Color and RedCam

I've never done this before. I'm going to respond to my own post as I just received an answer back from Graeme Nattress, the guy who wrote the code. I didn't actually think I'd hear back as quickly as I did so here's the answer. I knew there would be many of you interested in this information:

Hi Jack,

Well, I'm as qualified as anyone on how the RED / Color integration works.....

There are two modes of extraction of 2k from 4k used in Color. Both modes cut through Quicktime and access the R3D raw data direct.

2k Quick, is used for fast preview - it access the full 4k R3D data, but rapidly extracts 2k RGB from it. It's full RGB with equal resolution in all three channels. Only downside to this is you may, in some circumstances, see mild aliasing artifacts.

2k Nice is used for rendering (you can also render in 2K Quick by adjusting the render proxy settings) - Access the full 4K R3D and demosaics and downsamples to 2K in one go with a specially designed algorithm for absolutely superb sharpness and minimal aliasing. It's a very nice downsample from the full 4k and again, has full resolution in R, G, B.

In neither mode is their reduced colour resolution. No image components will come out soft.

As you know I wrote both the algorithms for getting 2k from 4k R3D, so I know exactly what I'm talking about.

Graeme

found a similar reply last week on reduser forum from graham

been working with red content over the past month for a post class we delivered at http://www.vet.co.uk

would be very interesting to find out at what point is the red primary room being applied e.g. I presume the latitude in the image is being set from the red room and so it is important to set this to a decent range for grading in secondary rooms

for the scaling we saw some fantastic results at 1.3 times bigger, no real artifacts, at 4 times bigger you noticed it but because of the jpeg2000 compression it scales much more organically

what we couldnt figure from these posts was how does the geometry room apply with red content, are we working from 4k files, scaled down through the geometry room to size needed and supported e.g. 2k or are we scaling off 2k files to 2k files and wouldnt this cause some softness when blown up for cinema projection?

also what wasnt clear was how is Color scaling the content is it a very high quality algorithm like shake or is there a better scaling workflow?


what also came up with lots of questions was compatibility between formats shot, color spaces, DCI output, video files were far easier to deal with once back in FCP e.g. how do you add titles to a dpx sequence.




- - - - - - - - -
Check my podcast at http://cowcast.creativecow.net/final_cut_pro/index.html
or my site at
http://www.benscottarts.co.uk/ - - - - - - - - -

Sounds to me like they are being unnecessarily concerned. Color is fine and can work with RED just fine. Either natively or not. It doesn't have to be 2K either, but could be good old 1920x1080. The best way would be to work out a short test out to film with Technicolor and make sure the workflow is solid.

To give you some ammunition, here's an example of an Oscar-nominated film that was graded in Color:

http://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/encounters-at-the-end-of-the-w...

Originally shot with XDCAM-HD. I've seen it as a film release and it looked very, very good.

- Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

We are a research institute of a very respected German university of arts and did extensive testing on RED footage. Plus, I'm teaching digital cinematography for Nordmedia, where professionals from all over Europe are trained for the new era of HDTV and digital cine (together with trainers like Michael Ballhaus, for example).

So, I hope I can add with some authority that the concerns they are expressing are a common misconception about FCS and Color. Color is capable of accessing the original RED footage independently of whatever reduced resolution you use in FCP for realtime editing. You can set it to decode the 4K footage at "Half High", which is the same setting most people would use with tools like REDAlert or REDCine from the company itself. This setting will give you perfect quality for some 98% of your shots if your delivery size is 2K. A full 4K decode (which indeed is impossible in Color as of today) will need extreme rendering power and is only necessary for very critical low-light shots. If you don't have any of these, you'll be fine with a tool as economical as Color.

If needed, you could always decode critical shots in full quality with the other tools mentioned, but that will complicate your workflow for DPX. I'd recommend additional tools like Gluetools in such a case to edit your final DPX sequence, since FCP can't cut them in natively.

Hope this helps,

Uli

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

1. That's a completely different issue from grading in Color.

2. I've never heard of a backfocus issue caused by firmware. While there have been lots of problems before firmware 16, backfocus is a purely mechanical parameter. Since it has to be adjusted by hand (with the help of optical devices), it can't be caused by any firmware.

I'm afraid those folks don't have a clue about filmmaking, be it digital or analog…

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

Half Standard and Half High decoding can be set in a system extension after installing RED software on the Mac.

2K is decoded full quality by Color. Only 3K has problems.

Yes, the Geometry room used to have problems, but they should be fixed by now.

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

Well, I didn't touch it lately, but that's annoying anyway.

I do my reframing after coming back into FCP.

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

More information on that last post. I just got in touch with the camera assistant. Apparently the camera was set up to the wrong color space to begin with and they changed it to Rec 709 after a partial day of shooting. The remainder of the DPX files created were in Rec 709 color space. This all comes through in the Red tab as part of the metadata for each file. Good to know I wasn't going crazy and there was a reason for all of this.