R1 + ASC + ProRes4444 = recipe for success

[Neil W. Smith]

Take a RED ONE, add some ASC talent, sprinkle it with some ProRes4444, mix thoroughly with some DI magic and what do you have?

A very tasty movie!

We've just finished grading a lovely feature shot by ASC DP, Marvin Rush (him of S. Darko fame) .... the movie is called CHERRY and was shot in Michigan last fall .... ... the movie follows a shy young 17 year old boy who goes to an Ivy League college and gets involved with a older female student who also has a wild 14 year old daughter ... talk about an interesting love triangle ... see screen grabs below for beautiful autumn colors and the three main characters.

Marvin shot CHERRY on the RED ONE and the Director, Jeffrey Fine, took the movie through a QT pipeline for editorial but originally wanted to do the color correction in a traditional heavy-iron, high-cost based system .... we showed Jeffrey and Marvin the alternative Apple solution using Color and grading the .r3d RAW files directly and outputting to ProRes ..... they really were pleasantly surprised with the quality of the look and even more happier when they saw the deal we could provide by staying in an Apple based workflow for editorial, color correction and output.

We finished grading the movie last week and Marvin came in on Saturday to do the final tweaks .... if you know Marvin, you know he's a tough, no-nonsense DP ... when we finally explained that his movie had been finished in full RGB 444 using ProRes4444 he literally shook his head in amazement ... its always good to see a satisfied ASC DP with a big smile on his face

The combination or RED ONE + RED RAW + ProRes4444 is going to dramatically change the 'acquisition + workflow + output' equation I keep harking on about .... I really wish the ASC and BSC had been able to use this workflow when they did their camera tests ... they would have seen much better results for the RED ONE footage.

We've worked on many kinds of features but we're actually agnostic to the acquisition device used (just bring us your DPX scans or digital files and we'll get the most out of them) ... however, working closely with RED and Apple and Assimilate over the last three years we've seen an exponential improvement in the quality of the RAW images coming off the RED ONE coupled with a tremendous improvement in the debayering algorithm from Graeme and the color correction software from Apple and Assimilate.

Color 1.5 and ProRes4444 are now important parts of the digital revolution in filmmaking that RED has inspired ... the wide 10 bit color information provided within the small bandwidth requirements of the ProRes4444 codec is a testament to the engineering prowess of the folks in Cupertino ... now all we need is for Deanan to deliver the "... new QT encoding engine for Rocket that will be tuned for rocket's speed balanced for cpu and rocket ..." that he's promised and we'll have an unbeatable combination ... (see this thread for details: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=32642)

They are still finishing the audio on CHERRY and cutting the trailer - as soon as we can, we'll put out a QT sampler of the finished movie ... in the meantime, enjoy the splendor of CHERRY plus RED ONE plus ProRes4444 .... truly a tasty dish.

These screen grabs are all taken from the 10 bit RGB ProRes444 FCP 7 timeline, so obviously we're loosing something in the translation to compressed 8 bit .jpegs:

 

[Mike Harrington]

PAL users have to watch out using ProRes 4444

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2861

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Congrats to Neil and HDI. Now I wonder if we can get Apple to release a "reader only" client for ProRes 4444 that would provide a data based distribution format with the potential for wide adoption???

In any case, its about time Apple upgraded FCP - its not the full rewrite we've been hoping for but its a nice step.

Cheers- #19

 

[Neil W. Smith]

Congrats to Neil and HDI. Now I wonder if we can get Apple to release a "reader only" client for ProRes 4444 that would provide a data based distribution format with the potential for wide adoption???

In any case, its about time Apple upgraded FCP - its not the full rewrite we've been hoping for but its a nice step.

Cheers- #19

Thanks Blair .... and yes, a ProRes4444 reader would be very cool ... might have to wait for Snow Leopard for total re-write.

Have you tried the new codec? .... image quality is amazing.

Neil

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Installing new FCP Studio now, and can't wait to check out the new tools.

Neil, the stills look great. I'll stop by in a couple of months when I'm in LA.

 

[Kaku Ito]

Congratulation on the success,

i was wondering how ProRes4444 was manageable upon real Color Grading stage. We have output the uncompressed 444 and the Colorist at Imagica preferred over 10-bit uncompressed 422 (naturally), but I wonder how much compressed 4444 can rival uncompressed 444.

 

[Neil W. Smith]

RED RAW color correction ....

RED RAW color correction ....

Congratulation on the success,

i was wondering how ProRes4444 was manageable upon real Color Grading stage. We have output the uncompressed 444 and the Colorist at Imagica preferred over 10-bit uncompressed 422 (naturally), but I wonder how much compressed 4444 can rival uncompressed 444.

Thanks Kaku-san,

We don't actually color correct the ProRes4444 QuickTimes .... the beauty of using Apple Color (or Scratch) is that you can color correct the .r3d files directly ... this gives you access to the full range of 12 bit Linear color information captured by the RED ONE. Once we've graded the RED RAW files we render out to ProRes4444 which is a very efficient and visually lossless codec - great for display purposes and transporting around on Firewire drives or laying back to HDCAM-SR tape.

We've done some tests comparing uncompressed 10 bit RGB against 10 bit ProRes4444 and its visually impossible to tell the difference between the two.

We have a very accurately calibrated 2k DLP projector and a special non-perforated DI screen .... we can see every pixel clearly when standing up close ... even when looking carefully at very fine details such as hair or eyelashes you can't see a difference.

RedCode is a very efficient compressed recording codec ... Apple ProRes4444 is a very efficient compressed display and finishing codec ..... the secret to getting the most out of the RED ONE images is to directly grade the RED RAW images in a tightly calibrated DI environment with a skilled colorist .... then render out to your preferred file format .... this can be DPX files, ProRes or even H.264.

The power of ProRes4444 is that you can now output a full range RGB 444 image that doesn't take up acres of disk space.

Hope this helps.

Neil

 

[Noah Kadner]

What hard drives are you using for playout? The data rate of ProRes 4444 is pretty significant.

Noah

 

[Patrick Scheller]

Hey looks great Neil indeed. And I'm glad to hear the new FCP+Color is a real help. But when did you get to work with it? It just came out
:idea:

 

[Dominic Jones]

What hard drives are you using for playout? The data rate of ProRes 4444 is pretty significant.

Noah

Still well below most decent external drives (unless they're 90% full!) @ around 42MB/s.

For my money, the datarate of PR444 had been very sensibly selected - you should be able to play out a single track for layout to SR tape with no worries from anything above (and including) a LaCie d2 Quadra over FW800.

Nice...

Good to hear that workflow is so pleasing for you guys (and your clients!) - we haven't gone near Color yet, but perhaps now we will...

Cheers,
Dom.

 

[Neil W. Smith]

The power of an optimized post pipeline

The power of an optimized post pipeline

Hey looks great Neil indeed. And I'm glad to hear the new FCP+Color is a real help. But when did you get to work with it? It just came out
:idea:

Sorry Patrick, but if I told you that I'd have to shoot you ;-)

As I've mentioned before, we've been working closely with RED, Assimilate and Apple for nearly three years now on developing an optimized workflow for getting the most out of RED RAW.

When we projected the very first RED images up on our screen to grade for IBC 06 (each frame was 76 mg TIFFS in those good old days) my jaw dropped ... I stood in awe next to Jim and Ted and all I could mutter was .... "workflow, workflow, what about the workflow?" .... Jim just laughed and said something along the lines of ... "We'll take care of the camera and the rest will take care of itself" ... how right he was.

We've come a long way in three years .... experienced DPs have gone from being skeptical and cynical to shooting great looking RED movies ... software vendors have endorsed Red Code and built great plug-ins around the architecture .... and some of us lucky guys in post have found ways to squeeze every ounce of goodness out of RED RAW.

The combination of the RED ONE camera with RED RAW and desktop tools like FCP 7 and Color 1.5 are rapidly changing the filmmaking process.

CHERRY was the first feature to be graded in Apple Color 1.5 and rendered out to ProRes4444 .... looks stunning .... but more is yet to come ... we are in the middle of grading another feature that has been accepted into the Toronto Film Festival (can't mention details just yet) .... the Director/DP is very experienced and totally fanatical about the look of his movie ... originally he was going to take his movie to a more traditional heavy-iron based post-house but when we showed him what our colorist could do with his RAW images in Apple Color and how we much detail and nuance we could extract from his .r3ds he had no doubts about which was the best way to go ... more details to come shortly.

FCS 3 ($999) in the hands of a talented colorist combined with a $100,000 DLP projector and $18,000 spectroradiometer is the way to go .... if you have trouble funding the projector and color management part of the equation, give us a call ... we'll give you a great deal and you'll end up with amazing looking RED footage.

Cheers,
Neil