Shooting scaled 2K MOTION while snapping 5K STILLS?

[Joseph Hutson]

Hey, so I know you ought to alway be shooting in 4K or in 5K and pulling stills from the EPIC. This is the ideal way of shooting, and what it's made for.

However, I wonder if RED might be able to enable the ability of when say:

I'm shooting scaled 1080p or 2K because I have to conserve my last bit of memory. But I want FullFrame 5K STILLS. I'd like that when I shoot 2K MOTION I can click the button on the RED Handle and it also saves a 5K STILL.​

I know we can't think up too many things that RED isn't already implementing it if possible, but I thought I'd just throw that out there...

 

[Spencer Broschard]

Doesn't the button just tag the frame as a still? So it could only be whatever resolution your filming at...I think

 

[Joseph Hutson]

Doesn't the button just tag the frame as a still? So it could only be whatever resolution your filming at...I think

That's what we know so far. However, I was curious if we could have a different kind of function as seen in a DSLR.

 

[Spencer Broschard]

That's what we know so far. However, I was curious if we could have a different kind of function as seen in a DSLR.

gotcha, but when you take a pic in motion from a DSLR (Using my T2i as a reference) the shutter closes thus interrupting the motion...doesn't that defeat the purpose of what you are trying to achieve? I don't see how such a feature could be possible without interrupting the motion...but then again I'm not as smart as Graeme

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and take a wild-ass guess at something. Sure, you could tag frames or approximate frames by pushing a button. I think that may be a confirmed feature? I know it's come up before. But what I'm wondering is if you were to push a button for still capture while shooting motion, could the camera capture the HDRx "x-track" for a selection of frames to coincide with that button push? This would give additional motion information for use with pulling stills, not just exposure information, but the ability to process disparity in pixel motion and extract less blurry images via the whole Magic Motion thing...

Just a thought...

I don't know whether or not that's a possibility (the push-button linking of HDRx while shooting). However, I would probably shoot HDRx just for the 'x-track' information and Magic Motion if I knew I was going to be pulling stills.

 

[Shane Betts]

Problem is, when you're shooting HD on a DSLR, it's capturing the entire sensor and pixel binning to get the rez down to something it can record. That means your still frame is the same frame as your movie, only higher quality. Now, on an Epic (or an R1 for that matter), when you're shooting at 2k motion, you're only using the centre part of the sensor. If you were able to grab a 5k still in the middle of this, it would be like shooting your motion on a 50mm lens and your still on a 28mm! So, you get your 5k still, crop it in to the same framing as the motion to get rid of the light stands and the boom swinger and ... 2k!

 

[Joseph Hutson]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and take a wild-ass guess at something. Sure, you could tag frames or approximate frames by pushing a button. I think that may be a confirmed feature? I know it's come up before.

Yes, that's a confirmed feature. And your idea of having the HDRx applied to specific STILLS is a fantastic idea as well.

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

Regarding 1080P RGB (is down downscaled RGB still on plans?) from full sensor, the camera would have to capture the still before the image gets downscaled and compressed. The possible limitations I can think of are memory buffers or free processing power needed to do this.

Regarding cropped recording, the limitation would be whether the inactive portion of the sensor during recording can be activated on the fly for taking a still image.

Questions only the engineering team can answer...

 

[Joseph Hutson]

Problem is, when you're shooting HD on a DSLR, it's capturing the entire sensor and pixel binning to get the rez down to something it can record. That means your still frame is the same frame as your movie, only higher quality. Now, on an Epic (or an R1 for that matter), when you're shooting at 2k motion, you're only using the centre part of the sensor. If you were able to grab a 5k still in the middle of this, it would be like shooting your motion on a 50mm lens and your still on a 28mm! So, you get your 5k still, crop it in to the same framing as the motion to get rid of the light stands and the boom swinger and ... 2k!

Except that the EPIC and Scarlet won't just be doing a crop of the sensor. RED has said they will be offering a 1080p SCALE mode from the whole sensor. Ted explained as this to be like "realtime in-camera scaling from 5K to 1080p as if the RED Rocket was doing it on your computer". The only downside is that the 108p would be the negative rather than 5K (obviously).

More recently, Jim made a reference saying something like "scaled to 1080p...or was it scaled to 2K?" This was him either having troubles recalling exactly what mode it was, or his way of giving a tease that it might be indeed "scaled 2K"

 

[Fabricio Morato]

I think this would be not easy to accomplish but not impossible with the current epic hardware.. you'll just be limited to a few shutter speeds I believe (because if you're shooting 24p 1/50-180º) you don't want to break or delay the next frame after the 5k still (so making impossible for a 1/50 or lower shutter speed still)...or you could make like this: when you press the button the next motion frame and the still frame are taken on a high shutter speed (1/250+?) but you would lose the motion blur continuity for that frame (for the motion frame)...
and with the dslr when you take a picture it happens what Spencer said...

it's an interesting idea tough...lets just wait to see an official (or semi-official) response...

 

[Andrew Gentle]

I think it would be theoretically possible for the camera to record a separate one frame R3D at a different resolution while recording motion. My guess would be that the limitations would be that the shutter speed would have to be the same as the motion and that you'd have to be recording at a rate equal to or less than half the maximum at 5K, to have time to store the still. The middle section of the still would be identical to the same frame in the lower res motion and the field of view of the still would be different to the motion if you weren't recording in the scaling mode.