240 fps in 2K

[MikeCurtis]

I took a deep breath and was about to write a long, screedy post....and Jeff Kilgroe pretty much wrote it for me.

So, what Jeff said.

Let me also add, for those that want 4K 60p, RAW port was to be uncompressed at that speed, and as Jeff hinted, Red has been somewhat mum on that subject for some time. We have 60p, onboard, at 3K. Good enough for now, use your PL35 lenses and you've cropped out the worst performing part of the glass, and should be good for at least circa 2K of "for real" optical resolved resolution (in terms of resolved line pairs, yadda yadda). Considering theatrical distribution is 800-1000 resolved line pairs delivered at best in most circumstances on film, and HDTV is 1080 pixels tall, unless you're planning drastic repo/pan&scan I'd say that's Good Enough.

As for 60p high res markets, it took so much work to get the current 720p and 1080i specs nailed and out, 60p would be a big push beyond. We'd need ubiquitous hardware support, then only a cable/sattelite provider could do it to the home for broadcast, or some newer/future Blu-ray spec (as someone mentioned).

PeterM - I respectfully disagree with your comments about Redcode56, that would actually be going in the less helpful direction. RC28 is circa 28MB/sec worst case scenario, RC36 about 36 MB/sec. Why would a HIGHER data rate help? That is going in the wrong direction if you want to record high frame rates onboard.

If you want high speed, Viper and Dalsa are not, I feel, The Answer. Dalsa DOES shoot 4K at up to 50fps, and that's great. I love how it handles blooming highlights - VERRRRRRY nice, one of their best attributes. I am not ultra loving highlight rolloff on my Red so far. Perhaps build 16 and more tweaking in post will improve that circumstance. I am unclear as to what frame rate is recordable on Codex - CAN it max out all the way to 50fps in 4K? Somebody chime in who knows.

Viper, however, shoots 1080i60, not 1080p60 - so you lose half your vertical resolution (we're processing a shot for a feature that way right now - Viper 60i to 60p conformed to 24p). For high speed, the Phantom cameras are great. The image is not great - LOTS of ways to make artifacts, beware banding, etc. - but shoot 1000 fps and deliver 1920x1080 - ROCK. The Phantom65 (shipping? dunno) was slated to do 4K at some hundreds of fps, but I don't recall how many off the top of my head.

"Movies" are still shooting at 24fps, and will for a while. I could see a market for "experiential" viewing - ride shows, etc. - at higher fps, and 3K@60p would be a decent place to start for that. Late and tired - anybody remember what the max fps is for the DCI spec? It is probably in my DCS notes from NAB of last few years, too lazy to check right now.

But my gut says we'll see Red Two (or a major Red One upgrade/mod) before that kind of thing goes mainstream.

My $0.02, feel free to disagree.

-mike

PS - oh, and if you wanted to do 60p, not only is it 2.5x the storage, and 2.5x the amount of rendering, but your system needs to be 2.5x faster to play it back in realtime. Considering how much CPU smashin' we're doing with 24p Redcode now, that is a pretty tall order (this year, anyway).

 

[Axel Mertes]

Hi All,

some my have missed my thread on a custom mode, which is very helpful to read to understand the limits of the RED camera:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=10333

Maybe you would be interested in such a "flexible" custom mode too. If yes, post there and ask for it as a group.

I still hope for 60p @ 4K. Jim asked US to ask THIS (instead of 2K scaled). We've yet to see any message that asks US to stop asking THIS from RED staff.

It makes me really wonder why poeple already chime in to "justify" that IT may not be possible to achieve, what RED themselfs put on the plan before to ask for: 4K @ 60Hz REDCODE to REDDRIVE or CF.

I don't want to heat up speculation. But I stand: As long as RED does not revert their own position, there is no reason to believe they won't achieve it. They achieve a lot, far more than many expected. Give them a chance. Stop speculating, wait for answers.

I think they can advocate for themselfs if it turns out to be impossible to do 4K @ 60Hz in the current RED ONE body by itself, without any hardware upgrades.

I wish they would open up the internal data path to us, so we can volounteer with a development. The sensor can do it, thats quite clear by the current facts. See the above linked thread to get an understanding of what I am talking here.

Happy discussion!

Axel

 

[Axel Mertes]

One more, too add (posted already earlier, but makes sense here too):

It all comes down to the pixel throughput of the codec encoder vs. the pixel speed of the sensor.

It doesn't help us if REDCODE RAW 4K @ 60Hz would be "good enough" and "uncompressed RAW" is not required, when the system can not compress 4K @ 60Hz in the end. We are in speculation here, but we all know what is definetly possible with the system by now and what we have not yet seen.

Its not making much sense to say there is no demand for uncompressed 4K @ 60Hz in favor of compressed 4K @ 60Hz, if the system may end up of not being able to compress those 4K @ 60Hz. But I remain with an earlier statement Jim made:

For those of you that have been asking for 2K scaling... you are asking for the wrong thing.

The only possible reason that you could be asking for this... is the misconception that we might be able to deliver 2K with full frame capability at higher frame rates. This is not possible. What you really should be asking for is 4K at 60 fps that can be recorded to CF or RED Flash Drives. That is a real possibility in the future.

The sensor clock speed is 60 fps at full frame (35mm sensor size). That's all there is. So why not ask for 4K at 60fps? 2K scaled just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. If we could deliver 2K full frame at 60fps, we could deliver 4K at 60fps.

Jim

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6695

This may give you a better understanding of the problem we are facing here.

Axel

 

[Barry Green]

We know the sensor runs at 4K @ 60fps; all you have to do is put the camera in 30fps 4K mode and use "open gate" and you'll see that it's happening. So any restriction on recording that would likely come down to either a) media speed, or b) internal compression engine processor speed.

I'd tend to rule out media speed, because we have the Red Raid already, and a raided hard disk should be plenty fast to absorb the 400mbps data rate that (presumably) 4k@60 would take up. So maybe it's processor speed that's the holdup? And if so, we know that processors increase in speed all the time, and their costs drop all the time, so sooner or later the cost/performance ratio would line up to make it practical. And IINM Red's design would allow for interchanging the sensor and other components, so perhaps 4K@60 will become a reality through a modest hardware upgrade at some point?

 

[Jeff Brue]

I'll echo mike curtis, but also chime in on another note as to what you can actually do to footage that is shot at 120 fps.

In reality for a super slow motion effect all sorts of vfx techniques can come into play in when dealing with higher end digital cinema cameras like viper, dalsa, F23, whatever.

For example that viper shot. In reality the viper is a 4k camera that selectivly downsamples to achieve an HD resolution. Its 4 pixels tall for every one across. Then its spiting out 10 bit log uncompressed, there's a ton more information there when shooting at 59.94i than an equivalent mode on a F900 or some other upresing sensor.

In any case I've had to adjust phantom footage from 400 fps to 500 fps, normally the subject matter is moving so slowly that you can adjust using motion vector techniques, all provided you're on a digital cinema camera, these are not tricks you can pull with an Ex1.