WHY!!!! are people still using color baked DPX's F&%*@#%*#K!

[mikeburton]

There are many valid points in this thread about the situation with RED work-flows but I wanted to return to one that Bruce Allen mentioned. The fact that the RED SDK doesn't support GPU decoding of R3Ds thus forcing you to get a RED ROCKET for faster work.

This is one of the things that RED should reconsider. It might have been a nice solution 3 years ago but with the way GPU processing power has increased and prices have reduced lately it's a shame we can't use what's already available to us. GPU utilisation for R3D decoding would make easier the life of many people and help improve the perception of difficulty to working with RED footage.

+1 + every other post professional I know.

 

[David Battistella]

Yup. Either the sticker price of the rocket comes down or the gpu possibilities open up.

Either one of these things will be first and revolutionary, and appreciated by many.

Rocket cost is going to hold back the scarlet revolution a bit.

Shoot > EDIT has not been met with a killer response.

David

There are many valid points in this thread about the situation with RED work-flows but I wanted to return to one that Bruce Allen mentioned. The fact that the RED SDK doesn't support GPU decoding of R3Ds thus forcing you to get a RED ROCKET for faster work.

This is one of the things that RED should reconsider. It might have been a nice solution 3 years ago but with the way GPU processing power has increased and prices have reduced lately it's a shame we can't use what's already available to us. GPU utilisation for R3D decoding would make easier the life of many people and help improve the perception of difficulty to working with RED footage.

 

[Bruce Allen]

We run on Flame and most other composting / grading tools and I have to say that you are quite wrong. The Red rocket is only needed if you are on slow/small computers todays hardware can manage R3D with no problem. The card is actually the cheapest solution available to play 4k RAW with realtime grading.

Actually, no:
- Iridas can debayer Arri Alexa RAW files in realtime using only GPU
- Resolve can do realtime GPU demosaic of 16bit linear RAW Sony F65 material
- Iridas had realtime GPU debayer on Dalsa Origin years ago

No $5000 card needed.

(Possible to do on your mac air laptop)

Having a Macbook Air plugged into a giant "mobile" RedRocket boat anchor... is not a solution.

But if you do serious work your you should have a big enough workstation to be able to chew the 5K files without to much difficulty, and at least playback at half resolution or such. When using DPX files there is no such option.

What you're saying is: you can play back half resolution RED files (eg 2K resolution, noisy and not full quality) but you can't play back 2K DPX files?

Your hard drives must really suck then because 2K DPX files are pretty easy to deal with.

I recently did some wire removal and basic VFX stuff with full aperture 4K DPX film scans for a little movie called The Avengers (if you saw any wires in the trailer, I failed ... on a little Mac running After Effects. Works better than waiting for a full R3D decode, let me tell you that.

BTW, we have a 8-core Resolve Mac system with a RED Rocket... and it can't seem to quite manage playing back 5K EPIC files properly either.

So Red in this case is making it easier for the little guys, since you do not need the big machines even. The problem is all the old hardware used out in the major post houses are not up to spec while 4k and above will make demand upgrades no doubt.

Are you telling me that you don't need a big machine to deal with RED footage... or that you do?

And for DI work the post side needs to learn a lot more complex things than handling r3d files which is more or less a plug and play thing to do.

Well, they have already learned those other things. Now you're asking them to learn something more. Sometimes they don't have time to learn properly... which is why RED needs to make the process as easy as possible.

And it's not obviously not plug and play or else we would have people developing R3Ds properly and not clipping the highlights.

As for flame, nuke etc you are very much able to just open the r3d file select. camera setting, red user setting or, user setting. If the last option is chosen you then go trough and sellect film gamma film gamma and set your iso, kelvin and so on. Not so tricky. But if you do not know you will probably do it wrong. Read your manuals, do your test etc. But off course things will go wrong when people do not know what they are doing.

Personally, I do all of that stuff yes.

As a whole... do I want multiple VFX vendors messing around with iso and kelvin? Hell no. The poor guy grading the stuff would go insane!

As a fact knowing what you are doing will be the only way to make a living in the post industry as things will evolve. Since the time of great investments in this field is long gone. Buy a computer, buy a red rocket, buy a raid, download resolve and call yourself "colorist"... No special funds needed really.

I am already making a living in the post industry, thank you.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Carter Cammack]

Come to think of it, I don't know of anywhere but here where an "outsider" can learn the RED language and workflows. Except Reducation, that is. Maybe that really is the problem. What can be done here?

 

[Michael Dalton]

There are many valid points in this thread about the situation with RED work-flows but I wanted to return to one that Bruce Allen mentioned. The fact that the RED SDK doesn't support GPU decoding of R3Ds thus forcing you to get a RED ROCKET for faster work.

This is one of the things that RED should reconsider. It might have been a nice solution 3 years ago but with the way GPU processing power has increased and prices have reduced lately it's a shame we can't use what's already available to us. GPU utilisation for R3D decoding would make easier the life of many people and help improve the perception of difficulty to working with RED footage.

I agree, this is partly why we are in this problem we are. If you open up processing to CPUs with the help of a open i/o card, then there will be no need to transcode into another format. Finally this year, avid got with the party and opened up to whole host of 3rd party cards. Now, I have to buy a rocket card and resort to a transcoding work flow.... AGAIN!!!

Best to open .r3d processing to cpu's enhanced by Aja, Matorx, and Black magic, avid, and we can get some kick ass real-time workflows going. I'm sure RED does not make their money off Red Rocket cards, so open it up, and let editing and I/0 companies figure out realtime work flows. If red thinks the whole transcoding thing is acceptable, we may as well go back to HD. Between the thunderbolt raids, fast computers, and i/o card from the boys listed above, we can move out of the dark ages and back into realtime.

 

[Dermot Shane]

Um: something is wrong with RED's 400ISO decode if it's hard clipping the highlights.

DPX files have worked great for describing the large latitude of film for decades. If RED can't fit the (smaller) latitude of R3D files into the DPX file... it's RED's problem.

Ideally if you just tell the R3D to decode at 400ISO, it should mean good exposure on the skintones... AND the highlight detail still present (nicely rolled off).

Personally, my workaround is to just convert at 250ISO (which maintains all highlight detail) with a little bit of FLUT to get overall exposure right (which moves exposure but doesn't clip highlights as much).

There is no benefit to going to 125ISO - if the highlights are clipped at 250ISO, there's no extra detail to be found at 125.

I know that you're using this as an argument for R3D... but all it sounds like to me is that you just don't know how to make a good DPX file.

Which comes back to my point: it's too easy to make a DPX file that is clipped, using RED's software.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

I didn't say they were clipped, and they wern't.. they were just nicely rolled off, so there just was very little to work with up there, often all good & fine when debayered at 400 or even 250.

But sub-optimal when cutting a MX against an Epic with HDRX turned on 2 stops and Epic has a borderline sureal ton of detail in the highlights, debayering twice was worthy to get as much detail out of the windows as possiable from the MX... and that's faster than dealing with rolled off highlights for sure

Sometimes i do just split the diffrence, really depends on the shot & scene.. but i don't have any choices if it's baked intp a DPX... and yea there is something to be gained in doing a highlight debayer pass @ 125 from an MX in some cases

d

 

[jake blackstone]

- Iridas can debayer Arri Alexa RAW files in realtime using only GPU
- Resolve can do realtime GPU demosaic of 16bit linear RAW Sony F65 material
- Iridas had realtime GPU debayer on Dalsa Origin years ago

No $5000 card needed.

Actually you need to mention #4.
Iridas demoed real time R3D GPU debayer 2 years ago at NAB only to receive a phone call from Red to knock it off.
One more thing. Red debayer actually quite a bit more difficult in comparison to ARRI RAW on the account, that ARRI is uncompressed. And we all know, that R3D is. Big diff.
But, as Iridas already showed, it is doable, even on a two year old GPU...

 

[Scott Crawley]

Wow, This is getting ugly. I didn't expect this to evolve into torches and pitchforks.

 

[Mark Toia]

Iridas demoed real time R3D GPU debayer 2 years ago at NAB only to receive a phone call from Red to knock it off.
One more thing. Red debayer actually quite a bit more difficult in comparison to ARRI RAW on the account, that ARRI is uncompressed. And we all know, that R3D is. Big diff.
But, as Iridas already showed, it is doable, even on a two year old GPU...

ooooh... This is very very very interesting. I'm suprised about RED pulling off a stunt like that, I would like to here both sides before this becomes another urban myth..

At the same time... Shooting Arri RAW is like an exercise itself, not to mention the drive space, not to mention cost, not to mention that 99% of all ARRI shoot footage is PRO RES HD...

But still...
Being open here. I love PRORES 4444 / REDLOGFILM @ 4k is all Ill need for the next 10 years !
Who ever makes that happen straight out of a camera body will have my dollars immediately sent to there bank account.

Oh and after all this mess this week, I've decided to only give the post house graded material from now on in, unless they conform and grade the way we do it here in house.

Thanks guys, Great feedback within alot of your posts. I can see both sides though, I just fell into the trap thinking everyone was doing it the easy way now, since RED has been out for so long now... But sadly not.

More for me I suppose. ))

Thanks Guys.

Sorry for the late night Rant!

 

[Mark Toia]

Rocket cost is going to hold back the scarlet revolution a bit.

Shoot > EDIT has not been met with a killer response.

David

Couldn't agree more...
Hence 2k, 4k PRO RES log files would change that over night... and not to mention take ARRI's little strangle hold on PRO RES of them over night....

It's RED's only flaw. They have ticked all the other boxes for us... but thats the big one.

Imagine the EPIC as is (no modules) and you could select 5k RAW+ 2k or 4k DNX or PRO RES simultaneously... I'm getting a woody thinking about.


RED here is a challenge, if you can do this and I have to send my EPIC back and you charge me 10k for the upgrade. Consider it done.

 

[Bruce Allen]

Being open here. I love PRORES 4444 / REDLOGFILM @ 4k is all Ill need for the next 10 years !
Who ever makes that happen straight out of a camera body will have my dollars immediately sent to there bank account.

Mark - agree 100% there, man. Shooting in a way that maintains latitude and image detail, RedLogFilm-style... to something with light compression like ProRes4444 (or DNxHD444 or Cineform or whatever)... in camera... at 4K or 5K... sounds fantastic to me.

I do also agree that DPX files are just rather damn huge. Especially considering the fact that it's not like we have pristine pixel-for-pixel RGB stuff at 4K. Most 4K footage is pretty soft and really wouldn't lose detail with some light compression. And as for Peter Jackson-style 4K 48fps stereo... yeah - there's no way in hell I'm doing that uncompressed!

My compromise for now is to use OpenEXR with B44 (very very slightly lossy) compression. File sizes are a lot less than their 10bit DPX counterparts - and it's all lovely floating point info...

Of the other solutions:
ProRes... can only be written on Mac.
DNxHD444... doesn't exist yet at >HD resolutions.
Cineform... is too buggy on Mac.

Confident it'll all get sorted out though. For example, this company already has a recorder that does realtime JPEG2000 compression on 4K inputs:
http://www.astrodesign.co.jp/english/product/hc-7504
Squeezes the 4K feed into a data rate that you can record on a 2K uncompressed recorder... They also make like $56,000 monitors though so I sadly think this one will be way overpriced too...

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[jake blackstone]

ooooh... This is very very very interesting. I'm suprised about RED pulling off a stunt like that,

You are? I guess you haven't heard of forcing certain DP to sell the camera back to Red? Or you haven't heard of telling a rental house to NOT rent Red camera to a certain DP? And I guess your posts hasn't been deleted, repeatedly without an explanation

 

[jake blackstone]

ProRes... can only be written on Mac.

No again. I'm wring beautiful Prores (any flavor) right now on Nucoda software, that is running on Windows XP64 (or you prefer, Win 7 It actually writes Prores faster, than Mac counterpart and no gamma issues whatsoever...

 

[Björn Benckert]

[Allen I'm not picking a fight here.

All Im saying is that conforming an edit of r3d into a flame is quite easy. A few taps with the pen. Then you can choose to use the meta data from the camera or from something done after that in red cine X pro. The people that has a flame should know about this workflow.

Not giving VFX people the opportunity to look whats under the iso is maybe wanted by the DOP's (to put a lock on the grade) but I can tell you as much as there has been more than one shot that I worked on where the DP actually liked that I could mask in a second iso pass in the window or such. And a lot of times keys are made better at one iso than what looks best for the picture. So having that information at hand is benefitting the end look for the production and by moving over to DPX you are basically closing that door.

So I think keeping it in r3d as long as possible is not a bad advice, using "soft imports" in the flame is letting you do that, the same goes for nuke. It also gives you instant proxies to work with. But off course to some extend VFX people have to respect the grades done but the colorist. Still the information that was pushed down in pitch black in the grading can be very handy when doing 3D tracks, keying etc. It must be a fact we can all agree on.

Regarding computers big or small Im just saying that if you want to play back 4k then I think a macbook air and a thunderbolt red rocket is probably the lowest cost solution you could find. The big machines on the other hand can playback all sorts of things but on the other hand they cost more than a red rocket. So yes, I can playback 5k on the flame from DPX files, and my mac air can not do so...

But on the other hand I would be able to conform and grade a feature in 4k using nothing but my macbook air and our red rocket raid and a few disks for source material...and while doing it have some sort of playback.. also in 4k coming straight from the rocket in dual SDI... Normally you would need a quite expansive video board to do so... so in that sense I find the red rocket quite amazing. It costs less than a grading session and to me it makes wonders having one is perfect for the indy production. If you run a grading facility I recommend you to buy a few, both resolve and red cine x pro support multi red rockets and again I do not know of a card that does what it does for the price it is given.

For 5k playback I guess you need 2 red rockets. Have not tried it myself. I do playback the 5k on my flame but my screen is too small so I have not seen the full picture of course.

Before we rant about the price we might have to think of the old solutions like Film...

I do not recall the prices exactly but I think it was something like this.

A small can of film (less than a small SSD) 400USD
Lab cost for the same roll: 300USD
Telecine one light for that roll: 200USD
4k Telecine with grading (we had a genesis and charged 4USD/frame for 4k back in 2003.
Tape costs: at least 200USD for compressed HD

Then going back to film print... 4 USD / frame... + lab costs making a sound positive etc.

You can not tell me a red rocket is expansive for going from camera to full 4k editing / grading.

I also, just to put things in perspective, can tell you this little story. Not to many years ago we had a Quantel Domino, it was built on 70 hard drives in a raid and did 8 bit 3k with full playback using 16 pal graphics boards... normally when turning on the power for this beast one or more drive could/would brake.. the cost for a single drive was 1,2k Sterling and normally a support call was made to Quantel to handle the error... to have them handle it we had to pay an annual support contract of 25k sterling. Things have improved since then and it will do so even more rapidly. In the mean time i find the red rocket to be a very cheap solution to improve our pipeline.

 

[Les Dittert]

GPU debayer, yes ... GPU decompress : not so much

GPU debayer, yes ... GPU decompress : not so much

Yep, the GPU can debayer in real time.
Now, what is going to decode the J2000 compression in the r3d? .... There is the slowdown...

Now, *mabe* parts of the decode can be implemented in GPU, but I've been told it's not a good fit.

Actually, no:
- Iridas can debayer Arri Alexa RAW files in realtime using only GPU
- Resolve can do realtime GPU demosaic of 16bit linear RAW Sony F65 material
- Iridas had realtime GPU debayer on Dalsa Origin years ago

No $5000 card needed.

Having a Macbook Air plugged into a giant "mobile" RedRocket boat anchor... is not a solution.


-snip-

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Bruce Allen]

Björn - yep, no fight intended. I understand that R3D works for you. I use it a lot for my own (smaller) projects too.

But for other projects, DPX (or ProRes or DNxHD or EXR or Cineform) works better. I don't see why it's a problem to ask for RED to make it idiot-proof and really fast to make good DPX files.

It's really silly to say "R3D is the way of the future and everyone who doesn't understand that is a dinosaur".

For VFX, it's really nice to just be given a DPX file (or EXR or ProRes or DNxHD or Cineform) in a Log (or Float EXR) format with all of the detail in the shot (including all of the stuff that will be crushed later but is useful for tracking).

You do the fixes to the shots, then write out files that look exactly the same as you're given, color-wise. You don't need to worry about the right developing settings or any silly stuff. Just do the shot, knowing that all of the detail is still there. The guy grading the shot just drops it into his timeline and applies the same color look. This is a really, really nice workflow. RED should make this really easy to do. Just my 2c.

Yep, the GPU can debayer in real time.
Now, what is going to decode the J2000 compression in the r3d? .... There is the slowdown...

Now, *mabe* parts of the decode can be implemented in GPU, but I've been told it's not a good fit.

How about this: "BroadMotion Decodes Real-Time JPEG2000 on NVIDIA GPUs"
http://www.marketwire.com/press-rel...real-time-jpeg2000-on-nvidia-gpus-1318776.htm

They do 2K RGB decode in realtime... which should be about the same amount of data as a 4K RAW image. And we're just about to get even faster GPUs!

BTW even if we can't do realtime de-JPEG2000, it seems better to do:

CPU de-compress -> send RAW data to GPU -> GPU does debayer -> GPU does grade
than
CPU decompress -> CPU debayer -> send RGB data to GPU -> GPU does grade

Seems like sending the RAW data would take less time then sending the expanded RGB data (since RGB data would take up 2x-3x the space).

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Chris Reynolds]

ooooh... This is very very very interesting. I'm suprised about RED pulling off a stunt like that, I would like to here both sides before this becomes another urban myth..

At the same time... Shooting Arri RAW is like an exercise itself, not to mention the drive space, not to mention cost, not to mention that 99% of all ARRI shoot footage is PRO RES HD...

But still...
Being open here. I love PRORES 4444 / REDLOGFILM @ 4k is all Ill need for the next 10 years !
Who ever makes that happen straight out of a camera body will have my dollars immediately sent to there bank account.

Oh and after all this mess this week, I've decided to only give the post house graded material from now on in, unless they conform and grade the way we do it here in house.

Thanks guys, Great feedback within alot of your posts. I can see both sides though, I just fell into the trap thinking everyone was doing it the easy way now, since RED has been out for so long now... But sadly not.

More for me I suppose. ))

Thanks Guys.

Sorry for the late night Rant!

Hi Mark

I completely hear you. It has driven me nuts for the past few years how post houses deal with workflows. It doesn't take a lot of research to get things right no matter what the workflow. That is a post houses responsibility!! If you are ever down south for post, look us up.

Been working with native R3D's since they arrived and if we need to use DPXs for 3D or design it will always be in log unless it happens after the grade (resolve with 4 GPU's and a Rocketcard) where will will have a pass of both graded DPXs and LOG.

I always fight for RED on a shoot as it is our favourite to post (resolution and latitude). Maybe I am bias (have owned Red Ones and now have an Epic). But when you have to go and match back all the Arri Raw files because the
Codex Box had different Reel names and Timecode to the Prores files it generated, it really doesn't make for and enjoyable day of post!! 5D is another story that just takes too long to tell........

Cheers, Chris

 

[Mark Toia]

You are? I guess you haven't heard of forcing certain DP to sell the camera back to Red? Or you haven't heard of telling a rental house to NOT rent Red camera to a certain DP? And I guess your posts hasn't been deleted, repeatedly without an explanation

You sound a bit angry Jake... ?

Yes I have been a bit blind to some of this... I don't really get sucked into political stuff, does not really interest me...

and to be honest. I've had the shits with clients and suppliers in the past and pushed them away from my business me due to bad attitudes... I don't have a clue what Jim or REDs issues are with the people you have mention above... but Im sure there are two sides to the stories..

oooh and I have had many a POST deleted ))

 

[jimhare]

I just fell into the trap thinking everyone was doing it the easy way now, since RED has been out for so long now... But sadly not.

I'm with you on this one Mark. Despite all of the reasonable arguments presented about the way things are it's ASTOUNDING that there is still so much fundamental misinformation about how to work with these really simple - yet incredibly powerful files. Even with 5D footage any novice should understand that if they transcode they are baking in any flaws they dial up and they should take time to understand how to get the best from it.

Bizarre. Really - bizarre...

 

[Les Dittert]

Bruce, that's good news on the decoding side !
I am pretty sure they will be taking a look at the whole RCX software decode issue anyways, as it is not very sharp right now and does not multithread very well either.
Scarlet user base can't justify a $5K card to develop their images. And besides, a software debayer should have higher quality than the simplified but much faster FPGA version.

Björn - yep, no fight intended. I understand that R3D works for you. I use it a lot for my own (smaller) projects too.

But for other projects, DPX (or ProRes or DNxHD or EXR or Cineform) works better. I don't see why it's a problem to ask for RED to make it idiot-proof and really fast to make good DPX files.

It's really silly to say "R3D is the way of the future and everyone who doesn't understand that is a dinosaur".

For VFX, it's really nice to just be given a DPX file (or EXR or ProRes or DNxHD or Cineform) in a Log (or Float EXR) format with all of the detail in the shot (including all of the stuff that will be crushed later but is useful for tracking).

You do the fixes to the shots, then write out files that look exactly the same as you're given, color-wise. You don't need to worry about the right developing settings or any silly stuff. Just do the shot, knowing that all of the detail is still there. The guy grading the shot just drops it into his timeline and applies the same color look. This is a really, really nice workflow. RED should make this really easy to do. Just my 2c.



How about this: "BroadMotion Decodes Real-Time JPEG2000 on NVIDIA GPUs"
http://www.marketwire.com/press-rel...real-time-jpeg2000-on-nvidia-gpus-1318776.htm

They do 2K RGB decode in realtime... which should be about the same amount of data as a 4K RAW image. And we're just about to get even faster GPUs!

BTW even if we can't do realtime de-JPEG2000, it seems better to do:

CPU de-compress -> send RAW data to GPU -> GPU does debayer -> GPU does grade
than
CPU decompress -> CPU debayer -> send RGB data to GPU -> GPU does grade

Seems like sending the RAW data would take less time then sending the expanded RGB data (since RGB data would take up 2x-3x the space).

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com