Why One Light?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Hmm, Jeff, I'm curious about you saying to *always* do a one light. I just did a short where I mastered it in 2k. Since I wasnt pushing it too hard, Prores worked fine. I did a 1k offline then in Crimson used Redline to output 2k ProresHQ files all completely flat. I thought that by exporting them from Redline flat (as opposed to pulling them into Redcine, which I hate due to its consistent bugginess) would give me as much room as Prores has to offer.

"Always" may be a strong term. There are times when it isn't necessary. And yes, exporting as you say to ProRes HQ will essentially give you all the room ProRes has to offer. That is, if you don't mind 10bit 4:2:2. In most situations where I'm going out to ProRes, I try to make a primary CC pass in REDCINE (latest build has been much, much more stable for me than prior builds). Even if I'm not going to push the color that far, having much of the work done initially before the conversion to 4:2:2 takes place, just leaves less to change later and less chance of exceeding any of the limits ProRes will impose on you. It's easy and doesn't take much time to do it. I at least make sure all my clips have balanced and matching contrast, white points, etc..

I'm seeing that people are resistant to the idea of a one-light. Hey, I'd like to skip a step here and there too, but there's lots of times that dumping straight out to ProRes just won't leave me enough information for my liking. One of the big reasons I jumped on the RED bandwagon is to move beyond restrictive 4:2:2 color spaces and HD codecs that I had been forced to live with when using HD cameras. RED allows this, but you have to take the proper steps to get there. Straight dumps of R3D files to ProRes via REDLINE, REDCINE, RED ALERT, won't get you there and can even be problematic for serious compositing and FX work. Problematic is in the eye of the beholder.. Thousands of people work blissfully with 4:2:2 HD footage every day and love it.

There are many different levels of quality that can be achieved with RED, to fit many different levels of production.

Anyway, I feel like I'm just repeating myself..

 

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Here's my two cents.

If you're moving it to a professional grader, give him/her as raw files as possible. That means log files with no grading.

My suggestion is DPX from Camera RGB and REDLog. The files are small and it's still a lot of info there, enough to make a cinema print out of it.

Grade for online or DI for print

In online convert to preferred format

Fredrik

 

[BigLu]

I WANT TO WORK WITH JEFF!

Due to the fact that I cant get Bob Sliga to teach me new things anymore.