NOISE IN RED WEAPON 8K RAW FOOTAGE

[Jamie Paolinetti]

As this is my first project using the RED I have many questions about our footage and edit workflow... the first big one is NOISE in the shots, and what should be expected when shooting in RAW 8K? The DP did use a shallow depth of field set of 35mm lenses and most of the movie is dark and shot at night in low light, but there sure seems to me to be a TON of noise, (I have been viewing the footage through redcine x pro player at full quality). I know color correction and grading are always part of the workflow with any media, but that has its limitations when trying to fix noise and pixilation. This is most evident in the shadows and when focus gets soft, but it is even in the interior shots that are well lit and very still. My question: is this "normal" or something that other people have had experience with when shooting 8k raw with the weapon? And, what are everyone's opinions of the Red's ability to shoot at night in low-light?

 

[Bob Gundu]

You get noise with underexposed footage. From Redcine, export a R3D snapshot so we can see the metadata of how it was exposed.

Bob

 

[Chris Kennedy]

I find my Weapon to be a pretty nice setup up in low light/signal to noise when compared to Dragon.

It’s all about using your goalposts/exposure tools and how to properly expose a RED
https://youtu.be/WiM14Hni3nI

Also be sure the black shading calibration is correct on the shutter speed and temperatures.

 

[Owen Rennie]

There’s been a ton of these threads and 99% of the time it turns out the footage has been underexposed. Do a search and post and R3D here

Owen

 

[Jamie Paolinetti]

Thank you! I had someone else mention the black shading calibration as very important. News to me.

 

[Jamie Paolinetti]

Thank you Owen! Beautiful reel by the way. Do you do narrative work ever? Love to stay in touch. MagnificentSevenFilms.com JamiePaolinetti.com AtwaterPlayhouse.com

 

[Tom Gleeson]

I can’t comment on the noise in the image without seeing a R3D but as your original files are 8K and if you are doing a 2K deliverable you should see the noise decrease substantially as you average the pixels to get 2K. Try transcoding some of the files to 1920 and to 4K and see what you get.

On this point are there any settings in RCX, Adobe’s Media Encoder or Apple’s Compressor that would help to improve the suppressing of noise when downscaling?

 

[Jamie Paolinetti]

Thanks Tom! I will give it a shot.

 

[Sergio Perez]

Definitely do a black shading at your operating temperature and at the shutter speed you mostly intend to shoot. Notice black shading takes almost an Hour on Weapon. But once done you can memorize it for similar days and shooting scenarios.

 

[Aaron Lochert]

Definitely do a black shading at your operating temperature and at the shutter speed you mostly intend to shoot. Notice black shading takes almost an Hour on Weapon. But once done you can memorize it for similar days and shooting scenarios.

If you do a manual black shade at just one shutter angle, it'll take like 10 minutes.

 

[Bob Gundu]

If you do a manual black shade at just one shutter angle, it'll take like 10 minutes.

Which is still the preferred method BTW.