RED Cine. in ENG?

[tj williams]

RED Cine offers outputs of H264, DV, Tiff, DPx, Jpeg2000,Jpeg any others?

What will be the fastest encoding to convert 2K origination footage to SD?

Can any of these formats support uncompressed SD?

I'm not very interested in DV output except for offline, as I think it is way too compressed. I'm looking for the best way to use the RED to shoot for SD deliverables

Most of these clients will value High image quality and speed of delivery.

[Anders Holck]

I believe Redcine will export to any Quicktime codec installed.
If you have FCP installed on a mac, that means DVCPRO HD, IMX, IMX HD, DVCPRO 50 and 10 bit uncompressed 4:2:2.

[Anders Holck]

Depending on how the license is going to be, the Redcode RGB quicktime codec could be an option as well.
Suppose it also supports SD resolutions it will be a great cross platform codec.

[tj williams]

Anders.... yea what SD... DV is way to compressed to compete with stuff shot on Digi Beta...Maybe lightly compressed Jpeg? that is pretty old???? shooting 29.7 frames and downconverting to mostly uncompressed SD should make a really nice SD Picture?

[Pig]

How about DVCPRO-50? Still too compressed?
If you need that codec (or others), and don't have them, check out MainConcept: http://www.mainconcept.com/site/index.php?id=4

[tj williams]

Is there an option to get an SD image which is not compressed?

[Pig]

tj, I still don't know if you're on a Mac or a PC, but there's fairly EASY ways to get uncompressed SD; either a standard uncompressed AVI, or look at Huffyuv.

Maybe tryout VirtualDub, that should give you some idea what's possible. (reads BMPs for instance). You could use free frame servers and output BMPs. Well, I'm all over the place with this stuff in this post, but getting uncompressed SD is really SIMPLE SIMPLE. It all depends on your workflow, and how/where and from what you originating. Check http://www.gromada.com/ for other conversion options.

I would think you can probably do this right out of RedCine without the need for anything other.

[Stuart English]

I'll second that thought about DV50 (as used by DVCPRO50). EBU tests from a while back concluded NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE between Digital Betacam and JVC's D-9 format. (which also uses DV50 compression)

So if you need to send a tape there is a pretty affordable DVCPRO 50 IEEE1394 recorder available - AJ-SD93 $6,995 list.

If you need to dub to Digital Betacam they have a $2,000 SDI option.

[Blair S. Paulsen]

The elephant in the living room with any solution that includes RedCine is the time is will take to cook the output files, be it SD/2K/1080/etc. I don't really expect an answer until NAB but in terms of workflow, particularly when the producer needs to walk away at the end of the day with footage, the processing rate of RedCine is the crux of the biscuit.

In terms of the business proposition of being a RedOne owner/operator the ability to offer better than Digi-Beta SD footage is genuine competitive leverage issue. I am planning to take a van full of computer gear into the field in an attempt to compete with every professional camera system/format in my market. If RedCine can process 4k RedCode RAW into popular formats in less than 5 times real time on a fast box it will rock my world.

I understand that it may be Q4 '07 before the optimization of the various components of the hardware/software equation can reach the less then 5 times real time threshold.

[donatello b]

depending if you're PC/MAC

there are some codec's that are uncompressed 4:4:4 and smaller then other uncompressed ( 30mgs vs 12mgs or 7 mgs) and pretty much have the same quaility ...

here are some test of different codec's - 4:4:4 , 4:2:2 uncompressed , 4:2:2 compressed etc ...

http://codecs.onerivermedia.com/
take a look at SHEER codec - click on 4:4:4

[JohnF]

Yep, the speed of REDCINE is the top interest for fast turnaround shoots like alot of SD work(which is still the majority) is. And as mentioned some producers will want the footage ASAP.

I know for sure that I will be asked to produce RED footage at SD. I am hoping REDCINE will be fast enough to convert to SD at least say at 2x(but 5x would be great) that way I'll be able to shoot 4k all the time to future proof any work instead of shooting in an SD mode. I also will consider doing all offline's at SD (at first) so as not to overwork and overfill my edit system.

But I admit that a SD recording mode would be nice to have up my sleeve!

JohnF

[tj williams]

Graeme seems pretty dead set against adding NTSC PAL to the RGB RED world. so I guess our best hope to work in this market is fast rendering! Thanks Donatello for the site on codecs, very informative stuff. I will be following Blairs van around to learn what to put in mine. We have both PC n Mac computers but I'm personally more comfortable on PC, which also usually seems to be cheaper for about the same power... So call me Irish "na then SnPaddys DaysOver. but don't call me Scotch"...

I probably shouldn't mention my preference as this seems to lead to very heart felt arguments about what is best....

[Jay A. Kelley]

I love the ENG section of the REDuset.net.. Our focus is a lot more refined since we work day in and day out on this stuff.. Basically:

SPEED SPEED SPEED.. SPEED is what WE NEED.

As TJ said in another post, most of the time our clients are watching over our shoulder with an edit session later that day. If we tell them, "yeah it's gonna look great.. You just need to develop it all before you shoot it". Their question will almost never be "how good will it look?" instead we will get the dramatic sigh, the removal of a few of their hairs, and then the "What? How long will THAT take?!"

Stuart, Graeme, Rob.. I know you are all doing a fantastic job on RED, and this is not exactly what the camera was designed for, but it is a HUGE market. You put a lot of effort into making the modular and easy to configure. If you could do the same with the format and get down to 480p directly out of camera, then you would have a machine for the ages.

This ability would allow us to get in front of our smaller clients who have not yet moved to HD and keep them in the loop, spoiling them on the optics of the RED and helping make the jump to a better format.

Jay