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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 :)

Post 4k screening and Red picture issues

Omnius said:
Don't you love these guys who come outta no where, and on their very first post they make some sort of criticism about Red, and then that's it. . . we hardly ever hear from them again.
What do they call it in New Zealand and Australia? "Tall Poppy Syndrome"?
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Sorry about not chiming in again sooner but I've been flat chat all weekend. I just wanted to send my query off about the clipping and skin texture before I forgot about it.

It's not a tall poppy thing at all, but when you hear nothing but good things about a product and don't see or hear any criticism whatsoever then that's not such a good thing either. I believe the concerns that I raised were valid observations and since I didn't get to ask about them during the screening I should be able to go ahead and raise them here.

Graeme Nattress said:
It's hard to be criticial in the way you are being of a camera, when you cannot see the raw footage as shot and were not at the grading session with the director. I've seen the raw footage, obviously, but I was not at the grading session and do not know the directors intent.

Graeme
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Thanks Graeme, it's good to know that latitude has been improved since then and that the skin texture issues were just down to grading choices. I'm sure you know the look I'm talking about and if you say it wasn't there in the raw images then that's good enough for me. Coming from a predominantly video background I am constantly frustrated by that "plastic skin" look and was, as you may understand a little disappointed when I noticed it at the screening, especially since the camera has been hyped so much.

None the less it does seem like an amazing camera for anything near it's price point. I very much look forward to seeing further test results in real world situations over the next couple of months.
 
The Onfilm article mentions that the film was graded in 709 linear space, which may explain the weirdness of the sky. They are apparently now regrading in log, which may provide better images (whether we'll ever see them is a different matter).
 
Cali - REC709 isn't linear, it's gamma encoded. Quite frankly, "what space you grade in" doesn't make a bucket load of sense to me, as any high end app will take the data directly into float anyway. How the data is represented is not the issue, but the accuracy of that representation is, and, how the grading mathematics work.

In all the raw files I've crunch, I've not noticed anything that I'd say was untoward about skin texture. To me, the camera footage always seems to look like a high end DSLR image (which is an image I like) that has not had much in the way of tweaking done to it - which is what you want going into a grading session.
 
Graeme Nattress said:
Cali - REC709 isn't linear, it's gamma encoded. Quite frankly, "what space you grade in" doesn't make a bucket load of sense to me, as any high end app will take the data directly into float anyway. How the data is represented is not the issue, but the accuracy of that representation is, and, how the grading mathematics work.

In all the raw files I've crunch, I've not noticed anything that I'd say was untoward about skin texture. To me, the camera footage always seems to look like a high end DSLR image (which is an image I like) that has not had much in the way of tweaking done to it - which is what you want going into a grading session.
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I was just quoting the article - I'm still wrapping my head around the concept of colour spaces in general...
 
I was involved with helping Ted and certainly arranging two of the three screening setups.

But in all three locations, the SMPTE conference, Apple's booth and the ACS night the footage was 2K, but at the conference and at ACS it was played on a Sony 4K projector. We worked hard to try and get the projection right - at the ACS in particular we spent a lot of time adjusting things and checking sound etc, to give the audience the best chance to view to the material. Ted offered to project it 4K but there was problems with the availability of the servers to play back the 4K to the projector.

Of course it would have ben ideal to project 4K, and we tried for 2 solid weeks to work it out, but Sydney does just not have many (any) 4K servers and both ACS and SMPTE are non-profits so we were all working to do the best we could. Once we understood how impossible it was to project 4K DCP level, we still used the very best 4K projectors we could thanks to SONY and I believe that the projection did the film proud - based on having seen it 4K at NAB on a smaller screen.

Actually I found it very interesting to see the 2K ProRes version, as it was stunning how great it looked given the reduced data rate. In a sense I felt like the ProRes confirmed RED as an everyday option and not just a 4k option. If that makes sense.

I would just quote Ted given Crossing the Line was shot on prototypes "this is the worse the images will ever be" meaning any footage shot from now on will benefit from the big improvements made since March/April.

Just a thanks to David Wakely and all the team at the ACS who worked so hard to put on the event in Sydney and the SMPTE for the conference, and Lucas Wilson from Assimilate for showing Scratch and REDCINE.

Mike
fxphd.com
 
Great work Mike and nice of Sony to assist in making the event a success.

Will ProRes still be relevant once Redcode is a codec choice in FCP?
Do Redcode and ProRes recognise each other? is it simple as plugging in a Red Drive via FW and dropping the files into FCP and selecting ProRes?
 
There are two paths you can choose from - Redcode or ProRes (or anything else I guess) If you were finishing in FCP for a 720P master - you may convert to ProRes and just finish out that way, but you could also run a timeline that is Redcode - of course I work for neither Apple or RED and this is not released yet but it is clear that you can work either way from the discussions I have had. Thats the short answer - the long answer will depend on what you aim is - what your plan is for the material (final resolution etc) - plus your budget and thus system capacity.
As much as it is fun to think about it, very few people will shoot 4K, edit 4K and project 4k at least for a while, so while it might be cool to want to maintain 4K - in reality it will be so much easier to sample to 4K (and then be able to go back to it if needed for a zoom etc) - but actually not finish a 4K master everytime.
IMHO

Mike
 
Graeme Nattress said:
Cali - REC709 isn't linear, it's gamma encoded. Quite frankly, "what space you grade in" doesn't make a bucket load of sense to me, as any high end app will take the data directly into float anyway. How the data is represented is not the issue, but the accuracy of that representation is, and, how the grading mathematics work.
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I would say that it can be important, but it depends on what your intended primary delivery format is. If it's a digital cinema or other digital delivery format, a linear (or, in most cases, video gamma encoded) format is fine. If your primary deliverable is a film print (and for the near term, it will be in many cases), that changes somewhat in that you really want to be seeing a reasonable representation of your film output - which, in most cases, is going to be best represented by a log encoded image projected through a film print preview LUT. How you get to that, however, is another story.
 
definitely 4:2:2

definitely 4:2:2

the images we saw at AFTRS on friday on the 4K projector were definitely 2k in the proRes format playing of a laptop...
 
Okay, I remember that the AFTRS screening on Friday was 2k Pro Res going through a 4k Projector. I'm sure Pro Res wasn't responsible for what I saw, but as Graeme has mentioned these were early prototype camera's and have come along way since then, which is good news. It's reassuring to here that the images are not unlike those from a good DSLR. I love the images I get from my camera, so I feel a lot better knowing that.

I'd also like to thank Mike and David for organising the demo last week. We've had a couple of good things from you guys in the last couple of weeks, keep it up. Speaking of which, when do we get to see the results from the Green screen tests we did the other week with that other camera?
 
cailyoung said:
The Onfilm article mentions that the film was graded in 709 linear space, which may explain the weirdness of the sky. They are apparently now regrading in log, which may provide better images (whether we'll ever see them is a different matter).
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Oh no! I knew that quote was going to cause a lot of problems.

I have no idea what they were talking about there. And I've heard the quote thrown around a great deal since then... and still have no idea what that means.

All the software I know of grades in linear space behind the scenes regardless. I don't know what grading in "log" will actually deliver. And I'm very suspicious it's just grader superstition. However I would be very curious to hear otherwise.
 
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