Good enough...

[Erik Franzén]

Tim, I pretty much agree with all you said, and will only offer this one additional thought:

If Sony or Canon or Arri or any other camera company should catch Jim fliying his jet upside down under a bridge (which is illegal) and actually have it on video as evidence to be used against him... and if they should come to him and say that he's going to go to a Federal Penitentiary (where conjugal visits are not allowed) unless he turns Red Digital Cinema Camera company over to them, what do you think would happen to the program. Would they fire everyone there and bring in their own people? Would they start charging for camera firmware updates? Would Redcine be spun off to another division as a boxed for sale app?

In other words, would this camera company fall back into the pack?

Without the organization behind it, current RED cameras would be frozen in time like the '56 Buicks running around today in Castro's Cuba.

I believe Jim would explain to them that line skipping pieces of crap don't hold up in court and that they're "not good enough". After which he would project RED Reel in 4K and then...then the real party starts :smash:

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Gavin... I'm really curious. Why haven't we sold one RAW Port? You can have uncompressed RAW and the price is very cheap compared to the rest of the market. Many features have been shot on REDCODE. Why not uncompressed RAW?

Jim

- Because even with a RAW port nobody probably knows how to get it onto something. RAW Card? Codex? S.Two? Where does it go? Who wants to write their own system for an unproven port to home spun software and hardware? If I'm renting a RED for a day with a RAW port what am I going to rent to record to? Arri answers this question. You rent an S.Two recorder along with it.

- Because it's more of a rental item than anything else. A special case tool for specific shots. Owner/Operators are unlikely to order one.

- Because REDCode has dramatically improved since being introduced and the push for uncompressed has diminished.

- Because nobody has seen uncompressed RED footage since I think August of 2007. So it's difficult to go to a producer and ask them to ask the rental house for an item which (doesn't exist as far as most people are concerned), has nothing that can record it and is unavailable for testing to see if other problems wouldn't simply replace it.

It's mostly a moot point with MX though. It's so clean the compression doesn't have to work very hard. Less Blobby blues. And of course 2.5:1 redcode will completely replace any need what so ever.

 

[Jordi Figueras]

There are a lot of horses in this race, but my money is on the horse whose team is passionate enough to be up answering questions from fans/customers at 3:30am. I believe that kind of passion goes beyond mere communication: people who care that much make a materially better product.

There's been a lot of talk along the lines of "can't we all get along", and yes, I think that we can. But like many here, my money is going to go to only one camera company at the end of the day. That's why this discussion of "good enough" matters to me.

The only other camera in this market that is real right now is Alexa, so like many here, that's what I'm most interested in comparing. On paper, Alexa is inferior in every way, except DR where it's comparable, and ProRes which is not part of my workflow. When I say "every way" I mean resolution, frame-rate, modularity, weight/size, and cost (to name a few). And when I say inferior, I mean inferior in ways that are truly meaningful to me: less detail, less ability to overcrank, less adaptability to diverse shooting circumstances, more cumbersome to deal with, and substantially more expensive.

Paper specs matter less than image. Fair enough. But I have a hard time believing that the image of a lower resolution camera with an unknown raw format (is WB baked in or not?) is going to look better. Could there be some secret sauce in Arri's image? Perhaps. No one can truly judge without shooting side by side, but honestly, there is no reason to expect that there will be at this point. Expected best-case is that Arri's image looks almost as good.

For those who feel that ProRes output is the greatest thing since Megan Fox: are you willing to accept all these other compromises AND pay two to three times as much to avoid a transcode? Wow. I'm not. But then I don't need to transcode before I edit: there are workflows available that offer R3D with no compromise, and frankly I don't miss Final Cut.

Arri has a deserved reputation for making great cameras. However, based on what I know so far, Alexa is not a competitive product for MY dollars. Red is an upstart. Red doesn't have 100 years of history. But Red's degree of passion is generating products which I believe will be VERY hard to beat. Maybe when Jim and company take that well-deserved break there will be a lull for others to catch up. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Just my opinion...

- Tim

I think this post by Tim quite sums all the discussion in this thread. He has not let any point out and has explained it in a really clear and nice manner (without offending anyone).

So, thanks, Tim, to put some sense in such a long thread! arty:

 

[Detlev Eller]

Come to visit. Think bigger. Life is short. Do something important.

Freudiana.

Jim

... and may i add:
"Every moment is fresh!"

Detlev

 

[chrislancaster]

fuck good enough ! really

i want a 100 inch screen thats made out of flexible oled that i can roll up and down so its not a big box hanging off my wall


i want a remote thats like a wii remote and a nintendo power glove rolled into one so i can flip through channels in the same way i do on my iphone ipod

i want it in 4k 3d and interactive stories with alternate endings so i can decide the story

i want a camera that shoots 5k at 120 fps with a 100 million dollar budget to create write the screenplay ive been laboring over forever


and most of all i want to get the fuck out of a life of mediocrity and start living for real..

peace out

cant wait for Epic..

Jim you are truly an inspiration

but i guess i got a lot of work to do


:rant:

 

[Mathieu Beaudoin]

1080P is the VHS of the future... mark my words.

Jim

I totally agree with you. I which that we can buy TVs with more then 1080p. The bigger the TV the bigger the pixels. 65" panel shouldn't be 1080p, they should be much higher! (4K FTW! :sifone: )

 

[Dave Neathery]

There is something very appealing to me about a very high resolution vision-filling image. 4k is one of the steps towards that as is higher fps. I'm thinking sorta beyond-home-IMAX kind of look. It me, the immersive qualities of such a moving image would exceed current stereo, and not need glasses.

Graeme

I don't think my earlier post was very clear.
Let me put it like this: It's good enough when the final product is such that you can't tell that your are not looking at the real thing.
We've got a long way to go for that. For one thing, frame rates have to increase dramatically, I hate watching everything that moves horizontally jerk along in fuzzy steps.
Without 3D it's really hard to convincingly represent being there.
Film has always been awful both because of horizontal judder and because on most showings the frames are not consistently placed, so the picture sits there bouncing up and down constantly. And I will skip complaining about grain.
On the other hand, even a DVD or web posted stuff frequently looks noticeably better when shot on Red and when shooting in less well controlled environments, or wanting to shoot somewhat in the dark, the end result looks strikingly better with the new sensor.
So, no not nearly good enough for 1080P, DVD, or even the Web. (It's just better than anyone else so far.) So, let's keep pushing ahead. And when better delivery becomes available, we'll be ahead of the curve.

Dave

 

[Casey Schendel]

I remember when I was at panavision one day demo-ing the genesis, I brought up the topic of RED and the guy helping me did not appreciate it. I got a rundown of bayer pattern vs. genesis, etc.. that by using "REDs" math the genesis would be a 6K camera.

When I asked him why they don't just upgrade it to record at those higher resolutions he didn't have an answer.

Too many people don't look 2 steps ahead

 

[Michael Brennan]

I don't think my earlier post was very clear.
Let me put it like this: It's good enough when the final product is such that you can't tell that your are not looking at the real thing.
We've got a long way to go for that. For one thing, frame rates have to increase dramatically, I hate watching everything that moves horizontally jerk along in fuzzy steps.
Without 3D it's really hard to convincingly represent being there.

Dave

Prototypes and demonstrators exist that pretty much solve the issues you detail above.
Based on previous developments I'd estimate 15 years for 7k 3d, 8 years for mass market 4k ish distribution media/processes ie 4k bluray. Of course mass market redray would get 4k to the public sooner and Jims background with mass market products doesn't rule that idea out of the equation!



Mike Brennan

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I remember when I was at panavision one day demo-ing the genesis, I brought up the topic of RED and the guy helping me did not appreciate it. I got a rundown of bayer pattern vs. genesis, etc.. that by using "REDs" math the genesis would be a 6K camera.

When I asked him why they don't just upgrade it to record at those higher resolutions he didn't have an answer.

Too many people don't look 2 steps ahead

The RGB striped sensor is really designed to convert and downsample using a simple algorithm from 12MP RAW to 2MP per color (there is an additional photosite row per color designed just for extra overexposure detail, so basically you need 4MP per color, not 2MP, hence 12MP total.) So the design of the sensor is optimized for creating 1920 x 1080 per color (with wide dynamic range) from 12MP. That's a strength and a weakness in a sense, you get an equal amount of information per color, it's probably easier to design an OLPF when you have an equal number of photosites per color, and it's easier to process the signal from RAW to color. Plus you have excellent headroom information. But the weakness, in a sense, is that I don't think you can achieve more than 2K resolution per color even if you recorded the 6K RAW output of the striped sensor, whereas a 6K Bayer sensor could achieve at least 4K resolution. Though in theory, color separation may be better in the striped design.

 

[Bob Rudis]

Nevertheless, ProRes/DNxHD off the camera, no transcoding is tempting...
Hans

With ProRes/DNxHD off the camera you may possibly put Alexa to bed. You would definitely please many of us. I can see a clear percentage of our collective camera rentals slipping away to Alexa. We want “good enough” which is shooting 4k and 1080p simultaneously. I’d like to offer my clients the “ease of workflow” some of them will be seeking in the Alexa with my Red. Please give us the modules to make this possible. The Epic can be better than Alexa in every way.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

I remember when I was at panavision one day demo-ing the genesis, I brought up the topic of RED and the guy helping me did not appreciate it. I got a rundown of bayer pattern vs. genesis, etc.. that by using "REDs" math the genesis would be a 6K camera.

When I asked him why they don't just upgrade it to record at those higher resolutions he didn't have an answer.

Too many people don't look 2 steps ahead

Of course, it's not our math that makes the RED have the measured resolution it has - it's the measuring! If you do the same measurements on an F35 (because I've never measured a Genesis, but I'd be very surprised if they measure any different in this respect), you see a measured horizontal resolution somewhat below 1920 with chroma moire, and strong luma aliasing vertically.

Because of the stripe design, the RGB image you get out does not line up right! Each channel is 1/3 of a pixel out of alignment with the others. Now, you don't see that other than on high detail edges, but it's high detail edges that show you have a high resolution! It's this mis-alignment that leads to the lower horizontal resolution and the chroma moire. The strong vertical luma moire is probably just due to in-adequate optical low pass filtering.

The problem with a camera that aims for 1080p rather than some higher resolution is that to make the 1080p sharp you have to use less optical filtering an allow for aliasing, whereas the better approach is to aim for a much higher resolution and use a proper amount of optical filtering and aim for (and achieve) a much much lower level of aliasing that will most probably not be visible other than shooting a test chart. With the F35, I have seen aliasing on broadcast footage of non-test-chart material, showing how it's aliasing is strong enough to interfere with normal production rather than be just something to note on a test chart.

In that respect the F35 like the visual appearance DSLR line skip cameras - strong luma aliasing vertically, soft horizontal with chroma moire, just not as bad.

Graeme

 

[Mark K.]

1080p is good enough for me, and that's pretty much for any deliverable including cinema. I think that beyond 1080p you really start to hit a point of diminishing returns (i.e. more resolution is better, but not necessarily very noticeable). It never once occurred to me that the visual quality of films like Benjamin Button and Avatar was lacking in any way. I've seen 2K projected digitally on very large screens and thought it looked spectacular (sharp, rich and detailed).

As far as I'm concerned the bigger issue is sensor size and dynamic range, I'd rather have those two things with the longer recording times, faster frame rates, and lower bandwidth that 1080p allows.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Mark, unfortunately, it doesn't quite work that way. 1080p RGB would be marginally smaller than 4k RAW for instance, leading to little benefit on record times and bandwidth. To achieve an acceptable 1080p you should start at a higher rez anyway, so why not just stay there?

Also, when you work with the 4k, your quality perception threshold changes. When you compare 2k next to 4k you see the difference. Once you see it, it's not fun to go back.

The best way to achieve better DR is through better pixels - which is what we did with M-X - them being the same size as before, just a lot better.

Graeme

 

[Michael Althaus]

It never once occurred to me that the visual quality of films like Benjamin Button and Avatar was lacking in any way.

Hmmmm, those two movies looked soft to me in the theater, especially Benjamin Button.

 

[Harry Clark]

Mark, unfortunately, it doesn't quite work that way. 1080p RGB would be marginally smaller than 4k RAW for instance, leading to little benefit on record times and bandwidth. To achieve an acceptable 1080p you should start at a higher rez anyway, so why not just stay there?

Also, when you work with the 4k, your quality perception threshold changes. When you compare 2k next to 4k you see the difference. Once you see it, it's not fun to go back.

The best way to achieve better DR is through better pixels - which is what we did with M-X - them being the same size as before, just a lot better.

Graeme

But Graeme,
We are not asking for 1080 RGB. We are asking for 1080 ProRes.
Pretty please.
I promise I will still faithfully record r3d at the same time. I cannot promise that my clients will ever use it.
Cheers,
Harry

 

[Taylor Morrison]

Harry,

We must work in the same circles. Ha ha I am hoping that Avid will deliver as promised with a native workflow in the next few months... as that will solve most (not all) of my clients problems with the Red workflow at this point. I think that this could be the single most important event in post for me and my broadcast clients.

Here's to hoping!

 

[Tim Morten]

Harry,

We must work in the same circles. Ha ha I am hoping that Avid will deliver as promised with a native workflow in the next few months... as that will solve most (not all) of my clients problems with the Red workflow at this point. I think that this could be the single most important event in post for me and my broadcast clients.

Here's to hoping!

June 10th. It's coming...

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

Hmmmm, those two movies looked soft to me in the theater, especially Benjamin Button.

Maybe you had a bad cinema, I've seen many 1080p films on the big screen including Superman Returns on IMAX and the only time I ever thought "That did look a little soft" was when I saw 21 (not the best example of a Genesis movie) and then saw The incredible hulk straight after it. The incredible Hulk being a movie shot with anamorphic lenses on 35mm film.

Most of the time when I watch a movie on the big screen shot on something like Genesis or otherwise the resolution is perfect the thing that I will notice is when they shoot 360 shutter.

 

[conrad gaunt]

Also, when you work with the 4k, your quality perception threshold changes. When you compare 2k next to 4k you see the difference. Once you see it, it's not fun to go back.

The best way to achieve better DR is through better pixels - which is what we did with M-X - them being the same size as before, just a lot better.
Graeme

I agree, and disagree. 4k is great, but I never do a 1:1 zoom into a bayer, unless I'm shooting 100-120fps on the R1. For me, things start looking good when they're downsampled to 2-3k. Artifacts, fringing whatever, all reduced in scale. I'm talking "RGB integrity", not just luminance.

If I want to image pan a static shot (something I do), I always start by high-quality downsampling to 3k. Now I know I can pan in to 1080p, 1:1 zoom, and the pixels are "robust".

The problem I find is, if I do a 1:1 zoom into a 4k frame, for example, taking a 1920x1080p rectangle from the center of the image (framing A), then pan back to full frame resolution (framing B), I can generally notice the difference between the pixels in framing A and those in framing B, with frame B pixels being understandably "richer". This measure trumps resolution alone for me.

An example, I have silhouetted tree against a bright sky, not black but too dark, but backlit. I want to push the shadows up a bit to reveal that owl perched on a branch, but the debayering is artifacting where sky and tree meet. Downsampling to 3k can reduce that artifacting a lot IMO, maybe allowing me to pull up the shadows without those tree/sky edges (typically) purpling out on me so badly.

Now, for shoots with no image panning, and where grading isn't difficult, I would happily shoot and finish at 4k, but I want a consistant pixel quality. My rule of thumb is, output to the lowest resolution imagery used, and make sure thats at least 2k or HD, possible with the R1 or DSLR generated stop-motion.

I guess what I'm saying is, its normally more practical to finish 2k with what I call a RGB 4:8:4 (1xred, 1xblue, & 2xgreen photosites, downsampled to 1 pixel etc), and I really don't always think a 4k image looks better than a 2k one. My quality perception hasn't changed.

I've been doing this high res stuff with stop-motion DSLRs for a while, its not red specific, its just my approach to handling bayer patterns, and is quite well aligned with your luminance measurements from the R1. Thankfully, I do have resolution to burn, but I trade spatial resolution for pixel integrity (kinda the opposite to increasing resolution and dithering colours)

anyway, thanks for making a 5k camera so I can downsample to 4k, then maybe my quality perception will go :crazy: