Is 2K on the Epic still softer than RED MX?

[Jack Lam]

Last year in Oct I shot a project with the Epic. We did some shots at 300fps in 2K, and it was very soft.
I am aware that 2K is naturally softer than 4K, but this time it was much softer than any decent 1080p material. Even RED MX at 2K was much sharper.
Other users on REDUSER also expressed the same concern in another thread (I can't find the link to it now.) The consent at that time was it was a known firmware bug.

I have a shoot coming up tomorrow. I just want to ask, is the 2K softness bug fixed on the Epic now? Is 2K / 3K useable now?

(I'm sorry if it has been discussed. I can't find an answer anywhere, and it is hard to prove a negative if the problem doesn't exist anymore.)

thanks

Jack

 

[Vigen Vartanov]

There was updates that fix this from OCT . I mean it is not something that software update can fix .

 

[Timur Civan]

90% sure the lenses have a lot to do with it.

Try shooting with S16 lenses for 300 fps material, i imagine the results will be far better.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

It's not the lenses - it seems to be a compression algorithm thing. Maybe it has improved. Certainly it could via firmware

 

[Jack Lam]

I am sure it wasn't a lens issue. It looked more like digital artifacts or bad compression than the lack of lens resolving power.
I have also shot 2K with a RED MX and it certainly produced better end result.

the project was cut in 1080p, so 2K shouldn't be noticeably softer than 4K material. It wasn't the case with the Epic in my last shoot. It was noticeable even when viewed at 50% at the Final Cut Pro viewer window.

So far nobody can give me a clear direct answer on this issue. So that means 2K is still not very useable right now?

I am surprised such an important problem isn't more widely discussed, or did I just have an isolated case of camera glitch? What's your experience with the Epic at 2K? Is it softer than RED MX?

 

[Jeff Garton]

I have shot a fair bit of 240 and 300fps material. My early tests on my Epic-M were a bit noisier than RED One 2k footage. I have had no issues with more recent shots, even extracting a 16x9 frame out of the widescreen 2k. This has mostly been for FX work, so the footage has been manipulated a fair bit. Haven't done any serious tests lately, but my anecdotal experience is that it has improved.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I don't recall which build it came with a few months back, but the current and most recent firmware for Epic has addressed some of the 2K quality issues. It helped a bit, but only just a bit. The faster 512GB SSD cards should help in this regard as we can lower the amount of compression. The other thing to take into consideration is that EPIC is pushing the same sensor much harder than the RED One does. We're going to see more noise at these higher frame rates. I guess that's one aspect of Dragon that I'm really looking forward to seeing -- how it will handle higher frame rates and other aspects of shooting that the current MX sensor tends to struggle with a bit.

 

[Elsie N]

Can Red One shoot 2k @ 300 FPS? Shooting 2k at comparable frame rates and compression ratios could narrow the difference.