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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, More Reasons Why 1080p is Not Enough

Phil Bates

Phil Bates

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Jim, so sorry I didn’t get to post in your Recon thread, but I wanted you to know 10 reasons why 1080p is not enough for me.

1. I want to be able to re-frame the compositon (crop) without loosing resolution.

2. I want the option to introduce pan, tilt, rotation and/or zoom.

3. I want the extra margin to be able to stabelize without duplicating edge pixels, stretching the edges, or using any other image compromizing trickery.

4. I want the extra margin to be able to correct for non-level support, bad pans, tilts, or zooms.

5. I want the extra margin to be able to correct for barrel distortion or other lens anomalies.

6. I want the extra resolution so when I size down to 1080p I get the pixel interpolation benefit of natural sharpness, less noise and less compression artifacts.

7. I want the option to layer(or dissolve) two overlapping images where the elements may not match exactly.

8. I am tired of depending on DSLRs for high resolution timelapse with all their limitations and the flicker they can introduce. (I’ve mostly resolved the flicker thing, but still...)

9. I offer footage for all kinds of uses that go way beyond broadcast, including digital signage, concert backdrops, projects for 4K projection, gaming and much more.

10. My customers are asking for ultra high resolution images for testing purposes.

With 4K I can do several of these items at once without compromising image quality, like doing both an artificial pan and image stabilization.

These are items I deal with daily. They are practical and affect my business and customers NOW. 1080p is DEFINITELY not enough.

Phil
 
Phil Bates said:
...
1. I want to be able to re-frame the compositon (crop) without loosing resolution....
Click to expand...

I still trying to figure out how this is done. Apparently, it's bloody difficult. I have stuff reframed in FCP, but for the life of me, or anyone else it seems, I don't know how to go back to the 4k and re-render those shots to get a crop that matches the FCP shot.

very very frustrating.
 
I live in the After Effects world and it's fairly easy to do there. I realize that's small comfort to you. I wonder if it's more of a compositing task than an editing one. Maybe someone else will chime in.

Phil
 
Phil Bates said:
I live in the After Effects world and it's fairly easy to do there. I realize that's small comfort to you. I wonder if it's more of a compositing task than an editing one. Maybe someone else will chime in.

Phil
Click to expand...

How do you do it in AE? How does AE do the debayer etc? Or do you do the debayer at 4k and crop in AE?

Thanks
 
Chris Pickle said:
How do you do it in AE? How does AE do the debayer etc? Or do you do the debayer at 4k and crop in AE?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Chris, you can literally create any frame size in AE that you want. For example, I might set a 3K 16:9 frame size. I import a 4K 16:9 .R3D file and it automatically crops, only showing the 3K window. I can then scale the 4K image down (or even up if I want) and re-position to show as much or as little of the 4K image that suites me. If the 4K image has a tilted horizon, I can fix it with a rotation, then re-size slightly larger than the 3K window to show the clean edges. I hope this makes sense, it's like ultimate control, with all the variables (scale, position, rotation etc.) key-frameable so they can change over time.

Regarding the de-bayer, it's actually pixel interpolation, similar to what happens when re-sizing an image in Photoshop. AE calculates all pixel scale, rotations, and positions to the thousandth of a pixel in 16 bit color space.

Phil
 
Chris Pickle said:
I still trying to figure out how this is done. Apparently, it's bloody difficult. I have stuff reframed in FCP, but for the life of me, or anyone else it seems, I don't know how to go back to the 4k and re-render those shots to get a crop that matches the FCP shot.

very very frustrating.
Click to expand...

I did this for the entirety of a Comedy Central special airing next month - we pushed in on every shot in the show. I re-transcoded everything out of RedAlert at 4K Prores444 and swapped out the media in the sequence with the full size versions (which as you probably know, you can see in FCP, but not play back in real time.) Then, the hard part - I went through the whole show, shot by shot, and looked at the magnification and xy values of the 1080p version I originally cut and manually multiplied that (I forget what I had to multiply by) to arrive at the proper magnification value for the 4K version. All along I presumed there could be a faster way to automate this for the whole sequence by exporting to XML and modifying the sequence parameters in Excel, but it only took me half a day to just do it manually.
 
Most of your points seem to suggest that you are finishing in 1080p ... so what you are saying is that 1080p acquisition is not good enough.

I think what Jim was alluding to was that a 1080p finish is not good enough.
 
Though it does speak volumes that, even while 1080p delivery remains a popular standard, 4K+ acquisition offers numerous benefits unavailable to 1080p or 2K aquisition. While resolution isn't everything, it can certainly help one do a lot.
 
Phil Bates said:
Jim, so sorry I didn’t get to post in your Recon thread, but I wanted you to know 10 reasons why 1080p is not enough for me.

1. I want to be able to re-frame the compositon (crop) without loosing resolution.

2. I want the option to introduce pan, tilt, rotation and/or zoom.

3. I want the extra margin to be able to stabelize without duplicating edge pixels, stretching the edges, or using any other image compromizing trickery.

4. I want the extra margin to be able to correct for non-level support, bad pans, tilts, or zooms.

5. I want the extra margin to be able to correct for barrel distortion or other lens anomalies.

6. I want the extra resolution so when I size down to 1080p I get the pixel interpolation benefit of natural sharpness, less noise and less compression artifacts.

7. I want the option to layer(or dissolve) two overlapping images where the elements may not match exactly.

8. I am tired of depending on DSLRs for high resolution timelapse with all their limitations and the flicker they can introduce. (I’ve mostly resolved the flicker thing, but still...)

9. I offer footage for all kinds of uses that go way beyond broadcast, including digital signage, concert backdrops, projects for 4K projection, gaming and much more.

10. My customers are asking for ultra high resolution images for testing purposes.

With 4K I can do several of these items at once without compromising image quality, like doing both an artificial pan and image stabilization.

These are items I deal with daily. They are practical and affect my business and customers NOW. 1080p is DEFINITELY not enough.

Phil
Click to expand...

I could not agree with Phil more. Right now for us there is no interest in finishing in 4K, but being able to zoom in to the frame 190% is the ultimate "Fix it in Post" tool. Once clients really get that you can do this it changes how they shoot things. We are using Assimilate Scratch, and it makes the process a turn of a knob.
 
Jim Retar said:
Most of your points seem to suggest that you are finishing in 1080p ... so what you are saying is that 1080p acquisition is not good enough.

I think what Jim was alluding to was that a 1080p finish is not good enough.
Click to expand...

Now that I have started working in 3K and 4K, I can't imagine processing footage without it. We are currently seeing some demand for 4K footage, however it is early yet. For us, 4K is mostly about future proofing and producing better 1080p.

Phil
 
Ok cool! some info on how to pull this off.

Thanks Phil & Alexis!

To just talk this through a bit.

I can export 4k Prores from Redrushes?

If I render out of RedRushes, can I set the ins & outs in Redalert? Are these ins & outs part of the preset look? Just so I don't need to do the entire clip at 4k. Maybe export from CF instead?

I could create a 4k sequence in FCP bring in all of my 4k clips, lay my 1080 crop on top of them, scale them up, then scale & crop the 4k to match. Then export the 4k to prores 1080?

I suppose I could do this in AE as well. I know AE does a better job of maintaining the gamma. (when I export uncompressed from FCP to Prores, often the gamma gets screwed. Which is odd. When I use AE to do the conversion, it seems to keep the gamma)

Alexis, yeah I tried to build a little formula in Excel as well. But it made my head hurt. The issue is that FCP uses centre off-set, while RedRushes uses X & Y. You need to calculate the "scale" from 1080 to 4k, then figure out the new 4k pixel size, then try to translate FCP centre off-set to an X & Y. If you could do that, then you could just enter that info in the crop section of REDrushes.

Thanks again for the help.
 
Chris, I don't think the original poster was talking about cropping, panning etc and then finishing to 4k.

They are using the 4k file in a 1080p/2k finish and it gives alot of extra resolution to play around with.
 
Jim Retar said:
Chris, I don't think the original poster was talking about cropping, panning etc and then finishing to 4k.

They are using the 4k file in a 1080p/2k finish and it gives alot of extra resolution to play around with.
Click to expand...

Hey Jim,

Yeah my ramble was a bit confusing. I'm finishing in 1080, and have a bunch of shots that I reframed. In some cases, a 60% scale. I want to go back to the 4k to get that reframe as to not lose so much res. It hasn't been easy to translate my reframe in FCP to RedRushes.

Thanks
 
Chris Pickle said:
Hey Jim,

Yeah my ramble was a bit confusing. I'm finishing in 1080, and have a bunch of shots that I reframed. In some cases, a 60% scale. I want to go back to the 4k to get that reframe as to not lose so much res. It hasn't been easy to translate my reframe in FCP to RedRushes.

Thanks
Click to expand...

You're working in Final Cut? Why are you not doing your reframe in Color? Rescaling should be something you bake into the clip during your color correct.
 
Jake Bastian said:
You're working in Final Cut? Why are you not doing your reframe in Color? Rescaling should be something you bake into the clip during your color correct.
Click to expand...

As in conform in Color?

Because truthfully, I don't know how to send the R3Ds to Color without massive issues. Every time I try to get my head around, it seems exceedingly difficult.

I know some of the big post house have it figured out very well, but my budget doesn't allow.

Cheers,
Chris
 
Color 2

Color 2

Hi Chris,
Try using FCS3 with FCP 7 and Color 2.
Much more stable and less issues, in sending to Color.

FYI - Color's Geometry room, will have all the basic scaling you did in FCP automatically, directly from the motion tab. If you are using natively wrapped R3Ds, you can link to the 4K R3Ds in Color.
Now, you can scale, crop and rotate with much higher quality, in 4K.
 
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