ProRes Weapon - what decoding flavors?

[Patrick Tresch]

While making my footing I was wondering if there could be some goodies and flavors in the decoding to Prores files like :

- A.D.D
Impressive feature that we speak to little about it. Crispy and noiseless files. I bet the camera could go higher ISO, like an acceptable 3200.

- Integrated denoiser (aka Neat) to beat some DSLR noise levels (12800 usuable)
The mapping of the noise would be made during blackshading and stored for different iso settings.

- New Gamma, flatter Red Gamma wich wouldn't be log (the contrary of the step RED made from RG3 to RG4) to have a visual acceptable look for editing and headroom in post.

These settings could be selectable by the user depending on delivery quality (to have a clean master or to see the artefacts).

With the Prores files, we don't need to be transparent like on the handling of the RAW R3D files. Now the battle is to have the best mastering Prores files "out of the camera" because there will be a lot of people that will juge the camera only on the Prores files.

But I bet this would make some nice 4k Prores files.

Now I wonder if this could be handled by the ASIC of the Weapon?

Pat

 

[Phil Holland]

While making my footing I was wondering if there could be some goodies and flavors in the decoding to Prores files like :

- A.D.D
Impressive feature that we speak to little about it. Crispy and noiseless files. I bet the camera could go higher ISO, like an acceptable 3200.

- Integrated denoiser (aka Neat) to beat some DSLR noise levels (12800 usuable)
The mapping of the noise would be made during blackshading and stored for different iso settings.

- New Gamma, flatter Red Gamma wich wouldn't be log (the contrary of the step RED made from RG3 to RG4) to have a visual acceptable look for editing and headroom in post.

These settings could be selectable by the user depending on delivery quality (to have a clean master or to see the artefacts).

With the Prores files, we don't need to be transparent like on the handling of the RAW R3D files. Now the battle is to have the best mastering Prores files "out of the camera" because there will be a lot of people that will juge the camera only on the Prores files.

But I bet this would make some nice 4k Prores files.

Now I wonder if this could be handled by the ASIC of the Weapon?

Pat

While anything can happen in the future, I think one thing to remember is ProRes is recorded in Weapon alongside R3D and not "after" REDCODE RAW encoding. Which means it's the raw data stream + whatever LUT you toss in there. Currently, though I need to test this to confirm, there is indeed a sharpening menu that effects signal out. I used this with the REDCAST Module on Epic Dragon to control my down sampled 4K image that went to various displays. I think I used about a 25% sharpen with my particular lens, resolution, downscale combo when shooting 6K HD. I think that can be baked into ProRes if I'm not mistaken.

Don't know why you'd need a new flatter Log Gamma. REDlogFilm will "fit" what the camera's potential can do for a given exposure in both the .R3D and ProRes file. With a little more punch you can just use a custom look or LUT these days with Weapon.

Remember A.D.D. looks at frames before and after, which is very impossible to do in realtime. I think A.D.D. will remain a post process for a long while. Outside of D.E.B., Dragon Enhanced Blacks, being enabled or a similar debayer algorithm in place I don't know if we'll see much more that that.

I just had Weapon MG in my life for a moment and I can say without a doubt the files are certainly slightly cleaner anyways, and this was with the STH OLPF. I haven't seen 5.5K look that good actually.

With this extra 1/2 a stop of cleaner image and what appears to be a better optical path I think we'll be seeing cleaner files across all OLPFs.

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Don't know why you'd need a new flatter Log Gamma. REDlogFilm will "fit" what the camera's potential can do for a given exposure in both the .R3D and ProRes file.

I was thinking of a flatter gamma than RG3. Still usuable for editing and for post.

Good that you told me about the sharpening menu. It's also a good knob to tweak for Prores output.

Pat

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

The intricacies of getting the ProRes files to look a particular way is an area that is about to get a lot more attention, methinks. Especially when the ProRes is the primary deliverable/hero media.

Cheers - #19