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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 :)

Video Assist on Set

Stuart English said:
Gibby, this begs three questions -

a) where are you, and what monitor do you have with you?

b) is this playback from the camera itself or playback from REDCINE?

c) What do you want to see when you spot check the footage?
Click to expand...


a) Monitors will vary in real mobile stock footage and b-roll shooting. Could be an LCD or an HDTV that is accessed. It could be a DVI-D capable LCD, or alternately an HDMI capable HDTV. Packing a monitor with you in those mobile situations is not always practical, as is getting back to your home workstation. In both situations, 1080p would be preferable. If I have to use a converter, then it should preferably be 1080p60 capable.

b) Both - playback would normally be from the camera, scaled down from 4k or 2k to 1080p (preferable) or 720p (second choice). At the stock footage reps or edit bay for the b-roll, it would be playback from REDCINE, so there’s lots of monitor and format options.

c) If it was REDCODE RAW, I’d simply want to check framing & focus, because footage dub will be processed by stock footage rep for each individual licensee's needs. If it was shot 1080p RGB, then full values on playback, in 1080p (preferable) or 720p (second choice)

------------

Need to check the footage, choose which clips to dub to HDD, then ship it off - all in a mobile environment. I realize that checking footage with a laptop, especially one with REDCINE, is an option, but quite often I don't have a laptop with me in real mobile situations. I realize that this "Video assist on the set" thread is somewhat threadjacked by this question, but then again it is still about monitors for RED One use. One day we may be working on a big set, and the next day out alone shooting as I've described. Whatever the solution, 1080p, and especially 1080p60 playback is optimal.
 
Wow and flutter

Wow and flutter

Perhaps we will have to "suffer" through 720p monitoring off the camera in any situation short of having a dual-link HD-SDI capable display at hand - for now. I don't think very many of us want to extend our wait for the RedOne (unless it was only an extra day or two) just for 1080 monitoring, no matter how badly we want it.

Perhaps the feedback on this thread, if representative of the community at large, which I believe it to be, is motivation to make this a high priority upgrade (firmware I assume) for the rig once it is shipping.

Being able to display a knockout image via HDMI at 1080p is a big sexy feature that will help us to turn people on (ya' know, people with checkbooks ;) ) to the image quality we all expect this camera to be capable of.
 
Dual Link HD-SDI

Dual Link HD-SDI

This is a good thread, and I appreciate the feedback. But I'll go over this one more time because the meaning keeps getting lost. You certainly can get a knockout 1080p image up on a monitor or projector.

The phrase "Dual-link HD-SDI" can mean one or both of two things - RED can support both.

a) Use of two links to provide 4:4:4 RGB monitoring at 1080p or -
b) Two duplicate outputs of 4:2:2 YUV (Y,Cr,Cb) at 720p or 1080i or 1080p.

To see 1080p you don't need a dual link capable monitor, any HD monitor with an HD-SDI input is fine. JVC makes a 1080P HD-SDI + DVI LCD for ~$4K (Note DVI not HDMI - are you sure you have an HDMI monitor that accepts 1080p/24 native and not 24p + 3:2 pulldown = 1080i/60 or maybe 1080p/60? - hence the Black Magic box specs perhaps?)

The HD preview output (HD-SDI and HDMI, its the same signal) provides a Surround View + active record area + select graphics + audio. Its designed to allow a quick check of framing and composition for the director and other on-set - think video assist for a film camera. We chose to include HDMI as an output in addition to HD-SDI as it lets you plug in a wide range of inexpensive computer monitors or 12" - 32" size consumer LCD and plasma TVs.

If anyone wants to research available portable / battery powered, HDMI based multiframe rate 1080p monitors that can accept 23.98, 24.00, 25.00, 29.97 and 30.00 1080p signals it would be a valuable addition to all of our knowledge bases.

What we have seen in HD-SDI and HDMI products have all been XGA or SXGA resolution, so its pointless to send them 1080p and also limit the frame rate we can display to 30fps - which is why we chose 720p instead.
 
HD-SDI dual-link split option

HD-SDI dual-link split option

Stuart English said:
(snip)

The phrase "Dual-link HD-SDI" can mean one or both of two things - RED can support both.

a) Use of two links to provide 4:4:4 RGB monitoring at 1080p or -
b) Two duplicate outputs of 4:2:2 YUV (Y,Cr,Cb) at 720p or 1080i or 1080p.
(snip)
Click to expand...

Thanks for your patience Stuart & Graeme. What I failed to grasp until today was that the architecture of dual-link HD-SDI used for the "clean feed" would allow me to cherry pick just one channel to produce 1080p at up to 30fps, albeit limited to 4:2:2 color space.

This was important to me as I am about to pull the trigger on the purchase of an eCinema DCM23 that can only handle single-link HD-SDI input. It is too bad that Martin's very forward thinking product is not set up to handle dual link inputs, I would think that driving a monitor designed for grading with a 4:4:4 signal would make a difference. Perhaps it is a moot point if the glass can only be driven at 8 bits anyway?

Bottom line - the eCinema display looks great and its the closest thing to a BVM CRT I have ever seen and I just want to show off the RedOne's image quality the best I can.
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
Being able to display a knockout image via HDMI at 1080p is a big sexy feature that will help us to turn people on (ya' know, people with checkbooks ;) ) to the image quality we all expect this camera to be capable of.
Click to expand...


I agree with Blair. Demoing the system goes a long way toward selling a new technology into the production and anything that inhibits the ability to properly review/demo the footage should be seen as an issue.

It won't be possible for laymen to understand why you can't just plug a camera that shoots above 1080 resolution into their HDMI 1080i/p TV and not be able to play it back in 1080--it will be seen as a camera deficiency. It will be "But I thought it has an HDMI? Oh, it shoots at 4K but only plays back at 720--great camera!" that will be the response.

Sort of like my first IMAX viewing experience of "To Fly" which opens with a tiny frame in the center of the screen before it fills the space with iMax. Someone in the theater screamed out "Sure you have the worlds largest screen--now all you need is the worlds largest movie!"

I'm okay with a breakout box monitoring to a 23" cinema display for now, and I definately don't want to hold up production on a convenience feature, but I think you should seriously consider this a deficiency and address it with future releases--hopefully a firmware release!
 
Stuart English said:
The HD preview output (HD-SDI and HDMI, its the same signal) provides a Surround View + active record area + select graphics + audio. Its designed to allow a quick check of framing and composition for the director and other on-set - think video assist for a film camera. We chose to include HDMI as an output in addition to HD-SDI as it lets you plug in a wide range of inexpensive computer monitors or 12" - 32" size consumer LCD and plasma TVs.

If anyone wants to research available portable / battery powered, HDMI based multiframe rate 1080p monitors that can accept 23.98, 24.00, 25.00, 29.97 and 30.00 1080p signals it would be a valuable addition to all of our knowledge bases.

What we have seen in HD-SDI and HDMI products have all been XGA or SXGA resolution, so its pointless to send them 1080p and also limit the frame rate we can display to 30fps - which is why we chose 720p instead.
Click to expand...

Well, I think the first choice in terms of those "inexpensive computer monitors" you mention is probably the 23-24" widescreen LCD panels from companies like Apple and Dell, which have basically emerged as the poor man's HD monitoring solution. These are, of course, native 1920x1200 displays, and they'll do 60fps just fine. 720p is not exactly going to look great on them.

Without 1080p over HDMI, driving these screens at 1080p goes from requiring a $25 HDMI-to-DVI adaptor to requiring a $450 HDLink. Given what a respectable camera package will cost, an extra $450 isn't a huge deal, but it just seems like an odd decision to ship the camera with an HDMI port, but not support the most appropriate resolution for some of the most common devices people would probably want to plug into it.
 
Computer displays

Computer displays

These are good choices when driven from a computer, but quite apart from the issue of portability and battery power for field use, I don't think you can drive these monitors with 1080p at 23.98 / 24 / 25 directly.

To quote from the Black Magic Design web site - www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hdlink/

"Because most computer displays are limited to approximately a 60 Hz refresh rate, HDLink will automatically apply pull-down to allow video frame rates to be displayed"
 
Stuart English said:
These are good choices when driven from a computer, but quite apart from the issue of portability and battery power for field use, I don't think you can drive these monitors with 1080p at 23.98 / 24 / 25 directly.

To quote from the Black Magic Design web site - www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hdlink/

"Because most computer displays are limited to approximately a 60 Hz refresh rate, HDLink will automatically apply pull-down to allow video frame rates to be displayed"
Click to expand...

Yeah, you'd have to add pulldown. Don't you have to do this at 720p for many devices as well? Pretty much any computer monitor would require it, and my understanding is 24 Hz support is sufficiently rare even on televisions that e.g. Blu-ray players implement it on their end for sets that don't have it.

I'm a little surprised the HDMI interface on the camera isn't just running at 60 Hz all the time and drawing new frames as necessary within that signal, the way a computer would. Wouldn't that be a more flexible approach? If the display has to actually sync to the capture frame rate, how do you deal with external monitoring/recording of off-speed shots?
 
HD Preview and HDMI

HD Preview and HDMI

Yes that is the way it works - constant 720p / 50.00 or 720p / 59.94 - 60.00
 
Stuart English said:
Yes that is the way it works - constant 720p / 50.00 or 720p / 59.94 - 60.00
Click to expand...

But single-link HD-SDI only handles 30 fps at 1080p, right? So is the problem with 1080p monitoring output basically that you can't go above 30 fps on single-link HD-SDI, and the HDMI and single-link HD-SDI outputs need to carry the same data, therefore in order to be able to run both monitoring outputs at a consistent 50/60 fps you have to limit monitoring to 720p?

Just trying to understand the issues involved here.
 
Preview HD-SDI and HDMI

Preview HD-SDI and HDMI

Yes, these are tied together - its the same signal, two physical outputs. So yes this is the technical reason, but that is more a symptom than the cause if you follow me. The cause is that this output signal isn't designed to do what you are asking it to do. Its an HD resolution "video assist" - showing Surround View + recorded video + limited (framing) graphics - not a maximum quality monitor or record video feed w/o any of the above.

We also have two additional HD-SDI feeds - the "dual link" HD-SDI output. Use one or both of those to monitor or record 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 RGB 1080p.
 
So the HDMI is not separately addressable during preview. What about playback? Does this mean we cannot play anything higher than 1080P out of the camera itself, even durring playback? Say if we hooked up the camera via HDMI to DVI adapter to a 30" Cinema display?
 
Computer monitor

Computer monitor

With computer monitors like the Benq FP241w with a HDMI input and the specification having a vertical frequency of 50 to 76 Hz. I what be curious to see if it would resolves most frame rates.

http://benq.com/products/LCD/?product=1010&page=specifications

Will have to test it with a Decklink multibridge pro hdmi output when Benq resolves a 1:1 scaling problem.
 
Monitoring Q&A. 1.

Monitoring Q&A. 1.

"Does this mean we cannot play anything higher than 1080P out of the camera itself, even during playback? "

Yes, 1080p is the highest video resolution available from the camera during playback and this is provided from one or both of the "dual link" HD-SDI's. If you want to see 2K or 4K images you do that from a computer and REDCINE.

"With computer monitors like the Benq FP241w with a HDMI input and the specification having a vertical frequency of 50 to 76 Hz. I what be curious to see if it would resolves most frame rates"

Yes, that's very typical - so the only video frame rates that fall into that range are 50Hz, 59.94, 60Hz (plus 72Hz). Not 23.98, 24, or 25, or 30Hz....
 
Stuart English said:
Yes, these are tied together - its the same signal, two physical outputs. So yes this is the technical reason, but that is more a symptom than the cause if you follow me. The cause is that this output signal isn't designed to do what you are asking it to do. Its an HD resolution "video assist" - showing Surround View + recorded video + limited (framing) graphics - not a maximum quality monitor or record video feed w/o any of the above.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I get that, and it's certainly a reasonable decision, but like I said, it does torpedo what would have otherwise, I think, been very popular monitoring options (those 23-24" computer monitors).

Stuart English said:
We also have two additional HD-SDI feeds - the "dual link" HD-SDI output. Use one or both of those to monitor or record 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 RGB 1080p.
Click to expand...

There is that... though you can't do frame guides, etc. on that feed right? Any possibility of having an option to do letterboxing to 2.35, etc. on the dual-link HD-SDI, or does it always just output the full 16:9?
 
Stuart,
Left field question can a monitor use a vertical frequency 2 or 3 times that of the frame rate with HDMI? eg 120Hz monitor displaying 60Hz signal. If so, can that translate into a 24P displayed at 72Hz?
 
Monitoring Q&A 2.

Monitoring Q&A 2.

"HD Preview is a HD resolution "video assist" - showing Surround View + recorded video + limited (framing) graphics - not a maximum quality monitor or record video feed w/o any of the above."

Q: Its a reasonable decision, but it does torpedo what would have been very popular monitoring options (those 23-24" computer monitors).

A: But you can feed the HD-SDI dual lin output via an AJA or Black Magic converter ($500 approx) which converts 1080p to DVI at ~ 60Hz...

Q: Any possibility of having an option to do letterboxing to 2.35, etc. on the dual-link HD-SDI, or does it always just output the full 16:9?

A: If its 1080p, by definition its always 16:9.
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Indie4K.com: a blog about digital workflow and the coming digital cinema revolution.
 
Can you connect one of the 1920x1200 displays out there (say, an apple 23") to a 720p HDMI input (via an HDMI->DVI adapter) ?

If not, suggestions on affordable, colour accurate 720p displays would be welcome...
 
Computer monitors

Computer monitors

You should be able to (I'll check this out) but for a native pixel-to-pixel display, just search for an SXGA or WGXA (slightly higher - 1600 x 1200 resolution) monitor with DVI input -

For example, from the Dell site -

Samsung 941BW $220

Dell E207WFP $280


From the Apple site -

Apple 17" monitor
 
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