720p footage to 1080 when using ProRes Standard settings.
having said all that thanks again for all your contributions to the world of video creation
Conform to 25p is at the very top of our feature request list.
Tested a 1 min clip on Compressor, MpegStreamclip and Grinder.
Using a Macbook Pro 2.93 Ghz Core 2 duo
The results:
Compressor: 4:58
MpegStreamclip: 1:32
Grinder: 12 seconds
This'll be great for the magazine programme we're about to execute, but I'm still waiting for the 5DtoRGB release to transcode files for feature. It'll be great if Grinder can have the same results as 5DtoRGB's files.
Thanks Stu!
This all sounds amazing but I'm just a little confused?
The RedGiant website says it exports to Prores LT online, but the demo version does not?
Is LT output something the full version will do? To be honest it's pretty VITAL for LT support as it's a perfect codec for many many people out here?!
When will ProRes LT be incorporated? Would love to know as that's all that's holding me back from buying.
Thanks
Steve
I agree, it's confusingly worded in the site. LT support is limited to proxies. We now know how much people love LT for final work and will consider this for future versions.
Stu,
I love Grinder and all Red Giant products I own. I'd like to get your opinion on 5DtoRGB that's currently in beta. Also, do you know what we can expect in a possible update to Grinder? Thanks and keep up the great work.
John
Hi Stu quick question will Grinder support the new Nikon d7000 as they have switched from Mjpeg compression to h264