Scarlet W Compression Ratio

[Pascal Payant]

Hi
I wanted to know if I should film everything in a 4:1 ratio on the 5k Scarlet W. Is there a big difference from 4:1 , 5:1 to 8:1
My thought is to always leave it on 4:1 to have the best quality but I was wondering if there's a huge difference. I'm waiting to get my camera next week
Thank you so much

 

[Christopher-lee dos Santo]

4:1 redcode is a very good compression ratio used mostly for getting the best detail and clean images for VFX artists to work with in post. Nothing wrong with shooting everything on 4:1 to get the best image possible, but bare in mind the data rate and disk space usage for what some may feel is very small gains in image quality. You'll be needing far more harddrives for this.

Most feature films in Hollywood shoot between 5:1 to 8:1 ratio. TV shows go up to 10:1.

Some may argue that there is a visible difference but most can't tell between 5:1 and 8:1. Especially with the Dragon sensor as the compression is much improved over MX.

 

[Rakesh Malik]

From what I understand, the compression has improved even more in going from the DSMC1 Dragon to the DSCM2 version used in Scarlet-W. I'm shooting with a Scarlet Dragon right now, and we're limited to 8:1 in 5K. I've shot a few things in 14:1 in order to conserve card space, and it ended up looking surprisingly good; quite a bit better than I'd expected given the amount of compression involved. 8:1 has been great for us for the most part; basically in any case when we didn't need especially long recording times.

 

[Chris Kennedy]

It depends on what your shooting. If you want/need to keep detail in something complicated like a tree with big camera movements then you'd want a low compression like 3:1-5:1. If the camera/subject isn't moving like a talking head interview then a higher compression would be fine.
I've shot the dsmc2 cameras at 12:1 and it's fine for a lot of what I shoot. The compression is more efficient then the previous generation of cameras like which shot The Amazing Spider-Man I believe shot mostly at 5:1.

 

[Christopher Commons]

I usually shoot 7:1 if it's something I really want to grade and 13:1 if it's something I'm not going to push much. I feel like the bit rate drastically drops off from 7:1 to 8:1 and from 13:1 to 14:1 so I basically only shoot at those two compressions.

 

[Marc Pilato]

In case you want to get stills from the motion flow, low compression is better.

 

[Carlos de Varona]

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Pascal, could i please ask when you placed your deposit?

Thanks!

 

[Chad Lancaster]

My personal philosophy is to always shoot at the minimum compression for the FPS. You can always make the footage worse quality in post but you can't make it better. Get that master file and go from there, hard drive space is cheap.

 

[Pascal Payant]

Chad: thats what im thinking and you are right. Hard drives are cheap

carlos. I didnt want to wait maybe a year to get it so i found someone who sold one used with low hours
i was able to save 2-3k on it. At least i got it now