2K Scaled Is Vital

[Hans von Sonntag]

This is a R&D request that I humbly bring up because I came over it in a real world situation

As Matt Uhry mentioned somewhere there is some serious need for 2K scaled. Yes there is and we badly need it.

The reason:

2 days ago I shot a commercial on 35mm with 50fps all day. Delivery format will be Pal 576i. HD for broadcast is not there yet, an won't be in the next 5 or even 10 years at least here in Pal-World-Europe. Things are interlaced and sometimes need interlaced footage.

1. Often pans (range pack shots for instance) have to be smooth and for that reason they need in PAL world interlaced footage. 35mm is frames only and so is RED. If you want interlaced/fields you have to shoot 50 fps.

2. Some action has to be shot in 50 fps for slow-motion shots, you need that every day on a commercial shoot.

3. Depth of field of 35mm is compulsory.

Now, shooting 4k is great for quality and depth of field but cannot over-crank up to 50 fps. 2K windowed can do 50fps but does only use a portion of the sensor, hence the DOF of S16 which is not an option for serious commercial work.

As an extra benefit there will be more runtime and transcoding will be faster.

We need badly scaled 2K!

Please make this happen, for me personally much more important than on-board sound for instance... nothing against on-board sound though.


Hans

 

[Tom Lowe]

2K scaled with higher FPS is what many would love to see.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

2K scaled with higher FPS is what many would love to see.

As Tom said,

Hans

 

[Nick Shaw]

I believe you can shoot 2k in camera with 35mm lenses that will fill the 35mm sensor but it will save it as 2k

Not at the moment you can't. That is what this thread is requesting. Currently 2k in camera is derived from a 'window' in the centre of the sensor, the size that would be covered by a S-16 lens, even if you are using a 35mm lens.

 

[Ethan Cooper]

How many times does Red have to say that 2K Scaled higher than 30fps IS NOT POSSIBLE due to the processing power needed to pull it off. It's not going to happen on Red One according to them. Red Two maybe?
________
BUY SILVERSURFER VAPORIZER

 

[jbeale]

Well, but 4k does not work at 50 fps which is what he wants to generate the interlaced PAL video (50 interlaced fields per sec).

Interesting to think of shooting 4096x2304 pixel frames and scaling down to the PAL field which is 720x288 pixels! That would be an oversampling ratio of 45:1. A bit less if you're cropping the 4k for 4:3, even a bit more if you're broadcasting 16:9 letterboxed.

 

[Álex Montoya]

the DOF of S16 which is not an option for serious commercial work

Well, it is for movies like Zodiac.

 

[Obin Olson]

As a commercial Director and shooter I could not agree with what Hans is saying more. I have said it before, I would take scaled 720p if that is all we could get to have more framerates with the full sensor size.

thanks Red team I know you guys are listening.

If you need to bin sensor photosites do it, whatever it takes to get a clean 720p or higher image with full sensor size.

This is a R&D request that I humbly bring up because I came over it in a real world situation

As Matt Uhry mentioned somewhere there is some serious need for 2K scaled. Yes there is and we badly need it.

The reason:

2 days ago I shot a commercial on 35mm with 50fps all day. Delivery format will be Pal 576i. HD for broadcast is not there yet, an won't be in the next 5 or even 10 years at least here in Pal-World-Europe. Things are interlaced and sometimes need interlaced footage.

1. Often pans (range pack shots for instance) have to be smooth and for that reason they need in PAL world interlaced footage. 35mm is frames only and so is RED. If you want interlaced/fields you have to shoot 50 fps.

2. Some action has to be shot in 50 fps for slow-motion shots, you need that every day on a commercial shoot.

3. Depth of field of 35mm is compulsory.

Now, shooting 4k is great for quality and depth of field but cannot over-crank up to 50 fps. 2K windowed can do 50fps but does only use a portion of the sensor, hence the DOF of S16 which is not an option for serious commercial work.

As an extra benefit there will be more runtime and transcoding will be faster.

We need badly scaled 2K!

Please make this happen, for me personally much more important than on-board sound for instance... nothing against on-board sound though.


Hans

 

[jbeale]

How many times does Red have to say that 2K Scaled higher than 30fps IS NOT POSSIBLE due to the processing power needed to pull it off. It's not going to happen on Red One according to them. Red Two maybe?

If you had the RAW port, you could supposedly shoot 4.5k up to 60 fps, and do the processing elsewhere. I just can't imagine anyone finding it worthwhile to do so.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

Well, it is for movies like Zodiac.

Yes, for Zodiak and many other film shot in S16 or 2/3 Video. But not for most commercial work. Horses for courses.

Hans

 

[Nick Shaw]

You could shoot 25fps and then interlace that into 50i.....

You can't reproduce the motion characteristic of 50i by shooting at 25fps, at least not without doing optical flow interpolation in post, which is less than ideal.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

You could shoot 25fps and then interlace that into 50i.....

You can. Actually that happens when you dump your 35mm stuff from telecine onto Digital Betacam. But every 2 fields will be the same. Nothing accomplished unfortunately. Sorry.

Hans

 

[Nick Shaw]

How many times does Red have to say that 2K Scaled higher than 30fps IS NOT POSSIBLE due to the processing power needed to pull it off. It's not going to happen on Red One according to them. Red Two maybe?

I am not aware that Red have EVER said that. The full sensor can be clocked at up to 60 fps. It is only 4k REDCODE that the processing limits to 30 fps (currently 25 fps).

They have said in the past that they are considering the possibility of scaled 2k at higher frame rates, just not immediately. Scaled RAW was mooted at one point, but has not been mentioned for a while. I suspect that scaled 2k will not come until RGB recording is enabled.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

I am not aware that Red have EVER said that. The full sensor can be clocked at up to 60 fps. It is only 4k REDCODE that the processing limits to 30 fps (currently 25 fps).

Yes, that's what I recall,

Hans

 

[Matt Uhry]

Here's an interesting project for 2k scaled nay sayers. Try taking the 4k tiff on HDFORINDIES.COM from Spain into Photoshop, Save a copy of the image and scale one of the clones from 4k to 2k and then back to 4k. Compare the images at 100% in Photoshop. Try it with other 4k images.

Matt Uhry
www.mattuhry.com

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

I am in no way an engineer. But thinking how easy RED is creating 2k reference movies off the 4K Raw data I am pretty hopeful that RED will pull this off.

My concern is: Does RED really know how useful 2k Scaled is?

In my point of view 4K is brilliant to have but in reality we are talking about 1080p for high definition and 576i/486i for standard definition. How many HD DVDs are currently made (I am not talking about Hollywood blockbusters). Most TV work, commercials and corporate stuff will end up in SD.

2K is the format to go with. Do a pan/can crop and you get 1080p with some room for stabilizing/reframing and do further down-converts for DVD or broadcast.

Hans

 

[Damien Molineaux]

2k scaled

2k scaled

How many times does Red have to say that 2K Scaled higher than 30fps IS NOT POSSIBLE due to the processing power needed to pull it off. It's not going to happen on Red One according to them. Red Two maybe?

I am not aware that Red have EVER said that. The full sensor can be clocked at up to 60 fps. It is only 4k REDCODE that the processing limits to 30 fps (currently 25 fps).

They have said in the past that they are considering the possibility of scaled 2k at higher frame rates, just not immediately. Scaled RAW was mooted at one point, but has not been mentioned for a while. I suspect that scaled 2k will not come until RGB recording is enabled.

Red did at one point say 2k Raw scaled was no possible. Later it has been mentioned, by both Jim and Graeme, they were working on 2k Raw scaled; sorry for not posting the references, but if you do a little research you'll find them. As has been mentioned a few times "Everything subject to change, count on it". I'm sure we'll get some form of scaled recording, maybe many : ie. 2k raw and 1080p RGB. I vote for 2k raw.

Cheers,
Damien

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Here's an interesting project for 2k scaled nay sayers. Try taking the 4k tiff on HDFORINDIES.COM from Spain into Photoshop, Save a copy of the image and scale one of the clones from 4k to 2k and then back to 4k. Compare the images at 100% in Photoshop. Try it with other 4k images.

Matt Uhry
www.mattuhry.com

Careful I lost a candybar with that kind of talk. :sheep:

Here's a question. Is 50p possible over the HD-SDI @ 1080p? If the REDCode compression is the bottleneck perhaps a good hold-over would be to enable higher framerates out to HDCAM SR.

 

[Álex Montoya]

Matt, this has been already discussed: the footage at hdforindies isn't top notch. They had a problem with backfocus. Many posted footage suffers from the same issue.

There is some footage though that shows a significant resolution boost from 2K to 4K.

Under ideal conditions RED can offer an effective resolution of about 3000X1500 pixels, which to me is reason enough to shoot 4K.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

The data-rate of 2K Raw is much less than 4K Raw. 50p 2K Raw will not need faster CF (even less) than 4K at 25p

Hans