1080p... Not a loser!

[Rocco Schult]

I agree. 720p? Bah! Gone in a couple years! 1080p? Ummm, I have several of those clients...

We MUST know what the time requirements of RedCine are on a decent computer system or it's all speculation.

YES and
YES.

please. Give us some time estimates.

 

[Häakon]

Hi, Mike. Nice to have you chime in! Just a couple responses to your main points:

1.) OK everybody, DON'T decide from the math or your gut - lets look at some actual frames to get what the difference is, and THEN decide from there if possible.

I'm sure most would agree with you that viewing actual frames is the only way to make an informed decision. Unfortunately, Jim is asking our opinion about features that may or may not be removed from the camera before it ships - and we most likely won't have a lot of data to play with until LART. By then, it will be too late. So we're just hypothesizing on the information that we do have available to us, trying to make as best an informed decision as possible before the camera is released. There's no question, however, that footage from the RED team would be unbelievably helpful.

2.) 720p and 1080p are CRUCIAL to maintain in camera. Broad acceptance will hinge on being able to quickly and easily work with industry standard formats as much as possible

This has been discussed ad nauseum, and I think there are very good arguments on both sides. Even if the camera doesn't end up offering internal scaling to RGB, it certainly doesn't mean you can't get a 720p deliverable from your 2K/4K sources after a transcode. As someone else pointed out, a REDCODE RGB file may be completely useless to a client right now anyway (meaning a transcode will be necessary regardless). Redquick will help for viewing, which should solve a lot of that problem.

Others have addressed the cropping issue, which (like a lot of things) is still not clarified, so that may or may not be something we have to deal with. If 2K truly isn't 16:9, I would have to agree that shooting windowed becomes an even less compelling option than it already is for me - but I also have to think that it is a typo, and that they wouldn't offer it in a different aspect than every other format in the camera.

3.) Even in present circumstances, 2Kx1080 isn't broadly supported. Cutting 720p/1080p would be a HUGE mistake in my opinion, if only to gain another 25% frame rate gain at an improved resolution.

2K is windowed and 1080p is oversampled from the 4K image... with only a 6% difference between the two formats in terms of overall area, you may find that the 1080p image actually has a better picture. (Less pixels, sure, but more pixels doesn't inherently mean more resolution. I can blow up a 20x20 .jpg to 10MP, and obviously a native 8MP image is going to look better.) Again, we don't really know what the difference will look like - how good the internal scaler is, for instance - but I think there is a misconception that 2K is higher resolution (on paper) than 1080p, so it must be superior. I'm feeling that's probably not the case.

Jim has stated previously that RGB options would not be first available when the camera ships... perhaps they're just getting to working that out now? Maybe it's taking more processing power/FCPGA space than was first expected and it would be advantageous to save that room space for other things - hence the proposal to just drop the RGB formats altogether? Hadn't really thought of that before, but anything's a possibility. I'm hoping the final decision will leave us with the most efficient camera we can get without having to sacrifice options we may need. That may or may not include the RGB formats, depending on what other news comes down the pipeline.

Still, with (a tentative!) 28 days until the camera ships... I would think things will have to get hammered out pretty shortly...

 

[REDHKSC]

Imagine all the people " Living Life in PEACE "

Imagine there 's no formats

It's easy if yu try....

NO Fights below us, and above us only " RED "

Cheers,

STEWART

 

[stephenlnoe]

Which one of these threads took over the first one?

 

[Stephen Webb]

Doesn't both Scratch Assimilate and Final Cut Studio (or in future releases) allow for editing of Redcode natively? If so then yes you could shoot 720 or 1080p and hand directly to the client if they used either setup.

You could, but there'd be no point. You can just as easily deliver it to your client as 2K or 4K REDCODE RAW - they'll have to transcode it for output anyway (either to tape or for broadcast) and it seems having it in RGB 1080 or 720 won't have any significant advantage timewise.

 

[MikeCurtis]

Paul - my bad! 2Kx1152 is the correct number, I've been fooling around with DCI spec 2Kx1080 over the past several days and that was stuck in my brain. While Scratch and FCP 6.x future version will work with native footage, if you look at the industry overall that is only a small percentage of the market - while future NLE's and post software will hopefully support Red as it (hopefully) becomes an industry standard and (expectantly) a powerhouse, for now, we gots what we gots.

And 2Kxanything is very much a minority format. Gimme 1920x1080 any day of the week - EVERYBODY can handle that.

But newfangled codec at newfangled size? I see that as a potential barrier to native NLE adoption and client acceptance. YES we can and will convert with Redcode, but 1080pRGB is going to be good enough for a lot of folks a lot of the time and they are going to want it for convenience/turnaround reasons...even once native NLE support is here. Think 2 years down the road - I think greater utility will come from 1080p record than from an extra bit of 2K fps. Slo-mo/high speed is an edge case usage to start with. A nifty/sexy one, but an edge case.

-mike

-mike

 

[MikeCurtis]

Haakon - thanks for the detailed response, and ignore my bad math/errors. My bad.

But 61-96 fps @ 2K is an edge case. 720p from 2K RAW at up to 120 fps is also an edge case, arguably a superior one.

1080p in camera for native NLE support is not.

IMHO.

There! I finally said something briefly.

: )

-mike

 

[PaulClements]

I think the whole subject is based around awkward clients. Everyone has them and knows exactly what I mean.

There'll be a guy who wants 1080p. Say's to you, why are you using a 4k camera, I only want 1080p, you tell him it'll be scaled using RedCine, he says fine, but I'm not paying for your time to do that when I could hire someone with a 1080p camera to shoot it. Ugh.

Perhaps that means that all those people who want 1080p know all to well about uneducated clients or perhaps they are simply lazy, perhaps either isn't justification for keeping it on the camera.

Maybe Stuart and Jim ought to put us out of our misery and just choose what they are going with. 2k96fps probably makes more sense in the long haul I guess, ditch RGB altogether, though I do believe this opens up a gap for Sony and co. to come along with a "more versatile, modular camera" ugh.

 

[Simon Blackledge]

perhaps 1080 will come along with the red-mini ?

 

[Poi Boy]

I don't see how it could be any more versatile than shoot 4kraw and output any format that exists. That is the holy grail !
Aloha
-A

 

[Poi Boy]

Haakon - thanks for the detailed response, and ignore my bad math/errors. My bad.

But 61-96 fps @ 2K is an edge case. 720p from 2K RAW at up to 120 fps is also an edge case, arguably a superior one.

1080p in camera for native NLE support is not.

IMHO.

There! I finally said something briefly.

: )

-mike

720 @120 is windowed rgb and I would bet not as good as 2k96 raw.
-A

 

[Costelloe Michael]

Poi Boy,

So you're keen on 2k @ 96?

Still? ; )

 

[Michael Ragen]

Can we assume that a 2k raw frame at 7MB/sec will look exactly like a 2k crop taken out of one of the posted 4k Redcode Raw 27MB/sec samples? Of course disregarding the added Jpeg compression for web posting.

 

[Poi Boy]

Poi Boy,

So you're keen on 2k @ 96?

Still? ; )

For my use I don't hand off footage right after a shoot so I don't really have any use for 720 or 1080 in camera. I will shoot 4kraw and output whatever the project requires. as for 2k96, yes I prefer that to 720@120.
Aloha
-A

 

[SalaTar]

I havnt seen this question asked yet but...
Could RED just alllow you to load the settings you want on camera from a laptop.
Make a Place on RED users could log into and get latest "firmware" for the setting you need for the shoot and "flash" the camera.
Also in this area you could make a "custom settings" from users that could be loaded to the camera, adding nice presets...

May be off my rocker but seems that it could work ..in time

 

[Peter McCully]

For my use I don't hand off footage right after a shoot so I don't really have any use for 720 or 1080 in camera. I will shoot 4kraw and output whatever the project requires. as for 2k96, yes I prefer that to 720@120.
Aloha
-A

I'm tending to go with that side too. If it's a cinema camera, let's use it like that. A digital negative that can be divied up as required - for iPhone if it comes to it! But what we are capturing is a high quality, pristine, CINEMA image.

 

[Steven Parker]

I don't see how it could be any more versatile than shoot 4kraw and output any format that exists. That is the holy grail !
Aloha
-A

It is indeed the holy grail. I LOVE 4K-to-anything. But the time, man, the time! We don't know how much time 4K-to-anything will take... there's a real potential for losing a few bread&butter clients if it takes too long or is somehow off-putting to them...

I don't know anymore. Scaled vs cropped, RGB vs RAW, 1080@60 vs 2K@96... my brain is down-rezzing - I think I'm working off 1K of proxy synapses!:wacko:

 

[Poi Boy]

I'm not sure how long it will take but no matter what flavor you shoot you have to do some converting. I don't think it will be that long and for sure the quality will be worth the wait , clients will see that.
For those that don't, keep your hvx handy.
Aloha
-A

 

[Casey Green]

For my use I don't hand off footage right after a shoot so I don't really have any use for 720 or 1080 in camera. I will shoot 4kraw and output whatever the project requires. as for 2k96, yes I prefer that to 720@120...

...I'm not sure how long it will take but no matter what flavor you shoot you have to do some converting. I don't think it will be that long and for sure the quality will be worth the wait , clients will see that.
For those that don't, keep your hvx handy.
Aloha
-A

This is a good argument for you and if the RED was built solely for the Feature Film Market, but that is not the case as is mentioned once again from Jim today:

We are not trying to exclude the ENG shooter. We have a B4 adaptor to PL mount (although we do not have many orders for that accessory yet), along with a B4 connector on the right side of the camera. We have successfully tested that the run/stop on a B4 lens does in fact... start recording. And the B4 adaptor enlarges the image to 2K size. It does quite a good job.

So one fact to begin with is that a B4 lens is native to 2K in our camera and not 1080P.

There is no data rate saving shooting 1080P RGB over 2K REDCODE RAW, while there is a considerable difference in image quality and "elasticity" of the images.

One little known fact is with REDQUICK (our mini app) you can instantly put a Quicktime wrapper on REDCODE RAW files to immediately view as a Quicktime movie. There is no transcode time to do this. It is truly instantaneous.

We fully acknowledge the importance of ENG uses of RED ONE. We just want to make sure we deliver what is needed, not just what is asked for.

This is a healthy discussion that we are watching closely.

-Jim

I believe you have stated your reasons from your perspective very well. But that does not mean there are other viewpoints from other types of business models that are not valid here.

Personally, I fall in the middle. Some productions I would want to have the quick turn around, and full Sensor Area, and am in that camp, and for other projects, I would love to increase the 2K and 4K capabilities.

That is why I am still asking about what is possible with Firmware changes by the end user. If this is not possible, I'll have to think about it some more...

Please, RED, let us know if this is possible? :blink:

 

[Paul Hazlett]

I don't see how it could be any more versatile than shoot 4kraw and output any format that exists. That is the holy grail !
Aloha
-A

Some clients, the bread and butter ones, are now going to be asked to do
color correction as well from shot to shot....tick tick tick...I know for a fact that the majority of broadcast does not have a heavy wieight cc process.
not all, but most.