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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 :)

How to make red 4k video to look sharp?

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Dave_S

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I really wish to know what you guys do in the post to make red 4k footage to look sharp?
Is Da vinci the good solution for it or we can achieve sharpness in Premiere Pro. Sharp and shiny like a glass.
 
Actual sharpness and perceived sharpness can come down to many factors.

I find that many people feel as if the image is sharper if its shot at a more open T Stop than a more closed down one since they perceive the subject to be sharper because the back and foreground are not as sharp. I also find that various lighting sets ups can impact the perceived sharpness of an image, obviously depending on who is viewing it and what they are looking for.

Other than that, for actual sharpness that can come down to many factors, Resolution, RedCode, Lens Used, post processing, and delivered codec.

What lens are you using, and what resolution and redcode are you using? Post a R3D and let us take a look and we can see why you feel your sharpness is not on par with what you are seeing from the rest of the Red community.
 
I also believe apparent sharpness is tied to MTF (Modulated Transfer Function), which is related to contrast, lens performance, focus, compression, and several other factors. I generally believe it's very, very unwise to do much sharpening in post unless you're really up against the wall.

How are you monitoring the 4K image? How is the monitor calibrated? What format do you ultimately need to deliver? All of these things will affect sharpness as well.

I've seen 2K images from the Alexa on a 40' screen where I could count the individual pores on actors' faces. Do we really need it to be much sharper than that?
 
Shoot a healthy exposure under a daylight balanced source at an f8 on sharp lenses (Master Prime, Ultra Prime, S4, Leica). The image will cut your eyes. I just spent all day in the DI trying to add texture to every shot that meets the above criteria because its just too sharp.

Julio
 
Thanks all!
And Paul, thankyou so much for a simple, straight forward and practical answer. I'll try it.
 
No worries.
The way I do it is on the Track Channel

After the first node, add two layered nodes and a layer mixer. Set the Layer mixer composite mode to Add
Set one of the layer modes to Luma by reducing saturation to zero. Sharpen to taste. I don't like to go below 46.
Set the other layer to chroma by going to the Primaries bar and pulling down the Y Gain channel to 0.01.
 
Thank you for the advice Paul! I will be trying it for an upcoming project
 
Paul.


Thank you also for those advices.

SI2K footage needs a little sharpening but I find that it moves into a "videoish look" if I get too ambitious. Your methods may be a solution for me.


You might be able to help me with this one. In this clip there are several things went wrong. I was operating solo when I should have had the good sense to have an assistant instead of enslaving passers-by.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVrNG-O-fjk


In the process, I managed to dislodge the battery and on the reboot the camera reverted to a tungsten white balance which had been the previous setting. I did not spot the error at the time. To complicate matters there was considerable fluctuation in light levels due to alternating cloud shadows and full sunlight.

My quick solution in Premiere CS6 was to colour correct for the blue bias, then crudely razor the clip at the changes in light level, change the luma values and apply cross-dissolves to the razor cuts. I found that with the changes in light level, the colour s also went out of whack, the green grass particularly.

The grade, such as it is, was done in haste for the folk who wanted to see it promptly. I am partially red-green colourblind which does not help.

For a more systematic method of correcting and grading this footage in Resolve 11 Lite, I would appreciate your suggestions.
 
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My preferred method for a perceptibly sharper result with less risk of looking over-sharpened is to change the scaling filter. The default in RCX-P is Mitchell, which is a smoother look. If that is too creamy for a particular project my go to is Lanczos which tightens it up a notch with very little risk of moire/aliasing. AFAIK, even if your export is the same nominal resolution as your source, which means you're not down scaling per se, it still impacts the image reconstruction characteristics - just not as much as when you are downsampling.

Cheers - #19
 
Shoot on a Dragon at 6k and downsample to 4k? *ducks* :)
 
Robert Hart said:
You might be able to help me with this one. In this clip there are several things went wrong. I was operating solo when I should have had the good sense to have an assistant instead of enslaving passers-by.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVrNG-O-fjk
Click to expand...
Wow, that's not good.

First thing to do is get the right white balance in meta data by adjusting the properties of the R3D files in RCP and saving the RMD sidecar. Then in Resolve you import the data with the global RAW setting of using 'Camera Metadata'.
Then make sure, by checking scopes, that you are not blowing out your highlights and crushing your shadows.

Those two simple steps will make a big difference. Scopes are everything.
 
Paul. Thanks for your suggestions.

In that deep valley, there is a bit of natural green spill which changes when the sun is masked by the clouds.

In Premiere, I was running out of minus blue adjustment and forced to up the red and green channels. Things got weirder and weirder. I have not been able to find the scopes and RGB parade in Premiere CS6 which I am still stumbling about in. I was reasonably comfortable in Premiere CS5 with the Cineform toolkit but Cineform is not on the new machine, only free Go Pro which enables the files to play.
 
Paul Russell said:
A popular fix in Da Vinci is to split the chroma and luma channels and sharpen the luma only. You can also apply a bit of noise reduction to the chroma channel to give a nice gloss. Sutble changes work the best.
Click to expand...


Thanks Paul! I'm going to have to try that.
 
Global sharpness in any way should be done carefully. I see it in images from starting photographers a lot, just dumb all the tricks of sharpening to the whole image and done. If that is based on the luma channel only or by increasing the contrast is not the key point here. (... talking about post sharpening.)

As cinematographers we are certainly requested to pinpoint where the audience eyes will "rest" and that is from our natural experience where things are sharp (besides where the movement is or light is --perhaps changing, etc). If everything is sharp, we do not direct the eye as much as we could. Often it is just enough to only sharpen the eyes of an actor.
 
There's several decent methods. Since there is no in camera sharpening, post Unsharp Mask/Sharpening works well. Sharpening and scaling works well. Scaling down works well. Adjusting the scaling method works well. All techniques net different results and "feels". So it's more or less down to doing some experimentation to find the look and method you're happy with.
 
pinned for reference.
 
Threads like these are usually related to "why this doesn't look/feel like film" type of threads.


Attempt of solving a part of the latter conundrum:


A) Because film provides less detail than UHD (meaning scene detail, medium texture excluded).

B) Because sharpening adds to sterility, by reducing the natural feel of the original captured light through artificial enhancement of micro contrast.

C) Because too much focus-grabbing picture detail draws viewer's focus to the surface, removing it from the essence.



Meaning that over-bombed mind of the viewer processes additional details for no apparent reason, except scene detail obsession of the content producer.

Which may be a problem with the type of content where the viewer's participation, his imagination and inner experience are more important than simple observation and consideration of tissue/clothes/things/environment texture.
And one can't have both without one affecting the other.
 
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