Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • 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 :)

Weapon Mg First Thoughts

M

Matthew Riggieri

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 13, 2008
Messages
442
Reaction score
0
Points
16
Location
Baltimore, MD
Hey Everyone

Just finished up 3 days after taking delivery of my Weapon last Wednesday on two different shoots. Would love to share some thoughts and I have some questions for the RED team.

The first shoot was really straight forward, rolled 5KHD 8:1 all day and camera worked great. Noticeably cleaner images, felt just like working with my EPIC, just lighter. Like, well, really lighter. It is so amazing how much a different a pound and a half make. And quiet. Couple UI, control issues popped up though.

First, no easy external electronic iris control. I found myself really missing my side handle. I can't wait to get the DMSC2 version. I know i can assign buttons to do it, but just missing the control

Secondly, I usually use my TV-Logic 5.4 as my operating monitor. I can nail focus on it, especially with a little output sharpening on the RED and the Aperture setting on the Monitor fine tuned. Make critical focus easy to find. Sometimes don't even have a RED monitor. But for the life of me, I could not get menu control over HDSDI. Is that possible on DMSC2 bodies?


Second job, got to really put the latest beta build through its paces and it rocked. Needed to record DNx for the client, so we rolled R3D and DNx. 6KHD and DNxHQx.

But I found a lot of questions that I think RED needs to clarify in documentation. Had no issues and shot about 1.5TB of media.

Was on a SuperTechno all day, so, it was great to have a battery and external power source. So nice. It was also nice to put the LEMO A connector on the side pogo, attach my 5" touch to it and flip it down. Was able to use the flip UI controls. The issue comes with the Flip video controls. Finally the body can do it, which is awesome. BUT, there are some issues. I noticed a fair amount of UI lag.

WIFI control is AWESOME. FoolControl is Awesome. Should have been this way since the beginning.

Also, it seems like there is two completely independent video channel, that you can assign to any output. So I flipped the B channel and assigned that to LCD2. But it was weird, the R3D's were coming in flipped in RCX and Resolve but not AE. Would love to see some documentation on how these two video channels work and what they control.

Secondly, I would like to know for sure if the RGB encoding is full debayer. I know it is before wavlet R3D compression, but is it Full debayer? Because Playback is definitely only 1/4 Debayer.

Also, RED color controls for the Proxy files are very confusing now. I figured it out, but you guys really need to clarify how the gamma/color space setting in the Look>Video section apply to the proxy encoding. I could not find it in the documentation at all.

I am hoping we may be seeing a RED UI upgrade soon in FW7. Its starting to get a little fragmented, with some controls one one spot and some controls in another spot but they need to combine them to accomplish what you need. Hope maybe the Panavision collaboration will lead to better UI controls.

Which Video stream A or B control the proxy and which stream controls the R3D?

Does the sharpening apply to the proxy recording? I believe it does from my comparisons, but that should be in the documentation.

Again, very happy with the camera, and can't wait to see how much more horsepower RED will unleash.


Cheers
Matt
Digital Cave
 
Oh yea and forgot to add, have the ET Weapon battery Plate and it is not properly displaying voltage. It goes from RB %, the sometimes showing 24V to sometimes showing 12V like the battery is low but the Battery indicator is still at 100%.

By the way, can the DSMC2 even accept 24V?
 
yeah, when you use flip video for the monitor to be upside down the menu has big lag problems, i now try to have all my settings in before i flip it!
i assigned the the buttons on the front of the minimag to be up and down iris. though this is for personal use, i dont use electronically controlled iris lenses professionally, yet!
thanks for sharing!

this is confusing to me too and i think i figred it out because i did a prores only job for an artist, what did you figure out? im still confused with the first setting :graded"

"Also, RED color controls for the Proxy files are very confusing now. I figured it out, but you guys really need to clarify how the gamma/color space setting in the Look>Video section apply to the proxy encoding. I could not find it in the documentation at all."
 
The new firmware and the Beta have an issue with the voltage display from the ET battery plate. It broke the voltage display for me, just like described above. I rolled the firmware back and all is good on that front.
 
Matthew Riggieri said:
...
WIFI control is AWESOME. FoolControl is Awesome. Should have been this way since the beginning.
...
Click to expand...

Thanks Matthew, glad you like it...
expect more stuff to ease taming those DRAGONs coming soon to the iOS app ;-)
 
jordan levy said:
yeah, when you use flip video for the monitor to be upside down the menu has big lag problems, i now try to have all my settings in before i flip it!
i assigned the the buttons on the front of the minimag to be up and down iris. though this is for personal use, i dont use electronically controlled iris lenses professionally, yet!
thanks for sharing!

this is confusing to me too and i think i figred it out because i did a prores only job for an artist, what did you figure out? im still confused with the first setting :graded"

"Also, RED color controls for the Proxy files are very confusing now. I figured it out, but you guys really need to clarify how the gamma/color space setting in the Look>Video section apply to the proxy encoding. I could not find it in the documentation at all."
Click to expand...

So, there is no fix... firmware update, etc. for the upside down lag?
 
So in terms of what is encoded to the ProRes/DNX files, this is what i figured out. Under Look>Video, whatever you select there is what i recorded to the RGB files.

So if you select graded, you get what ever Gamma/Colorspace is set there. If you select RLF, you get RedLogFilm Proxy files.

I still don't know how the A/B Look Config is applied to the proxy files or R3D. Maybe Graeme or Rob can chime in here.
 
Abiodun Shote said:
Hi Mikael,
Is FoolControl on Andriod?
Click to expand...

Hello Abiodun
For now foolcontrol is only iOS and OS X. As I do all this by mysef I'd rather focus on adding more features for now (lift gamma gain and audio update coming this month...) versus adding more platforms. Android can also be a pain to code nice looking app on due to the diversity of OS versions and various screen sizes.

But the good news is that if you need to use foolcontrol it does work natively on an iPod touch or any iPad (as long as you can install iOS 8 on it)
Consider it as a camera accessory and keep your phone charged for calling friend after shooting wraps ;)
 
Mikael,

whats coming up in the next release?
Do you go to Cinec 2016 in Munich? Two years ago we met there...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top