White silvery wisps

[Jon Hedley]

I've searched the forum and couldn't find anything that resembled the problem I've been having so here goes. I'm looking at RED footage on an external monitor and I see these random whitish, silvery "threads" on the image. They don't seem to be resulting from over saturation or white levels being too high. In fact they move independently of the image behind them. On a pan they'll move in the opposite direction of the camera. It's like there is a spider web in my image that's being blown around by a breeze.

The footage has been brought into FCP using L&T to Pro RES 422HQ and it appears fine on my computer monitor. The threads only appear when I send the image through my KONA 3 (software v. 6.0.2). Non RED originated images don't have the threads and I've tried changing the KONA setups but nothing fixes it. I can literally watch the show on the computer and its fine look to my left on my exported image and its got webs.

Anyone with spider web experience?

 

[Stefan Scherperel]

Weird, any way you can post a screen grab from the monitor?
From the way you are describing it sounds like what happens if you are using a mattebox with some ND filters and had a light leak from behind the lens. This will give you a light leak that can sometimes pan the opposite direction from where you are panning, but usually that should show up all your footage.

 

[Jon Hedley]

Its not on the files in the computer though only on the footage after it goes through the KONA card. I'm pretty sure it's KONA related and have asked their tech support about it. If anyone has seen the KONA 3 do this let me know.

 

[Shawn Booth]

Have not experienced this.

Have you tried viewing footy on another machine altogether with the same spider web results?

IS there a spiderweb in your camera? Did you check?

Good luck with Kona support... They suck.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I know exactly what Jon is talking about and strangely it's similar to what Stefan is describing with the Mattebox, as I've experienced that too. But this issue is specific to playback, not in the files themselves.

Jon, what kind of monitor are you seeing this on?

My theory is that it's one of these possibilities.

1. If playing to an LCD, it might just be a lag that is being introduced, a ghosting. One way to check it is to step through the clip frame by frame. Is it there?

2. It could be something in the ProRes decode during playback. Test another codec and see if you still have the same problem.

3. It could be something in the Kona 3 firmware. Probably unlikely though.

Shawn, I disagree about Kona support. I've had pretty good experience with them, especially compared to Black Magic. But I'm sure everyone has different experiences with vendors and that's why we all buy different products. The Kona guys have been great working with me about the Kona 3 and Red specifically.

 

[Jon Hedley]

Just encountered some more problems directly related to the KONA (ingest with sparkles) so I'm assuming the new KONA update didn't take for some reason. I'm going to try a system reinstall and see if that solves the problem.
Thanks, crossing my fingers.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

John, I had the problem with sparkles too. You may need a new board. I sent mine in and they swapped it for another board.

There is a preference you can turn on and off to try and see if that helps but I can't remember what it is off hand. Most likely,you'll need a new board to work with the current firmware.

 

[Jon Hedley]

A new Kona board to use the new 6.0.2 firmware update? I'll contact AJA to see about it. In the meantime I had reverted to the old firmware and went back to update 5.1 which seems to be working fine again. While I've got your attention any idea why I have to choose 720p 59.94 to see my RED to Pro Res HQ footage in real time through the KONA. Am I correct in thinking that is has more to do with FCP and its real time capabilities since the KONA just converts whatever it gets correctly sent to it. Why 720P 59.94 for footage that is 2K 23.98?

Thanks for your great advice and experience.