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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 :)

Jim (Cameron) says 4K is overkill...

Overkill is the point....If you can have 4K why not, you can do more with a 4K image than you can with a 2K. Plus you will see most things go 4k 3D over the next 3-4 years.

"A 2K image at 48 frames per second looks as sharp as a 4K image at 24 frames per second ... with one fundamental difference: the 4K/24 image will judder miserably during a panning shot, and the 2K/48 won't. Higher pixel counts only preserve motion artifacts like strobing with greater fidelity. They don't solve them at all." (from the above link)

It might be fair to say that right now we have 3K 48fps. I bet we will get 48fps 4K soon. So why not shoot 3K at 48fps still better than 2K 48fps if the above is really the concern. It also sounds like he has seen bad 4K, Red can likely chime in here and strike down the motion artifact concerns from 4K.
 
i think the 48fps point is pretty valid, but i can't see why having *more* resolution is a bad thing.

when we create CG characters and texture them, we always create a higher res (polys and texture sizes) than we expect to use ... that way if we later decide we need to upres (for better systems, perhaps, or for marketing materials) we have a more detailed original that we can go back to. You can always down res through an automated process ... but if you start low, you can't go higher without recreating the asset.

maybe it's because he (rightly, for now?) assumes you can't have both. he actually says that the ideal is "3D-2k-48fps", but he's making an assumption that you have to compromise somewhere.

I know this has been probably been brought up before, but since the mysterium is cropped for 2k would there be a way to rig up two lenses on the front of the RED and use the full 4k sensor to capture stereo 2k images with every frame?

JT
Austin, Texas
 
48fps could be useful for those shots like James suggests that judder. Then double up frames on playback on all other shots to retain the look and feel of 24fps.

More information is always going to be better. Perhaps it's not wholey necessary but at the end of the day it can't hurt to shoot it that way. It gives you greater options in post to reframe or add effects outside of the 2K area if you have the extra info from the start.

Paul
 
Regarding fps:

"...Especially in the types of films which have been my specialty to date, the fantasy experience is served best by a sense of detail and textural reality supporting the narrative moment by moment. The characters, the dialogue, the production design, photography and visual effects must all strive to give the illusion that what you're seeing is really happening, no matter how improbable the situation might be if you stopped to think about it -- a time-traveling cyborg out to change history by killing a waitress, for example."
Click to expand...

"For three-fourths of a century of 2-D cinema, we have grown accustomed to the strobing effect produced by the 24 frame per second display rate.
...Some people call it judder, others strobing. I call it annoying. It's also easily fixed, because the stereo renaissance is enabled by digital cinema, and digital cinema supplies the answer to the strobing problem....This alone would make 2-D movies look astonishingly clear and sharp, at very little extra cost, with equipment that's already installed or being installed....So why aren't we doing it, as an industry?

Because people have been asking the wrong question for years. They have been so focused on resolution, and counting pixels and lines, that they have forgotten about frame rate. Perceived resolution = pixels x replacement rate. A 2K image at 48 frames per second looks as sharp as a 4K image at 24 frames per second ... with one fundamental difference: the 4K/24 image will judder miserably during a panning shot, and the 2K/48 won't. Higher pixel counts only preserve motion artifacts like strobing with greater fidelity. They don't solve them at all."
Click to expand...


I remember a thread where almost everyone was appalled with anything but 24 for cinematic storytelling.

So...James Cameron also isn't.
 
Given all the horrible things people have done to their 30i and 25i footage to make it 'look like film' that's a fairly interesting thing to hear coming from someone like Cameron.

Personally I've always preferred the temporal resolution of high framerate (or perceived framerate in the case of interlaced image) to the strobey look of 24fps.

Of course something like RED offers the flexability to go either way, you can have the 4K at 24/25fps or a lower resolution at higher framerate.
 
James Cameron also prefers the 4x3 versions of his films which most people (myself included) wouldn't have predicted.

So if you want the TRUE director's vision, you have to watch the 4x3 versions of T2 and the Abyss ;)
 
4k gives 4 by 2k pan and scan capability

4k gives 4 by 2k pan and scan capability

I don't know how anyone else feels about this but one of the reasons I am excited about shooting 4k is because it will give 4 quadrants of 2k image data within which I can pan and scan in Shake if I want to pick up a close up shot, change the framing, zoom speed and etc. Also stabilize and smooth cam often crops the outer 20% of the 4k frame. At 4k with camera turned 90 degrees, you could shoot a single full body shot (head to toe or even waist up) of the talent against a green screen, then rotate in post and with full 4k you could grab a head and shoulders shot or even tight close-up from the same original footage and you'd have plenty for 2k final.

I just think this is another reason to shoot 4k and then finish in 2k. Once R3D support is native in Shake (via SDK), we will be able to work on 1/10 res proxies and then finish in 2k but if pan and scan, zoom or other 3d move is necessary or warranted, we can always link back up to the 4k original and let a few servers render overnight.

4k at 48 frames would be the sweetest of the sweet spots as far as I'm concerned.
 
PaulClements said:
48fps could be useful for those shots like James suggests that judder. Then double up frames on playback on all other shots to retain the look and feel of 24fps.
Click to expand...
For me the "look and feel of 24fps" is equivalent to clicks and cracks of vinyl record when comparing to a CD. Is the "look and feel" established a century ago the ultimate goal that modern cinematography should be aiming for?

I fully agree with James Cameron. Temporal resolution is compromised and objectionable at 24fps, where spacial resolution of good 2k is more than adequate for human eye. And, it is true that 2k at 48fps is perceived "crisper" and sharper than 4k at 24fps.

4k at 48fps is just waste of bandwidth/space and results in diminishing returns. I would put dynamic range higher on the importance list than spacial resolution. My vote for delivery would be 2k at 48fps, 12+bit colour. Anything more does not produce visible difference and is therefore wasteful.
 
wow.. i thought i was the only one who liked 4x3 more :D Then again 4k is hardly overkill for us since its highly compressed down to 36mb/s... might not even look as good as uncompressed 2k cinema pros use?
 
Well, as far as I'm personally concerned, the 2k you get from our 4k when downsampled properly is the nicest looking 2k I've seen. But the 4k as 4k is just lovely!

Graeme
 
it's an interesting article, well worth reading.

i think much of what he's talking about is 2k vs. 4k projection (and pipeline), and I'm sure he wouldn't turn down more resolution if he could have his high frame rate at the same time.

i've been thinking a lot about shooting at 48 fps and what it would entail; it's interesting to read Cameron's opinions.

He's always been one of my favorite directors. The Abyss was on Sci Fi recently; I had almost forgotten what an amazing film that is. I can't wait for Avatar.
 
shooter said:
I don't know how anyone else feels about this but one of the reasons I am excited about shooting 4k is because it will give 4 quadrants of 2k image data within which I can pan and scan in Shake if I want to pick up a close up shot, change the framing, zoom speed and etc. Also stabilize and smooth cam often crops the outer 20% of the 4k frame. At 4k with camera turned 90 degrees, you could shoot a single full body shot (head to toe or even waist up) of the talent against a green screen, then rotate in post and with full 4k you could grab a head and shoulders shot or even tight close-up from the same original footage and you'd have plenty for 2k final....
Click to expand...

I agree, it is a great solution for stabelizing, panning, tilts, cropping, pushing. Plus there could be other end user purposes besides cinema, like multiple event screens, video walls, video games, trade shows, 3D texture mapping, etc. It opens a whole world for compositing. Cameron must be thinking 2K as a projected cinema format which is probably too limiting for most Red users.

Phil
www.artbeats.com
 
cinemano said:
wow.. i thought i was the only one who liked 4x3 more :D Then again 4k is hardly overkill for us since its highly compressed down to 36mb/s... might not even look as good as uncompressed 2k cinema pros use?
Click to expand...

Realistically bitrate means nothing. From what I've seen the REDCODE compression is very efficient. I've certainly not seen any obvious compression artifacting.

That said, I've never seen, in person, any of the 2K footage used by the "cinema pros".
 
3D via crop

3D via crop

JT.. Possible, maybe..

But there would be issues to overcome.
Image circles are bigger than the sensor area, so I'm not sure if there is a way to take both eyes at the same time, as the image circles would overlap. You wouldn't want to take off the same lens side by side; the edge distortion would make the image characteristics too far off.
I know people are already doing 3D with red - I was assuming they were running at 48fps and alternating L and R eye captures, or something like that, through some type of 3D lens system.

David

jtcoleman said:
I know this has been probably been brought up before, but since the mysterium is cropped for 2k would there be a way to rig up two lenses on the front of the RED and use the full 4k sensor to capture stereo 2k images with every frame?

JT
Austin, Texas
Click to expand...
 
In the end this will be about making the choice for your given project I think.

24fps was settled on because at that rate the flicker of the film couldn't be perceived by the human eye. Thus, that became the standard, film projectors were made to accommodate that fps, and audiences got used to it.

Now with digital projectors do you really need a standard frame rate? The answer is no, I think, please correct me if I'm wrong.

So what's to stop Director's and D.P.'s from choosing the right "frame rate" for their project?


(resolution is a non-issue I think as most people will go for higher res if their equipment can handle it, and given the speed at which computing power and storage space are ever increasing I think in the near future we'll look back at the crazy olden days when 4K was too much for our desktops to handle)
 
PaulClements said:
48fps could be useful for those shots like James suggests that judder.
Click to expand...

Yeah, 'cause we've all been complaining about this "objectionable judder" for the last century :whistling:

Then double up frames on playback on all other shots to retain the look and feel of 24fps.
Click to expand...

You mean, like we do now???

IIRC Jim Cameron gave a speech at NAB 2006 (when Red was launched) criticising 4K as overkill. Nice to see he's remained consistent. Back then he was saying 72fps was the "sweet spot" though. Problem is, Cameron has settled on technical standards that make him happy and then he expects everyone else to adopt them, regardless of whether it works out for them. I seem to remember a certain Mr. Lucas arguing a while back that HD was more than enough resolution and that we should all adopt it.

I'm really glad that certain Mad Men didn't take any notice...

FWIW, I think Graeme's suggestion of an agnostic platform has a lot of merit, one where you could use multiple playback frame-rates as a creative tool.
 
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