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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 :)

NAB 2014 - DRAGONcolor and REDgamma 4

To be honest I'm having a difficult time finding a significant difference between these images - they almost look identical. I can see that the old color science renders skin tones a little more red and reds are more saturated in general, but that's about the only difference I can see. Anyone else agree?

Phil Holland said:
I have a few images to share here. I was fortunate to get an early look at what exactly DRAGONcolor and REDgamma4 can do. This is very important stuff and I have a few example images. Anything you see here listed as DRAGONgamma is actually REDgamma4.

Here we go:

Color Chart in Broad Daylight (no ND)


Things to notice is the overall subtle vibrancy and clarity of chroma and tones.


Skin Tones - Shot 1


Skin tones, likely the most talked about color response talked about, has more pop. Richer, fuller, subtle tones revealed.


Skin Tones - Shot 2


Another example on a male subject under daylight fluorescents.


Super Saturation - Shot 1



Early on we noticed that Dragon had access to a lot of color information. So much it was actually carrying over into highlights on tricky sources, like the orange sign in the background next to the man in frame. Graeme worked hard and the highlight chroma roll-off is much more wrangled under saturated sources. Huge accomplishment in reality.


Super Saturation - Shot 2



Another test of tricky color sources. Check out how the tail lights and the El Capitan sign in the upper left corner are now. This is good. Also the guitar neon sign in the background shows perhaps the biggest improvement.


Tricky Reds



Before we had tuned color science on Dragon reds in particular seemed to be jumping up and being hot. In the files you could see the data there, with the new color science with DRAGONcolor now it looks like you want it to.


Harsh Daylight Source


This is the visible difference on my face compared to REDcolor3/REDgamma3. Again, there's more pop and nuance to skin tones. They aren't as flat as before and have much of a think feeling.


As John mentioned above DRAGONcolor/REDgamma4 places the black levels at the appropriate density levels. Now we have a far thicker "digital negative" in the REDCODE RAW. This effects everything in reality. From the general look to the proper ISO performance under this New OLPF and New Calibration.

And the thing I'm stressing with these examples is this is REDgamma4's output. Using DRAGONcolor and REDlogFilm is equally as powerful when going for more advanced grading. Dragon's got the thickness. That's the best way I can describe it.
Click to expand...
 
MichaelJQuill said:
To be honest I'm having a difficult time finding a significant difference between these images - they almost look identical. I can see that the old color science renders skin tones a little more red and reds are more saturated in general, but that's about the only difference I can see. Anyone else agree?
Click to expand...

RC3/RG3 aren't even the 3rd version of viewing the data; there were RedSpace and Rec709 before that. So when you consider the years of work that went into getting up to RC3/RG3, I would actually *hope* that at this point, all that we get is small, incremental improvements. It indicates that they did a ton of work getting us up to this point, and did it well.

Also, Phil posted .jpg's; I would hold off final judgement until viewing actual footage in RCX and on a calibrated monitor. Phil did a great job of selecting footage that would showcase and even highlight the improvements in web-appropriate jpg format. But I've always found that as impressed as I might be with someone else's exports, the true flexibility of footage doesn't become apparent until it's my own fingertips on the controls.
 
I know this is a fast moving thread, and I posted it once ealrier, but for those who don't see much difference in more subtle tonality, have a look at my colour spectrum comparison:

DCDGspectrum.jpg
 
Jarred Land said:
(clipped)
• 4K Broadcast Module support
• DRAGONcolor (Dragon only)
• REDgamma4 as default gamma
• 4 User Calibration Maps available (Dragon only)
• Calibration map programming time optimized (Dragon only)
Click to expand...

Thank you for all this guys!!!
 
Has anyone updated their Scarlet to 5.2.8 yet? What is this burst mode that they speak of?

EDIT: Also, what's the problem with using DragonColour on MX footage? It actually looks a little more accurate to me... Cleaner, less cross-contamination type thing.

EDIT2: Build 30 doesn't allow me to enter in values numerically on any of the settings (e.g. highlight and type in "0.5").
 
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Burst Mode apparently does something a bit different than we thought.

It essentially rolls REDCODE RAW at 2:1 for a short period of time depending on your FPS. So. It's ideally suited to while rolling still work in my mind.

Micheal, Look closer at mine and John's images. Look at the highlights, shadows, midtones, and how the our colors are effected. That is actually a considerable difference I can see. Even on the jpgs.

On the show floor right now. I'll more info on a few things soon.
 
I just applied Dragoncolor and redgamma4 to my Red Epic MX shoot. worked great! looks awesome!!!
 
Yeah, I'd like to know how DragonColour negatively affects MX footage. I presume it's just not as calibrated for the sensor, so will cause erroneous results some times...??

It looks to me like RG4 effectively "DRX"s the blacks, forcing the channels to match better by not excessively stretching them.
 
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MichaelJQuill said:
To be honest I'm having a difficult time finding a significant difference between these images - they almost look identical. I can see that the old color science renders skin tones a little more red and reds are more saturated in general, but that's about the only difference I can see. Anyone else agree?
Click to expand...

I agree :)
Skin tones are still very red-ish.
Roll off is also very similar, doesn't look significant.
 
Phil Holland said:
Burst Mode apparently does something a bit different than we thought.

It essentially rolls REDCODE RAW at 2:1 for a short period of time depending on your FPS. So. It's ideally suited to while rolling still work in my mind.
Click to expand...

Ok, it was quiet bad naming on that feauture. Will be alot of hopefull people disapointed for a while. The timing would have been great now that so many cameras do highspeed. Would have been cool with 180 or 200fps in 4k or something.
 
Joel Arvidsson said:
Ok, it was quiet bad naming on that feauture. Will be alot of hopefull people disapointed for a while. The timing would have been great now that so many cameras do highspeed. Would have been cool with 180 or 200fps in 4k or something.
Click to expand...

yeah itst too sad, but who knows maybe there is hope that the hardware is capable of doing it in the future?
 
Joel Arvidsson said:
Ok, it was quiet bad naming on that feauture. Will be alot of hopefull people disapointed for a while. The timing would have been great now that so many cameras do highspeed. Would have been cool with 180 or 200fps in 4k or something.
Click to expand...

I would be worrying about colour science to be honest :)
 
it's a bummer... "RC burst mode" would have made it a bit clearer from the start.

But a nice thing is the SSD rest time indicator. or did I miss that in one of the last firmwares?
 
Asif Limbada said:
I would be worrying about colour science to be honest :)
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i would have it to put through redlogfilm / redcolor4 in grading in resolve (at this stage over dpx intermediate) to be able to say more, this is where it will prove its real value… i will be able to look into that on the weekend and excited for that
 
alexjentz said:
i would have it to put through redlogfilm / redcolor4 in grading in resolve (at this stage over dpx intermediate) to be able to say more, this is where it will prove its real value… i will be able to look into that on the weekend and excited for that
Click to expand...

lets hope so too.
 
In the stills the skintone is much better in Dragoncolor - has some pink, less brown - I really like it.

Also in the flower shot the red is less electric looking - more subdued and natural.
 
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