Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • 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 :)

Properly graded...

Status
Not open for further replies.
Jannard

Jannard

Red Leader
Joined
Dec 28, 2006
Messages
8,248
Reaction score
7
Points
0
RED footage has a TON of dynamic range. That pre-suposses that it is graded properly.

There are a million ways (apparently) to screw it up. It amazes me what some post houses can do to crush and clip RED footage.

Here is the litmus test. Open RED footage in REDCINE-X. Set REDcolor 3 and REDlogFilm. Adjust the FLUT if necessary. That will tell you what you have.

Compare that with what is coming out of grading...

It amazes me that some are still converting to DPX or EXR without a white balance or FLUT adjustment and grading from there. Or... ACES.

If you aren't getting incredible results... check your methodology. Ask what is being done. Some people are still living in 1990. Don't let that happen to you.

Jim
 
Last edited:
Jim, do you guys have a foolproof 'message for the masses' like this with regards to handling HDRx? Or is it just safer to leave secret sauce like HDRx to those who know their stuff inside out?
 
I'm likely to use HDRx for the first time (n anything other than a test shoot) this Saturday... some last-minute-Columbo-esq 'one more thing...' would be much appreciated!
 
Back in 2011 when I was doing a ton of tests I was completely blown away by what wasn't getting blown away in my R3Ds. That's without HDRx too.

Shooting in actual daylight with that type of latitude really allows you to fiddle and fine tune your color work. The ability to easily manipulate the raw material in post and the huge amount of flexibility that it provides is damn near 80% I purchased a Red.
 
Jannard said:
Here is the litmus test. Open RED footage in REDCINE-X. Set REDcolor 3 and REDlogFilm. Adjust the FLUT if necessary. That will tell you what you have.

It amazes me that some are still converting to DPX or EXR without a white balance or FLUT adjustment and grading from there.
Click to expand...

This should be mandatory reading for anyone who is new to the RED post workflow!

I know that this pretty basic knowledge but coming from an ENG/EFP background, this little bit of info would have saved me tons of time.
 
Jannard said:
RED footage has a TON of dynamic range. That pre-suposses that it is graded properly.

There are a million ways (apparently) to screw it up. It amazes me what some post houses can do to crush and clip RED footage.

Here is the litmus test. Open RED footage in REDCINE-X. Set REDcolor 3 and REDlogFilm. Adjust the FLUT if necessary. That will tell you what you have.

Compare that with what is coming out of grading...

It amazes me that some are still converting to DPX or EXR without a white balance or FLUT adjustment and grading from there. Even worse... ACES.

If you aren't getting incredible results... check your methodology. Ask what is being done. Some people are still living in 1990. Don't let that happen to you.

Jim
Click to expand...

I don't want to bash anyone but it is WORSE than what you tell in France.
A LOT (I mean A FUCKING LOT) of post houses take R3D files, export it to DPX with their own in house softwares with their own gamma, color and log worlkflows and that's all. They go from there. AND, they sell themselves as groundbreaking, state of the art post houses and they charge an incredible amount of money for that. They say they work digital the filmic way...

I had to do a grading test for a client with his footage (shot on Epic, 5K). Took it in RedCine X, did EXACTLY what you told, saved to metadatas. Opened the R3D files in DaVinci Resolve, applied the correct LUT for the client's preview screen, color graded the footage in front of him. Exported to ProRes 4444 from there (it was just a test and he asked for that !). AMAZING results. On an outdoor shot, blue sky, I managed to have SEVEN shades of blue blending together. Looked really amazing. And it wasn't shot in HDRx mode.
 
I agree, this needs to be more widely known, we do our best to get the knowledge out there as do Red and others. Some times this stuff needs Bullet points.

I only heard today another instance of one Post house who has a bungled 2K workflow which increases cost and reduces quality and cripple's creative options which isn't doing any of us any good.
 
I have noticed that medicine is the same (I'm not a doctor, BTW): it is years behind, even within its own rather limited viewpoint. And what is obvious to laypersons is never considered by doctors. Hell, if we can't get medicine right... I hear that some productions are still using tape. I mean, that's like using a Canon 10D or D100 (professionally) when you have no excuse to shoot with such a POS.

But I guess there's an edge here: people use RED incorrectly and blame the camera and think that they can get the same thing with a DSLR. That helps nobody.

I don't have a RED camera yet, but let me tell you: all this reading is going to come in handy.

Just 2c from someone not in the movie/TV industry.
 
since i am a juinor red user i can say Lesson learnt. Although i have never exported without correction before its just something to know
 
I agree, DPs leave bad shots &/or badly lit shots for post to handle, Post guys(most of them) don't understand the workflow and do what they are comfortable with.

Luckily, due to under sight of many post production houses here in UAE, we are getting lots of big budget post production work, because we do native RED RAW edits with 4K delivery.

As soon as our Windows 7 Behemoth is ready, we would be 6K ready.

:-)
 
Reply to Jim's statement.
The reason is simple, the bigger posthouses does not update their machinery and software to often. If they sit on old color grading gear. They will not be able to look at the r3d's and grade from there. Also all 3D packages and most composting packages are lacking r3d import, atleast with the latest color science. Most compositors use flame, if you do not have flame 2013 then you do not have red gamma3 import...

It's easy to sit around and say that everyone should work from the native files... well, the software developers does not really keep up with the number of updates... and a lot of people do not think that the anual updates from autodesk costing about 15k USD per seat is worth buying (if you have 15 flames, then thats a quite large number, especially if the only new thing in it is new color lut from red...

There is today not a valid VFX pipeline that can stay R3D all the way... People that fiddle around in Premier might say there is... but then how do they texture their 3D elements... you need to get r3d into 3DSmax, Maya and softimage and all the regular software not to have people going straight to DPX...

When working with 3D texturing you want to have both background and texture elements as native as possible and grade on top... well how do you do that with r3d?
with alexa and the others you might not have the latitude, but alot of postpeople will find that to be more simple, just not having all backdoors open.

Nuke is on track and so if autodesk with flame even though the updates are very expansive.

Im not saying they are doing it right. But the above is the reasons.


My soution to you... make a Flame import spark that is easy to update with your lates color science then the pros will like it aswell. For example, Flame 2012 does not have the color picker in the built in r3d importer so offcourse people get their whitebalance set to shit.

I find the most latitude using redgama2, redlogfilm into flame and then do, denoise, sharpen and log-lin conversion in the flame lut editor...and add color warpers and grade nods from there... that beats RCXP, resolve and all the others... Still it could be improved heavily...
 
f you do some tweaking and then export a linear EXR doesn't this retain most of the information?

R3D doesn't work for VFX obviously. What would you recommend for such a workflow?
 
I'm seeing bad shooting/bad post on almost every RED feature I watch, much of which is low-budget stuff from Canada and such. It often looks like it was shot on Panasonic or Sony HD gear from several years ago.
 
Ido Karilla said:
So true, but as a result people have stooped shooting Red around here (Israel).
Click to expand...

Same in stockholm, all bigger productions commercials and features are done on the alexa studio. I have nothing against that camera, but I think it's a bit sad, the choice is based on poor knowledge. Usually the Codec recorder and the Alexa studio bites quite a large portion of the budget... Little do they understand that they could have one epic, and two scarlet bodies for the same day rate and get the possibility not only to shoot from multiple angles but also get a "Offline-Grade-Conform workflow" that is possible to carry out on a laptop instead of using the super expansive codec gear and get overloaded by the amount of data from a single Alexa studio camera....

Also I noticed that Camera Assistants, and many of the settled DOP's do not like red... They want a one button camera. They where used to use arri 435 and they do not like all the possiblities and options of the reds... A lot of times I hear that the Camera assistant for a job "knows the Epic" then when I get to set and meet him inperson, he explains that he has been to one previous shoot where an epic was used... So then he knows the camera... he is not a frequent reduser, he does not sit at home fiddling around in the touch screen menues while watching TV... he does not actually know more than any camera interested person has read in some tech magazine.

So I think the compression on Epic is possible to work around. I think the cost in comparison is a smash hit. I think RED will get some clients, But I also quite sure that Arri will keep most of their client stock... those people that want to do it as they always did, will prefer Arri, and I'm proud not to be on of them.
 
Your methods of delivering constant.new updates are both a blessing and a curse. Great for the indies etc that keep up with Reduser everyday but not so good for the working professionals who tend to want to get comfortable with a workflow and settle in...and then you change the color science on them again. To be honest and no disrespect but the other problem is RED will make posts like these and somehow expect the working world to know it exists. Unfortunately only a very small portion of the post community visits a camera forum. You should consider publishing a white paper and putting it on red.com. Something that says "no matter what kind of updates we continue to improve upon our color science in the future, this same guideline for processing Red footage is preferred for optimal results. If you must transcode before grading here are the steps you should take to ensure a successful exposure will be baked into the transcodes.
Posting here on Reduser and expecting everyone to see it is nothing more than venting. Make it official already. It's been 5 years already!
 
L. Langer said:
I'm seeing bad shooting/bad post on almost every RED feature I watch, much of which is low-budget stuff from Canada and such. It often looks like it was shot on Panasonic or Sony HD gear from several years ago.
Click to expand...

Canada? Can you point me towards these low-budget projects please. Very curious.
 
Björn Benckert said:
Also I noticed that Camera Assistants, and many of the settled DOP's do not like red... They want a one button camera. They where used to use arri 435 and they do not like all the possiblities and options of the reds... A lot of times I hear that the Camera assistant for a job "knows the Epic" then when I get to set and meet him inperson, he explains that he has been to one previous shoot where an epic was used... So then he knows the camera... he is not a frequent reduser, he does not sit at home fiddling around in the touch screen menues while watching TV... he does not actually know more than any camera interested person has read in some tech magazine.
Click to expand...

I agree, even though it was not our shoot, the DOP "knew" the camera. What ended in bad footage...
 
Hi Björn,

To use R3D files natively for 3D results is given (with some limitations) via UV mapping. (Re:Map from RE:VisionFX) Which means you map the R3D files in post on the objects. Double resolution should be a given, as UV information should not be Anti Aliased. This limits some aspects of 3D/4D, but keeps the decision in Post, with all options. http://www.revisionfx.com/products/remap/overview/

Another option is to use QT Wrappers (just tested with CINEMA 4D). That was a quick test, I have to dive deeper into it. (I haven't used QTW so far, I try to use of course R3D, so I'm happy to get input tho this option)

It would be great to have a developer kit for those things. I'm happy to suggest this to our developer team and write a paper what needs to be done. No promise on my side, but I'm certainly interested to push that connection and if possible bring a RED developer and MAXON together. Again, I'm certainly not the biggest fish in that pond, but my last success was NUKE and Multi Layer EXR support in CINEMA 4D. C4D to NUKE is my favorite pipeline, BTW)

I have already RED footage integrated in my training, and one of the reasons I bought the Scarlet is to work on its integration inside 3D/4D.

To not hijack this thread, please feel free to contact me. I'm really happy to help or work on this.

Thanks for bringing that theme up, as well thanks for all your replies here in the forum, always fun to read.

Sassi
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top