REDRAY Comments

[Bruce Allen]

Thanks Nick

What I'm referring to is when you point back to the original R3Ds and then debayer to 4K, saving that step for the final render so one could work in a 2K pipeline up to that point. Obviously depending on the articulation of the roto involved, or elements used, this might be an issue. Totally understand that the Rocket will not speed up rendering of the Nuke project. Simply to allow the R3D to 4K to be done as needed, and only on the frames needed, rather than debayering to 4K of the entire takes and storing them on a network before it's determined what of the clips need to be used.

Also, 're-conforms' at the DI stage to upscale a 2K DI to a 4K DI.

Jon, thanks for being here on REDUSER!

My only 2c is to not expect VFX to change fully to 4K that quickly. You guys should definitely accept 2K up-res'ed content on your system if it's high quality - and not relegate it to a 2K ghetto either.

The competing Sony 4K distribution network is proudly talking about bundling Spiderman in 4K... yet the VFX for that was done mostly at 2K. When it takes up to 20 hours per frame to render the Lizard, you kinda don't have a choice!
http://www.fxguide.com/featured/spider-man-the-detailed-vfx-of-spiders-and-lizards/

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was not a full 4K finish either. They worked at full res - but only 3600x1500 made up the final frame. The rest allowed for creative reframing choices, etc.
http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/4k-di-on-the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo

Prometheus was 2K. I chatted to the guy who graded it and he said 4K 3D just wasn't quite there yet. Also VFX would have had to be done at 4K...

My 2c is we're not going to get ubiquitous good cheap 4K VFX, let along good cheap 4K 3D VFX until there is an affordable 4K monitor, compute and display pipeline on every compositor's desk. Which is 2-3 years away.

REDROCKET is a non-starter for VFX artists because it's just too expensive and nobody wants to take up a PCI slot on a manufacturer-specific card. Imagine if we needed an ARRIROCKET for Alexa and a SONYROCKET for F65. We'd have no space left in our computers for the GPU and RAID cards we'd need to handle the data!

Personally, I have been finishing in 4K for various trailer movie titles since Ocean's Thirteen. Recently we did the trailer title for Iron Man 3 in 4K.

4K is not THAT big a deal. But it's still adds a major additional cost. We have a ton of 12-core Mac Pros just for rendering. Nothing in the compositing side is anywhere near real-time. And just to QC the damn thing, we have to watch the movie 4 times at 1:1 resolution since we don't have a 4K display! Check top left corner... check top right corner... hahaha! Of course that will get sorted soon... but not every post house will be able to rush out and buy new 4K monitors and 4K-supporting gfx cards.

Even for The Avengers, we got in 4K scans (from the high speed film stuff) and delivered 2K (well just above 2K, actually, to give some room for the 3D conversion). And it looked great.

Anyway, ODEMAX looks awesome. Give us a shout if there's anything we can do to help. We're here for you because ultimately you guys are trying to make life better us!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Jon Farhat]

Ok, it’s finally sunk in here. What we are potentially looking at is the first truly independent wide spread digital theatrical exhibition market. Well, one thing we are potentially looking at anyway.

Wow.

Exactly.
j.

 

[Elsie N]

@ Jon

Have you had any talks with TV folks? I can see, in time as they upgrade their shooting to 4k, TV channels for episodic television with no (noticeable) commercials, being set up. You lot are getting dangerously close to monopolizing information and entertainment. I'm very happy to be a part of that, both as a provider and customer. '-)

 

[Steve Johnson]

It's an interesting qustion, but as the internal REDRAY player in the REDRAY Projector (home) or CRIMSON (theatrical) has the same capabilities, there is no point in feeding one from the other.

Hmmmm. So, if I;m not in a rush, and can wait a bit long, then the REDRAY Projector with the built in REDRAY Player might be the better option?!?!?!

I suppose its going to determine if the REDRAY Projector (Home) is capable of accurate color grading and if the main different between the REDRAY projector and CRIMSON is going to be the size of the screen that it can display up to. If REDRAY Projector (Home) is capable of grading suite, small home / business theatre style, and CRIMSON is mainly for large theatres, then it makes sense from my stand point to wait for the Projector with the built in REDRAY.

Just thinking out loud here Stuart

Thanks for all the great answers that you've give so far!

 

[Jon Farhat]

Thanks for your reply here Bruce.

You bring up some good examples. One thing though... 4K monitors are going to flood the market sooner than we all expect. For the big "VFX" movies, where you have 1000+ shots, sure, they will be slow going. Profit margins in VFX companies, especially at that level are "marginal" at best and they fight the producers hard.

But of the movies that rely on moderate VFX, (True Grit for example, or any Cohen Bros. movie that Luma Pics does) are in 4K, and the result is certainly stunning.

You're right, 4K is not that big a thing. Especially in moderate amounts that are used to support a good story, rather than prop up mediocre ones. But let's look at the market dynamic shift we're trying to support here. Big Studios are definitely concerned as the increase in great independent, 'story driven' movies increase, it dulls their edge. So how do they respond? To quote a studio exec, and friend... "the only thing that we can do now, that no one can compete with is 'BIG'". Translated to mean, epic, spectacle, etc. RED and ODEMAX are working to give the independent studio, production company, director, etc. an edge as well... BIG SCREENS. Hmmmmm, who do we think will adopt that faster. Yep, the productions committed to great movies, that rely on good stories, great craft, amazing cinematography. Most of them don't have the budget anyway, to do massive CG comic books that all share the same story, and need for 1000+ shots. The VFX facilities, I'm sure can make a better margin (most survive on cashflow only) by doing more movies, with some effects, instead of some movies with a glut of them, and then struggle to ramp up and down to get them out.

Jon, thanks for being here on REDUSER!

My only 2c is to not expect VFX to change fully to 4K that quickly. You guys should definitely accept 2K up-res'ed content on your system if it's high quality - and not relegate it to a 2K ghetto either.

The competing Sony 4K distribution network is proudly talking about bundling Spiderman in 4K... yet the VFX for that was done mostly at 2K. When it takes up to 20 hours per frame to render the Lizard, you kinda don't have a choice!
http://www.fxguide.com/featured/spider-man-the-detailed-vfx-of-spiders-and-lizards/

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was not a full 4K finish either. They worked at full res - but only 3600x1500 made up the final frame. The rest allowed for creative reframing choices, etc.
http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/4k-di-on-the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo

Prometheus was 2K. I chatted to the guy who did the DI and he said 4K 3D just wasn't quite there yet. Also VFX would have had to be done at 4K...

My 2c is we're not going to get ubiquitous good cheap 4K VFX, let along good cheap 4K 3D VFX until there is an affordable 4K monitor, compute and display pipeline on every compositor's desk. Which is 2-3 years away.

REDROCKET is a non-starter because it's just too expensive and nobody wants to take up a PCI slot on a manufacturer-specific card. Imagine if we needed an ARRIROCKET for Alexa and a SONYROCKET for F65. We'd have no space left in our computers for the GPU and RAID cards we'd need to handle the data!

Personally, I have been finishing in 4K for various trailer movie titles since Ocean's Thirteen. Recently we did the trailer title for Iron Man 3 in 4K.

4K is not THAT big a deal. But it's still adds a major additional cost. We have a ton of 12-core Mac Pros just for rendering. Nothing in the compositing side is anywhere near real-time. And just to QC the damn thing, we have to watch the movie 4 times at 1:1 resolution since we don't have a 4K display! Check top left corner... check top right corner... hahaha! Of course that will get sorted soon... but not every post house will be able to rush out and buy new 4K monitors and 4K-supporting gfx cards.

Even for The Avengers, we got in 4K scans (from the high speed film stuff) and delivered 2K (well just above 2K, actually, to give some room for the 3D conversion). And it looked great.

Anyway, ODEMAX looks awesome. Give us a shout if there's anything we can do to help. We're here for you because ultimately you guys are trying to make life better us!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Elsie N]

Hmmmm. So, if I;m not in a rush, and can wait a bit long, then the REDRAY Projector with the built in REDRAY Player might be the better option?!?!?!

I suppose its going to determine if the REDRAY Projector (Home) is capable of accurate color grading and if the main different between the REDRAY projector and CRIMSON is going to be the size of the screen that it can display up to. If REDRAY Projector (Home) is capable of grading suite, small home / business theatre style, and CRIMSON is mainly for large theatres, then it makes sense from my stand point to wait for the Projector with the built in REDRAY.

Just thinking out loud here Stuart

Thanks for all the great answers that you've give so far!

Steve, the way I'm looking at the decision to order now (done) or wait for the paired player and projector, is that I'll be able to afford a 4k display before I can afford the home projector at the msrp of $10,000. Plus, that should give me a leg up on watching early ODEMAX output, even at 1080p resolution from Sundance etc. I also hope to get a teaser up on my own channel to attract funding. Eventually when I get a projector, I will use the stand alone player with the 4k display, which I will have hooked up to a computer to edit on and then check encoded footage.

 

[Bruce Allen]

Thanks Jon!

Really interesting and potentially disruptive points you have there You guys really are in the court of the filmmakers with talent. Which is insanely awesome. Boy do I hope this happens.

And yes, I totally agree 4K monitors will be here soon, cheaply! I don't really see much of a cost difference for the manufacturers once mass production is set up. We just need to convince the post houses to buy them, plus GFX cards, plus storage... ah well. But yes, at some point if there is a large demand for 4K VFX and the equipment is cheap, we'll just buy it ourselves and do independent work!

One thing is that the VFX houses would be happier to deliver 4K if we didn't get pixel-peeped at 4K! We commit to a shot for a set price, deliver it... then the next thing we know some producer is zooming in on the 4K render 400% in the DI room and scrutinizing it, then sending it back. To make good pixel-perfect 4K VFX we have to then have textures at 16K!

But that ties in to what you're saying - perhaps the margin is better doing more movies with some effects (and non-insane pixel-peeping) rather than blockbusters. And yes, making our own content...

Anyway, thanks for the wakeup call. Opportunities like this are the best motivation someone can have to get back to the script and storyboards and work on creating their own stuff!

Cheers and thanks for the inspiration.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Look at it this way, Bruce. Every point you just made in your post has been made with the jump to 720p, then again with the jump to 1080p... I'm sure we'll have yet another round of similar complaints with the jump to 8K and other future formats. Sometimes we just have to bite the bullet and go for it. When I moved my CGI pipeline to HD, it was a painful transition, but I did it early. Everything was still being finished for SD and DVD and I found that moving to 720p not only prepared me for the soon to come HD revolution, partially anyway, but it afforded me much better quality when I downsampled to 480p DVD resolution. As soon as I could, I embraced 1080p. Texture sizes greatly increased. Polygon counts increased and spline subdivision iterations increased. Render times increased exponentially. But so did the abilities of the hardware everything ran on. I'm tossing about 4K easier than I handled 1080p just 3 years ago, the software and systems have improved that much in that amount of time.

Pixel-peeping is a way of life and it's not going to stop. I pixel-peep my own work and just because resolution is higher, that doesn't mean my pixels should be of any lower quality. On the contrary, I've found that at 4K, my pixels need to be better. 2K resolution is still low enough that fine details (or flaws) can be lost in the rasterization.


As for this whole ODEMAX thing, I think it's great. One quality of it that I'm really liking is they're doing to the cinema industry what Apple did for application developers. Eliminating the publishers and opening up the market to everyone. This is what a lot of us were hoping would happen with iTunes and similar services for video distribution, but has never come to pass. In fact, getting any video on iTunes pretty much needs major publisher or studio backing and the end cut to the artists is so low it's usually not worth the effort.

 

[Jarred Land]

It is time to put the big boy pants on... the world is going to move past 1080p, the writing is on the wall. Even Arri who jumps up and down screaming how 2K is enough, I will bet everyone here a cookie that hey have a 4K Alexa in the oven ready to come out. Now that GoPros and DSLRs and Chinese offbrands are starting to shoot 4K and every display maker has a 4K model, its not that difficult to see coming.. you can either live in the past or play in the future.

2K is quickly becoming secondary.. like 720p is now. People really need to finish in 4K and do a 2K output as needed. That 4K transition is going to be much quicker than the SD to HD jump. How many of you watch normal SD television or SD movies still? The arguments were all the same when that transition was happening.

When we came out with the RED ONE 5 years ago, we had a shitload of complaints that we didn't have a SD output for monitors.. someone requested that "we add SD " every other day. That was just 5 years ago. I haven't heard a single request for SD output now for 3 years.

We are not interested in maintaining status quo.. that is not why we are here. We believe in a better picture.. and are putting all our chips on it.. like we always have. You can either come along for the ride or stay where it is safe.. it's up to you.

There is one thing for sure.. Whoever who has already finished in 4K.. and have a 4K master on their shelf... is going to look like the really smart guy pretty soon. Nobody is going to say finishing in 4K was a mistake.. but there are going to be alot of people saying that finishing in 1080p was.

 

[Bruce Allen]

Guys, you don't have to lecture me on 4K finishing being a good idea.

At the same time... seriously, there is a reason that Prometheus, Dragon Tattoo, The Avengers, etc did not master at it.

There is a reason that lots of big movies are still not mastering at it now.

And it's not because those guys are stupid.

It's because budgets are finite. And perhaps budgets are better spent on doing another artistic pass on a shot at lower resolution vs waiting for it to render.

You'll make more money now with a creatively-excellent 2K release than a 4K release that needed another layer of polish. And then you can re-do at 4K down the line when there is a larger paying audience who demands your creatively-excellent work at higher resolution.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Jarred Land]

The Avengers was shot in 1080p... they are fucked. Those other 2 that we are intimately involved with.... There may be some info you don't know yet.

 

[Bruce Allen]

The Avengers was shot in 1080p... they are fucked. Those other 2 that we are intimately involved with.... There may be some info you don't know yet.

No. They are not fucked. They are rich.

In fact, they have plenty of money to do VFX for their next stuff in 4K if they want, thanks to making such a huge profit on The Avengers. In 2K.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Claus Mueller]

Placed my order yesterday. I love my MacBook Retina but do I need a „faster“ Computer now to convert .RED files?

 

[Jarred Land]

No. They are not fucked. They are rich.

In fact, they have plenty of money to do VFX for their next stuff in 4K if they want, thanks to making such a huge profit on The Avengers. In 2K.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

short sighted.... you are completely missing the point Bruce.

 

[Phil Holland]

Times are changing right this very second. More studios are gearing up or preparing to handle 4K in house. It is going to be dependent on the budget, job, and the additional cost/time of 4K VFX is a real factor. Soon it will be common place. Especially for the top 10 VFX houses.

Oddly in retrospect Prometheus, which came in under it's VFX budget btw, probably could have been finished in 4K with the level of VFX they employed. But, I'll shush about that.

This is exactly the same thing we experienced with HD at the start. Next year 4K is landing in a big way. And all of this conversation about if 4K is desirable or why certain productions didn't finish in it will eventually be an odd memory. UHDTV is now a standard and it will be "explored".

The industry itself certainly has levels to it. One of my friends is a promo editor for broadcast and he primarily worked in SD before finally making the shift to HD this year. I haven't shot a single frame of 1080p content in 2012.

 

[roryhinds]

So will RedRay and ODEMAX accept 2k .RED files or does it have to be upres to 4k?

 

[Anthony Rinaldi]

The Avengers was shot in 1080p... they are fucked. Those other 2 that we are intimately involved with.... There may be some info you don't know yet.

Oh, secrets! Do tell!

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

So will RedRay and ODEMAX accept 2k .RED files or does it have to be upres to 4k?

It seems the container is 4096x2160 only. How you choose to fill it is up to you.

 

[Steve Johnson]

Steve, the way I'm looking at the decision to order now (done) or wait for the paired player and projector, is that I'll be able to afford a 4k display before I can afford the home projector at the msrp of $10,000. Plus, that should give me a leg up on watching early ODEMAX output, even at 1080p resolution from Sundance etc. I also hope to get a teaser up on my own channel to attract funding. Eventually when I get a projector, I will use the stand alone player with the 4k display, which I will have hooked up to a computer to edit on and then check encoded footage.

Oh don't get me wrong Elsie, I've already ordered my REDRAY player and will probably do the same. Get seeing what the early stuff released through ODEMAX is like, get use to the outputs, channels, etc. It's a no brainer. I will be in a position for a REDRAY Projector for my suite when their released. It might be nice if when it is released, its can come without the REDRAY player, but that doesn't really matter. REDRAY & ODEMAX for delivery is just freedom. If the REDRAY Projector (Home) is capable of grading on, then for me, that's the other big winner, especially at around $10k.

Things just keep getting better and better around here.

 

[Les Dittert]

As has been stated, ODEMAX can be derived from DPX, or whatever you want basically.
2K resized to 4K is in many cases will be indistinguishable from a lot of the material that was shot with a 4K camera.
Shooting on a 4K camera does not guarantee 4K resolution material. Shooting with a 4K camera means the resolution might be up to 4K.

So will RedRay and ODEMAX accept 2k .RED files or does it have to be upres to 4k?