RAW Still from REDCODE Video?

[Harry Lipnick]

Hey RED Team-
I had a thread a little while back about REDCODEstill, (or whatever it will be called) which Jim confirmed will be a format, and will be useable in Lightroom, Aperture, et. al. I was just thinking again today, though, if there would be anyway to extract a frame from an R3D video file, yet maintain its RAW format. While REDAlert, etc. could be of course used to process the RAW and than export it as a still TIFF, this does not fit typically into a photo workflow. For me, the most useful situation would be when I want to pull production stills from actual clips, but I need to hand them off to someone else, not necessarily a video person. This would allow them to use something as simple as Photoshop Camera Raw to do a few basic tweaks to get it ready for printing, perhaps. This is only one example of I'm sure many uses of this potential feature. What do you say Graeme? The magic pixies up for it?
Peace,

-Harry

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I approve of this message.

 

[Eren Ozkural]

Likewise, this would save a lot of hassle. Sounds difficult to program, but then again I think there's a reason why I'm not a programmer.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Shouldn't be at all difficult to program.

In fact all the pieces have already been written by various individuals over the last year.

The question will be whether or not RED is willing to let RAW images into the wild without the RED SDK stamp of approval.

The concern last I heard was that other vendors will do an inferior job debayering and RED will be blamed. However if RED releases a multi-platform RED-STILL codec (which they are) then they should be able to convert to REDCODE Still without the RAW image ever being exposed to unsanctioned codecs.

In fact it shouldn't even require a transcode if REDStill is compatible with r3d which I would assume is the case considering r3d is jp2k compatible. It would be odd if the video codec is jp2k compatible but the still isn't. It would just be changing a a few lines in the header data and extracting the desired frame.

 

[Harry Lipnick]

You're way over my head there with the technical jibber-jabber, but I'm glad to hear it shouldn't be too hard to make this happen. I'd still love to get a positive reaction from Mr. Nattress, but I guess this might have to wait til the big NAB announcments.
Peace,

-Harry

 

[Kenneth Elkington]

Likewise, this would save a lot of hassle. Sounds difficult to program, but then again I think there's a reason why I'm not a programmer.

I can't see why it would be. Redcode is an intra-frame format, so the frames aren't interdependent. The only problem would be to establish a still container format, which I can't imagine would be too difficult.

 

[jbeale]

Seems to me if you extract a RAW still frame from a normal R3D, you could make it a valid R3D which just happens to be one frame long. That way all existing R3D software would still work on it. I don't know why Red wouldn't do this, except that I guess they're busy doing other things. 3rd-party debayer seems like an entirely separate issue, unless I've missed something.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Well if you wanted an adobe digital negative file you would have to extract the actual RAW data and resave it as an Adobe digital negative file. To date RED has pretty staunchly opposed the actual extraction of an actual RAW file from an r3d.

The SDK only outputs RGB that has been debayered. So you can't for instance just use the SDK to output directly to another RAW format. You could sidestep this issue once photoshop etc support some form of r3d natively as you said by extracting a single frame. But that wouldn't be terribly useful for someone until RED releases the still frame header specs/SDK.

 

[Lee Saxon]

If this was possible I would probably end up exporting every frame to a still and batch processing them with ACR, lol

The RGB mixer in RedCine is a step in the right direction from those inexplicable, useless three-wheel exercises in idiocy that NLEs use, but nothing can compare to the power of the Red/Orange/Yellow/Green/Aqua/Blue/Purple/Magenta HSL in ACR.

 

[Harry Lipnick]

If this was possible I would probably end up exporting every frame to a still and batch processing them with ACR, lol

The RGB mixer in RedCine is a step in the right direction from those inexplicable, useless three-wheel exercises in idiocy that NLEs use, but nothing can compare to the power of the Red/Orange/Yellow/Green/Aqua/Blue/Purple/Magenta HSL in ACR.

Haha...not quite what I had in mind, but we'll chalk it up to another potential use :beer:

On second thought, maybe we could also just get those HSLs in the next versions of REDAlert/REDcine/whatever the next REDrawprocessor might be.
Peace,

-Harry

 

[Lee Saxon]

Haha...not quite what I had in mind, but we'll chalk it up to another potential use :beer:

Oh I know, plus can you imagine what a huge hassle it would be?! Just exporting them all, to say nothing of how the hell do you get them back together into a video stream once you've processed them out to tiffs or whatever.

Terrible idea on my part, I was just goofing off.

On second thought, maybe we could also just get those HSLs in the next versions of REDAlert/REDcine/whatever the next REDrawprocessor might be.

DEFINITELY a much better plan than mine

Here's hoping.

 

[Shane Betts]

Well, actually, not that difficult at all, nor far from where it's all at right now.

The key here is that R3Ds are not video. (Look up the definition of video and you'll get my drift) They are a sequence of still images. All you have to do right now is export a section as DPX or TIFF files and you have a folder full of still image frames. Grade them how you will and just save 'em if you want. Both AJA and Blackmagic Design have free utilities that then wrap those folders so that Quicktime sees them as a single clip (which you don't even need if you're using Adobe, 'cause both AE and PP see the folder and understand to play them as a sequence).

So, if you want to grade a shot using a still frame tool, just grade an indicative frame and set up a script to apply the settings across all the files in the folder. Might prove problematic if you have to 'ride' any settings across time but that's where the cine-style graders have it their way I guess.

BTW, the biggest hurdle to using a still image from an R3D will always be the slower shutter speeds used in cine causing motion blur where a stills frame will usually be shot faster to freeze motion. From what we've seen posted on these boards, the wavelet compression the guys have come up with seems to hold up pretty well - but who knows when it's blown up large as a single frame in comparison to a 50MB file from Canon or Nikon. Only time will tell on that one but my guess is that, if the wavelet doesn't hold up, Jim will offer up uncompressed as a stills option. He knows the stills game and doesn't strike me as a compromising kinda guy:sifone: