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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

MX Rolling Shutter

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IanK

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Hello All,


I was wondering if anyone could help me. I have shot with the Red a lot and have never had a problem with Rolling Shutter. A VFX supe mentioned that it might be a problem with some tracking and comping on moving shots. We are planning to shoot with our new MXed Red. Does that present less of a rolling shutter 'problem' or skew? If anyone has any information on this I would really appreciate. Thanks


Ian
 
How fast do you plan to be whipping the camera around? There are plugins and methods of fixing a great portion of skew, and with R1 in particular, you'll have to be whipping it around pretty viciously to get a good amount of rolling shutter issues.
 
It is the exact same as the RED ONE. Intially the M-X was a faster read/reset time, improving rolling shutter dramatically, but that was clocked back to the same as the M sensor.

Treat M-X as you would M when dealing with rolling shutter.

David
 
Clocked back? Perhaps you could use an old build?
 
We are not panning fast enough to notice but I want to plan for a possibility that I dont think will happen. What is the name of the plugin?

Thanks guys

Ian
 
This was posted by Jim on March 16, 2010:

We have temporarily rolled back the clock speed (read-reset time) for the M-X upgrade cameras to work on several issues... calibration being one. As soon as we fix all the "stuff" we'll roll up the clock speed again. As of today's build, you will get skew "slightly better than the M sensor". Soon, that will go back to where it was when we showed M-X at RED Day.

Link (post #9): http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=42532&highlight=mx+rolling
 
Oh, so it looks like it is still slightly better than the M sensor?

Does anyone have an idea about when we would rolled the clock speed back to the better time?

Ian

ps I personally never had a problem with skew on the Red. I never could see what the big deal is. This is just to try to come to an understanding with the post folks.
 
http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/pkg_overview.aspx?ui=47C4AB50-4636-4326-87D1-FB380B2119EF

core melt made a rolling shutter plugin too, don't know how good either ones are, but I've always seen the foundry as a staple company and their products reliable. If anybody can personally vouch for the plugin please chime in.

But unless your whipping around like a maniac or doing very fast pans wes anderson style then honestly I think you'll be fine.
 
Thanks Tom


IAn
 
If I am remembering correctly. Mysterium (vanilla RED One) has a 9ms read-reset. Current MX (or at least as of Jim's posting about a month ago) is like 8 (so slightly better). MX in a later build will be 5ms, so nearly double the read-reset of the original RED One, which should be quite a nice improvement.
 
IanK said:
ps I personally never had a problem with skew on the Red. I never could see what the big deal is. This is just to try to come to an understanding with the post folks.
Click to expand...

Try being on the back of a shotmaker with a relatively tight lens. Skew-o-rama.
 
The rolling shutter has sometimes been a nightmare for us in Post, having to both deal with the removal of it, as well as explain it to clients, and DP's who didn't notice it until the project is already done shooting. We have been using the Foundry's Paralax distortion plugin "RollingShutter," as well, for really bad shots, but for an entire hand held, running with the camera style movie, it would be a total headache to fix. Also, since its a plugin, it tries to fix the frames by making cures straight, etc. It of course is always dependent on the footage and sometimes, like anything, shots can be really really hard to fix. For tracking on distorted shots, its not just the track won't hold, its more that the image is totally warped, so anything comped into the shot is going to look out of place, since those images comped in the shot, need to be warped as well. It has been really rare though that we where forced to use an unfixable or highly distorted image, we have been able to cut around majorly distorted stuff or use "RollingShutter" to make the images usable.

The rolling shutter is very well known by big time DP's, and has actually been something keeping some bigger films from shooting entirely on RED, this is mostly because of the "TEARING" effect that you have when a sensor scans from top to bottom. It warps with fast movement and shows a lot of distortion when you would have had a traditional morié pattern, or you have a lot of small lines crossing vertically and horizontally. In the 35mm variable shutter world you have artifacts, but these artifacts are pleasant and pretty. Like in the Omaha beach scene in Saving Private Ryan. Lots of visual distorting there, but there is no warping, or fluttering of the frames, so it seems like more natural photography. That is why a lot of big movies that have used the RED camera have used them for 2nd unit or for background plates.

RED has made great strides trying to reduce this distortion, but for someone like me who looks at 2k images all day, I can see it very clearly, where most people don't. I have learned not to point it out to DP's and Directors, since it will drive them nuts once they notice it. I have not seen enough MX footage yet, since the camera is still new, but I would image the distortion is less than R1.

The worst of the worst is of course when something is shot entirely on 5D/7D. That distortion is so bad, it makes me sea sick, and I tell people to only shoot 7D as a locked down, or super super slow dolly shots.

DP's who are coming from 35mm should always do extensive camera tests, if you are doing a lot of swish pan, test it first and see if the distortion is too bad for them, its the DP's call.
 
are there places to see stills of this warping? I would love to be better at pointing it out to AC's and DP's rather than having it pointed out to me, as a DIT.
 
Alex Hastings said:
...


The worst of the worst is of course when something is shot entirely on 5D/7D. That distortion is so bad, it makes me sea sick, and I tell people to only shoot 7D as a locked down, or super super slow dolly shots.
Click to expand...

Thanks for pointing this out and making it clear what one of the downsides of these cameras is. I run into a lot of people who are just totally enamored with DSLR DoF, light weight, and sensor sensitivity but know nothing about the issues that have to be considered and dealt with.
 
David Wyatt said:
5ms will be for Epic though, not Red One M-X (correct me, of course, if I'm wrong!)
Click to expand...

The 5ms read/reset time will be for the RED One with the MX sensor once RED releases a firmware that brings it back up to that speed. Hopefully soon.
 
what's the restet time on the Canon SLR's? I've always read of how terrible it is. And when I was at Abel I watched a 5d reel, most of which was shot with handheld, fast moving action sports shots, and there was to my eye, no visible skewing.

And that was the point of the reel, was to dis-prove the myths. I think the sales rep told me they merely adjusted the shutter angle, even though I never really asked.
 
Doug Horton said:
what's the restet time on the Canon SLR's? I've always read of how terrible it is. And when I was at Abel I watched a 5d reel, most of which was shot with handheld, fast moving action sports shots, and there was to my eye, no visible skewing.

And that was the point of the reel, was to dis-prove the myths. I think the sales rep told me they merely adjusted the shutter angle, even though I never really asked.
Click to expand...

The 5D2 has some bad skew. If I were to guess what its read/reset time was I would say around 11-12ms. You can use a program to get rid of the skew in AE. The skew in the RED One has never been that much of a problem for me. But sometimes it rears its ugly head. It will be nice once RED gets the speed back up on the MX sensor to 5ms. Film is measured at 4ms so if a RED One MX'ed gets back to 5ms it will be, almost, visually no different than film...in the skew department.
 
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