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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 :)

4K Finishing Folly

When you downsample from REDS 4K sensor down to 2k, you are still sampling colour, tone and range from 4k.. Youre still getting all the benifits of a 4K picture but on a smaller pixel grid. Also due to the benefits of oversampling get a much finer picture.. So for most, editing in 2K should not have any impact on the artform. If you were shooting 2k windowed, that would be a different matter though.

Ive said it before and ill say it again though, art will always take precedence over technique.
 
Our vernier resolution exceeds our "eye chart" vision by several times. Vernier resolution is our ability to detect the relative alignment of two dots/lines/whatever.

"Eye chart" vision, to me, is our ability to read letters on an eye chart.

If we want *perfect* resolution, then we would need greater than 4K to achieve perfect vernier resolution. In practice, I think the industry will be 2K for a while (image quality can be improved more by focusing other areas).

Info about vernier resolution:
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/lum_hyperacuity/index.html
 
Thomas Mathai said:
Demos are rehearsed dog and pony shows. They don't reflect real world most of the time.
Click to expand...

I have worked as a professional full-time demo artist for both Avid and Quantel.And I can tell you from having done (no exaggeration) thousands of demos, that this is categorically untrue at the high-end.

At NAB, IBC, Interbee, Broadcast Asia, and the other major industry trade shows - of course there are canned presentations. That's the only way to cover a large amount of material in a short time for a varied audience from multiple disciplines.

But for one-on-one demos, any good demo artist avoids a script like the plague. The ultimate purpose of a demo is to sell a system. And the best way to sell a system is to show someone how it will work in the real world. If you sell someone a bag of tricks, it *will* come back to haunt you, and it will most likely end up in bitterness, acrimony, and possibly legal action.

Most of the fulltime demo guys I know are very honest about what their system can and cannot do. It's pointless to lie or try to overly inflate capabilities, because a customer will find out on the very first day with a system that what you told them was a crock and they will hunt you down.

As a prospect, your duty is to be a conscientious consumer. Buying a high-end post system is like buying any other expensive item - car, house, education, etc. Caveat emptor.

I know from experience demoing and selling Avid|DS, Quantel eQ/iQ, and ASSIMILATE SCRATCH - the last step in any evaluation process is putting a system in at the prospect location and letting them try it in the real world on their projects with their artists. If you blow sunshine at first, it will only make you and your company look bad at the end.

Best,

Lucas
------
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
Los Angeles
 
acehole said:
When you downsample from REDS 4K sensor down to 2k, you are still sampling colour, tone and range from 4k.. Youre still getting all the benifits of a 4K picture but on a smaller pixel grid. Also due to the benefits of oversampling get a much finer picture..[/B]
Click to expand...

Gosh, half of my early posts were summed up by this statement. I've always said that the RED will be the best 2K camera in the world because it's 4K.

There is always a "sweet spot", and for RED ONE that sweet spot is the relative ease of post at 2K/1080 and the benefits of super-sampling to give you that 2K.

I've had a decades long philosophy to "shoot one higher" than you post.
 
Great thread! As a CONTENT CREATOR, I am always interested in "what is good enough?" I avoid, like the plague;

o early adoption (with one rare exception, the RED One);
o buying the latest, fastest gear, or;
o working in resolutions higher than my anticipated deliverable.

First and always, I'll spend my money on the production value that goes into the frame. I'll spend my time tweaking a script to perfection and inspiring actors to finding truth in their performances. I'll scrabble for additional funds so I can hire the best and brightest crew. But, I certainly won't agonize over building a 4K editing/finishing solution... until it's time to do so.

Michael
 
Finishing in 4K doesn't have to cost a fortune, if you never go uncompressed. If you're sufficiently patient, I don't see why you can't do a 4K conform on a decent desktop these days, without high-priced specialized tools.

The real issue is, what do you do with it when you've got it? You can't write it out to any sort of standard video tape or disc format. Computers generally won't play it back in real-time even off of hard drives (if it's compressed, the CPU isn't fast enough, if it's not, the disks aren't fast enough), and assuming they could, there are hardly any displays out there with that sort of resolution. The number of 4K projectors in the world is pretty small, and getting things encoded for the media servers they connect to does require using specialty tools, I believe.

Realistically, most indie filmmakers are going to be interested in producing standard and high-def DVDs to send around to potential buyers, and maybe going out to HDCAM, which some festivals want. These are all 1080p or less. And people who aren't doing features are going to have even less reason to create deliverables at anything above 1080p.

4K acquisition + 2K/1080p finishing is, as others have said, definitely the way to go.
 
I'm more interested in short format right now than long format (commercials, short films etc) just because I usually bore of the subject matter after 6 months and I'm a stickler for focusing all of my efforts onto something instead of spreading out my energy across a huge unwieldy process.

For me I'll probably never 4k online until it'll run on my mom's home computer. Why? Because I HATE WAITING! I'm the most impatient human being on earth. Waiting is time when creativity is dripping out my ear down my arm and into the drain. I hate rendering, I hate capturing, I hate scanning, all of it, I hate it. I love working with creative talented people and I expect the same of the equipment I and they use. Your editor wouldn't ever sit you down and say "Hey Gavin, I know you want to see what I'm working on, but everytime I make a change I'm going to go into a corner and stare at the wall for 15 minutes while I process the idea that just came to me." (Especially if your name wasn't Gavin! :blush:)

That is why I plan on shooting in 4k (so that I have more control later) and editing in SD. That's right SD. I don't even understand what all the hubbub is about in doing 2k onlines. A nice Anamorphic SD is far more detailed than I would ever need to edit.

Grading and compositing are trivial tasks to undertake with proxies. The one time my no waiting policy is absolved when I'm asleep. If I can point it to the 4k online footage, walk away and take a nap and drink a cup of coffee while it chugs away for 2 days. I don't mind. I already know what's going to come out if my deadline isn't too soon, it can take a week for all I care, I already have an SD master to show.

So to summarize this overly long winded rant. I agree with the OP, but I also disagree. Yes, online 4k is stupid. But when a 4k deliverable is practically free, why not?

I can't count how many times I have had a 720p project that I finished only to later be incredibly discouraged I didn't have a full 1080 or 2k copy. Or before that when I had an SD copy to be dissapointed I didn't have a 720p copy. I can't think of a reason why I would want 4k now. But I just know in the bottom of my heart in 10 years I'm going to be sitting around dissapointed I didn't have an 8k copy for some current work.

And yes to answer your question having a little technical glitz such as "4k" on the project spec can excite investors. Rational or not on their part, that's profitable.
 
im.thatoneguy, I agree with you 99%... comments follow:

> That is why I plan on shooting in 4k (so that I have more control later) and
> editing in SD. That's right SD. I don't even understand what all the hubbub
> is about in doing 2k onlines. A nice Anamorphic SD is far more detailed than
> I would ever need to edit.

Your SD idea is not crazy at all. That's how we do all conceptual work for trailers & main titles. We usually don't even bother with anamorphic - we keep it plain, letterboxed SD. Only once the studio has given us the green light, then do we do the up-res to 2K. Otherwise, we are restricting our creative options through excessive render times too early in the process.

> I agree with the OP, but I also disagree. Yes, online 4k is stupid. But when
> a 4k deliverable is practically free, why not?

4k for finish is not free because even if you're rendering overnight (making CPU time "free"), you're still going to need 4x the hard drive space. Which gets costly especially once you consider that you want that those 4k renders need to be backed up because otherwise you're going to lose a month's worth of overnight renders. I speak this as a someone who approves of and uses your workflow ;) Actually I am even crazier - I used to sometimes work for an hour at night, set an overnight render to go, then wake up half an hour early the next morning and try to tweak it and set the render to go on my home PC during the day when I'm at work.

> But I just know in the bottom of my heart in 10 years I'm going to be sitting
> around dissapointed I didn't have an 8k copy for some current work.

Naah, unless they make some major breakthroughs to human vision in 10 years' time. I'm sure our eyes have an equivalent resolution way, way beyond 8k, but I'm sure that 10 years in the future you'll still have no problem watching classic movies, some of whom I think were pretty close to 2k in resolution. Hopefully we'll have some great-looking 2K finish Red movies included in that collection then...

...and if I'm very lucky, maybe my little film shot on an $1000 HV20 with a $1000 35mm adapter but with good script, acting, lighting, sound, editing and production design might squeak in there too...

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
im.thatoneguy said:
That is why I plan on shooting in 4k (so that I have more control later) and editing in SD. That's right SD.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't rule out using DVCPRO 720p as your new RED "off-line" format. After all, it's only 2X the pixel count of SD yet still cuts like butter on laptops. I'm amazed at what I can do with several real-time layers with the stuff in FCP.

My motto; "720p is the new SD".
 
I would go one up and say 1080p is the new sd.
-A
 
I'd say ultimately it depends on your resources and your intended audiences.

If you have the resources and think it's cool to output to 4k , why not. And of course, if your intended audiences are tech people who can see the difference between 2k and 4k with one glance, 4k definitely is an option.

But for most of us who's working on budget constraint, 2k is realistic. My intended audience are the general public, I shoot on HD most of the time, and none of them even know what film, HD or DV means, and definitely have no idea what 1080, 2k or 4k is. And 99% of the general audience won't know if a film was shot on HD , 2k, 4k etc unless maybe you put them side to side and point out the difference to them. A lot of films are projected on 2k all over the world and there have been no issue.

For now, we'll set up our post for 2k finishing.
 
im.thatoneguy said:
I'm more interested in short format right now than long format (commercials, short films etc) just because I usually bore of the subject matter after 6 months and I'm a stickler for focusing all of my efforts onto something instead of spreading out my energy across a huge unwieldy process.

For me I'll probably never 4k online until it'll run on my mom's home computer. Why? Because I HATE WAITING! I'm the most impatient human being on earth. Waiting is time when creativity is dripping out my ear down my arm and into the drain. I hate rendering, I hate capturing, I hate scanning, all of it, I hate it.
Click to expand...
We have a lot in common! I'm so over my own projects after a few months! And, I HATE waiting!
 
Isn't it nice to have the choice though. Um, do I finish in HD, 2K or 4K today..... ? :-)

Graeme
 
Hey Graeme... if you guys continue to push 4K post for the little guy, realize that one of the ONLY places IN THE WORLD they can look at it on the big screen is projected by YOUR shiny new 4K projector... so you'll have to set up screenings times at your facility for RED owners FREE OF CHARGE.

It's the least you can do... :)
 
Graeme Nattress said:
Isn't it nice to have the choice though. Um, do I finish in HD, 2K or 4K today..... ? :-)

Graeme
Click to expand...


Definitely good to have such choice. So hope that Red will keep on helping the indie filmmakers to push the frontier.
 
4K finishing

4K finishing

One of the key points about RED ONE is we are building a camera that is capable of servicing our customers in the future as well as today. So if 4K isn't what you want to do right now, that's fine - go ahead and do 720p, 1080p or 2K and when you are ready for 4K finishing the RED ONE camera and REDCINE are already there.
 
It would be nice to be able to compress any 4k material much further than the ten times compression i think red are talking about. This would be useful for archiving purposes. I have one particular project i have in mind that i would like to produce it on 1080p then perhaps in ten years time return to the master copy in 4k and just press a button to restore the footage from say thirty times compression to 10 times and re- do the whole project in 4k.

I wonder if that will be possible? As an aside i loved Graeme's intepretation of colour in the images seen so far with red. I hope we will get some fixed settings so the in-experienced can get on with learning without fiddling with the colour set up.

Mike the beginner
 
Stuart, I state in my first post that I think you should record in 4K (REDCODE RAW). Just don't finish that way. Finish in 2K.

I also think that if you guys cut any features from the RED, it should be the 720p recording option. Practically nobody is going to use that and it's just wasting Graeme and his team's time.

Mike the beginner - if you really wanted to, you might be able to approach a 2:1 compression ratio well, by doing a non-realtime compression method on the REDCODE RAW stuff - eg RAR, to a lesser extent ZIP. But I think that'll be as far as you can go without losing quality. If someone figured out a lossless 30:1 compression scheme that can compress already-highly-compressed data at that ratio, they'd be a millionaire. I fear it might be mathematically impossible however...

If you were to go further, you might also lose the joys of RAW. Maybe 4k Cineform is what you want if you're really crazy about achieving a higher compression ratio? But they haven't invented that yet.

Also, 4K REDCODE RAW is pretty great in terms of data rate to quality. If I were you I'd just stick it.

If there was some kind of RedCine tool where you can delete the parts of the footage that you don't end up using, but keep little chunks of data from where you're pulling your shots, that would be great.

Yes, I definitely think if I were a Red owner, I'd rather see Graeme working on that than on 720p recording... in fact if he made REDCINE really great, I'd be fine to only have REDCODE RAW 4K and windowed REDCODE RAW as shooting options.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
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