Scarlet-W Questions from someone who has never owned a Red

[maxwellmonty]

Hi everyone, thanks for taking the time to read this, I know there is another thread about a guy who is trying to be talked into keeping is S-W order, that's not really my case. I'm pretty much sold on it but I do have a few concerns.

I come from the line of 5D2 to C100 to FS7, so I'm used to the full-frame, and a little bit of a cropped sensor, nothing too crazy I couldn't handle (coming from full-frame). From what I understand, if I am shooting something quick and dirty for a client that doesnt care about 5K and really just wants 2K at the very end, am I going to end up kicking myself since I didn't realize in order to utilize the full size of the sensor I HAVE to shoot 5K? If I was shooting at 2K, does that crop it in an insane amount? My real concern is just allllll of the terabytes of footage I'm going to be shooting, I guess I never really thought about the preparation of how much space the footage will take up, with me being used to smaller codecs. I know about the RED tools sensor crop guide, but I was just wanting to confirm from actual people giving me that information.
Also, the 300FPS is awesome but does the cropped sensor get in the way of trying to get a really wide shot for anyone?

So I guess my next question would be if something like the Atomos or Odyssey 7Q+ would work with the S-W? That way I could utilize the full 5k amount of the sensor but only record ProRes files (when I am doing quick projects that don't need that 5K footage). Any thoughts or explanations on this would help. Thanks everyone

 

[AndreeMarkefors]

That's a scenario where the included ProRes comes in handy. The Scarlet W supports 2k ProRes.

You can set the Scarlet W to a 5k project setting and then record to ProRes only. This way you're using the whole sensor and image quality at capture and just let the camera do an internal scaling down to 2k. Set it to REDLogFilm and you have a flexible 10 bit file that you can work with.

 

[Björn Benckert]

You shoot full frame as long as you can / for high frame rates the camera must crop. then you set your proress to 2k. But then those are not raw. To me it´s nonsens to say that we dont need 5k. Possibly you do not need highest bit rate 5k but why not record with lower bit rate. Then in post you could debayer at 2:1 or such and leave half the pixels out, or use all the pixels. but not recording them does not make sense to me and recording cropped without having to is the same as saying you like less quality. Sorry to stay at as big sensors as possible. And at 300fps the slice of sensor is not big and compression is on the highest so then results will very much vary with the quality of your glas and light, but no matter what it will not be as sharp and clean as if shot FF on high bit rate.

 

[maxwellmonty]

Thanks for replying, that's interesting to read. The tools from Red.com with the cropping don't really make sense to me now. Say I set the reference to Dragon Full frame, and use Red Dragon at 2K 2:1, it crops it in a ton as a factor of 3.02X. Could you explain this in a little more depth? I can still utilize most of the frame but shoot at 2K or is that only when recording to r3d files?

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Yes definitely set the camera to 5k and deliver just the 2k prores files if you know they can't use the 5k R3Ds. One concern might be whether you can deliver RedLogFilm footage and hand off a LUT or whether your client can handle log. If you need to deliver non-log prores files you might want to pester Phil Holland to figure out how to do it since I couldn't find a way to do it and there does not seem to be any mention of how to do it in any documentation or on the forum anywhere that I have seen.

Additionally you could also an Atomos or 7Q to record prores files but I'm not sure what that would gain you given the camera is capable of recording HD/2K prores internally.

Yes trying to shoot 300fps will put you at 2k WS which isn't even HD if you need 16:9, so it will be very hard to shoot a wide unless you have a lens wider than 12mm at least. Sometimes people carry a separate set of 16mm lenses for cropped high-speed. Then again the 2k-cropped 300fps footage could be tough to match to the 5k-originated material since it will be very noisy and soft by comparison. You might want to think about whether you can get away with 120fps or 150fps instead (or 150fps or 200fps if you're shooting WS)...

What Bjorn says is true as well, if the client can handle R3D files and you're just worried about file sizes, you might want to consider 5K R3D files with a high compression ratio since you'll likely get better images from that even at comparable bitrates compared to the prores 2k/HD files. That said, I can imagine for quick-and-dirty work the prores files might just be simpler since it is a more common format that just about any editor can handle and doesn't have the high CPU and render time requirements of R3Ds.

 

[Les Hillis]

Thanks for replying, that's interesting to read. The tools from Red.com with the cropping don't really make sense to me now. Say I set the reference to Dragon Full frame, and use Red Dragon at 2K 2:1, it crops it in a ton as a factor of 3.02X. Could you explain this in a little more depth? I can still utilize most of the frame but shoot at 2K or is that only when recording to r3d files?

Until the new DSMC2 model camera's introduced recording ProRes internally, RED camera's didn't use in-camera scaling, only cropping, when recording at lower resolutions than the sensors maximum resolution. Scaling was only done via a third-party device recording a signal out of the camera.

When you record the RAW R3D's now, the full sensor is still only cropped when shooting at resolutions lower than the full sensor.

But when you record ProRes in-camera, the full sensor (if that's what your Project resolution is set to use) is scaled down to the lower ProRes resolution.

So, the idea is to use the full resolution of the sensor, and let the camera scale that down to your ProRes resolution for maximum quality. With the main trade-off being, using the full resolution of the sensor lowers the maximum highest frame-rates you can achieve.

You can also choose to just record the down-scaled ProRes files as well, so you don't have to waste storage space saving the RAW R3D's if you know you're never going to use them.

 

[Gregg Ferguson]

I have question about the Scarlet-W record times. With the S-W Recording 5K R3D files at the lowest compression and simultaneously recording 2K ProRes, what can I expect for record times on a 512GB mini mag? I have looked at the Cinephotography Tools page and calculated recording time, but there is no S-W listed and no option to add ProRes.

 

[Brian Merlen]

They probably need to redo the tool. Dual recording codecs will eat cards faster and reduce through put so you end up with more compressed red files when dual recording. You can always just record the scaled prores or the red raw too... Lots of options

 

[Ben Richardson]

I worked these out the other day. R3D data rates from the Scarlet-W manual + 25MB/s for 2k ProRes 422 (HQ).

 

[Gregg Ferguson]

Hey Ben, thanks so much for putting this together - super helpful for shoot planning. My client has requested ProRes files for their new content management system while finishing with and archiving the 5K. Looks like I will be burning up cards pretty quickly.