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Epic and Scarlet release in 2010


Emanuel A Guedes

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As far as I'm aware, no true Prime-Time has ever been shot on the RED, (although the goalposts that define Prime Time are of course freely available for interpretation).

 

Last season, "The Cleaner" on A&E was on the Red. This season, "Blue Bloods" on CBS is shooting the Red, "NCIS/LA" is on Alexa.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

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... extra resolution allows you to use a heavier Optical Low Pass Filter, ....

 

Do they really do that? Usually, the choice is to do a slight cheat on Nyquist, and OLPF to where there's just a little aliasing left. Going heavier would kinda tie your hands.

 

The big advantage to shooting with up to twice the distributed resolution is that you can make the Nyquist limit of the distribution format with a digital filter, not an OLPF. The optical filter has to start rolling off at half the limit you want, while a digital filter can drop like a rock, giving you loads more top octave sharpness. The Modulation Transfer Function for the whole shebang looks like a cliff, not a gentle hill.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

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But if you have a 1.9K recording, wouldn't you want to avoid resolving exactly 1.9K in a line chart? Wouldn't that create moire?

 

Yes, exactly. That's what the OLPF does, it softens out any detail above the Nyquist limit.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

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A lot of HD cameras around today oversample for the best images to output 2K/HD (F35 & Genesis both have 5760 photosites across the horizontal, Alexa from 3.5K etc.), .

 

The F-35 and Genesis sensor has a vertical stripe color filter. It has 1920 reds, 1920 greens, and 1920 blues across the frame, 1920 x 3 = 5760. So it only has 1920 complete data sets across, it's not oversampled at all.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

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Each pixel or grain is a piece of information. HD has 2,073,600 of them per frame. How many does a frame of 35mm have?

 

Funny you should ask, I asked the same question a few years back, and got an answer from our Kodak reps. Depending on the emulsion, slower films have more grains, a frame of 35mm contains on the order of tens to hundreds of millions of silver halide grains. Each grain is either exposed or not, so each grain is in effect a binary digit.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

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Last season, "The Cleaner" on A&E was on the Red. This season, "Blue Bloods" on CBS is shooting the Red, "NCIS/LA" is on Alexa.

-- J.S.

Oh sure, there one or two shows that use it. And I mean literally "One or Two".

I don't begrudge them their 15 seconds of fame; it's more the way the Fanboys insist on bubble-economy-ing that out to make it sound like they have the market sewn up.

 

So, this season: Red - 1. Alexa - 1, Genesis/F35 - er, quite a lot more.

And that's with as many as 7,000 REDs and, er, how many Alexas are out there at the moment?

 

By the way, the Ten network finally got round to showing the final episode of "House" (5D) here last Sunday. They've replaced their HD service with a dumbass mostly YouTube-quality 24 hour sports channel, so I could only watch it in 720 x 576 SD, but it was still pretty impressive for what it was. The quality fell down in a few places, but for most of the show, I doubt too many punters would have noticed the difference.

 

I can't wait to see what happens when Canon actually set out to make an HD video camera :lol:

 

I know, I shouldn't laugh....

Actually, no, I ... don't know why I shouldn't. Sorry, what was the reason again ...?

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The F-35 and Genesis sensor has a vertical stripe color filter. It has 1920 reds, 1920 greens, and 1920 blues across the frame, 1920 x 3 = 5760. So it only has 1920 complete data sets across, it's not oversampled at all.

-- J.S.

And what's more, I would just like to say Sony have done an absolutely Fantastic job with the F35!

It may sound old-fashioned and trite in this sound-bite iPad age of short-term profit outlooks and three-month executive careers, but it's engineering like this that restores one's faith in Multi-Billion Dollar Multinational conglomerates, who have to pander to the insecurities of whining, ignorant shareholders, and faceless paper shufflers who only care about the bottom line. Well done Sony!

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@Thomas James

p3fig01.jpg

 

Looks like a serious difference to me (2k vs. 4k scan from S35 source: ARRI), but you're right - every medium becomes more "inefficient" at higher resolutions because MTF goes down and artifacts (interpolation, grain...) become more obvious - that's why 4k 65mm will look way superior to 4k 35mm - although both are capable of 4k actual resolution.

But I think the "4k" derived from compressed bayer-sensor-data hits a limit - you will loose information by downsampling to 2k, but it's very unlikely that the trade-off in actual photosite-size (and therefore DR - something that doesn't exist in the film-world, a 4k-scan doesn't cost you DR) is worth it in comparison to a 3k-sensor.

 

@John Sprung

I don't think oversampling saves you the OLPF, ARRI still uses one, it just compensates for the loss in MTF at high frequencies (when the OLPF sets in to reach 0% at Nyquist).

It's a strange variety of concepts - ARRI uses oversampling but doesn't fully compensate color interpolation and Panavision goes the opposite route by not using oversampling but compensating color interpolation. What surprises me is their very ambitous new sensor design with 37MP on a S35-sizes sensor with 2,9µm pixel-pitch! I wonder how they plan to handle DR and noise or if they plan to make it the users-choice (hardware-binning - 4k with high noise, low DR or 2k with low noise and high DR)

 

@Keith Walters

What is the difference between Genesis and F35 anyway? Different ergonomics?, different firmware?, one can be bought, the other one has to be rented - but it's basically the same camera, isn't it? I'm curious - the Genesis is practically unknown in Germany.

 

By the way, I think Mr. Tattersall does a fabulous job on "House" - I think the 35mm-episodes are a proof that even on the small screen, the "cinematic look" pays off - it stands out in comparison to Genesis/D21/F950-material when switching channels (I think that's really important in this market). Maybe the 5D was the right choice for this specific episode, but it was nowhere near 35mm - even my parents noticed that! I remember I was blown away by how great the first minute of "Castle" looked - until I've read it's 35mm... "Good enough" is not "good enough" in my eyes and saving a few thousand dollars (doesn't the F35+extras cost a few thousand dollars per day?) on high-profile TV-series over the head of the DP/producer/director is hideous.

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"... "Flesh coloured" to mean "Brown" ..."

 

Somebody saw the new Fincher-Trailer? ;-) Remember when Fincher was once visually/ technical top-notch, just like Mann, or Coppola :( ... But we have the new young guys now :lol: , like Nolan - I'm eager to see "Inception" on 70mm 15perf WITHOUT brownish skin or clipped highlights and forget these digital cinema discussions (I admit, I'm pushing them) at least for 148min... Who's with me? B)

Edited by georg lamshöft
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I don't think oversampling saves you the OLPF, ARRI still uses one, it just compensates for the loss in MTF at high frequencies (when the OLPF sets in to reach 0% at Nyquist).

 

Yes, right -- you still need an OLPF no matter what the sensor is. It's just that the more samples you have, the higher the Nyquist limit that you have to obey via the OLPF. Downconverting from your oversampled data to HDTV or whatever is its own separate sampling operation, with its own Nyquist limit, lower than that of the OLPF. But now we're filtering digital data rather than photons, so we can make a filter with a much steeper slope, a "brick wall" filter.

 

The optical filter has to start rolling off at N/4 in order to be all the way out by N/2, so you lose some of the "top octave" resolution. The digital filter can easily get you more like 0.9N/2.

 

This is also why you get diminishing returns when you oversample by more than 2:1.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

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@Thomas James

p3fig01.jpg

 

Looks like a serious difference to me (2k vs. 4k scan from S35 source: ARRI)

 

Here is a BD example from a similar film source with the introduction of a 4K transfer in-between for the new Gladiator's BD version now available in Europe:

 

[6 samples]

http://comparescreenshots.slicx.com/comparison/68257/picture:0

 

Any doubts?

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Here is a BD example from a similar film source with the introduction of a 4K transfer in-between for the new Gladiator's BD version now available in Europe:

 

[6 samples]

http://comparescreenshots.slicx.com/comparison/68257/picture:0

 

Any doubts?

The first image that appears is the old BD - roll your cursor over it to see the same shot on the new BD from a 4K transfer.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The first image that appears is the old BD - roll your cursor over it to see the same shot on the new BD from a 4K transfer.

The difference is marginally due to 4K versus 2K or 1080p. The old transfer was simply suffering from poor quality DNR and way overdone

sharpening turning everything into video garbage. One of the worst transfers for a major movie they dared to release on BD (together with

"Gangs of New York" which also got a reissue with a new transfer lately).

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They didn't talk about pixels then, but all of this is pretty well covered in my 70 year old Television Engineering Texbook!

 

 

It's had pretty much the result you'd expect.

There are 7,000+ REDs, and something less than 500 Genesis's and F35s out there.

As far as I'm aware, no true Prime-Time has ever been shot on the RED, (although the goalposts that define Prime Time are of course freely available for interpretation). There's not much film being used for TV any more, it's pretty much carved up between the Genesis, the F35 and a fair bit with 2/3" cameras (mostly Sony).

I'm sure there is an enormous amount of frames of REDcode being shot, but far from being a paradigm shift, it's just low-level noise spread over a vast geographical area. As far as so-called "4K archival value" goes, for the vast majority of it, low-band U-Matic archival would be overkill...

 

Meanwhile, the vastly less capable 5D is getting lots of eager attention from top-dollar operators.

 

What does this all say?

It says that people

A. Don't like delivery systems that make you wait

B. Don't think much of the idea that they MUST either:

(1)Convince their regular Post outfit that they need to equip for Redcode or

(2)Put their precious footage in the hands of someone they don't know, just because they have REDcode capability (and judging by some of the posts made by certain people on REDuser, they wouldn't want to know them).

C. Don't like being lectured with false dichotomies as in (1) and (2) above, when the simple answer is "no thanks, we'll stick to what we know".

 

If people don't like you, they won't hire you. Nobody likes a Zealot. Get over it.

 

If Jim Jannard could only have only have prised himself loose from this millstone/albatross called REDCode and offer a proper realtime delivery system,(And NO! I don't mean REDCode RAW!)the RED would have slaughtered the broadcast market.

The RED should be first and foremost a 1920 x 1080 realtime camera with option of non-realtime 4K (WHATEVER that means).

As it is, they have the whole concept completely arse-about, with exactly the results a lot of people predicted.

 

HM. As of primetime TV-drama produced here in Norway, RED has had close to a clean slate since april 2008 for all the major series, and funny enough, REDCODE RAW has been the best post argument, all the time, even when we struggled RedCine/Crimson.

AND redcode RAW is still the major argument for NOT going Alexa, but going MX RED + Epic.

 

Simply put, your solution would be to shoot RED in the foot...

 

That said, I wouldn't mind a 1080/2k prores module shooting 4444 redlog @ 14 bit either.

 

But for all the advantages RED has had, dropping RAW would be more or less going out of the competitive sphere...

 

But our experiences and milage vary, obviously...

 

But I thing the prores Solution may be the Achilles heal of Alexa. Of course people will prefer prores over RAW, but then again they won't get the most out of their cameras.

 

Pure speculation, of course. I'll be testing this over the next few weeks...

Edited by Gunleik Groven
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yup... And I forgot: Easy editing, and fast turnaround from set to edit, but that's just because it's so obvious.

That is compared to HDCAM SR which was the previous format of choice...

 

Anyhow.

YMMW - as always.

Edited by Gunleik Groven
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YMMW??

 

Erm ... I'm sorry, but I can't work out what your point is.

 

OK, maybe RED has the game sewn up in Norway.

Who knows; it might also have cornered the market in Bolivia, Uzbekistan, Panama and parts of Southern Sicily.

In terms of viewer-base-hours, Australia exports far more TV program product than all the Scandinavian countries put together.

Yet to my knowledge, only one (1) locally-produced TV series ("Lowdown") was shot on the RED and has actually been broadcast here.

REDs are readily available here at very reasonable rates, they produce a good enough picture for most medium-budget work, they're not particularly difficult to operate, but nobody seems to use them for broadcast-level productions.

Not terribly different from the US when you get right down to it.

 

So what does that tell you?

 

BTW, if anybody wants to chhime in with "Pirates of the Carribean"

A. That's not being shot with RED Ones

B. Does the name "Attack of the Clones" ring any bells? :rolleyes:

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yup... And I forgot: Easy editing, and fast turnaround from set to edit, but that's just because it's so obvious.

That is compared to HDCAM SR which was the previous format of choice...

 

Anyhow.

YMMW - as always.

 

This must be a point of debate, because I've heard it said that RAW can be be a problem with TV productions that have complex and tight post production schedules because of the render time. This is something that changes, but it doesn't currently seem to be cut and dried.

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Forgive me if I am wrong on this, but with the introduction of the "red rocket," card to post, is not the debayer of 4K in near real time? Or at least accelorated? Akin to shooting on tape and having to capture the thing before editorial anyway-- hence making working with "raw," a bit easier (transcode it to something nice, edit, lay off to hdcamsr and shoot it off to the other departments.) Granted, at this time you've lost the flexibility of the "raw" workflow...

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I believe the A&E series The Glades is being shot on the RED also. Adrian, yes the RED Rocket allows you to accelerate 4k debayering, but its real purpose (B/c other cards could handle it ie the FX5800) but its real advantage is it allows you to monitor in 4k with the breakout box. Its like having the Protools HD instead of LE.

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Forgive me if I am wrong on this, but with the introduction of the "red rocket," card to post, is not the debayer of 4K in near real time? Or at least accelorated? Akin to shooting on tape and having to capture the thing before editorial anyway-- hence making working with "raw," a bit easier (transcode it to something nice, edit, lay off to hdcamsr and shoot it off to the other departments.) Granted, at this time you've lost the flexibility of the "raw" workflow...

 

 

Yup. The Rocket is realtime.

 

& Norway is small...

Budgets are low, so we have to find effective workflows.

RED has been effective compared to other options...

 

And I think RED has had the most impact first in smaller markets.

 

Qualitywise and ease of use, and speed, I find it hard to imagine much speedier workflows.

But I am of course refering to an offline-online workflow.

 

Offline prores (transcoded on set)

Online RAW/DPX

 

Granted Norway is small, but shooting dualcam and into the editing suite in the end of the day, can be much faster than that - if you don't want to start the edit before the shoot is done.

 

1080 offline files for editing - like from Alexa...

 

Online RAW or whatever format you like.

We've been using DPX/AJAlog

Probably will go RAW with Resolve, when it materialises...

 

Where's the bottleneck?

I don't say it's not there, I just don't see it. It's on par with P2...

 

Qualitywise I think it's hard to argue that RAW is a disadvantage.

 

Pirates is of course shot on a bunch of 7D's, we all know that... -:))

 

Anyhow... To each his own...

Edited by Gunleik Groven
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Oh really?

Frank

Your point?

The RED One with the MX sensor upgrade is NOT the same as "RED One"

If it was, there would never have been the upgrade.

The MX upgrade is really the camera the RED one should have been in the first place except, as Mr Jannard is so fond of pointing out, they didn't know what they were doing. B)

Or maybe the Epic is the camera the RED One should have been....

Shoulda, Oughta, didn't....

Edited by Keith Walters
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