Frame summing and Frame Averaging ???

[Russ Fill]

Been testing the new beast over the last couple of days and can't seem to find the Frame Summing and Frame Averaging in the Record menu as it use to be.
Has it not been added to the latest 5.1.35 Dragon firmware update or is it something still coming for Dragon?? Or did it get moved to some other pull down or does a setting need to be done before it activates?

 

[Terry VerHaar]

I could be wrong but I don't think it works for Dragon yet.

 

[Stacey Spears]

Per the manual, not available on Dragon. Hopefully it is coming at some point.

 

[Russ Fill]

I hope it comes back also. It was pretty useful for some speciality work I do and there was a stylistic shoot I was going to try with just those functions. bummer.. Well glad I still have my Epic X around...
Hey RED Folk, is this in the future or just a no go indefinitely.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Love those features and use them often when I have no control over timelapse post

 

[paulherrin]

pretty sure i heard they're supposed to be added

 

[Erik Vanlenten]

Just curious....is there any update on when Processing or Averaging are coming to Dragon?

 

[Phil Holland]

It's in there on the beta builds.

Menu>Settings>Recording>Frame Processing.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

You mean the super special "For Phil's Eyes Only" betas, or the one's the rest of get to play with after you've had your fun… ;-)

All kidding aside, as much time as you have devoted to testing and posting you have absolutely earned "shotgun" on the RED Express lately Phil, thanx.

Cheers - #19

 

[Phil Holland]

You mean the super special "For Phil's Eyes Only" betas, or the one's the rest of get to play with after you've had your fun… ;-)

All kidding aside, as much time as you have devoted to testing and posting you have absolutely earned "shotgun" on the RED Express lately Phil, thanx.

Cheers - #19

Lots of chatter lately both here and in the flesh bound world about Dragon. Doing my best to explain things.

But no, this is actually in the beta that everybody has.

 

[Jay Silver]

Hey Phil,
I've been testing the frame summing and frame averaging functions and I'm just trying to figure out what they're really for or what they'd be best used for...
Any chance you can enlighten us a bit on the different uses of summing and averaging?
Maybe I need to do some night time shooting, but I like just shooting slow frame rates at 360 degree shutter for that long exposure look...
Anyway, I'm sure your busy, but thought I'd check to see what you thought.

Thanks,
jay

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I've been testing the frame summing and frame averaging functions and I'm just trying to figure out what they're really for or what they'd be best used for.

Frame Averaging:
Frame Averaging takes multiple exposures and finds the average exposure. What this means is that you get the exposure interval of a short exposure, but you get the motion blur characteristics of a longer exposure. This is incredibly useful for long exposure shots where you don't want to use a great deal of ND but you do want the long streaks of tail lights or long exposure timelapse. The other side-effect of averaging multiple frames is that the noise is averaged across exposures so if you average 2 frames your noise goes from the equivalent of 800ISO to 400ISO. Averaging 4 frames gives you 800 -> 200 ISO and averaging 16 frames gives you the equivalent of 100ISO noise. If you have a still life subject like a real-estate still or static car or product shoot, or motion control, you should use Frame Averaging so that you get a perfectly clean image. Another common use of Frame Averaging is to generate a clean plate for VFX that is noise free.

You also get the nice side effect of increased usable dynamic range by reducing the noise (at the cost of increased motion blur).

If you shoot 48 frames a second with a 1/48th shutter and average 16 frames you get the equivalent exposure of a 1/48th shutter, but the motion blur of a 1/3rd of a second shutter and 3 stops of noise reduction.

Frame Summing:
Frame Summing just adds one exposure onto the next. This is for pretty much all intents and purpose the equivalent of a very long exposure but enables you to take exposures longer than the maximum exposure duration. Useful for astrophotography and extreme low-light.

*(You should almost always set your shutter angle to 360 degrees when using frame averaging or summing).

 

[Björn Benckert]

I think it's good that those funcitons are there but both are very much possible to achieve in post just shoot 360 shutter and set your frame rate so it's equal to the sub frame of your wanted frame average or frame summing. Then in post you have the option to choose how you want your frame summing or average. just by using compound or additive mix in between frames. Having that done in camera simply leaves you with less options, but then again if it looks good as is then it's pretty nice to have it done a possible to playback right there and then in camera.

 

[Trent Lillehaugen]

I think it's good that those funcitons are there but both are very much possible to achieve in post just shoot 360 shutter and set your frame rate so it's equal to the sub frame of your wanted frame average or frame summing. Then in post you have the option to choose how you want your frame summing or average. just by using compound or additive mix in between frames. Having that done in camera simply leaves you with less options, but then again if it looks good as is then it's pretty nice to have it done a possible to playback right there and then in camera.

One advantage of doing it in camera is that the summing and averaging occur before the REDCODE compression.

 

[Björn Benckert]

One advantage of doing it in camera is that the summing and averaging occur before the REDCODE compression.

Aha. But normally when using this feature it's undercranked so 3:1 can be used, which is not much of an issue no?

 

[Dr. Sassi]

Question, would it be preferable to have a two stream (similar to HDR) where one is recorded as is (stream A) and one has the frame summing or averaging applied and is stream B?

 

[Ulf Krentz]

Question, would it be preferable to have a two stream (similar to HDR) where one is recorded as is (stream A) and one has the frame summing or averaging applied and is stream B?

My thought exactly… Is this possible?

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I think it's good that those funcitons are there but both are very much possible to achieve in post just shoot 360 shutter and set your frame rate so it's equal to the sub frame of your wanted frame average or frame summing. Then in post you have the option to choose how you want your frame summing or average. just by using compound or additive mix in between frames. Having that done in camera simply leaves you with less options, but then again if it looks good as is then it's pretty nice to have it done a possible to playback right there and then in camera.

You can. But if you are shooting 16 frame averaging (which is what I almost always use) and 3:1 compression then if you normally would shoot 6:1 you're at double datarate * 16. So using up 32x the memory means you might only be able to shoot for 1 minute of timelapse vs 32 minutes per mag.

With frame averaging since there is so much less noise you can also generally use higher compression (except with trees etc).

Lastly it's just a bare on most machines to have to process 16 frames to get one frame. Your render times are astronomical. If you can normally render 2fps now you have to wait 8 seconds to get a single frame. If you are using ADD and it's taking 8 seconds... now it's up to 120 seconds per frame.