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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's 60 & 61 on CNN's "Black In America"

spitfire

spitfire

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Five days of flawless RED ONE production in Atlanta created terabytes of footage to be used for CNN's documentary series, "Black in America" that airs this coming Wednesday and Thursday nights. The opens, closes, and segment transitions for both shows, and part of the promo campaign were shot on 60 & 61 with Ultra Primes, release build 15. Our team delivered 4K DPX sequences and uncompressed 1080P quicktimes on multiple drives over several days. Look for the CNN-HD feed, it should be fun.
 
Meet Jon Goode

Meet Jon Goode

He was the talent for the shoot, a local spoken word artist, and will setup the story. Can't begin to describe how professional this guy was. The location was beautiful, but plagued by every conceivable source of noise imaginable. Jon just rolled with it. He's someone to watch, get the rookie card.
 
I watched the opening carefully last night. It is the first time, to my knowledge I have ever seen RED footage on television. I was especially interested as TV will also be the outlet for my own RED shot footage.

Unfortunately I was a bit dissapointed. Before I go on I'll tell you what a watched it on. A Panasonic Viera 52 inch 1080P flatscreen. The signal was from the local high def cable service (Rogers) and the TV was fed a 1080i signal through an HDMI cable from the cable box.

Now I realize, by the time it got to me, the image had been heavily processed, internally by CNN then to their uplink to a satellite and back down to my cable co's receiving dish then God knows what then do to pump it through a very large cable system.

But this is the reality of broadcast. I've seen the still images here and downloaded RED footage into my computer and like everyone, was mightely impressed. But what struck me last night is that for Broadcast work some of the Sony and Panasonic cams at the same price point as the RED- the PDW700 and the AJ-HPX2000 might have stood up well if not surpassed the RED image after it's been through a broadcast pipeline.

I'm on the list for the RED but audio, timecode and post production are much simpler with Sony and Panasonic. I just need to shoot the highest quality footage possible in the middle price range without spending a whole lot of time doing renders and conversions just to have a usuable 1080 product for broadcast. The argument that if you start at 4K or 3K any 1080 image that results will be better than any native 1080 camera. But after seeing the opening to "Black in America", I'm not so sure.

I'd love the hear other opinions on this, especially from those who saw the footage before and after going through the broadcast pipeline and anyone else who's work is destined for TV.

Nothing wrong with the content by the way..it was very well done and the use of the written words to the RAP was very clever and creative. I am just talking about picture quality.
 
I guess I expected the images to really stand out from the body of the doc which was shot with regular high def cameras. I didn't see much of a difference . If anything the doc itself had better color saturation and sharpness.

Maybe the RED image is just too nuanced and delicate to be kicked around the TV pipeline at least at CNN. HBO or PBS might have been more gentle.
 
The way I see it, cameras such as the REDONE (or F35 and Viper for what matters - but they are much more pricy) are useless for TV work (ENG or documentaries aimed especially for the small screen) - have you ever seen a news break shot on 35mm?
For ages everybody has said that you have to choose your videocamera (ok, Red ain't "video", but I think you got the point) according to what you have to do - why should we change it all of a sudden?
 
The red is not a high def video camera. Was not designed for tv, its digital cinema, which is a different concept.
The sonys and panasonics are video cameras, they produce images for the broadcast pipeline. You are judging the red in an wrong condition/environment here, why? cos its not a documentary camera, its a movie camera. It does not produce HD TV nor 1080P or 720P it produces raw images, just like film in a way. Its in what you do to the raw data what can make the images stand out. Only if you have a nice image to start with! I have not seen the CNN's special, but I would look for a more "cine look" to it than definition. Looking forward to see it.
 
The way I see it, cameras such as the REDONE (or F35 and Viper for what matters - but they are much more pricy) are useless for TV work (ENG or documentaries aimed especially for the small screen)
Click to expand...

But what about commercials for theater and tv screens?

I think a lot has to do with the process of the image, they could have obviously took more time for the actual doc in the process then for the intro's and outro's.
 
Even on my relatively small screen HDTV, it is easy for me to see all sorts of MPEG2 artifacts in broadcast HDTV, unless the subject and camera is absolutely still. In some ways, the old SD TV was less annoying, at least you would never see macroblocks show up when something moves.

Aside from that type of glitchyness, I would think the Red image could look as good or better than the usual HD-cam stuff, as long as the post is done right. I'm pretty sure that the optimum post treatment for cinema display is not the same as post for HD broadcast.

And of course, if your broadcaster has selected a really low bitrate for the channel, then there's an upper limit to the quality you'll ever see regardless of what camera sourced the image.
 
JMpictures said:
But what about commercials for theater and tv screens?

I think a lot has to do with the process of the image, they could have obviously took more time for the actual doc in the process then for the intro's and outro's.
Click to expand...


Commercials have to have a "film" look and, even though they are 90% of the time shown on TV, they are not necessary made just for the small screen (as you said, they can be shown in theatres). They are a different concept, just as music videos (which very rarely have been shot on video - I'm talking about pro stuff, not VERY-indie or even amateur projects).
Of course post work makes the difference, but what I was trying to say is that, if your project is a tv report-documentary (something that in the "old-days" - Hell, we're mostly still there after all - would have been shot on beta-digibeta and alike), it's pretty useless to use a camera with higher performances. If a company like Sony keeps producing cameras in all ranges, with HDV-XDCAM HD-EX-whatever-you-want specifically aimed for TV work, there must be a reason after all. And, again, in the "old days" (which are still present days the way I see it), even if sometimes TV-guys might have had the money to shoot a project on film (let's say Super16), 90% of the time they use\used videocameras (I'm not talking about fiction, mind you). Just my 2 c's.

PS: Oh, yeah - I hope I might not sound as a RED-fanboy: while I'm very attracted by this camera, I hate fanboy-isms of everykind and my speech wanted to stay on a general level (Digital Cinema Cameras Vs Digital Tv Cameras).

PPS: sorry if my English is too rough too.
 
I understand what your saying, but I don't think that it's pretty useless because of the amazing quality, even after down res.
Especially with the 35mm DOF, it could also be my choice for some TV work. And it's not only commercials and music videos but the majority of Tv shows (from 24 to ally mcbeal) are all shot on Panavision camera's, so I think the Red will even do better then those camera's when your staying digital.. Just my opinion..
 
JMpictures said:
I understand what your saying, but I don't think that it's pretty useless because of the amazing quality, even after down res.
Especially with the 35mm DOF, it could also be my choice for some TV work. And it's not only commercials and music videos but the majority of Tv shows (from 24 to ally mcbeal) are all shot on Panavision camera's, so I think the Red will even do better then those camera's when your staying digital.. Just my opinion..
Click to expand...

I guess "useless" is a too harsh term and I apologize - let's say "wasted" :biggrin:
I wasn't talking about fiction though, I was talking about ENG, reports, made-for-tv documentaries and alike - again stuff that in the SD world would be shot on Beta, DVCPRO, DVCAM ecc. TV series (which could be considered an offspring of movies - but we're getting too theoretical here! :sick: ) are another game - as a matter of fact, some recent shows are being shot on HD cameras (if I remember correctly, the last season\version of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is shot digitally...or maybe is STARGATE: ATLANTIS?).
 
I think it's silly to say to say that Red footage can't be graded to fit broadcasting standards to acceptable levels.
 
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