Prolost: What Should RED Do?

[Trevor Meier]

Great discussion-starter post by Stu Maschowitz (of DV Rebel fame) on his blog: http://prolost.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-should-red-do.html

Worth a read and a comment... I think he brings up a great point about the primary disadvantage of RED's position right now: clarity of workflow. We have hundreds of ways to treat the footage... that can be great, but it can also be a big hangup for producers/DPs/etc - unless they have a rental house on their side, or someone who's got a serious lack of other interesting things to do with their time besides come up with workflows.

 

[reality]

Great discussion-starter post by Stu Maschowitz (of DV Rebel fame) on his blog: http://prolost.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-should-red-do.html

Worth a read and a comment... I think he brings up a great point about the primary disadvantage of RED's position right now: clarity of workflow. We have hundreds of ways to treat the footage... that can be great, but it can also be a big hangup for producers/DPs/etc - unless they have a rental house on their side, or someone who's got a serious lack of other interesting things to do with their time besides come up with workflows.

I've found everything he's asking for exists in redspace except for log. The last thing you want in a more general format is log. That's will only confuse the hell out of scarlet customers.

 

[Stu Maschwitz]

Not so reality. Log images are very similar to video images. Plenty of people use Genesis footage in a video pipeline without any LUTs or color space conversions.

I wrote about the similarities between log and video here:

http://prolost.blogspot.com/2005/05/log-is-new-lin.html

Redspace is not what I want. It is undocumented and still leaves lots of controls available to mess up your image. It also appears to be have some kind of video-like s-curve baked in, which is definitely not what I want.

-Stu

 

[reality]

Redspace is not what 'you' want but you also make the argument that the broader consumer base for scarlet wants something more digestible. Log is definitely not that. A finished final picture that looks good is the solution there.

When I do any deliverables that aren't going to grading, I go straight to redspace because it works and people are happy. I can see this being the same for the scarlet users too.

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Agree with Master Stu, Log is actually in many ways closer to an acceptable final look than anything else, and if you still need/want to manipulate/grade the footage, you have all the information there for maximum flexibility and minimum quality degradation. At least, having the option of staying RAW or going to straight to RedLog would be ideal. Let's not forget that a LOT of the people that will buy Scarlet because that's what they can afford, however bang for their buck they're getting, are not necessarily people with experience in complex grading procedures, knowledge of the software to achieve so, or more importantly, the desire to do so. The Ex1 has gained so many adepts so quickly because it does just that: deliver a great looking image that can either be "printed" as is or toyed with if needed. Scarlet should improve on that very concept.

 

[Stu Maschwitz]

I don't disagree at all that many Scarlet users will want a solid default "looks good out of the box" option, but you're right, that's miles away from what I'm talking about and, as you say, may well already be handled by Redspace.

I'm glad we now agree that Redspace does not address the needs outlined in my post.

-Stu

 

[RyanKunkleman]

i agree with stu.

while its fun to create a new workflow for each client, it is a little silly.

 

[Robin Balas]

Well, as several million stills photographers can grasp RAW as both an acquisition format and an intermediate format (along with XMP) and have handled this with relativ ease for 10 years plus - how on earth should we expect the professional video and movie photographers to adapt to the future of RAW acquisition formats and full freedom in every aspect?
In my personal opinion - you ask for something that soon will belong to the past. Having a versatile product without any artificial limitations is the future.
Everyone has to learn something new to master the new ways, but when did evolution and unlimited possibilities become a problem? I see RED technology as an opportunity for new ways of working, not as problem to figure out how to adapt RED to old work flows. If some people can't figure it out, they could keep doing what they are doing now for a while longer until someone else does figure it out, however they risk getting run out of business if they wait too long. I red your blog and the way you describe the creative possibilities and describe it as "Rather than give you a hundred ways to screw up your images,..." you really haven't taken the full possibilities in. I've seen this discussions for years with established stills photographers with the exact same arguments, however they disappeared a few years ago. Most of them have adapted and excelled artistically and a few gave up and retired. RED is about possibilities, high quality creative tools available to the masses and opportunities.
I'm biased though, as I'm still totally sold on the RAW concept after 8 years of daily work with it in the commercial stills photography business.
MHO.

 

[Jason Diamond]

i think the point of the post is to ask for guidelines as illustrated by the genesis workflow for a solid starting point to know where you stand in a given situation and proceed from there. of course theres always a huge group of people willing to dive in and experiment (i.e REDUSER) and share but there are alot of people who like to have defined options and guidelines to maximize the benefits of the operation. i see it both ways personally

 

[reality]

i agree with stu.

while its fun to create a new workflow for each client, it is a little silly.

Redlog, redspace, and rec709 doesn't make you change the workflow everytime. The thing that changes is how each post house or production want's to deal with it. Lets say you add panalog to that list, you then have another option that you have to deal with. Panalog might be great for Genesis but I would rather have Redspace and Redlog as my options because they work well already.

 

[Stu Maschwitz]

Redlog is not a color space. It's one of many settings in RED Alert that together define a color space. If I say "transfer this in Redlog" there are still a hundred ways for someone to interpret that, and in doing so potentially mess up my images.

If I shoot Panalog with the Genesis and follow Panavision's recommendations, every post house in the world knows how to work with the footage.

-Stu

 

[M Most]

If I shoot Panalog with the Genesis and follow Panasonic's recommendations, every post house in the world knows how to work with the footage.

If you followed Panasonic's recommendations, you wouldn't be shooting with a Genesis in the first place.

I know it's clearly a typo. I just couldn't resist.

 

[RivaiC]

Stu, Redlog is listed as gamma space / LUT in RED terms and i agree it isnt a color space. I have been wanted to ask you. Can you give a more concrete answer on what potential messed up picture is all about ? What is it exactly that you worried about ? Exposure, saturation, dynamic range, what is it ?

 

[Stu Maschwitz]

If you followed Panasonic's recommendations, you wouldn't be shooting with a Genesis in the first place.

I know it's clearly a typo. I just couldn't resist.

Der, oops! Fixed.

Stu, Redlog is listed as gamma space / LUT in RED terms and i agree it isnt a color space. I have been wanted to ask you. Can you give a more concrete answer on what potential messed up picture is all about ? What is it exactly that you worried about ? Exposure, saturation, dynamic range, what is it ?

All of the above.

-Stu

 

[Stu Maschwitz]

Well, as several million stills photographers can grasp RAW as both an acquisition format and an intermediate format (along with XMP) and have handled this with relativ ease for 10 years plus - how on earth should we expect the professional video and movie photographers to adapt to the future of RAW acquisition formats and full freedom in every aspect?
In my personal opinion - you ask for something that soon will belong to the past. Having a versatile product without any artificial limitations is the future.
Everyone has to learn something new to master the new ways, but when did evolution and unlimited possibilities become a problem? I see RED technology as an opportunity for new ways of working, not as problem to figure out how to adapt RED to old work flows. If some people can't figure it out, they could keep doing what they are doing now for a while longer until someone else does figure it out, however they risk getting run out of business if they wait too long. I red your blog and the way you describe the creative possibilities and describe it as "Rather than give you a hundred ways to screw up your images,..." you really haven't taken the full possibilities in. I've seen this discussions for years with established stills photographers with the exact same arguments, however they disappeared a few years ago. Most of them have adapted and excelled artistically and a few gave up and retired. RED is about possibilities, high quality creative tools available to the masses and opportunities.
I'm biased though, as I'm still totally sold on the RAW concept after 8 years of daily work with it in the commercial stills photography business.
MHO.

Robin, I don't think you and I disagree at all. I'm just asking for a predictable, vetted default setting/shooting practice that works well with existing video/film post workflows. I dream of the day that the raw workflow is as seamless in video as it is for stills. I am most certainly not asking for fewer options or less control for those who want to experiment.

-Stu

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

I like Stu.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Orphanage Panalog presets for Shake and AE both work nice with RED.

RA output Camera RGB+REDLog

Import to Shake.

Panalog2lin in Shake for a good start up in CC.

Panalog2lin in AE for a good start up in CC.

 

[J Davis]

... I think he brings up a great point about the primary disadvantage of RED's position right now: clarity of workflow. We have hundreds of ways to treat the footage...

I was at a smoke demo given by autodesk in NY and I asked the obvious question about working with R3D files and I got a curious answer.
They said Apple (and Assimilate) had an exclusive 12 month contract with Red over 'access to R3D for support' and the contract ends summer 08. Well I've seen all the buzz about Assimilate's Scratch but what I haven't seen is the new Color. I am hoping Apple will solve a lot of workflow problems when it get around to a new release of FCP & Color. Maybe in time for Scarlet and the lower end of the market?

 

[reality]

Redlog is not a color space. It's one of many settings in RED Alert that together define a color space. If I say "transfer this in Redlog" there are still a hundred ways for someone to interpret that, and in doing so potentially mess up my images.

If I shoot Panalog with the Genesis and follow Panavision's recommendations, every post house in the world knows how to work with the footage.

-Stu

Do you really expect scarlet users to shoot according to a manufacturer's recommendations? Come on... exposure is going to land where ever it looks best.

I've had no problems with redlog at multiple facilities, in fact some of them ask for redlog up front. If a post house can support viperlog, panalog, cineonlog, etc. they can support redlog in their sleep. If they can't then they're probably not someone you want to use.

Panalog is not a color space though. It's an encoding scheme that is not explicitly related to color gamut.

 

[shashbugu]

mis-understanding

mis-understanding

Do you really expect scarlet users to shoot according to a manufacturer's recommendations? Come on... exposure is going to land where ever it looks best.

Panalog is not a color space though. It's an encoding scheme that is not explicitly related to color gamut.

Stu I have known you for a long time, its important that you explain to these guys in lay mans terms what you mean. They are arguing in terms of settings you have to first explain to them the correlation of grayscale to color. The word "exposure" and how a sensor grades that exposure on a grayscale is what you need to explain.

most people see Red raw images immediately as flat, so they immediately apply some kind of contrast adjustment or what ever settings are available in red alert redcine to define their images.