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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 :)

Post 4k screening and Red picture issues

I

Iron Possum

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After seeing the short film "Crossing the Line" on a 4k projector in Sydney last night I have a little feedback, which are my first impressions of seeing the Red One footage up close and personal. Unfortunately I didn't get to ask the following questions of Ted whilst at the screening.

The pictures are indeed amazing, especially for this price point, no arguments about that 4k resolution from me at all. However I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed by the apparent colour fringing around some of the highlights and the way they clipped, especially in some of the cloud areas. It struck me as quite a harsh look as opposed to the way film deals with these areas of the shoulder, perhaps better than the average video camera but still video like.

I also felt that skin tones in some situations seemed to take on that all to familiar plastic video like texture that you just dont see in film. I'm wondering if these skin tones are a symptom of a knee point set to low and an aggressive knee slope that has reduced the tonality and gamma of the midrange portion of the signal too much?

I'm curoius to know if any improvements have been made in these areas since the shooting of the Peter Jackson's short and/or if a bit more grading would have made a difference to these problems as I understand they didn't spend very much time on that original grade.

Has any else felt this way about the images is or is just me? Am I being too critical because there's no gate weave or grain to distract me anymore?
 
I saw the 1080P footage at SMPTE a few days earlier, and was quite alarmed that the clouds looked really quite badly clipped. I was trying to look for faults, however, rather than watch the story. I remind myself that these were alpha cameras, tested in a rush, with almost no features enabled and a board that's now been replaced. Given what Ted was hinting at, with regards to a latitude that exceeds some film stocks, I don't think it will be an issue with the final release.
 
Concrete said:
At the time of the release of the short film it was stated that the latitude when shooting was only about 8 stops and that it has been since largely improved.
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There you go. Couldn't remember that, but knew we were in that sort of arena. I know I wasn't hallucinating when I heard Ted on Wednesday talk about getting towards 16 stops. So, that's twice as good as Crossing The Line. Gulp.
 
What Ted Said

What Ted Said

Concrete said:
16 stops? With the existing sensor? That would certainly change drastically the way of shooting...
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Ted said a few things on and off the record. Bear in mind that I had been awake a solid 29 hours when I met Ted, so my perceptions could be distorted. I stormed up to him before he'd had time to set the camera up and threw questions at him. He's a lovely guy, and I got lots of very, very interesting answers. But the thing about 15-16 stops came up at the big presentation at the Apple stand later that day, and I think he repeated it elsewhere during the week. He said that latitude is difficult to measure, and some people say film has a latitude of around 15-16 stops, and that Red was hoping to get there before too long. (This camera, this sensor, later update? Who knows?) Later, he used the word "eclipse"; I remember it clearly. He said that Red was hoping to have enough latitude to "eclipse" some popular film stocks. I got the impression he was talking about this sensor and the camera we will all have in our hands. I am still doing a double-take on this information, wondering if I've dreamed it all, but I think I've seen it elsewhere in the forum, where people are talking about Australian SMPTE. If 15-16 stops are possible, with this version of the camera (even if it requires a firmware upgrade) it is major news. I should also add, that he stressed over and again that the initial releases will not be fully enabled (as we all know) so if this 15-16 stops is ever true, it may be some time away. Still, it's a potent thought.
 
The colour in the clouds was added in grading, I do believe, to make things look more like sunrise. The entire visual look of the piece, what the skin tone was like etc. etc. was down to grading choices by PJ's team. We just gave them the raw pixels to work with, so to speak.

It's hard to be criticial in the way you are being of a camera, when you cannot see the raw footage as shot and were not at the grading session with the director. I've seen the raw footage, obviously, but I was not at the grading session and do not know the directors intent.

Talk of dynamic range is just that - talk. We've made real improvements in how RED One is working, as can be seen by Jim's ISO tests that he posted recently, however any talk of numbers or where the numbers might go in the future is pure speculation.

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
The colour in the clouds was added in grading, I do believe, to make things look more like sunrise. The entire visual look of the piece, what the skin tone was like etc. etc. was down to grading choices by PJ's team. We just gave them the raw pixels to work with, so to speak.

It's hard to be criticial in the way you are being of a camera, when you cannot see the raw footage as shot and were not at the grading session with the director. I've seen the raw footage, obviously, but I was not at the grading session and do not know the directors intent.

Talk of dynamic range is just that - talk. We've made real improvements in how RED One is working, as can be seen by Jim's ISO tests that he posted recently, however any talk of numbers or where the numbers might go in the future is pure speculation.

Graeme
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Completely understood. Talk is talk, and grading is grading. And gut feeling is gut feeling. Personally, I have no worries.

It reminds me of a screening of Flyboys footage in Palm Springs. The director had chosen to blow the sky out completely in some shots, but no matter how the Genesis people pointed out that this was a director's choice, the audience kept muttering for days about the "blown out sky".
 
Concrete said:
16 stops? With the existing sensor? That would certainly change drastically the way of shooting...
Click to expand...

Hi,

Twice as good would be 1 more stop!

Stephen
 
I heard 'Crossing the Line' at NAB was output in ITU.709 for Sony projector.

Footage shown at AFTRS in Sydney was ProRes 2K 4:2:2.

Cheers,
 
david farland said:
Footage shown at AFTRS in Sydney was ProRes 2K 4:2:2.
Click to expand...

That's disappointing, that's exactly what I saw at the conference screening, then (not the public one, the one in the auditorium on the oddly shaped screen).

From what I saw at Future Reality's stand a lot of the shots were pushed very hard in the grade (that, or the default one-light in REDCINE is really dark).
 
ahhhh remember... 2days prototype camera..think about it guys..not finished product. It would be like complaining because the car does not move because it has no engine.
 
Completely agree. Wait till its done and knowing Jim it will never be complete even after you get it..upgrades...love the foresight.
 
The Onfilm article that was recently posted online shows how Crossing the Line was filmed.

The only camera controls they had were 'go' and 'stop'. And with the new boards that were done in the engineering delay, it seems that the dynamic range has increased a few stops!
 
Michael Mann said:
16 stops with 12 bits? Isn't 12 stops the limit? Thanks for clarification in advance.
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Encoding into 12 bits limits DR to 12 stops, but considering how difficult it must be to reduce noise low enough to get 15-16 stops, switching redcode raw from a 12 bit codec to a 16 bit codec is probably relatively simple (meaning it can be done and, presumably, graeme and co know how to do it)
 
You can compress 32 stops into 8 bits... but you probably wouldn't want to (very very flat image). 12 bits for 12 stops is just the limit at which point you are no longer recording useful information and you're just capturing noise. And since you don't want to risk throwing away any information that you don't have to--the absolute mathematical-maximum information possible option is probably the best.

Film has more than 12 stops of latitude and to date it's been almost exclusively recorded to 10bits.
 
im.thatoneguy said:
Film has more than 12 stops of latitude and to date it's been almost exclusively recorded to 10bits.
Click to expand...

But that's 10 bit log. RED's 12 bits are, as I understand it, linear.
 
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