why 5k? go after uncompressed instead please

[reality]

Dan, I hear they have some job openings at Dalsa. They love uncompressed there.

 

[doondoon]

Every dpx I've seen from a Viper is riddled with artifacts...

Graeme

Riddled with artifacts? Were you looking at DPX files from uncompressed viper footage ? Not to an HDCAM SR deck, but to codex or S2. The footage I saw was some unreasonable data rate like 880 megabytes per second and it was CLEAN.
David Fincher and Claudio Mirando didn't complain about artifacts when they shot the soon to be released "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" on the Viper.

 

[doondoon]

Ha. Every side by side I've seen show Red as superior.

Are you talking REDCODE vs. Viper 4:2:2/ regular HDCAM or HDCAM-SR @ 420mega-bits per second or 880 mega-bits per second or what? Or direct to disk or what? So many ways to capture Viper.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Check out the DPX files on CML - nasty little artifacts all over the Viper images.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

it would be a much better archive format if red would release tools to allow for trimmed r3d files.

yes yes yes yes yes yes

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Waiting...

Waiting...

Dan, I hear they have some job openings at Dalsa. They love uncompressed there.

When the RED ONE was announced they said(?) it would have "raw uncompressed Bayer data" and a RAW recording option, so are/were they not in love with RAW also?

My point was simply that with a RAW option you can improve the results up to the limit of the sensor quality. How could it be to the advantage of the RED company to hobble their cameras with compression and not show off the quality of their sensors RAW data to the best possible results?

 

[reality]

When the RED ONE was announced they said(?) it would have "raw uncompressed Bayer data" and a RAW recording option, so are/were they not in love with RAW also?

My point was simply that with a RAW option you can improve the results up to the limit of the sensor quality. How could it be to the advantage of the RED company to hobble their cameras with compression and not show off the quality of their sensors RAW data to the best possible results?

Have you ever shot 6 TB a day and tried to maintain 2 copies plus dailies?
There's a huge difference between science experiments and production viable. You seem to be stuck in the science experiment bubble.

 

[doondoon]

Have you ever shot 6 TB a day and tried to maintain 2 copies plus dailies?
There's a huge difference between science experiments and production viable. You seem to be stuck in the science experiment bubble.

For Special Effects or companies that have the $$ though it is a reality that some people need/want.

 

[I Bloom]

Are you talking REDCODE vs. Viper 4:2:2/ regular HDCAM or HDCAM-SR @ 420mega-bits per second or 880 mega-bits per second or what? Or direct to disk or what? So many ways to capture Viper.

I think that you are missing the point. Compression is helpful. It makes the format manageable. Red could easily offer uncompressed. They don't have to "go after it" they are already there if they want to be.

The fact that compressed Redcode is even competing with uncompressed 2K is amazing. Working with 2K uncompressed is a huge burden.

Red is smart to go the other way. They offer as much compression as you need to manage the footage and as the technology gets better they will offer less. Look forward to Redcode64 Redcode100 etc. The same great compression, just less of it.

IBloom

 

[Dan Hudgins]

6TB a day?

6TB a day?

Have you ever shot 6 TB a day and tried to maintain 2 copies plus dailies?
There's a huge difference between science experiments and production viable. You seem to be stuck in the science experiment bubble.

I do not think people using the ACAM dII will be shooting 1.5TB a day for the most part, and if true RAW is an option to get better images under difficult lighting then you are not forced to shoot true RAW for video applications.

How much footage does one need per day for feature shooting,

7sec*10takes*(800shots/20days)=2800sec*24fps=67200frames per day

4096*2304*1.5=14.2MB per frame.

67200*14.2=954240MB/day average

If you trim the takes after shooting and delete the bad takes you could get under maybe 500GB per day, if you cut closer you could get maybe 250GB per day.

40 finished shots per day is maybe too high for some productions.

Has RED said they are NEVER going to have the RAW port on the camera that they said they would have? Did they say their idea to have a RAW port was a "science experiment bubble"?

Are people who make an uncompressed DI from film scans in a "science experiment bubble"?

I thought this thread was about "more pixels (5K) compressed vs. uncompressed (2K-4K) as an option"?

Even areas of the image that get filtered out with compression can have low contrast detail, just because the detail is low contrast does not mean that there is no detail there.

If the RED company has already decided NEVER to offer a RAW port or true RAW recording option they could say so, and then people would know that they should not discus the merits of RAW recording here, perhaps.

DSLR cameras have RAW like file modes, users of those cameras must have some reason to use those modes over the more compressed modes, and they deal with the file size issues.

Not everyone using the RED cameras will be in a high volume video like workflow, some may want to have the best quality the sensor can deliver, and I would not resent them for dealing with the increased file volume to get those better results even if I was restricted to lesser results myself.

If you shoot true RAW at 2K or 3K the file volume is about half to a quarter, in keeping with the subject of less pixels and true RAW vs. more pixels and compression. At 2K 7sec*40shots*24fps=6720frames*3.6MB=24192MB or about 25GB per day if you trim heavily, or if you leave some room maybe 100GB per day.

People who shoot features on short ends can manage working with tight limits, I would not suggest that everyone shoot short ends, but people shoot 35mm sort ends rather than 16mm so that the end result on the screen can look better. Likewise people could shoot uncompressed within tight limits if they wanted to get better results if they wanted them, they would not be the majority of users, just as filmmakers working on feature films are a small minority of the RED ONE users, so the true RAW users would be a minority of a minority hence we can assume the decision by RED to let those users go to other cameras for that feature for now and to set aside their plans to offer a RAW port(?).

If you use lossless "compression" (data packing) then the file volume is about half maybe, its like making a zip file you get back 100% of the sensor data, so the data sizes do not NEED to be unmanageable and will become more manageable as time goes on...

I don't see why someone would want the RED company NOT to offer true RAW recording as an OPTION, unless...?

 

[Pawel Achtel]

I would choose 5k compressed using RedCode over uncompressed 2k any time and for any purpose as the compression artifacts are a lot smaller than alising artifacts of 2k. Not to mention 5k would have less noise (after downsample to equivalent 2k), higher MTF and better sharpness.

 

[Ariana]

7sec*10takes*(800shots/20days)=2800sec*24fps=67200frames per day

You've never been on a real movie shoot have you?

1 million feet of film is not that uncommon these days on large features.
Say half that for average features. That's about 2.5 hours per day or 216000 frames a day.

 

[reality]

216000 frames using Dan's math is about 3+TB a day.
For a large feature, that's 6+ TB/day.

There's a huge difference between 2k raw and 4k raw compressed. 4k raw compressed wins. I've shot lots of 2k uncompressed and I'm not going back to that hell. No thanks.

 

[Dan Hudgins]

The verdict is...

The verdict is...

216000 frames using Dan's math is about 3+TB a day.
For a large feature, that's 6+ TB/day.

There's a huge difference between 2k raw and 4k raw compressed. 4k raw compressed wins. I've shot lots of 2k uncompressed and I'm not going back to that hell. No thanks.

I think under some lighting conditions 2K or 3K uncompressed could look better than 4K or 5K with REDCODE, but those tests would need to be done to find out, and they might help improve REDCODE. If the 5K REDCODE has a higher bit rate, and they change the linear to log before compression then the artifact issues may diminish.

So the final verdict is make a 5K REDCODE camera and forget the RAW port, that seems to be what RED have decided anyway, without showing side by side examples under difficult lighting and letting others process the RAW data to see if it CAN be made to look better...

 

[Dj Joofa]

I don't see why someone would want the RED company NOT to offer true RAW recording as an OPTION, unless...?

Number of people asking for uncompressed might be low enough.

Red could easily offer uncompressed. They don't have to "go after it" they are already there if they want to be.

Hardware limitations. I don't think offering uncompressed at these rates is an easy thing. Red might be facing these hardware issues.

 

[Daniel Browning]

If... they change the linear to log before compression...

I'm almost certain they're already doing this, and I'm pretty sure Graeme mentioned it one time long ago. Even Nikon did this in their "lossy" (visually lossless) NEF compression.

 

[I Bloom]

Nobodies against the RAW port. It would be and awesome accessory. But the support hardware to record 4K RAW is tremendously costly in comparison to the camera. Even to Epic.

I think though at some point during the development of the the camera Jim Jannard mentioned no-one had actually put down a deposit on a raw port. Which I would guess is a big part of why they seem to be focusing elsewhere. It's not going to be profitable. Especially with competition from Arri/Dalsa in that department.

By the time 2K uncompressed is really practical for Red One's target market they will be offering a much higher resolution compressed image at the same bandwidth. You can't argue that that will not be much better and not look much better as well.

IBloom

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Precisely what we do with the compression is proprietary, and I'm not going to go down the route of explaining every little detail, but we didn't just say "this is how it's going to work, based upon theory", but we tested, iterated and figured out what actually worked best in practice. And then refined and improved with each firmware build.

The REDCODE compression has been key to the success of the RED One. From what I understand, although the raw port would have been lossless in image, it would have been very lossy in dollars.

Graeme

 

[JanneJansson]

If you compare the REDONE camera, software tools from red, REDCODE, workflow on mac in FCP, SDK, new firmware for camera etc... vs all else. The production value in $ is better that anything else. My opinion, REDONE is the best cam on this planet... see what happens when Epic and Scarlet arrive

 

[doondoon]

I think that you are missing the point. Compression is helpful. It makes the format manageable. Red could easily offer uncompressed. They don't have to "go after it" they are already there if they want to be.

The fact that compressed Redcode is even competing with uncompressed 2K is amazing. Working with 2K uncompressed is a huge burden.

Red is smart to go the other way. They offer as much compression as you need to manage the footage and as the technology gets better they will offer less. Look forward to Redcode64 Redcode100 etc. The same great compression, just less of it.

IBloom

I'm not missing the point... I understand just exactly what uncompressed means from shooting through posting.
What I'm saying is that uncompressed would be a great option for certain people.... and that I'd personally rather have the option to shoot uncompressed than to get an extra 1K of compressed resolution.
By the way I'm not knocking RED or the picture. I own own and love it.