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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Uncompressed vs REDCODE

J

Jonas Drehn-Knudsen

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Dear Jim and the RED team.

Since the original thread from Jim regarding this is closed, I post a new one.

I'm sad to read this statement from you :

"Peter Jackson and his team couldn't tell the difference with a RED ONE, in fact... guessed wrong. People here think that the Milk Girls footage was uncompressed. It was REDCODE. There were many things along the way that changed in a RED ONE that caused image issues, but REDCODE was not one of them. REDCODE had to change to compensate for other things in the chain."

This might be true - BUT I think it's very important to the future success of RED to understand why people are talking about Uncompressed. Because the current RED cameras has for sure some compression issues! And acting like REDCODE is perfect is just so wrong.

The hype about RED is less than 2 years ago and being at the end of the chain doing high-end commercial and features grading (with almost 50% shot on RED) I can feel that people start turning away from RED and I understand why.

I have seen some really compressed looking images - and the last 3 feature film camera-tests I have done, the DOP's has chosen to go for 16mm & D21 instead ... only because of this. Specially low light and low exposure images has these problems.

I think it's wrong to offer people uncompressed - the success of RED is the easy workflow and file handling - BUT you need to listen to this, and understand the reason for these requirements instead of offering some silly very expensive box. Hopefully you already had and this thread is not necessary - I'm really hoping to see virtually lossless images in the next camera releases so we want see compression with our eyes.

If you disagree I like to post some stills where you can really see what I'm talking about.

Happy New Year - Hope for 2009 being the year all this changes.

Jonas Drehn
Duckling A/S
www.duckling.dk
 
The statement is pretty old, but yes, in the Milk Girls footage its hard to see any compression going on.

For chromakeying, the compression becomes a problem. And Im sure you got plenty of stills showing the problem, because I've encountered it aswell (as will most people).But Red already stated that Epic will have something closer to a 3:1 compression instead of the current 9(or something):1 as Red currently have. Red are working with what they can, and I think Reds success has mainly been that they indeed delivered a compressed format as RedCode. For most people handling 300MB/s instead of 30MB/s is unrealistic.

But I think uncompressed is the wrong way to go. A 3:1 compression would infact be enough. And higher resolution with compression will still look better than lower resolution uncompressed. So the future is looking better than ever, so don't be sad Jonas.. Red One was the first step, and I believe 100% that Red is taking the future in the right direction. Uncompressed is not really the future in my eyes.
 
Hi Peter,

If you're right about that they're aiming around a 3:1 compression, this sounds brilliant. We use HDCAM SR all the time, and this is also compressed 4:1 but it's both a very good compression and visually lossless. The Milk footage and alot of other stuff we have been working on looks really good, while other footage looks really bad - and that is the issue.

I'll never vote for uncompressed, I just hope for everybody that next released is a big improvement on this. And hopefully there will be a update to all the RED one cameras out there - so we'll get better footage.

Peter Karlsson said:
The statement is pretty old, but yes, in the Milk Girls footage its hard to see any compression going on.

For chromakeying, the compression becomes a problem. And Im sure you got plenty of stills showing the problem, because I've encountered it aswell (as will most people).But Red already stated that Epic will have something closer to a 3:1 compression instead of the current 9(or something):1 as Red currently have. Red are working with what they can, and I think Reds success has mainly been that they indeed delivered a compressed format as RedCode. For most people handling 300MB/s instead of 30MB/s is unrealistic.

But I think uncompressed is the wrong way to go. A 3:1 compression would infact be enough. And higher resolution with compression will still look better than lower resolution uncompressed. So the future is looking better than ever, so don't be sad Jonas.. Red One was the first step, and I believe 100% that Red is taking the future in the right direction. Uncompressed is not really the future in my eyes.
Click to expand...
 
Uncompressed

Uncompressed

Jim has already stated here that RED would offer an uncompressed solution, with accompanying recorder, PROVIDED enough people put down a deposit.

The next generation of cameras will also include much higher data rate / lower compression ratio options within REDCODE. Also, compression is only one part of the camera's image processing chain; improvements have been and will continue to be made across the board - for RED ONE and the new cameras.
 
Mmm it will interesting to see how many would put down a deposit on something that can record uncompressed 28K in 30fps or even 6K at a 100fps.. I guess it will cost a bizillion dollars, and record 10 seconds until it chockes on itself :)
 
REDCODE is under continual development and improvement.

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
REDCODE is under continual development and improvement.

Graeme
Click to expand...

Graeme - what advances have been made to Redcode since build 16? That was the last time there was any noticeable improvement. Can you foresee any visually significant improvements coming to the codec for the Red One (RC 28 & 36) this year?
Thanks.
 
Fresh out of crystal balls, I'm afraid.

Graeme
 
I'm lost - If Redcode's under continual improvement - why can't you describe how it's improved since build 16, or may improve into this year? I'm wondering if the great hope for people who aren't satisfied lies in Epic.
 
Hummm...
 
Mark Pugh said:
I'm lost - If Redcode's under continual improvement - why can't you describe how it's improved since build 16, or may improve into this year? I'm wondering if the great hope for people who aren't satisfied lies in Epic.
Click to expand...

REDCODE (and everything else) is under continual improvement. We aren't going to talk about every detail along the way for a few reasons. We'll keep you posted on major advancements.

If there is any question that things are constantly improving, just check the difference between Build 1 and Build 18. But we aren't telling you every detail of what we are doing and why.

Jim
 
Dear RED team,

I think it's all fine of Jonas to bring this up. He's not suggesting that you should consider uncompressed. He's merely saying that RED has a great market in his business (one of Scandinavia's most prestigious and biggest post houses). That your cameras are involved in Scandinavia's high end market, but is now declining slightly because of this.

I've encountered these compression problems many times and is learning how to work around it, but knows that many productions will not take the risk after being burnt ones. With me there's no problem since they know my background and can see many successful RED commercials on my reel.

BUT if I was to shoot for example green screen and it's a little more elaborate in it's lighting then straight forward (still talking about well lit green but around it). Well then I wouldn't shoot RED Code because of it's compression. I've had a 2 mayor green screen shoots were we had a lot of "cleaning" up to do.

(PS I now know how to shoot RED Code green screen successfully but it would undermine my creativity).

So I agree with Jonas that just like me seems to like your camera and the look of it (I've actually grown into liking it more then film). That just bare this in mind when you're working on it for the future.

The 2 achilles heels right now, IMHO, are rolling shutter issues (strobe and skew) and compression when it comes to post production. Strobe and compression being the biggest thorns in my side.


regards,

Fredrik Callinggard
 
I'm actually really excited about the higher data rate cameras. i'm sure RECODE will continue to grow and improve as writing mediums become faster and better. SSD benchmarks are still something we haven't seen....
 
Mark Pugh said:
Graeme - what advances have been made to Redcode since build 16? That was the last time there was any noticeable improvement. Can you foresee any visually significant improvements coming to the codec for the Red One (RC 28 & 36) this year?
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Graeme Nattress said:
Fresh out of crystal balls, I'm afraid.

Graeme
Click to expand...


"OF COURSE!Thats how hey do it... they use crystal balls! . the answer is so obvious ."
 
"If you disagree I like to post some stills where you can really see what I'm talking about."


I would really like to see some stills of the codec noise (which I've never seen) from anyone who has them. Also some detail about how the images were taken (lighting, color temperature(s), ISO, histogram, etc.).

What is the proposed compression ratio of the new Scarlet FF35?
 
Are we talking specifically about the compression as it exists on the original R3D file or in the implementation of the various debayering methods? In other words, are you certain that all of the artifacts you are seeing are in fact compression of the RAW signal or could some of them be attributed to the process of changing those RAW images into RGB? I would like to see specific comparisons you might have between original R3D files and the debayered, transcoded files.

Redcode is not perfect, but it has improved quite a bit. It should be no surprise that RED has learned a lot over the past couple of years, but let's not underestimate how well they did right out of the gate either. Redcode is quite impressive for a first attempt.

Jonas, I respect your work and therefore my asking for examples is merely to help build a lot of reference data to help educate people about shooting with Red and to possibly help RED identify some real world challenges to the codec. Anything you can provide to help that cause I'm sure will greatly be appreciated by the community.

Thanks!
 
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