Weapon compression - WOW!

[James Codeglia]

I'll just chime in and say yes, the Weapon fan is way way way quieter! I'm shooting behind-the-scenes now on-set, so staying quiet at all times is essential for me. It's a staggering improvement. Your sound guys will love it!

 

[Nick Morrison]

I'll just chime in and say yes, the Weapon fan is way way way quieter! I'm shooting behind-the-scenes now on-set, so staying quiet at all times is essential for me. It's a staggering improvement. Your sound guys will love it!

Awesome!!!

 

[Zeb B]

To the OP: isn't this mostly due mostly to the difference in media speeds?

 

[Brian Merlen]

I'll just chime in and say yes, the Weapon fan is way way way quieter! I'm shooting behind-the-scenes now on-set, so staying quiet at all times is essential for me. It's a staggering improvement. Your sound guys will love it!

Whats the A cam?



Ps better compression over dragon is new boards plus faster media

 

[James Codeglia]

Whats the A cam?

The movie is shooting on film. I've always been able to control the fan so no one is bothered by it, using manual control. But there was always a time when I'd have to go into hair-dryer mode to cool it off before another take. Now with Weapon no one ever seems to turn their heads my direction. Very pleased! Guess I'll back away from hijacking this thread into a fan discussion, now. Love the new compression. Slow-motion has a special place in my heart for behind-the-scenes.

 

[Brian Merlen]

thank goodness its film, i was going to laugh hardcore if it was alexa lol!

 

[Jeffery Anderson]

I know, maybe not a common event in hollywood, but quite common in the museum world.

I agree, the Red isn't a museum camera.

Remember the early days when you could just open up an R3d in matlab and see exactly what was going on, you can still do that with everyone else - arriraw, sonyraw, cr2, nef.

If they did, do you think you, someone else, would help Red Improve the their image quality on their cameras?

Sounds like your are deducing that it is indeed an impossibility on the Weapon? (that is capturing 16-bit)

 

[Mike P.]

I guess, mum's the word on how 16bit images are being fit in 12bit file sizes... (which is unfortunate because it means assumptions will be made).

Christopher, are you saying that they are culling enough "redundant" green pixels to result in 12bit file sizes?

 

[Elias Tejeda]

I literally know people upgrading because of this one feature. And it's it's pretty much at the top of my list as well.

On most productions I work on it's been ideal to shoot at a 5:1 to 8:1 REDCODE RAW Compression Ratio, which is standard for feature films and most 4K delivered shows now. 4:1 is commonly used for Anamophic as well. Let's just talk 5K. You can literally shoot 5K FF at REDCODE 5:1 from 24 through 60 frames per second and up to 96 fps at 8:1. This means there will be a minimal to no hit to what I'd say the "visual compression cadence" is. Remember lower REDCODE RAW Compression Ratio = higher quality footage.

This is a mega big deal for those of us shooting overcranked footage (every commercial ever). But it also plays a pretty big role in the 24/25 fps side of things. 2:1 and 3:1 are pretty much visually lossless.

The side of things I'm on is favoring quality above all else at the moment and I'm going to exploit this like crazy. 6K 3:1 is going to be sexy.

I'm very curious to see what 8K can get down to. We've see Jarred running around shooting 5:1 8K FF for 24 fps, but man if RED can get that to 4:1 I'll be a happy piglet.

Can you speak more about the framerates on the commercials you've shot ?

On the small budget commercials i've shot or worked on , slow motion was usually just inserts or pack shots , unless the story happened to need a certain slow mo shot

Are you saying that a lot of the high end stuff shoots entirely undercranked and conforms to whatever the deliverable is going to be?

 

[Phil Holland]

Can you speak more about the framerates on the commercials you've shot ?

On the small budget commercials i've shot or worked on , slow motion was usually just inserts or pack shots , unless the story happened to need a certain slow mo shot

Are you saying that a lot of the high end stuff shoots entirely undercranked and conforms to whatever the deliverable is going to be?

That's not what I was saying, but oddly I have seen that done.

What I was saying 831 days ago was it's nice to shoot at say "at speed" 5:1 and be able to also overcrank and stay at 5:1 REDCODE RAW Compression Ratio.

Or overall, just stating that higher data rates benefit the quality of footage at the minimum compression ratios.

There are a few combined things that have helped benefit DSMC2 bodies into recording cleaner REDCODE RAW overall compared to DSMC1 bodies. Mainly the internal hardware processing power, internal data bandwidth, internal camera color pipeline, and the optical imaging path comes to mind. Some of those improvements are computational, some are improvements to the noise floor, some are just better optical design.

Which is why if you compare say Epic Dragon 6K to DSMC2 Weapon Dragon 6K you get slightly better quality footage and slightly better quality encoded REDCODE RAW.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Can you speak more about the framerates on the commercials you've shot ?

On the small budget commercials i've shot or worked on , slow motion was usually just inserts or pack shots , unless the story happened to need a certain slow mo shot

Are you saying that a lot of the high end stuff shoots entirely undercranked and conforms to whatever the deliverable is going to be?

We shoot 50fps 360 shutter for most commercials (25p mastering) as that gives us a better possibility to retime in post. Simply cinespeed and other motion estimate timewarp features have twice the chance to create a good result if needed.
The costs and data rate is no difference, if we don´t shoot with in-between frames / 50p we crank the bitrate to max anyway. And the NLE´s works fine with having everything speeded X2.

What would be nice is to shoot 8k 66.666fps to get to do the same as the above but with 33.333 slomo. If its up to me pretty much everything looks better shot 33.333 than played back in 25p and that little retime also work for sound capture and dialog, if done right people dont only look and act cooler in that little slomotion and they also get much more comfortable voices. But thats my taste I guess.