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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 :)

REDCODE...

Brandon J.F. said:
I think it's one of the most important things. It makes working with raw video manageable.
Click to expand...

I agree with this, to be clear.
I have said a number of times, and still mean - that redcode is the mostimportant factor for the general spreading and development of the RED platform.

What I am saying is that the competition does not ONLY do stupid stuff... :-)

In hinsight, Alexa prores was very smart.
Also not very good, as the debayering in-camera sucks. So it would never give the full potential even at 1080 for that camera, but it made the platform immediately accessible to a ron of users.

Prores = simple

Is in the general conciousness.
And it worked.

ALEXA RAW is simply beautiful, and as I said - in many ways simpler to work with and demands less horsepower (but significantly larger datathroughput) than red RAW.

When a significant number of manufactureres choose Cinema DNG or other uncompressed solutions for their RAW capture, it is not only to sell drives. Methinks that if REd wants to compete with that perception that creates, an uncompressed option would be good.

Otoh, I don't need it. Personally.
Really dig the compressed RAW.

Just observing what is happening perceptionwise on sets and in Production planning around me.

But if that doesn't count... Who am I to know anyway...

Cheers
Interesting times!

G
 
REDCODE is why I shoot raw today.

DNG, and all the other uncompressed format are too "DIT" demanding.

My projects (meanly indie films) wouldn't have the money and will to put so much effort to just manage data.

Monney is spent on production values.

Pat


PS: And raw is just the best negative to work with today.
 
REDCODE is what makes Red fundamentally better - Even with Dragon upgrades the reality is that senors will get better and better, and Red will have to adapt and compete with this in years to come.

But where they have an undeniable edge is with REDCODE, I think if anything instead of comparing DR, Resolution framerates etc from camera to camera. We should be talking about REDCODE vs. whatever else is out there.
 
That Pat, I totallly agree with.

Compressed RAW is what has given all us "small guys" the ability to shoot RAW.
Love it.

What I am observing, though, is that the equation is slightly different for productions without budget or technical or manpower constraints.
And ARRRI has made it very simle for peeps to chose that option for those productions.
Personally I am not a huge fan of Codex and the workflow.
But it works... Well..

I just want RED tobe a more obvious option than it currently is for manyhigh-end commercials and big budget productions. There is a certain snobbery involved in planning of those. Uncompressed is part of that.
 
I recently did additional photography for a major studio upcoming film release (that I will not name for now)... The bulk of film was shot with Alexas. Going in for the additional photography, it was assumed that we'd stick with Alexas to match the overall film's look. As it turns out, many of the needs of this new material demanded different camera platforms... Mainly from the outset, a Phantom for some extreme slow-mo shots. The film was thankfully shot ArriRaw, but the max frame-rate for ArriRaw is 60fps, so anything higher dictated a different camera. Turns out, one shot turned to two, turned to entire scenes being captured on Epics (At Red Studios coincidentally)

Long winded background story short, the material we shot turned out awesome. The studio flipped out declaring, "This is what we wanted the WHOLE MOVIE to look like from the beginning!" The material that they were referring to was all shot with Epics! Now, a lot of that also has to do with shot staging, dynamics and the lighting, but I'm not dismissing the Epic's visual quality in that either.

I discussed the use of Epics with the film's director. He did say they originally tested the Epic against the Alexa and he just "liked the look" of the Alexa better. Well in my opinion, I feel that there is a vast majority of people who simply don't know how to properly shoot digital motion picture cameras. And some of these individuals have society initials after their names. It's a changing toolset, I don't hold that against anyone. But I cannot answer to a director about some material that someone ELSE shot with an Epic or and Alexa. I can only show them how I use an Epic and the results I get from my particular handling, exposing, filtering, whatever.

So to get to the thread topic at hand, Redcode plays a huge role in my photography approach now. But I do feel that to obtain the best results from ANY digital camera, you need to know how to best treat it. You can get great images on each of the major player camera systems, and you can also get crap. I do feel that the Alexa's platform has been tailored so that just about anyone can shoot it and get a good looking image out of it. However, in "dummying down" the levels of control that a user can access, it also limits my style of image handling. I cannot view the raw image on set, I cannot toggle between the metadata'd SDI output and the Raw and make judgements based on that. I cannot factor in my sliding-scale exposure methodology looking at raw/redcolor with false colors, exposure and on waveforms. So it's frustrating for me.

Maybe I'm saying that Epics require more specific handling, and maybe that's not a great marketing quote for RED, but it's that more specific level of handling that appeals to my style of shooting.

I guess I'm saying I have officially drank the Red coolaid.
 
Speaking about REDCODE,

Isn't that other companies can't use wavelet compression of raw because RED has a registered patent on the process ?

Thanks if anyone could clarify.

Pat
 
@ christopher

Wholeheartedly agree and can relate to all you write.

And there is an issue that "impressions" and "feelings" are as important to equipment choice as anything else.
There are also practical reasons for why a dop might choose one system over the other.
But that is kinda another discussion.

But, whichever production chooses whatever equipment:
Knowledge is king!!!
 
redcode is why i use epic or scarlett everywhere and everytime. for 512 pixels on the web or for high quality pictures.

olivier
 
REDCODE made the whole thing doable, the RED ONE would have been of very little use to very few of us, if it came with a fridge size array of disks at an astronomical cost, recording 1Tb per second.

Compression IS GOOD
Many people out there seems to think that compression is bad, which might have been true in the infant stage of image processing, or if uyou crunch a JPEG image.
But good compression algoritms is a smart way of simplifying things without compromising the image quality = REDCODE = GOOD!

If you want to describe to someone over the phone how to draw a 5120x2700 size frame, that is entirely black, you don´t say to them "Ok first pixel from the top, right side - black, next pixel - black, then the next one - black...." You Just simply say "It´s all black!" - The result will be exactly the same, but I bet there are people out there who will claim one of them has "more natural skintones".

So compression is GOOD, and REDCODE is VERY GOOD because it is so manageable, even on a laptop.

REDCODE made this adventure possible.
 
Gunleik Groven said:
@ christopher

Wholeheartedly agree and can relate to all you write.

And there is an issue that "impressions" and "feelings" are as important to equipment choice as anything else.
There are also practical reasons for why a dop might choose one system over the other.
But that is kinda another discussion.

But, whichever production chooses whatever equipment:
Knowledge is king!!!
Click to expand...

Knowledge is indeed king! And ironically it's the Red One that truly started me on my current path for knowledge of digital motion picture camera systems... This process has been expressed somewhat publicly for me in a series of articles I have written on the topic, starting with my much-lambasted Red One piece for American Cinematographer in Feb of 2010 and then with what I consider a follow-up series on digital imagers in May/June of 2011.

I have become quite specific on my opinions on camera usage and image control techniques and I'm often amazed that many high-level DPs I talk to can dismiss Red or Epics, but then can't qualify WHY they don't like it or why they prefer the Alexa. To me, if you can't analyze and break down the components and know how you are controlling those components, then you're really just flying fucking blind now aren't you. So having a DP saying, "I just like the look of the Alexa better" means, they have no fucking clue how they are producing the images they are. I have no patience for that. Because I can certainly put a low con filter on my Epic if I choose, but I cannot easily remove the low con from the Alexa's filter stack. I for one don't want to shoot all of my images with a fucking LOW CON!

I get hired on jobs all of the time where the production/producer/director/client say, "We love your work! We're really excited to have you shoot our project... Oh and we're shooting Alexa!" I always have to take a moment to calm myself before I go on a rant at not being able to CHOOSE which camera is best suited for the task at hand... and then ask them, 'Okay, you love my reel... you do realize that what you love so much was all shot with an Epic?" It's then a bit like Nigel Tufnel coming back to me with the answer, "Well these here go to 11..." They're like "Great, we're shooting Alexa..." Guess what, when I'm through with my digital imaging dissertation/lecture/scolding with them, 90% of the time we end up shooting Epic and the project turns out great.

To come full circle. The knowledge required to utilize these cameras is all readily out there. Red has done an amazing job explaining exposure methodologies and tools on the Red.com site Learning area... Lighting/composition/blocking will always being personal, subjective and varied... Knowing how a camera functions and is controlled is the task of EVERY cinematographer to tackle and have a thorough knowledge of. Red and Redcode included.

End Rant (Image if I drank coffee!)
 
@Christopher , again I can understand and relate to allyou write.

I have one final goal before I fully parbk my geeky "me", and that is to write an article on "linear light for dummies"
I allready have a nice reference group in place. Just need the time/money to write...

Then I'll drop pure geekery forever after.

But very few DOPs actually have any deeper knowldge of imagecreation and post processing in digital cameras...
And I have come to that I am fine with that.
They are not hired to be engineers but artists.

Of course I THINK they should have the same knowledge about their digital equipment as they had of their different analogue filmstocks, but I have come to a more - "it will all pan out good in the end" philosophy.

So little time
So many images to find and create...

NJoy life instead!

Hahahahaha
 
Do write that, I'd want to read it, I've always enjoyed your posts and perspective.
 
The solar system consists of Jupiter plus debris - Asimov

Digital Cinema consists of Redcode plus debris - me.

I've said this before - back when Scarlet was being released, I argued for the 3K fixed camera, saying 3K vs. 4K was far less important than Redcode Raw vs. the alternatives. I stand by that. Coming from a stills background I simply can't imagine *not* working in raw. It's a no-brainer.

Mike
 
Without REDCODE, I'm not sure RED gets out of the gate. At the time, the storage requirements for 4K uncompressed would have been very bulky and expensive and would have eliminated a large part of RED's initial customer base. Being a newcomer in the industry and perhaps not being welcomed with open arms, it would have been a struggle to get all of the industry players, the ones who could afford to shoot uncompressed, on board. Shooting to a CF card or a small RED Drive are a huge part of RED's initial success. Resolution is part of it, but it was the practicality of recording the images that gave birth to a legion of RED fans. REDCODE wasn't perfect, but it was perfectly implemented for the time. It has improved greatly. Where it goes from here, who knows. But I have always felt that it was two things that really lifted RED off the ground. REDCODE and Jarred. Without JL and the portal he had created to a vast community of filmmakers this could have been a much slower ascent for RED. With Jim's vision, JL's passion for filmmaking and his network, a core of bright engineers/designers and REDCODE, they were able to stand a chance in a tough industry that doesn't always welcome big change.

I am curious if there is any uncompressed footage floating around from those early cameras. Would be interesting to see some of it. Something tells me that if there is, it's meant for RED eyes only. :-)
 
Christopher Probst said:
So having a DP saying, "I just like the look of the Alexa better" means, they have no fucking clue how they are producing the images they are.
Click to expand...

I agree with you so much that this argument could also be used for Epic user... ;-)

Image quality is a strange argument as it depends on a lot of factors. A great argument in favor of Epic could be the ergonomics for shooting. Big budget films could be shot with S8 and have a great picture quality as they have enough post-production capapbilities to boost what ever image up to Imax.

But where the Epic cameras shines (and the whole RED system) is on low budget films.
Where shooting schedules, technical limitation, and post-production capacities are low.

I must say RED's system (small, Redcode, cheap) made my projects possible. Other choice would have been 5D or Ex1.

I allways considered Alexa like the Viper camera. Needs a whole truck to make it shine. Not for me. I prefer my Eyemo ! ;-)

Pat
 
Redcode is great for most situations, but it isnt perfect.

I'm banging the same drum, but I experience 2 common situations where Redcode breaks down and an alternative would be appreciated.

1) In very low light an R3D file (which is 5x the file size of a 1080p counterpart) looks worse than a 1080p file recorded from the HDMI port side by side ( even when R3D is scaled from 5K to 1080p to match it). This is just a waste of recording space to produce an inferior image. Low light Raw needs to be given some more thought because of compression artifacts at high ISO. It's because Redcode is not RGB (doesn't bake in the gain prior to recording) that this occurs.

More resolution is better yes, but not when that 5K image suffers much more from artifacts than a 2K image from a Ninja. So much so, that the 2K image is far cleaner when scaled up to 5K and put side by side with the R3D. The R3D takes 5X the space, but is actually of worse quality

2) High FPS shooting. The first ever 5K slo-mo shot I did was full of compression artifacts in the shadows (it was a high contrast shot) - in this instance, even post scaled to 2K the shot was unusable, it was THAT noticeable it was trashed.

Now if you did include a scaled 2K RGB recording option it would probably eliminate the above issues and all the threads on Reduser about compression artifacts - of which there are many. 2K RGB as an alternative to redcode, would giver smaller files sizes and also cleaner images in the situations above. In theory a scaled RGB image should look much cleaner because it requires less bandwidth.

I understand why you want to offer 5K and your philosophy of 2K not being enough, without Redcode this wouldn't have been possible - but you cannot say that there arn't instances where trying to record the full 5K image simply breaks down the quality of it. Options are nice, and without us buying even faster, even larger SSD's - a 2K recording option internally would be an amazing solution.

Redcode is a very good option for most situations, but it should not be the only onboard choice IMO. Please give us other ways to make our images look better. Camera manufacturers are offering multiple choices of recording formats and resolutions, and I hope that Red listen to what a lot of people are asking for (I'm not talking of dual recording via a new module, but a real in-camera alternative to R3D). I think it would make the camera more attractive and flexible to everyone.
 
Gunleik Groven said:
I have one final goal before I fully parbk my geeky "me", and that is to write an article on "linear light for dummies"
I allready have a nice reference group in place. Just need the time/money to write...
Click to expand...

I would love to read it. I will add it to the shelf behind me filed with "...For Dummies" books and similar...

matt
 
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