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Noisy Epic footage?

Eric Haase

Eric Haase

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I've had a few shoots recently where I am noticing that the shadows appear somewhat noisy with my Epic X. I've diligently done black shadings at "current fps", etc before each shoot (sometimes just before rolling). It appears to me that the footage (shot at 7:1, 5K) is more noisy than Red MX footage shot at RC36 4K 16:9. I first noticed it on black shirts that subjects were wearing in controlled, well-exposed lighting situations (under tungsten OR daylight balanced lighting conditions). I've included a link to a test clip I shot today, along with a picture of the exposure check from the Epic touchscreen. The purple areas on the exposure check I might expect to have noise, but looking at the black shirt and the jacket on the chair I am seeing quite a bit of noise all over it. Wondering if anyone has any insight into this? It just looks noisier than I am used to after shooting the last couple years on RED and with the MX sensor since it became available. I shot the same setup with a RED MX and will post that footage as well as soon as I get it. In the meantime, any help is greatly appreciated.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/904379/Epic X Noise test.zip
 
alas the noise isn't limited to your shadows. At 400% your green screen is peppered with quite a bit of blue noise.
 
I have some of these concerns myself where I think I have gotten cleaner footage out on my R1 than from Epic under similar circumstances.
 
Hey Eric,
Did you try it with lower compression?
Anyone know if there ever any definitive answer from Red regarding what the new compression ratios mean as compared to the old "Redcode 36", "Redcode 28", etc.? I know people had posted here that 8:1 was like one thing, 5:1 was another, etc. but I never saw any OFFICIAL statement from the Red Team.
Just wondering...
Cheers,
Harry
 
Yes, at minimum. If you have enough F stops to shoot with... 80C eats you 1 stop, but RGB would be equally "saturated".


Pat
 
Patrick Tresch said:
You used 3600K for a 5000k+ sensor. It's like 1.5 stop of noise in your blue channel (2400 asa).

Pat
Click to expand...

I normally use an 82C filter when shooting under tungsten lighting and am aware that tungsten light makes the blue channel more noisy. I have shot scenes with the MX at 1000 under tungsten lighting at lower light levels than this with no filter that are far less noisy than this. In addition, this Epic is producing this noise even under daylight lighting conditions. Here is a link to an R3D of a shot under daylight balanced lights. Notice the noise in the chair.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/904379/A003_C002_01053Z_001.R3D

I'm just seeing more noise than normal based on a few years of shooting RED. Wondering if it is this particular camera, firmware (2.0.5 beta) or Epic in general. I will try to test more today and get a hold of the R3D of the MX shot that I made at the same time. It has less noise than the Epic shot when viewed under the exact same settings. I hope to be able to post that later. If anyone has any clue or has any similar experiences please let me know. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
Harry Clark said:
Hey Eric,
Did you try it with lower compression?
Anyone know if there ever any definitive answer from Red regarding what the new compression ratios mean as compared to the old "Redcode 36", "Redcode 28", etc.? I know people had posted here that 8:1 was like one thing, 5:1 was another, etc. but I never saw any OFFICIAL statement from the Red Team.
Just wondering...
Cheers,
Harry
Click to expand...

Harry, I tried some lower compression and played back on a monitor on a different shoot but it did not make a big difference. I don't have those files, though. I was under the impression that 8:1 was at least equal to or better than RC36.
 
IAN SUN said:
I have some of these concerns myself where I think I have gotten cleaner footage out on my R1 than from Epic under similar circumstances.
Click to expand...

Ian,

I'm not sure I can agree with you on this. Maybe we should get together with our cameras and shoot side by each :). If you underexpose the camera then you will get noise in the blacks if you try to dig something out that didn't get enough light.

R
 
Would a new black shading help?
Side by side comparison with an other Epic would be interesting, it's perhaps related to your specific camera...?

Pat
 
It's kind of unfortunate that we need to resort to black shading, which randomly work. Epic boots up in about 10 seconds, but now I need to spend more time on black shading that takes 20 minutes. Red One MX gives me more solid (or consistent) results so far with only black shading required when updating the firmware. I'm aware that the team is looking into major improvements, but this makes me nervous each day. Here's hoping for a new build with lots of improvements!

Edit: Just to contribute to the thread, I've felt that Red One MX performs better at noise from time to time. Daylight lit with the actor in a black suit. It was less pleasing than Red MX footy to grade that suit.
 
I don't know if i should say I am sorry to chime in - on the other hand i had a similar experience a couple of weeks ago:

We shot Greenscreen / Tungsten lit / converted with 80C / 80D on EPIC-X (4K HD, Compression 5:1, 50 fps, Exposure time 120) and the picture was quite noisy on the blacks. I did several black shadings (24fps and afterwards for the higher frame rate), but it wasn't improving the situation, so the VFX guy applied some noise reduction in shake (?).

I have shot more or less the same setup more than 10 times with RED ONE M and MX and never experienced the same kind of noise level in the shadows.

We had to do a reshoot last week (because the customer wanted to have more extras for the backgrounds) and after talking to the VFX guy we decided to use "Queen Mum" (RED MX) instead of the EPIC-X and the result was quite pleasing as always.

I will check if I can provide clips.

best wishes and kind regards,
Martin
 
R. Gonzales said:
Ian,

I'm not sure I can agree with you on this. Maybe we should get together with our cameras and shoot side by each :). If you underexpose the camera then you will get noise in the blacks if you try to dig something out that didn't get enough light.

R
Click to expand...

Rate and light at 320 ISO..for tungsten...Noise floor is lower. rating at 800 is forcing you to underexpose a bit....

If you use tungsten use an 1/8 blue in the mattebox.


David
 
But you can't shoot 50fps @ 4k on a R1 so already the results would be different. 1/120 is a very fast shutter as well, whichwould cut a it of light.

martinnoweck said:
I don't know if i should say I am sorry to chime in - on the other hand i had a similar experience a couple of weeks ago:

We shot Greenscreen / Tungsten lit / converted with 80C / 80D on EPIC-X (4K HD, Compression 5:1, 50 fps, Exposure time 120) and the picture was quite noisy on the blacks. I did several black shadings (24fps and afterwards for the higher frame rate), but it wasn't improving the situation, so the VFX guy applied some noise reduction in shake (?).

I have shot more or less the same setup more than 10 times with RED ONE M and MX and never experienced the same kind of noise level in the shadows.

We had to do a reshoot last week (because the customer wanted to have more extras for the backgrounds) and after talking to the VFX guy we decided to use "Queen Mum" (RED MX) instead of the EPIC-X and the result was quite pleasing as always.

I will check if I can provide clips.

best wishes and kind regards,
Martin
Click to expand...
 
true, we went 3k 50p on the red mx

we had space lights for the green and dinos for the foreground

regards,
martin
 
I wonder if the smaller form factor of the Epic means a slightly hotter sensor, all other things being equal. Perhaps that is what we are seeing here.
I was a bit surprised, to be honest, by the amount of noise in that clip.
Cheers,
Harry
 
David Battistella said:
Rate and light at 320 ISO..for tungsten...Noise floor is lower. rating at 800 is forcing you to underexpose a bit....

If you use tungsten use an 1/8 blue in the mattebox.


David
Click to expand...

Rating 320 will compromise highlight range quite a bit. As it is, if you rate 800 the highlight/shadow distribution is not even- you still have more stops of shadow information than highlight. If you rate 320, this becomes even more unbalanced and there are very few stops of highlight range. This is not practical for scenes with a wide tonal range. I rate 320 or 400 when I have dark scenes where the tonal values of the scene fall under one and a half stops over key. Ive achieved clean results doing this shooting dark scenes, but it is simply not practical for a scene with a wide range of highlight and shadow values.
 
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