Redspace or Rec709 for export to Pro res

[Scott Brown]

Hi Folks

I'm just about to start transcoding a batch of Red footage into Pro Res. I plan to use Red Alert for a basic 1st light grade and then use Red Rushes to batch encode the clips.

I'm a little confused however on two settings - Colour Space and Output LUT/Gamma Space.

I shot using Redspace but am I correct in thinking that I should adjust the settings to Camera RGB for Colour Space and Rec 709 for Gamma Space? The footage is for a HD documentary so I'm thinking that I should really be using Rec 709?

Help? I don't want to start transcoding hours of footage, only to select the wrong settings!!!hmy:

Best wishes

Scott

 

[jimhare]

Is the transcode for offline or final master?

If it's for master, and you plan to do a final grade, keep in mind that prores throws away a lot of the color information and many have said it leaves you limited options in grading.

If you have the drive space and speed, you might want to consider uncompressed.

But anyway, this doesn't help with your color space question. I'd like to see a good answer as well!

 

[Scott Brown]

We have quite a quick turnaround on this, so ideally I'd like to transcode to a format that will "suffice" for our online if we run short on time and cannot do a full uncompresed online via Crimson.

From my research so far it would appear that a half debayer export to Pro Res 1920 x 1080 should give us this option, however I'm struggling a little with some of the settings in Red Alert and Red Rushes. We NEED some proper information from Red on getting the best out of these software packages, having to spend hours trawling the internet for information is a pain!!

I still need to work out whether we stick with Redspace or whether we go out to Rec 709, so if anyone can assist it would be really appreciated.

Best wishes

Scott

 

[M Most]

We have quite a quick turnaround on this, so ideally I'd like to transcode to a format that will "suffice" for our online if we run short on time and cannot do a full uncompresed online via Crimson.

If you're planning to do a full color correction after that online, Rec709 is probably a better choice because it will retain more of the "extreme" information in the original image. If you're talking about a quick finish with minimal color color correction (if any), then Redspace is what you want because it gives you an image that is much closer to a "final" look, based on the original exposure, but with the caveat that some white or black detail might be lost.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I've been finding that I lean towards Camera RGB for Colorspace and REC709 Gamma for an HD finish. Sometimes I'll use Redspace Colorspace but you do lose some highlight info with the Redspace gamma. I try to get the image in Red Alert or Redcine looking pretty good in terms of contrast and saturation, using a combination of curves, exposure, saturation and white balance. Try not to overcommit to a look in these apps. Leave yourself some room for grading later on, unless you are going to have very little time to do any grading. Then Mike might be right, maybe Redspace is an option for that scenario. I have found that REC709 colorspace doesn't do it for me. Tends to be overly saturated or have color shifts. Camera RGB with some tweaks does it a lot of times for me.

 

[M Most]

I've been finding that I lean towards Camera RGB for Colorspace and REC709 Gamma for an HD finish. Sometimes I'll use Redspace Colorspace but you do lose some highlight info with the Redspace gamma. I try to get the image in Red Alert or Redcine looking pretty good in terms of contrast and saturation, using a combination of curves, exposure, saturation and white balance. Try not to overcommit to a look in these apps. Leave yourself some room for grading later on, unless you are going to have very little time to do any grading. Then Mike might be right, maybe Redspace is an option for that scenario. I have found that REC709 colorspace doesn't do it for me. Tends to be overly saturated or have color shifts. Camera RGB with some tweaks does it a lot of times for me.

I should add that my comments about Rec 709 and Redspace were referring to the gamma curves. I would always recommend using either Redspace or Camera RGB for colorspace. I tend to prefer Redspace for colorspace these days because it gives a bit of a needed saturation boost.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I should add that my comments about Rec 709 and Redspace were referring to the gamma curves. I would always recommend using either Redspace or Camera RGB for colorspace. I tend to prefer Redspace for colorspace these days because it gives a bit of a needed saturation boost.

Exactly. I have seen some people using REC709 colorspace and wondering why the colors seem off. I'm still not exactly sure why this happens, but needless to say, I've gone with what looks best to me and that has been Camera RGB with boosting saturation manually to taste or with Redspace which gets me closer sometimes right off the bat with minimal tweaks. But for gamma, REC709 most of the time.

 

[Nook Kim]

Isn't it that one "must" use the Rec 709 "gamma" if going for HD delivery?

...or am I correct saying that it doesn't matter what gamma one uses as long as the preview (grading) monitor is set up with Rec 709 gamma?

Hope to see more experts jump in this thread.

 

[Deanan]

Isn't it that one "must" use the Rec 709 "gamma" if going for HD delivery?

...or am I correct saying that it doesn't matter what gamma one uses as long as the preview (grading) monitor is set up with Rec 709 gamma?

Hope to see more experts jump in this thread.

REDspace is complimentary to REC709 so you'd use it wherever you'd use REC709.

 

[Nook Kim]

Deanan -

I don't know about others, but for me, I tend to use Redspace IF the picture looks good all around when I open in RA judging by the histogram. But if there's some information that's been clipped, switching to Rec709 seems to recover the last bit of data that I want.

Any objections?

 

[Meryem Ersoz]

REDspace is complimentary to REC709 so you'd use it wherever you'd use REC709.

so are you saying that the Redspace values are appropriate for HD/SD broadcast?

(I just need to hear a resounding "yes" on this, and I'll be satisfied...been using REC709 for broadcast, but if Redspace implements broadcast-appropriate values as well, I would like to know it beyond the shadow of a doubt...)

 

[Deanan]

Deanan -

I don't know about others, but for me, I tend to use Redspace IF the picture looks good all around when I open in RA judging by the histogram. But if there's some information that's been clipped, switching to Rec709 seems to recover the last bit of data that I want.

Any objections?

If you're happy with the way REDspace looks, then I'd drop the exposure knob down a notch or two.

REDspace gamma is very close to REC709 gamma for where it clips. Adjusting it down about .1 on exposure makes it about the same.

 

[Nook Kim]

Okay, I will follow your advice on that. Then, let me ask you this: When would "you" use other colorspaces and gammas? I'm just trying to get as much info as I can from you while you're paying attention to this thread. Of course, I greatly appreciate your time here.

 

[Scott Brown]

Thanks for all the feedback, it has been much appreciated and very helpful.

OK, here's where I'm at with this....

I've got my workflow kind of sorted...started off just going straight out through Red Rushes without any colour correction, however the footage just looked so flat that I started to do some initial light CC in Red Alert, mostly upping the saturation, adding a little brightness and contrast where needed. Still not sure what the difference is between adjusting the Exposure and the Brightness is....results to my eyes looked almost identical but it would be good to hear a definitive scientific answer to this. On shots that are too dark are we better adjusting Brightness or Exposure or perhaps a combination of both??

I shot my footage using Redspace and I have stuck with this in Red Alert, using this for both Colour Space and for Gamma Space, I've used Mild, Mild and Medium for the Chroma, Debayer and OLPF settings.

The resulting transcoded Pro Res clips look really nice and could almost go to broadcast without CC if we had time restrictions....which we do on this project.

In Red Rushes I opted for the Lanczos resampling filter as I felt the other were a little too soft for my liking, however I've been shooting on the F900 and F750 for the past few years so my eyes are used to seeing "SHARP" HD and will need time to readjust to the different look of Red footage.

HOWEVER....I have run into a problem in Red Rushes and I suspect that it is entirely my own fault and I'm just being plain stupid, but I have had problems with all my clips over 2GB in size...they did not render out!! Everything under 2GB was perfect so I'm wondering, do you have to import ALL the R3D files from a given clip for Red Rushes to properly render this out? I only imported the first R3D clip so I think this may be where I went wrong. :help:

Can anyone come to my rescue?

Best wishes

Scott

 

[Deanan]

HOWEVER....I have run into a problem in Red Rushes and I suspect that it is entirely my own fault and I'm just being plain stupid, but I have had problems with all my clips over 2GB in size...they did not render out!! Everything under 2GB was perfect so I'm wondering, do you have to import ALL the R3D files from a given clip for Red Rushes to properly render this out? I only imported the first R3D clip so I think this may be where I went wrong. :help:
Scott

You only need to load the first R3D in a clip sequence. RR takes care of the rest.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Thanks for all the feedback, it has been much appreciated and very helpful.

OK, here's where I'm at with this....

I've got my workflow kind of sorted...started off just going straight out through Red Rushes without any colour correction, however the footage just looked so flat that I started to do some initial light CC in Red Alert, mostly upping the saturation, adding a little brightness and contrast where needed. Still not sure what the difference is between adjusting the Exposure and the Brightness is....results to my eyes looked almost identical but it would be good to hear a definitive scientific answer to this. On shots that are too dark are we better adjusting Brightness or Exposure or perhaps a combination of both??

I shot my footage using Redspace and I have stuck with this in Red Alert, using this for both Colour Space and for Gamma Space, I've used Mild, Mild and Medium for the Chroma, Debayer and OLPF settings.

The resulting transcoded Pro Res clips look really nice and could almost go to broadcast without CC if we had time restrictions....which we do on this project.

In Red Rushes I opted for the Lanczos resampling filter as I felt the other were a little too soft for my liking, however I've been shooting on the F900 and F750 for the past few years so my eyes are used to seeing "SHARP" HD and will need time to readjust to the different look of Red footage.

HOWEVER....I have run into a problem in Red Rushes and I suspect that it is entirely my own fault and I'm just being plain stupid, but I have had problems with all my clips over 2GB in size...they did not render out!! Everything under 2GB was perfect so I'm wondering, do you have to import ALL the R3D files from a given clip for Red Rushes to properly render this out? I only imported the first R3D clip so I think this may be where I went wrong. :help:

Can anyone come to my rescue?

Best wishes

Scott

Oversharpening is still there if you ever need it.

Are the drives you are rendering to limited to certain file size chunks. Some drive formats will only allow you to create file sizes of 2GB or less.

 

[Scott Brown]

Hi Steve

Spoke to Red last night about this and I think there may be some issue with the fact that I'm transcoding the R3D's on one system and then outputting the Pro Res footage via our network to another Raid on our second FCP suite.

I'm doing some tests right now nad will let you know what we discover.

Best wishes

Scott

 

[JanneJansson]

Hi Steve

Spoke to Red last night about this and I think there may be some issue with the fact that I'm transcoding the R3D's on one system and then outputting the Pro Res footage via our network to another Raid on our second FCP suite.

There have always been issues with outputting from FCP over network. If it fails, then try output to local folder, them move over network. Don't know why, but FCP can behave strangely with mixed filesystems (also network filesystems).

Despite that apple make AFS, I have better luck and better speed with NFS.

Cheers

 

[Johan Pabon]

sharpening / oversharpening

sharpening / oversharpening

Oversharpening is still there if you ever need it.

Hi Steve,

I'm running tests with also the purpose to deliver on DVD. Out of Redcine into Prores I was not happy with the sharpess. So I went to uncompressed which looks better and now I test on the filters.
What amount of sharpening do you find good? What kind of filter do you use on the output?

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Even with all of the filtering that takes place in Redcine you might find the video still doesn't look as sharp as we're used to seeing with typical video cameras. I would get it to the point where it's as sharp as you can get it coming out of Redcine without artifacts. Then take it into After Effects or similar high quality apps and apply some sharpening. The key thing when downsampling these 4K Red files is to make sure that you find a good balance between sharpness and anti-aliasing. This might require some experimentation with the content you are downconverting to see what fits your tastes. I might start with the following settings in Redcine.

Sharpen - 50%
Detail - High
NR - Off
Filter - Sinc

The NR filter you can try with it enabled and see what it gets you. It will depend on your source material.

If the rendered footage still lacks sharpness you need, then go to the following combo

Sharpness - 100%
Detail - High
NR - off
Filter - Lanczos

The Shake manual has a section that describes the filters and what situations they are good for.

I think I would opt for creating a nice looking image out of Redcine (even if it's a tad bit "soft") and then after your piece is edited, master your SD version in After Effects applying sharpening and scaling. It should give you clean results.