Red camera without Mac and FCP

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

After looking at the tech specs of the site it looks like an issue of waiting for a software update.

It says 2k a lot but REDCODE isn't even mentioned so I'm putting this in the wait and see.

 

[laguun]

2) Color is limited to 2K right now. Explain how you fit 4K into 2K. Feel free to use diagrams.
Lucas
-----
Cynical Shill
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

Lucas...
...if FCP doesn´t do 4k i suppose i will spend a loooong time in your both @ IBC 2007...

 

[Chris Kenny]

1) 4K RGB playback in realtime is 1.2GB/s. How many FCP stations at home have that sort of connectivity? So... do you really think FCP is pulling 4K from the wavelet when it plays back?

2) Color is limited to 2K right now. Explain how you fit 4K into 2K. Feel free to use diagrams.

3) When was the last time you played back a 4K Quicktime in realtime? Give it a whirl one day.

You're right about Color; Apple makes this very clear.

As for the other issues... who said anything about uncompressed, or about real-time? Any 4K workflow in FCP would presumably be compressed on both sides. Ingest right from REDCODE RAW (which we know FCP6 will support in an update, though we don't know if it will support ingesting at 4K) and then render to REDCODE RGB or JPEG2000 or whatever.

If FCP can online at 4K, I would guess the way it would work is, you cut your movie at 1K or 2K, and then flip the resolution on the timeline to 4K, swap the 1K/2K QuickTime proxies (the little QT files that instruct the REDCODE component where to pull the actual data from and what resolution to feed to QuickTime) for 4K proxies, and export to your output format, not in real-time.

Note that FCP5 lets you select frame sizes up to 4000x4000 already. Now, for all I know getting those extra 96 pixels might require rewriting half of QuickTime. But it's also possible that it would be trivial. And either way it's possible Apple has done it.

 

[Desert Rune]

Yes, I am looking around at Apple. I will need to learn to play the one button mouse concerto. This after finally mastering William Gates' symphony for three fingers:- ctrl:alt:delete!

The irony. Because as a Mac user, I will only use a Microsoft branded mouse. I HATE all of Apple's line of mouse!

 

[dalemccready]

I second that...I haven't used a mac mouse in years and the side scrolling microsoft intellimouse is perfect for scrolling across and in/out of timelines in FCP and AE. Couldn't go back to the 'designed' white mighty mouse. Not enough functionality when I have 4 fingers and a thumb sitting there

 

[Stephen Gentle]

Note that FCP5 lets you select frame sizes up to 4000x4000 already. Now, for all I know getting those extra 96 pixels might require rewriting half of QuickTime. But it's also possible that it would be trivial. And either way it's possible Apple has done it.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that there's an XML hack that you can do to get full 4K. It was mentioned somewhere on the DVXuser boards, I think.

Anyway, with REDCODE support, Apple will have upped Final Cut's maximum resolution.

Hopefully next year at NAB they will release a new version of Color that can do 4K as well.

 

[Desert Rune]

Emery Wells mentioned on a podcast episode (forgot the show name) where he said that developers or Apple's engineers hate the Quicktime architecture. I've had problems with Quicktime myself, notably gamma and scaling handling by Quicktime. Hopefully, I'd like to see a day when Apple completely abandons QT in favor of a writing a completely new media architecture for the 21st century.

 

[Poi Boy]

Luki,
I know you are anti fcp, but like I said pre nab put a nail in the avid coffin...apple IS going after the high end, not hype, just a matter of time.
-A

 

[Chris Kenny]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that there's an XML hack that you can do to get full 4K. It was mentioned somewhere on the DVXuser boards, I think.

Yeah, I was actually just thinking about that after I posted, and I went and tried it. It works. I created a 4096x1743 sequence, dropped in the stills from the PJ short, and rendered. I do, in fact, get a 4096x1743 QuickTime movie out the other end. I can't come anywhere close to playing it back in real-time (I choose PNG compression for the test, and ended up with a data rate of 260 mbytes/s), but stepping through frame by frame seems to show it came out. I even tried a cross dissolve between two of the images, and that worked fine. Everything also worked with a 4096x2304 test image.

So, maybe there are some subtle issues somewhere, but it looks like FCP can technically do 4K.

Anyway, with REDCODE support, Apple will have upped Final Cut's maximum resolution.

Hopefully, and hopefully Red's QuickTime component will be able to feed full 4K into QuickTime. (I would imagine this would be the case, because you'd definitely want it in apps like Shake, even if you were otherwise doing a 2K finish.)

 

[Jarred Land]

remember you can export through redcine to a format almost any app out there can understand. And many non FCP apps have no problem with 4k.. Ive used after effects, premier pro, shake and a few others without issue over the last 8 months.

 

[Martin Drew]

I will need to learn to play the one button mouse concerto.

If you get a Mac do yourself a favour, junk the mouse and get a Microsoft one, they are loads better and have plenty of buttons!

M

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

If you get a Mac do yourself a favour, junk the mouse and get a Microsoft one, they are loads better and have plenty of buttons!

M

Such a waste of a mouse, If your gonna junk it then mail it to me I actually like mighty mouse believe it or not.

Beyond the frustrations of having to clean the scroll ball it functions just fine.

Oh you can ship me those old one button mice if you want as well I'll start a collection.

 

[Martin Drew]

Hey Craig

Maybe you then you could get yourself a windmill and move to Amsterdam.:biggrin:

M

 

[laguun]

remember you can export through redcine to a format almost any app out there can understand. And many non FCP apps have no problem with 4k.. Ive used after effects, premier pro, shake and a few others without issue over the last 8 months.

Jarred, just to understand it
can FCP only do 2K?

i have read here that one can "hack" the XML in FCP to get 4k - what does that mean? is that supported?

 

[Lucas Wilson]

Luki,
I know you are anti fcp, but like I said pre nab put a nail in the avid coffin...apple IS going after the high end, not hype, just a matter of time.
-A

FCP currently, today, cannot open a 4096x2048 timeline. Color is limited to 2K. Will Apple address these issues? I feel certain they will... and soon. But reality is a good thing.

If it makes you feel better...

Avid currently, today, cannot open a 4096x2048 timeline. Media Composer doesn't have *any* integrated color correction tool other than the Composer "Color Tool" (shudder) Avid has announced no plans for REDCODE support making the workflow from RED for offline editorial cumbersome at best. If you're going to use a RED camera, then FCP is the obvious and natural choice for editorial.

I'm not "anti-" anything. I'm just realistic about what apps can and cannot do in relation to any particular job.

Lucas
-----
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

 

[MikeCurtis]

A couple of tidbits:

FCP XML hack - news to me. If it can be made to handle that resolution...sure. Great.

However, the MUCH bigger issue - Unless you are doing cuts only, with no titles or cross dissolves or color correction in FCP....FCP CANNOT process RGB in greater than 8 bits on the timeline. FX plug is 32 bit floating point space internally, but AFAIK, asking direct questions to Apple dev team at NAB, the limitations are still there. Want 10 bits/channel? Y'CbCr is the only mode to support 10 bit.

And if trying to do high end work, bit depth is MUCH more important than the difference between 2K and 4K.

For everyone's discussion of "Well, I wanna finish in 4K," keep remembering that the ONE AND ONLY time a 4K finish is EVER useful/necessary/required is if you have theatrical distribution to 4K DCI spec or to a filmout.

Even if you're going to a festival to show your film, if you don't want to drop the big bucks for filmout, an HDCAM is ususually fine.

Final Cut, at this time, AFAIK, is NOT suitable for a 4K finish. The resolution may be hackable, but unless you're doing straight cuts, you'll be compromising your images for any titles, dissolves, etc (stuff that has to render).

So we need to look to other tools for that is the bad news, but the good news is, few of us really need to finish there. If you get theatrical distribution and you want to do a 4K finish....go to a Scratch house or somesuch.

Hollywood has just started getting used to 4K finish work at the highest end. While reading native Redcode RAW in is great, after coloring they'll still need to render out to 4K files (or at least 2K proxies for RT playback at minimum) so big throughput infrastructure is still required at present....perhaps in future, Redcode RGB might be good enough if can be decoded fast enough?

If they got that working right, that'd save HUGE money on RAID/SAN costs...

-mike

 

[laguun]

Avid currently, today, cannot open a 4096x2048 timeline.

correct me if i am wrong - DS can?

 

[laguun]

asking direct questions to Apple dev team at NAB, the limitations are still there. Want 10 bits/channel? Y'CbCr is the only mode to support 10 bit.

argh. bummer.
there goes FCP even as 2k system for us.
ok, FCP then is a cool offline tool with 2K DI via color.
shoot->edit fcp redcode @ 1/2k->export fcp edl via redcine to 2k dpx->color via 2k dpx->master then via something else than FCP as it has no 10bit RGB.

And if trying to do high end work, bit depth is MUCH more important than the difference between 2K and 4K.

indeed. there are plenty of project which i can do at 1080p/2k. there are none i could do in 8bit.

For everyone's discussion of "Well, I wanna finish in 4K," keep remembering that the ONE AND ONLY time a 4K finish is EVER useful/necessary/required is if you have theatrical distribution to 4K DCI spec or to a filmout.

which happens to be a mayor part of our jobs...

Even if you're going to a festival to show your film, if you don't want to drop the big bucks for filmout, an HDCAM is ususually fine.

100% true.

So we need to look to other tools for that is the bad news, but the good news is, few of us really need to finish there. If you get theatrical distribution and you want to do a 4K finish....go to a Scratch house or somesuch.

hmmm hmmm hmmm - luki, how much was an scratch seat? could you drop me a pm?

 

[Chris Kenny]

However, the MUCH bigger issue - Unless you are doing cuts only, with no titles or cross dissolves or color correction in FCP....FCP CANNOT process RGB in greater than 8 bits on the timeline. FX plug is 32 bit floating point space internally, but AFAIK, asking direct questions to Apple dev team at NAB, the limitations are still there. Want 10 bits/channel? Y'CbCr is the only mode to support 10 bit.

It doesn't seem like this is a problem.

FCP's "High-precision YUV" is actually full 32-bit, not just 10-bit. FCP also does all internal processing at 4:4:4, even in YCbCr mode. So, REDCODE apparently just presents itself to FCP as a YCbCr codec, and gets 32-bit 4:4:4 processing. See here and here.

(Remember, there's no real penalty for converting between RGB and YCbCr if you do it in a 32-bit color space.)

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Chris is right. The processing bit depth in FCP is a non-issue if you know how to handle it in the codec.

Graeme