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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 :)

RED B16 vs F23/Panavision

The innate problem with SR (a ten year old hack of digibeta) is that it is a pseudo progressive format. We believe that this is as transient a format as Betacam.

Time to step up to true progressive.

Jim
 
It aint what ya do its the way that ya do it..... Red is a better choice then the above cameras on any film on a budget the listed cameras are impossible to shoot on a micro budget scale. When is the last time you heard of a low budget feature being shot on the d20 or f23 it just doesnt happen. That is were the red is better. Quality resolution and support is all up to the productions standards and budget you can make anything look like film if you have the money in post. i.e 28 days later.... or cloverfield.... In the end its what i said first. It aint what ya do its the way that ya do it.
 
It aint what ya do its the way that ya do it..... Red is a better choice then the above cameras on any film on a budget the listed cameras are impossible to shoot on a micro budget scale. When is the last time you heard of a low budget feature being shot on the d20 or f23 it just doesnt happen. That is were the red is better. Quality resolution and support is all up to the productions standards and budget you can make anything look like film if you have the money in post. i.e 28 days later.... or cloverfield.... In the end its what i said first. It aint what ya do its the way that ya do it.

Hi,

Did you honestly think 28 days later looked like it was shot on film?

Stephen
 
20% of the movie was shot on 35mm. It looked good on the big screen and thats all that mattered. Same with cloverfield they used every camera they could and made it all cut together. 4k 2k dv hdv dvcpro HD 35mm it all doesnt matter if you cant tell a story thats the point im trying to make. The red bridges a gap that the other cameras cannot come close to.
 
"20% of the movie was shot on 35mm."

¿Huh? Everything was shot on dv, except an alternative ending, the one in the mountains.

And I saw it in a cinema and it certainly did't look like film, tho' I recall that the main problem was resolution.

The ending in the movie was shot on film too. And If did look alot better on the big screen.
 
The innate problem with SR (a ten year old hack of digibeta) is that it is a pseudo progressive format. We believe that this is as transient a format as Betacam.

Time to step up to true progressive.

Jim
Jim,
what's the issue with 1080 PsF ?
Isn't the end result the same as the when using 1080 P ?
I mean, quality wise, it should be exactly the same, it's just the way it is encoded that is different...

You said the Red One would only support true progressive outputs. Is PsF more difficult to encode than PsF ? Shouldn't it be the same bandwidth ?

Don't get me wrong, I hate interlaced formats as much as you do, but I don't understantd what the issue is with PsF formats. I don't care how it's encoded on the deck, as long as it looks the same on the output... Did I miss something ?

Nils.
 
The innate problem with SR (a ten year old hack of digibeta) is that it is a pseudo progressive format. We believe that this is as transient a format as Betacam.

Time to step up to true progressive.

Jim, I have a lot of respect for what you've accomplished and for your technical expertise, but this statement is dead wrong, on a number of levels.

PsF is a recording method and has nothing to do with the nature of the images being recorded. Progressive material is split up for recording and reconstituted for output. If you're going to call this "pseudo progressive," then I guess one could refer to R3d files as "pseudo RAW" because they involve mathematically lossy compression. And Red 4K output as "pseudo 4K" because it doesn't involve full RGB sampling at 4K in the sensor. I'm not putting any of these approaches down, I'm just saying to be careful when you make statements like this. In the end, it's about results. Your results are great. Their results are great. SR has achieved far more than critical mass in terms of industry acceptance, and is the standard for essentially all broadcast deliveries and studio archival masters today. And your description of Betacam as "transient" is rather curious given that it has been around for 26 years now, and if you count its "improved" versions - namely SP and Digital Betacam - is still a hugely popular format for many, many markets. Time will tell how many of today's formats - including the current version of Redcode - last that long.

Cynicism is fine - I'm one of the more cynical people I know. But don't let it overtake common sense and actual fact. You don't need to be putting everyone else down in order to show that your solutions are valid. In the words of Steve Jobs (paraphrased, of course), "Sony/Panavision/Panasonic/etc don't have to lose for Red to win."

And, just FYI, HDCam SR was not introduced until 2003, making it 5 years old, not 10.
 
Sorry i know were off topic but back to 28 days later and what was shot on film in that movie. 20% of the movie was shot on film. All of the establishing shots basicly anything with a sky in it. And the entire ending. and alternate endings.
 
The innate problem with SR (a ten year old hack of digibeta) is that it is a pseudo progressive format. We believe that this is as transient a format as Betacam.

Time to step up to true progressive.

Jim

But Jim, Beta is the longest lasting electronic format in the history of our profession. I bought my first Betacam in the 80's, my first Beta SP several years before 1990 and they still are making me money. The majority of our dubs still deliver on Beta SP today...the entire time Panasonic tried several superior formats and none overtook Sony. Unfortunatley, that's the case with D5...few have adopted it, despite its superiority. We get requests for SR 10:1 over D5.
 
Hi,

Did you honestly think 28 days later looked like it was shot on film?

Stephen

Absolutely did not look like film. It was the most astonishingly bad, sharpness ringing from hell, let's count the pixels on the big screen movie I have ever seen. The image quality would be something I'd rate as diabolical. I'm just happy I didn't pay to see it, but got in on a free local premiere ticket.

Graeme
 
PsF

PsF

PsF is a recording method and has nothing to do with the nature of the images being recorded. Progressive material is split up for recording and reconstituted for output.

PsF is both a recording format and an option for HD-SDI data transmission format.

Either way it splits a progressive frame into two fields, and this requires extra hardware in the RED-ONE camera that we don't need if we use the SMPTE approved alternative - P (true progressive). If HDCAM SR decks don't support P as well as PsF that is unfortunate, Panasonic D-5 decks certainly support both, as do JVC, Cine-tal, Panasonic and the apparently the latest Sony LCD monitors.

So our comments are if you are going to be progressive, be progressive, its undesirable to support segmentation - pseudo interlacing - when you don't need to, it complicates the system design.
 
PsF is both a recording format and an option for HD-SDI data transmission format.

Either way it splits a progressive frame into two fields, and this requires extra hardware in the RED-ONE camera that we don't need if we use the SMPTE approved alternative - P (true progressive). If HDCAM SR decks don't support P as well as PsF that is unfortunate, Panasonic D-5 decks certainly support both, as do JVC, Cine-tal, Panasonic and the apparently the latest Sony LCD monitors.

So our comments are if you are going to be progressive, be progressive, its undesirable to support segmentation - pseudo interlacing - when you don't need to, it complicates the system design.

HDCam SR decks support 720P, but not 1080, which is supported only by using PsF. But your statement implies that Red sees this as a technical issue only, and feels that if you output 1080P, you don't have to output PsF. I think what your users are telling you is that it isn't just a technical issue. Your position means that there will be no support for the format that has clearly established itself as the de facto standard for HD video mastering, and that is unfortunate.
 
HDCam SR decks support 720P, but not 1080, which is supported only by using PsF. But your statement implies that Red sees this as a technical issue only, and feels that if you output 1080P, you don't have to output PsF. I think what your users are telling you is that it isn't just a technical issue. Your position means that there will be no support for the format that has clearly established itself as the de facto standard for HD video mastering, and that is unfortunate.

De facto standards always change.

We have said all along we are shooting a progressive image only. We don't do SD and we don't do PsF. If you want either of those, there are many ways to get there from here.

Jim
 
And, just FYI, HDCam SR was not introduced until 2003, making it 5 years old, not 10.

PsF is about 10 years old (probably more). For what that deck costs, it's curious that it doesn't support true progressive.
 
Specs are good for getting your foot in the door towards a product you are interested in or suits your needs.
after that it comes down to how does it function for you in your process.
how does it look to you and does it achieve the creative vision you've set forth to create.
so many people i meet with say, "this tech or that tech told me about all sorts of deep specs on different cameras" and eventually alludes that RED is tricking people or is a fake of some sort.
if it works for you it is irrelevant to a point. the inner workings as jim has talked about don't matter if it gives you the result you want. if you are interested in specs then dive in.
 
exactly thus my earlier post:
Specs are good for getting your foot in the door towards a product you are interested in or suits your needs.
after that it comes down to how does it function for you in your process.
how does it look to you and does it achieve the creative vision you've set forth to create.
so many people i meet with say, "this tech or that tech told me about all sorts of deep specs on different cameras" and eventually alludes that RED is tricking people or is a fake of some sort.
if it works for you it is irrelevant to a point. the inner workings as jim has talked about don't matter if it gives you the result you want. if you are interested in specs then dive in.
 
I do fully understand the math, and bayer at 4k gives, much greater luma resolution and at least equal chroma resolution as the striped approach. There's a reason no DSLR uses the striped approach, because it's an inferior colour filter array pattern. Sure, you get equal numbers in RGB, but you get a LOWER number!!!

I think they adopted the striped path because of limitations to their recording medium. They weren't looking beyond 1080. Another plus for Red - the record chain is much more current and flexible (as long as you don't drop the hard drive.) Will Red ray be fast enough to mount on the camera and shoot? Or just for archive and distribution?
 
Is PsF really all that bad??? The end product would be the same had one recorded on a non-psf format, so to the viewer it doesn't make a difference. (It also gets screwed up because all this 24p material is broadcast as 60i with cadence breaks.... but that's another story.)

On the other hand, I think there are much bigger problems. HDCAM for example is only 1440x1080 (and low chroma resolution and high DCT compression)... if anything, the "pseudo" label definitely applies. It is pseudo HD. Yet many shows are being shot and delivered on it.

So unless it's a huge hassle or expensive to support PsF output, it seems to me that the complaining is a little exaggerated???

2- Some (all?) HD CRTs out there only accept psf. So to support them you would need a psf signal. (Presumably that won't handle a progressive signal very well since they'd need a frame buffer, have to scan the progressive image twice to avoid flicker, and scanning twice as fast might hurt resolution too much.)

Your position means that there will be no support for the format that has clearly established itself as the de facto standard for HD video mastering, and that is unfortunate.
It seems like Scratch would go hand in hand with converting Red footage onto SR @ 24Psf (4:4:4)? So I don't think it necessarily rules out SR/24Psf workflows?

I understand it to mean that the camera probably won't output PsF for monitoring, only P. That may not be a problem... you'd probably just have to get a LCD monitor instead of CRT.
As far as Redray goes, the specs on that will change but I would guess that it won't output PsF. (Which could potentially be a problem if you want to use it as a VTR/feeder deck and want to QC on a CRT, I'm supposing.)
 
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