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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 :)

Faster than realtime full-debayer transcoding to DPX, QT, etc

BOXXLabs said:
hmm. Makes sense.

I would love to know what % of RED projects use "1/2-high-rendered" HD/2K DPX/QT frames as the deliverable for online editorial? for VFX?

My assumption was that most folks used 1/2 high @ HD or 2K for the deliverable unless the project is destined for film or is VFX-heavy. Perhaps not?

Are most folks generating 4K frames (with the full 4K debayer) and then downconverting?
Click to expand...

It depends on the workflow of the project. Each one will be different. We primarily work on commercials which is obviously very short form. It's a no brainer to just process everything at full res for a 30 sec spot to take advantage of the noise and oversampling benefits Graeme pointed out. To be clear, our deliverable is generally never higher than 2k so our Scratch constructs are set to 2k. That being said, it is very difficult to tell the difference between a 4k source processed to 1080 with half res high and a 4k source processed full and down-sampled to 1080.

On most jobs, we only process the final spot in high quality. Things change a bit when you start talking about feature workflows but even still, we process the final deliverable in full 4k and down-sample to 2k.
 
And again I should point out that we are not rendering out 4k DPX sequences and then down-sampling as a separate step... we set the construct to 2k or 1080 but set the process node to full.
 
Thanks...

as i thought...it wasn't there but now i have installed the last REDCode and it's there ...Thanks!

Does the settings choice in this control panel have effect in redcine too?

Thanks

g
 
Nope, they just control the Quicktime Codec.

Graeme
 
Graeme...

What is the highest possibly quality using the Adobe CS4 workflow (Premiere or AE) and starting with 4K assuming I don't want to use RedCine or RedAlert at all but still want to use the best quality slowest approach you mentioned? Is that possible in the Adobe workflow?

-shooter
 
Argh! Don't ask me that. I've not got CS4 installed yet!

Graeme
 
Emery Wells said:
And again I should point out that we are not rendering out 4k DPX sequences and then down-sampling as a separate step... we set the construct to 2k or 1080 but set the process node to full.
Click to expand...

And this is exactly how i've set up Scratch for all of our transcoding and realtime playout tests.

And my understanding from earlier in this thread -is that these settings only actually consider 50% of the actual original 4K RAW data for the demosaicing/debayering process.
 
BOXXLabs said:
Yes, Scratch Cine. (and red Cine if you like)

pricing is TBA, as is the actual release date.
Click to expand...

How do you set redcine for that performance...I mean this 1/2 high etc.. settings are not available in Redcine...so how can we say to redcine to debayer only half res during the export?

Thanks

G
 
In Red Cine, You can set the resolution/scaling in the "Format Type" in the Project settings tab and set the "Process" mode in the Output settings tab.

Selecting the "Full" setting in the process box in Red Cine is equivalent to using the "high" setting in Scratch.
 
Niiice

Niiice

In my experience the visually noticeable differences between full res, full quality and half res, high quality are highly dependent on the material. Darker curved shapes against bright backgrounds show a lot less aliasing at full, full. Noise in the shadows is also improved by down sampling vs binning pixels, in some cases quite noticeably.

Its fun to think that half res, high quality 2K or 1080 is the new "offline". As the conforming tools and the passage of metadata improves most post houses will start using 4K masters downrezzed to the deliverable format as standard procedure. First they will have to un-learn the mantra that 4K is too unwieldy for all but the heaviest iron, but that's another thread :devil:
 
BOXXLabs said:
hmm. Makes sense.

I would love to know what % of RED projects use "1/2-high-rendered" HD/2K DPX/QT frames as the deliverable for online editorial? for VFX?

My assumption was that most folks used 1/2 high @ HD or 2K for the deliverable unless the project is destined for film or is VFX-heavy. Perhaps not?

Are most folks generating 4K frames (with the full 4K debayer) and then downconverting?
Click to expand...

We ALWAYS user a full debayer (not 1/2 high) for our deliverables from Scratch, no matter what the output resolution or format. I can see the difference in quality between a full debayer and a "1/2 high" debayer 10 times out of 10, even to standard def deliverables.

1/2 high is perfect for realtime grading and conform though! We just switch to 'full' when rendering deliverables.
 
BOXXLabs said:
hmm. Makes sense.
I would love to know what % of RED projects use "1/2-high-rendered" HD/2K DPX/QT frames as the deliverable for online editorial? for VFX?
Click to expand...
very few. only the ones who can afford to loose image quality. remember, 2K is 75% less, not 25% less. And with a bayer-pattern, you certainly want, rather need to oversample.

BOXXLabs said:
My assumption was that most folks used 1/2 high @ HD or 2K for the deliverable unless the project is destined for film or is VFX-heavy. Perhaps not?
Click to expand...
No. 1/2 high is good for offline, for fast editing/creative sessions, sometiome for SD-TV out. But noise levels are pretty increased, resolution is down etc.
Its eye to see.

Try the following:
Use redcine
set a project to 2K 2:1
zoom for pixel by pixel
load 4K redcode
scale the image by 50%
now switch between 1/2 high and full.

The quality difference is obvious.

BOXXLabs said:
Are most folks generating 4K frames (with the full 4K debayer) and then downconverting?
Click to expand...
In raw/bayer pattern, you will always want to filter down from the original max raw resolution while debayer to the target rgb resolution. everything else is lesser quality.
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
Its fun to think that half res, high quality 2K or 1080 is the new "offline". As the conforming tools and the passage of metadata improves most post houses will start using 4K masters downrezzed to the deliverable format as standard procedure. First they will have to un-learn the mantra that 4K is too unwieldy for all but the heaviest iron, but that's another thread :devil:
Click to expand...

Yeah, offline 1080p/2k are fun to mention in production meetings :)
 
Paul Leeming said:
I'll be building my own render box shortly so once I do I'll try to bench it to see how it compares..... :)

Love it!
Click to expand...

if suppose boxxlabs if referring to their upcoming products - they certainly use nehalem ep/tylersburg.

these chips and boards are pretty inexpensive and power efficient. for endusers they should be available in the next weeks.

here is intels roadmap as pdf:
http://download.intel.com/pressroom/kits/events/idffall_2008/SSmith_briefing_roadmap.pdf

a typical board from october 2008:
http://www.dvhardware.net/news/foxconn_nehalem_ep_server.jpg

and an overview over the different cpus and prices:
http://techinsight.tv/articles_54.php

for even more performance than the dual nehalems EP (which probably is the one boxxlabs seems so exicted about), there are the xeon 7x00 6 core series and also the upcoming Boxboro-EX Platform, but these really cost.

the nehalem ex however are pretty cheap - especially the single cpu regular nehalems core i7 920 are a steal.
 
Seth Larney said:
We ALWAYS user a full debayer (not 1/2 high) for our deliverables from Scratch, no matter what the output resolution or format. I can see the difference in quality between a full debayer and a "1/2 high" debayer 10 times out of 10, even to standard def deliverables.

1/2 high is perfect for realtime grading and conform though! We just switch to 'full' when rendering deliverables.
Click to expand...

There are many circumstances under which this cannot be done. For instance, when a client walks in with 4 hours of material, and tells you they want to do some basic color correction (which, of course, turns out to be a bit more than "basic"), and then deliver on HDCam to a broadcast or cable network for cutting the next day and airing 2 days after that, a playout using 1/2 High is far more than acceptable. For material that is going to be recorded to film, the differences are more relevant, and a full render is a better approach.

If anything, I would think those here would be welcoming the ability to do real time playout with color correction at very high quality, even if it's not technically "the best," because the inability to do that is what prevents a lot of these type of productions from considering Red in the first place.
 
mmost said:
There are many circumstances under which this cannot be done. For instance, when a client walks in with 4 hours of material, and tells you they want to do some basic color correction (which, of course, turns out to be a bit more than "basic"), and then deliver on HDCam to a broadcast or cable network for cutting the next day and airing 2 days after that, a playout using 1/2 High is far more than acceptable. For material that is going to be recorded to film, the differences are more relevant, and a full render is a better approach.
Click to expand...
In order to not reduce quality, we offer for such scenarios the overnight render. 64 cores munch through the project, and 4 hours overnight are feasible.

the difference between full res debayer and 25% res debayer is pretty visible on hdcam as well.

however i agree that one can get away with it, if the customer has no a/b comparision and no noisy footage is in the sources.
 
laguun said:
In order to not reduce quality, we offer for such scenarios the overnight render. 64 cores munch through the project, and 4 hours overnight are feasible.

the difference between full res debayer and 25% res debayer is pretty visible on hdcam as well.

however i agree that one can get away with it, if the customer has no a/b comparision and no noisy footage is in the sources.
Click to expand...

What do you use for color correction that allows renderfarming? I'm not talking about basic balance here, I'm talking about multiple windows and some secondary corrections as well. The only devices I know of that can currently do that in real time are Scratch, Pablo (as a beta), Digital Vision (don't know if they've actually delivered that or not), and possibly Speedgrade, although I don't know if they've delivered on that or not either. So you're pretty much looking at Scratch or Apple Color for this. Apple Color can't do full debayer. Scratch can't render farm. Neither can Pablo or Digital Vision. So what are you using that lets you process color corrected files on 64 cores? And, BTW, allow you to play it out to tape, which will take four hours (plus setup) by itself?
 
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