Full-frontal insidious attack on Red, by indie director Rian Johnson (2008)

[RivaiC]

Hoamm...what's next ?

 

[Erik Rangel]

Hoamm...what's next ?

Seconded...yawn...

 

[Esteban Sosnitsky]

If the guy is no technician why did he spare the time to write such a thing?
I will let you answer that.....quietly....

 

[bernd katzmarczyk]

his video was nice but sfx. I know, the following link isn´t dealing with this thread but I thought some of you are interested in music video art...
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=i_VuIgOVWx4

 

[Emery Wells]

I don't think attacking the attacker serves any purpose. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and RED ONE is not a perfect camera. The one major disingenuous claim is that typical HD cameras outperform the RED. It's true there are many cameras with a less compressed image but they all live in the HD resolution world. I dont think they would stack up in a 4k theatrical projection. However, his post is not without it's truths. Footage from all sorts of DPs come through our door everyday and I have seen BAD RED footage. It is not impossible to create bad RED footage. That being said, I have seen plenty of BAD 35mm footage. If proper care is not taken, the image artifacts described can and will show up.

More often that not, we are AMAZED with the quality but this idea that RED is somehow except from criticism is probably what urges folks to respond like this.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

The compression is closer to 10:1, not 36:1 just to clear that one up. A 4K 16:9 TIFF is around 27MB (at least the frame that I just grabbed and output was). That would make the uncompressed RAW file around 9MB. If you are recording in RC28 at around 28MB/sec, that would give you slightly more than 1MB per frame at 24fps. So the compression is from 9MB to 1MB. Even at the 36MB/frame that he mentions, that would still be only 12:1 compression. He clearly doesn't understand RAW Bayer Filtered sensor technology. Is my math wrong here Jarred or Stuart?

Yes, it is wrong for two reasons: Your TIFF was 8-bit. REDRaw is 12-bit. TIFF is RGB, and REDRaw is Raw sensor data - not comparable.

The correct calulation is 12 bit x number of photosites = 12 x 4096 X 2304 = 113,246,208 bits = 14,155,776 Bytes = ~14 MBytes per frame of uncompressed 12-bit sensor data

So if, as you say, one RedRaw frame is ~1MB, the compression is 14:1, but it can not be directly compared to a compression of RGB formats such as MPEG or H.264 compressions. You are compressing two different things. It is smarter, and that's hard to quantify

The best response was that of Jarred:

This was a nice comical read with my morning coffee...

LOL

 

[Dan Carew]

Hi Emery,

I don't believe I attacked Rian in my post--and I certainly don't believe Red is exempt from criticism. I responded forcefully to a snarling article, which
-says Red marketing is b.s. and Red reps waffle and weasle on arguments about "4K" and tech specs
-implies Red footage projected on a large screen will always look bad, because of compression
-acts as a "voice of reason" and "FUD buster" for those of us indie filmmakers who may be "deluded" by Red marketing
-probably without intending to be, is a godsend to the big camera manufacturers with the truly big marketing budgets, whose lunch is already starting to be eaten by Red.

Hi Jeff,

You write, "Without fail, the loudest, most vocal critics have never seen Red footage projected in a screening room."

Well, the problem is that Rian is very loud and vocal (and influential, as a talented filmmaker), and he's written a "fact-filled" long article where he claims that he *has* watched a lot of Red footage projected and implies that it always has problems (with color and clumping due to compression).

I do think it would be useful to hear from Rian and his DPs how they shot with Red and what workflow they used when they saw these problems. Presenting this + examples would have been totally welcome and positive. A discussion. Science. (And no, Brook, I'm not religious on cameras. Or anything else ; )

But instead, Rian and his DPs spent a lot of time putting forward a hostile and lawyerly attack on Red, which will be used as ammo by Red bashers--e.g., pls do read this blog post (which I originally linked to) which gleefully quotes Rian and links to his article: http://chud.com/articles/articles/16368/1/CHUDindie-RIAN-JOHNSON-CAUGHT-RED-HANDED/Page1.html
And this will in turn influence and spread FUD amongst the 99.9% of people learning about Red who have not seen Red footage--esp. in places like Asia, where very few public Red large screen projections have taken place.

cheers,
Dan (about to peacefully drink my coffee after a good nights sleep : )

P.S. to G.Balaji's post: I don't have any frames to post. It's Rian's frames with compression artifacts (and what process he went through to produce them) that we'd all like to see. And Rian Johnson is indeed a real and influential person--which is why myself and others (e.g., Graeme Nattress and other Red staff) take the time to respond to his article.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

And Rian Johnson is indeed a real and influential person--which is why myself and others (e.g., Graeme Nattress and other Red staff) take the time to respond to his article.

He may be influential, but if this dude can't multiply three numbers together to work out the correct compression ratio and stands by his "results", he is still a fool.

 

[Sarah C.]

Hey.. this guy Rian Johnson really is smart.. look at all the attn he's getting now! (wrong or right)

 

[Wayne D]

here's my 2 cents worth (after my 2nd coffee...)

firstly - Rian (infact anybody) is entitled to their opinion
secondly - if you dig around on the net you can find dirt on anything and anyone

thirdly - as a group (red owners/users) we tend to defend fairly well the product but.........why don't we start a "shot/used RED and it was great site"

and i don't mean all of us on this forum. i mean get the directors, producers, editors, ect... from projects you have worked on to say "it was great"

might solve a few of the isues with negative views and also collect some data for bigger issues like inurance/bond people.


ahhh......my render bar is finished........more coffee.....

 

[Jason Diamond]

I think anyone interested in the technology will seek it out to test for themselves for whatever budget or finish they are interested in.

granted impressions by "professionals" are always lauded however anyone serious enough to consider digging into their pockets should setup a test with whomever they will hire to verify results and satisfaction for their proposed delivery and finish.

that goes for any technology in any business sector at any budget level, we just happen to be talking about RED.

 

[Jon Schellenger]

Well,

I read the post. He has it out for someone. I am not sure as to why. You can call me a redboy, redfan, fanboy, or whatever- the bottom line:

I have been using the camera since April. It is absolutely an amazing tool. It gives me "jaw dropping images". Everyone is correct about the fact that everyone is entitled to their opinion- but the majority of what he is saying is total bullshit. It is as simple as that.

I have seen the results of this camera on an amazing 1080P color correction monitor and I have seen my stuff along with others project on a movie screen. The camera is amazing.

 

[BobSimon]

I searched the internet.
There are several 4K cameras out there. If you want to compare cameras, RED should be compared to these other 4K cameras.

From checking the features, I find the only advantage for RED is its price. It is the cheapest.
From the quality point of view, other cameras are not inferior. For a low price you get a reasonable quality from RED. If you take out the price, RED has no advantages.

From reading various blogs, I get the idea that Hollywood pros are not all that sold on RED. Peter Jackson made a short for Jim, for testing the camera. Soderberg made two movies with RED. But the technical quality was poor. They got awards but nobody bought it for distribution.
No other major director seems to be interested in using RED.
Some B movies have been made with RED.
More movies have been made with other 4K cameras.
So, RED cannot claim infallibility or superiority, based on popularity among Hollywood Pros.

The director of Sony USA has said Sony will soon release a 4K camera (may be in 2009 NAB). Panasonic product manager has hinted about the possibility if bringing out a 4K camera.
ARRI employee refused to putout a rumor that ARRI is working on a 4K version of D21.
Panavision is rumored to be working on an 8K camera.
It looks like within next two years RED will have a lot of competition.

Somewhere on this site, somebody has predicted that by 2011 film will be dead. Most probably this prediction will come true by 2009.

 

[Deanan]

From reading various blogs, I get the idea that Hollywood pros are not all that sold on RED. Peter Jackson made a short for Jim, for testing the camera. Soderberg made two movies with RED. But the technical quality was poor. They got awards but nobody bought it for distribution.
No other major director seems to be interested in using RED.
Some B movies have been made with RED.
More movies have been made with other 4K cameras.
So, RED cannot claim infallibility or superiority, based on popularity among Hollywood Pros.

Soderberg has shot three movies, not two. (first two have american distribution)
There's are many more hollywood directors that have shot Red.

No other 4k digital cinema camera has shot more movies than Red.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I dont know what the poor director was doing wrong,

We can only speculate.

but for sure he doesnt understand todays image acquisition technology, and he also has difficulties reading -the red has 4900, not 4096 photosites, of which 4520 are used to debayer an image.

Uh... Currently the RED only allows us to capture using 4096 photosites horizontally. It's true there is about 4900, of which 4520 are said to be usable, but for now we can only use 4096 to capture and debayer from. This will change when we get the 4.5K mode added at some future date... And even that will be short of the 4520 -- 4480 horizontally, if my memory serves.

Furthermore in his compression calculations he is misplacing CMOS RAW and RGB - pretty incompetent for 2008, as these technology is common in photography since 2002.

Yes, I question some of his technical understanding.

The images a competent director/dp/post team can produce with red are simply awesome.

True. But we should also extend that to say a competent director/dp/post team that has been properly trained. This has been my biggest stumbling block in dealing with clients who try to use my gear or do the post work on RED footage. It's not complicated, but it usually takes someone to hold their hand and walk them through proper "developing" of the RAW files to get the desired results. In fact, I almost lost a good client over a RED shoot just recently. They wanted to handle post and they got lost along the way, almost ended our business relationship until I finally got the producer to look at an email with some stills from the shoot that I exported and corrected. In the end, I had to go in and train a few of their post guys on how to get the images out to DPX and looking nice. One of their post team was a very experienced colorist too, with lots of time on Quantel and with access to Lustre. For that particular job, the post team just wasn't understanding the notes from myself and the DP about the lighting issues and white balance for post. White balance metadata was FUBAR because the RED-newbie DP kept bumping button #1 for auto-WB -- this was under Build 15.

 

[Joel Kaye]

Soderberg made two movies with RED. But the technical quality was poor. They got awards but nobody bought it for distribution.

Not true. Many international rights sold right away and recently North American rights were sold. Gotta remember, that's a foreign language film American buys almost never buy those movies.

There have been a lot of beautiful things shot and projected on RED. The number of RED feature movies will dwarf every other format within a year. (film may still dominate BIG Hollywood releases for years to come)

 

[Pawel Achtel]

From checking the features, I find the only advantage for RED is its price. It is the cheapest.

Red has more advantages over any other existing camera than there is place here to list. The biggest advantage is that you do not need a fridge-sized storage teathered to the damn thing. You can manage full 4k data easily with existing storage and bandwidth. Besides, the price of the camera is insignificant in most realistic projects (less than 2% in my case), yet RED One is the camera of choice.

More movies have been made with other 4K cameras.

Which cameras that would be?

The director of Sony USA has said Sony will soon release a 4K camera (may be in 2009 NAB). Panasonic product manager has hinted about the possibility if bringing out a 4K camera.
ARRI employee refused to putout a rumor that ARRI is working on a 4K version of D21.
Panavision is rumored to be working on an 8K camera.
It looks like within next two years RED will have a lot of competition.

We wil see how/if the new 4k Sony will compete if/when it is released and with what RED offers at the same time. At this time Sony is vaporware.

Same goes with Arri, lets see it in action first and compare to Epic or Red One with Mysterium X or whatever will be current at the time. Apples with apples. But, major letdown with Arri is lack of any reasonable storage medium.

Panavision does not have 8k camera, not even 4k camera (Genesis outputs just 2k). We will wait and see when/if they work out how to make one.

And, finally, the biggest advantage of Red, is its customer-friendly attitude, going extra mile to deliver more than promissed and superior service. Sony (and many others) can't compete here and are NOT rumoured to announce any breakthrough in this area :whistling:

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Poor Rian will never get to have one of his films encoded to RedRay.

 

[Peter Majtan]

I was about to sign up to his "forum" in order to clarify "few" technical "issues" with his "RED BULL" article. Then I have noticed something very strange. Out of the 11776 registered users 11009 have never posted anything and it apears as they have been registered in huge bulks on the same days...

Putting that aside - I think Wayno is right. Lets all of us post on our own websites our experiences and real-world samples with the redhead...

His statements would have been in their right place on any discussion forum, where there are always plenty of misinformed and technically non-savvy chaps. But the way he posted his article is indeed a baseless full-frontal attack on RED. Thanks to his talent and/or luck he is now shooting a film with A-class cast and his image quality does look great. With that come a form of "power" and many will take his "opinion" for granted. With that power comes a responsibility. And this is where he fail as human being...

I kinda feel sorry for him - this is going to hunt him for many years to come. Most likely out of pride he won't get RED camera himself, if he even qualify to get one, as RED keep the right to refuse service to anyone with bad attitude - if anyone qualifies, he does... Having said that - I know Jim would most likely even give him on for free with a free on-site support & training just to open his eyes - if that was what he used to see the footage...

Good luck to him...

Peter

 

[Matthew Verkler]

But we should also extend that to say a competent director/dp/post team that has been properly trained. This has been my biggest stumbling block in dealing with clients who try to use my gear or do the post work on RED footage. It's not complicated, but it usually takes someone to hold their hand and walk them through proper "developing" of the RAW files to get the desired results. In fact, I almost lost a good client over a RED shoot just recently. They wanted to handle post and they got lost along the way, almost ended our business relationship until I finally got the producer to look at an email with some stills from the shoot that I exported and corrected. In the end, I had to go in and train a few of their post guys on how to get the images out to DPX and looking nice. One of their post team was a very experienced colorist too, with lots of time on Quantel and with access to Lustre. For that particular job, the post team just wasn't understanding the notes from myself and the DP about the lighting issues and white balance for post. White balance metadata was FUBAR because the RED-newbie DP kept bumping button #1 for auto-WB -- this was under Build 15.

I think this is important for everyone shooting on Red to understand; we must make sure that post is up to the task of using our footage. Otherwise, it is all for naught. If whomever is doing post for our projects is NOT up to speed, we must get them up to speed, even if we have to go well out of our way to do it. This is no different than what the best feature film DP's have done for decades; we must do whatever it takes to make sure that everything is handled properly up to the point of creating the master.

I know this is not always possible, but seriously, I don't think Red footage is something you just shoot and hand off, unless it's to people who know Red, like Plaster City. Sony, Panny, etc. all have the look baked in; sure, we have metadata, but that only goes so far. The onus is on us to educate, and if we can't for reasons of schedule or whatever, we must make sure that qualified people ARE educating the post users of our product.

Up 'till now, I've developed all my own Red footage, so I haven't had to deal with these types of issues, but I have had to educate my clients as to the in's and out's of using Red, as we all have. It may take several years for much of the industry to get up to speed; until then, we have to hedge our bets and not leave it to chance.

Respectfully,

Matthew Verkler