WHY oh WHY does footage look really great in the monitor and "crappy" in the PC?

[George D.]

I know, I know, the footage from a Red-One is RAW, and you're supposed to tweak it in post.

I guess I'm dense, but I just don't get it. We spend hours and hours setting up and lighting a set, and it looks terrific in the monitor and sharp as a razor. So, we shoot it with our Red-One. Later, after downloading it into the PC it looks like shit. It's slightly soft, has no contrast, the colors are off, and there's just no sparkle. It also looks like we almost shot it out of focus, which, of course, we did not. It is very, very disappointing.

I have asked this question before, and everyone has told me that it is supposed to be that way, and you're supposed to do the adjusting in post later on. I'm sorry, but I just don't like that and it is not acceptable. I want to see it later on the PC monitor "EXACTLY" the way we shot it "without" having to fuss with it first.

Is there any way of achieving this, so that what we see when we shoot it is what we get? Then, if we don't like it, or change our minds, we can later adjust it in post, not the other way around.

Maybe there is no solution, and it's just the way it is, but I want to state officially for the record, that I do NOT like it.

Thanks for your time.

.

[ericyoung]

Post a representative R3D to let us see what you are concerned about. Also post a screen grab of same R3D in Redcine-X Pro with the settings you typically start with.

[BigLu]

Once you or your DIT or someone in the post workflow understands the full design on the outputs of the camera how to adjust the menus.
And REDCINE X inside out with a REDrocket installed so you will be working in full debayer,
you will have a much more pleasant experience.

Dont worry you dont have to go threw this, just need someone or you to have more experience with its workflow and menu settings

Using REDcolor 2 with REDgamma 3 from beginning to end with good properly calibrated monitors all the way threw including your PC.
Should give relatively consistent looks and results.

I hope that helps

[Mike Kushner]

when i first shot my RED One on an early build, i needed to add full sharpening in RED Cine to get sharp footage in the transcode

[Mark Toia]

Sorry to hear that...
There is obviously something wrong in your post pipe line. I had a fellow come to me with footage from a first gen R1... and he had similar concerns.
I put his footage in RCX and set the settings to RED COLOR AND RED GAMMA 3.... and his shots look great.
Forget about the proxies, thats a long gone work flow if your using it.

Send me a r3d still frame and i'll see what your doing wrong.

[Tom.Wong]

it's because a computer, a lot of the time doesn't accurately represent rec709 color and luminance. when you have a monitor hooked up to your camera via hd sdi or hdmi, is is a proper 10 bit legal signal going to the monitor. when you open up your r3d on a computer. those values are all the same as it's coming out of the computer. if you hook up I/O card or red rocket and load up a r3d and hook up that same monitor, it will look exactly the way it did on set. your monitor alone may be way off, and most cheaper pc monitors tend to be like that. unless you are running a monitor that has rec 709 built into it as a color space, you'll never see it the way it should on your computer. not even anywhere close.

computer monitors are one of the banes of color/look management. people trust them too much, but most of those monitors are made cheaply to be cost effective and can't even be calibrated correctly to look close. a computer operating system usually operates in a full range rgb mode, which is beyond a broadcast gamut, and will do wacky things to your picture as well. and usually a proper monitor and certain software corrects for that. I use a hp dreamcolor as my gui monitor set to 709, calibrated often, and that and a eizo seems to be the only few monitors that come close to showing what i see on my hdsdi output.

and depending on what codec and wrapper you convert your r3d to, they introduce shifts in values that change the look as well. so short answer to your question would be, hook up your system to a hd sdi monitor and see how it looks. if it looks the way it's on set, than your r3d's have no issues, it's your monitoring setup that's messing with you.

and no it's not possible to get all yoru images looking the same on every monitor you go to unless you make them all the same monitor and calibrate them all to perfect to line up to each other. at some point you just have to let go. i'm sure more than half the movie screenings out there are so poorly projected that they don't even come close to what it looked like in the finishing DI. You just work to spec, at the highest quality, and highest standards possible. and hope for the best when it trickles through the system.

the standards are presets are initially put there to try to maintain some kind of continuity with the look. but the most important part is to make sure the beginning of the pipeline is correct first. or it just keeps getting worse from there.

[BRANDON JAMESON]

Tom, awesome answer, so appreciated!!!

[Marc Wielage]

I have asked this question before, and everyone has told me that it is supposed to be that way, and you're supposed to do the adjusting in post later on. I'm sorry, but I just don't like that and it is not acceptable. I want to see it later on the PC monitor "EXACTLY" the way we shot it "without" having to fuss with it first.

Without a calibrated monitor, all bets are off. Computer monitors are notoriously unreliable in terms of telling you the truth about what was shot, what's been processed, and what's being edited.

[Stuart English]

I have asked this question before, and everyone has told me that it is supposed to be that way, and you're supposed to do the adjusting in post later on. I'm sorry, but I just don't like that and it is not acceptable. I want to see it later on the PC monitor "EXACTLY" the way we shot it "without" having to fuss with it first.

Without a calibrated monitor, all bets are off. Computer monitors are notoriously unreliable in terms of telling you the truth about what was shot, what's been processed, and what's being edited.

Make sure that nobody has messed with the PC monitor settings - or habitually cancels the metadata settings recorded by the camera as their first step in grading - because NO that is not the way it is supposed to work. What you see on your monitor in the field is what you should see as your default grading look on your monitor with REDCINE-X.

[Johnny Friday]

This will not turn out to be a great example, but you get the point and i can tell you that if you understand and work post well, you won't be disappointed. I'm posting a low rez example of a RAW and then colored frame grab from Epic. But, this said, if you don't want to learn the post pipeline and can't afford to bring someone along that can do this, then red just may not be the camera for you. if shooting TV and you are delivering Prores and want out of the camera great looking images....there are a lot of great options out there.

I for one took about 2.5 years to figure out how to manipulate in post and why/how it was advantageous for me....but this is another step from shooting to umm....can't say coloring since i'm a crap colorist, but something in between.

As pointed out by another poster....get ready to spend a pile more $$ on proper post gear.