Telecine

[Justin]

Thoughts?

[Brook Willard]

...ok?

[Justin]

Just curious about what you think the most effective way would be to go about this?

[Brook Willard]

...still confused...

[Brian Ferguson]

Telecine is usually a term used for film to tape transfers.
No film with Red.

[Justin]

Sorry...I guess that Im just thinking about how you would most effectively deliver the footage to the colorist if that was something that you wanted to do...Im sure that it all just depends on who you are using and if they are prepared to work with content from a digital medium as opposed to just throwing the film in there.

I just love the process of sitting in on my film transfers and having my colorist styalize my footage according to preference...It would be fun to be able to do that with footage from this camera eventually.

[Lucas Wilson]

Just curious about what you think the most effective way would be to go about this?

Shoot film. Find Telecine. Thread Film. Push "Play." Transfer to videotape.

Simple! :)

Lucas Wilson
------------
Bit Interrogator
Assimilate, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Justin]

Maybe telecine isn't the right word to use here because I understand what it means...I used it pretty loosley when trying to bring up the topic of color correction with a colorist as opposed to just doing it yourself...

[Brook Willard]

So basically you're talking about final color correction. That's completely up to you and your colorist.

REDCINE will do the equivalent of a one-light transfer. Once that's cut and you have your final EDL, you pass it through REDCINE and get your online footage out the other end. Lets assume a 4K workflow.

You could export REDCODE if your colorist could handle it. You could go all out and export a TIFF sequence or DPX files [can REDCINE create DPX files?]. Long story short you just get to make whatever format you decide to finish in. Pass that through your final color correction and you're in business. The decision is up to you and your established workflow.

[Justin]

Thanks for your time to help better clarify things for me Brook. Im still figuring things out over here...Very appreciated.

[Alex Boothby]

This is a very valid question. Of the two common stages of telecine (onelight / dailies transfer and select scene transfer / final color grade) REDCINE will mercifully provide us with a solution for at least one.

ONE-LIGHTS - Redcine's primary color grading tools should aptly take care of onelights, and I expect the market to respond in three ways: The first solution (but last out the gate) will be post houses who will invest in Redcine software run on G5s, or something... The second solution will be in-house dailies made by a dedicated member of the production or editorial team. The third potential solution will be an emerging pool of freelance Red-users offering up (cheap) Redcine onelight services to friends and colleagues (consider this a supplemental income for red owners). I assume that many RED users are eager to grade and process their own dailies at night. Personally I'm not sure how eager I would be to do this after 18 hour shooting days, on a multi-day shoot. For this reason I think local networking will help, with Billy offering midnight rushes to his pal Bob for sympathy, cash or barter.

Having said all of this, I will be pleasantly surprised if Redcine offers all of the bells and whistles that clients have come to expect from midnight dailies. Many DOPs consider dailies their one opportunity to set the look the way they want - before the editor, agency or clients change it all. As such "one-lights" have actually become "best-lights" and midnight colorists put a lot of effort into putting out some sophisticated images, on powerful gear, and on a tight schedule. And if you think the market will be flexible with schedules, I think you are mistaken. They are called Dailies & Rushes for a reason.

FINALS - This is a bit more sticky as secondary color correcting, vignettes, power windows, tracked windows and filter fx will require the muscle of professional color grading tools like Lustre or SCRATCH - generally offered by bigger post houses (some of whom are slow to evolve). Switching over to a pure data paradigm will eventually happen but it may take time, especially considering that many post shops are affiliated with labs and stand to loose major revenue by embracing the great-data-future.

The biggest issue - and the reason I'm posting - is that of time. Say what you will of those old lumbering Ranks and Spirits, but all telecine suites have one major thing going for them - THEY ARE REAL-TIME (at least in SD & HD). Lace up your film and you are ready to go. This is going to be a bitter pill to swallow for the pure-data movement, as post houses may require considerable time before the transfer session starts in order to digitize the data (I assume we are talking about uncompressed 4/4/4 tiffs or DPX files @ 4K or 2K or HD - and that's a lot of data).

Presently all I see are schedules getting shorter and shorter, with offline editors rushing into transfer sessions (15 mins late) with their freshly burned EDL in hand, and their online conform booked later that afternoon. Squeezing another 24 hours out of a post schedule is going to take a major effort in education. It is not enough that Red DOPs and directors learn to evolve - we will have to educate editors, producers, agencies, clients, broadcast buyers, etc. I know many will scoff at this, and so for comparison let's try a silly production analogy:

DIRECTOR: "Yes and we're shooting RED not film, but it will take an extra 1.5 hours out of our shooting day".

PRODUCER: .....dead silence....

I don't mean to sound bleak here, and I don't for a minute doubt the huge benefits that pure-data will offer, but I also fully expect to hear some blond agency producer say these words:

"What do you mean it takes more time? Why do we need 4K anyway? Why is my latte cold? And what was wrong with film in the first place?"

Alas, this agency producer will have long forgotten about all the money that RED saved her in the first place. :(

Food for thought.

[Alex Boothby]

Question for Lucas:

Can you hook an external hard drive directly up to SCRATCH? Now that would save some major time. When we were running Lustre we were moving data over our company network which was as slow as molasses.

I'm sure you could offer some potent incite into this little debate I'm having with myself.

[Júlio Taubkin]

Yeah, the problem is always that you can't just give your post house an HD and expect them to give you a tape dump for a few bucks. Post houses like tapes, and dislike rendering. They charge if their machines are rendering, conforming, copying or doing anything our desktops are used to do. But if we can't get our image to a post house for grading, conforming or even mastering, what good is our product for?

So they will eventually catch up (They already started after the HVX came along, and everybody had DVCPRO HD firewire HDs to master to tape...)

[Damien Molineaux]

Telecine is the proces of going from film to digital media. It's the same in french, the process of going from digital to film, in french, is called Telecinema, what about in english ? I know Swiss Effects for example can do color grading during that process.

Cheers,
Damien

[Rob Lohman]

Redcine software run on G5s, or something...

REDCINE will only run on x86 compatible processors (with certain minimum requirements) on both Windows & Mac OS X. It will not run on PowerPC processors (like the G5). Other software tools will be universal binary though, including the REDCODE codec.

[Evin Grant]

Have you guys seen Colorista. It's not Scratch or Lustre but it looks like a very powerful color corrector for the money ($200) and as a plug-in can be used right in FCP. In realtime depending on computer power. Of course many commercials and features will go to pro houses like Riot and the Sydicate but there may soon be a suite of Red owner/DP/finishers who can craft the look of a piece from beguining to end. This is exactly what I do for my commercial still clients. It'll take some getting used to but it will surely be possible to finish 4K Redcode, even with secondaries, powerwindows and the like, right from your own desk.

[Barend Onneweer]

The biggest issue - and the reason I'm posting - is that of time. Say what you will of those old lumbering Ranks and Spirits, but all telecine suites have one major thing going for them - THEY ARE REAL-TIME (at least in SD & HD). Lace up your film and you are ready to go. This is going to be a bitter pill to swallow for the pure-data movement, as post houses may require considerable time before the transfer session starts in order to digitize the data (I assume we are talking about uncompressed 4/4/4 tiffs or DPX files @ 4K or 2K or HD - and that's a lot of data).

A valid concern. But the solution might be to avoid transcoding for dailies and just playing back the Redcode RAW files. It's been suggested by Graeme that REDCINE will play back the compressed RAW 4k files in realtime - albeit scaled down and not with the highest quality demosaic. Depending on your hardware config you might be able to pull off a "draft" playback at decent resolution - including primary color correction. Most of us are not going to project dailies at 4k anyway.

Maybe a high-end system could play back REDCODE RAW at half resolution (draft demosaic) in realtime? Add an OpenGL accellerated primary grade.

All speculation thus far, but the concept of a non-destructive realtime viewing and grading of footage is the direction to aim at for dailies and rushes - in my view.

Barend

[Sanjin Jukic]

Telecine (IPA pronunciation: [?t?l??s?ni, ?t?l??s?ni]) is the process of transferring motion picture film into electronic form, or the machine used in this process. Telecine enables a motion picture, captured originally on film, to be viewed with standard video equipment, such as televisions, video cassette decks or computers. This allows producers and distributors working in film to release their products on video and allows producers to use video production equipment to complete their film projects.
More
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine

[Graeme Nattress]

For Daillies, if you just want to see what was shot with the colour settings as shot, just load up the clips into Quicktime or REDCINE and hit "play". Done.

Graeme

[Stuart English]

True telecine is a film conversion process, but we saw an analogy between the film and RAW processes, which is why we called our app REDCINE...

Telecine enables a motion picture, captured originally on film, to be converted to an appropriate video format for processing with standard video equipment, such as monitors, tape recorders and non-linear editing systems.

REDCINE ditto :

REDCINE enables a motion picture, captured originally in RAW, to be converted to an appropriate video format for processing with standard video equipment, such as monitors, tape recorders and non-linear editing systems.


Beyond that, archiving the RAW source footage to a data tape or other data storage meduim is our equivalant to archiving a film negative. Hence the phrase "Digital Cinema Negative", meaning the camera original RAW data files.

[Chris Gearhart]

Ohhhhhh. "REDCINE" . . . I get it!

Thanks for that insight, Stuart. I never picked up the analogy--I'm liking it.

I think that helps explain what to expect from REDCINE for people who ask, "Can I use REDCINE instead of Lustre or FCP?"

[Lucas Wilson]

Question for Lucas:

Can you hook an external hard drive directly up to SCRATCH? Now that would save some major time. When we were running Lustre we were moving data over our company network which was as slow as molasses.

I'm sure you could offer some potent incite into this little debate I'm having with myself.

Hi Boothba,

The short answer is "yes." SCRATCH does not need any kind of proprietary storage or files to work. You can hook up a hard drive directly to the system and start working.

Lucas

[Lucas Wilson]

I should also add... SCRATCH will natively support REDCODE... ;)

Lucas
-----
Assimilate, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Nick Shaw]

I should also add... SCRATCH will natively support REDCODE... ;)

Does that include REDCODE RAW? And if so will it have access to the full information stored in that RAW data? ie would it be possible to go into a SCRATCH online with a drive full of REDCODE RAW files and a RED Pull List/EDL, bypassing REDCINE entirely, and be able to do a full primary and secondary grade?

That would be immensly useful to those of us who want to do HD onlines in-house, but if a 4k finish were called for could go to a big facility with a SCRATCH system, without needing to spend time in REDCINE first generating and then transferring huge files.

Nick

[Júlio Taubkin]

That would be awesome!

Now go sell scratch to some Brazilian post houses!!!! They will love it!

[Ruairi Robinson]

Cutting out the tape from digital workflow is great, I'm all for it, and cutting out the telecine process has it's benefits too, but the only negative I see in all this is the idea that somehow, if the budget is tight, people will take it upon themselves to grade their own projects, and we may be flooded with a lot of really crappy looking projects because of this. Being a colourist is a pretty specialised skill, and not many people have the temperament, or the talent to do it well, and with any degree of subtlety.

It's like the democratisation of desktop publishing - everyone CAN do their own design suddenly, but that doesn't mean they are any good at it.

So great stuff, new tools, cheap as hell. It'll benefit all of us, but benefit people that use it wisely the most, it will.

That's what yoda told me.

R.

[Hoffmann Films]

I had not thought about the reference to telecine.

Redcine make sense....thanks

[Alex Boothby]

I should also add... SCRATCH will natively support REDCODE... ;)

Lucas
-----
Assimilate, Inc.
Los Angeles

Holly crap! There's your answer boys. The big, big, BIG deal (until now) was the issue of converting REDCODE RAW to uncompressed image sequences like TIFF or DPX @ 10 or 12 bit (which ups your data X 10) simply to get it into a system like Lustre or Smoke.

Major kudos to Lucas and SCRATCH for making this move. Based on this info alone I wouldn't hesitate to put SCRATCH at the very top of the list of color correction options. (I'm about to be fired as I kinda work for the competition, he he... but my old boss worked for Assimilate so I guess it's OK.)

[Brook Willard]

I should also add... SCRATCH will natively support REDCODE... ;)

Lucas
-----
Assimilate, Inc.
Los Angeles

Wow, this is absolutely fantastic news... I can't wait to see where this goes. How deep will the integration reach? Seamless?

[Nick Shaw]

Lucas hasn't answered my question about if that means REDCODE RAW or just REDCODE RGB. REDCODE RAW (in it's true RAW state) is the big deal, as any application that supports Quicktime will support REDCODE.

NDA?

Nick

[Lucas Wilson]

Does that include REDCODE RAW? And if so will it have access to the full information stored in that RAW data? ie would it be possible to go into a SCRATCH online with a drive full of REDCODE RAW files and a RED Pull List/EDL, bypassing REDCINE entirely, and be able to do a full primary and secondary grade?

SCRATCH will support REDCODE RAW...

As Jim has said many times, we're learning and moving forward every day. Other details will emerge as the process evolves!

Lucas Wilson
------------
BOO!!! (a Red Scare, by the way)
Assimilate, Inc.
Los Angeles
www.assimilateinc.com (http://www.assimilateinc.com)
lucas*at*assimilateinc*dot*com

[Alex Boothby]

Well now I feel like scrapping my earlier diatribe. Again mega kudos Lucas! I consider this big news.

[Brook Willard]

This is huge news... this kind of simple direct integration into a preexisting major workflow is invaluable for high-end production. The ability to shoot RED and work straight into a bleeding-edge workflow without having to purchase new equipment or having to re-learn a piece of software is just making my day.

[Lucas Wilson]

That would be awesome!

Now go sell scratch to some Brazilian post houses!!!! They will love it!

Estudios Mega, Link Digital, & Labo Cine are already customers.

Lucas Wilson
------------
Brasil e com "S."
Assimilate, Inc.
Lucas

[Lucas Wilson]

...people will take it upon themselves to grade their own projects, and we may be flooded with a lot of really crappy looking projects because of this. Being a colourist is a pretty specialised skill, and not many people have the temperament, or the talent to do it well, and with any degree of subtlety.

It's like the democratisation of desktop publishing - everyone CAN do their own design suddenly, but that doesn't mean they are any good at it.

When editing left Steenbecks and went to Avid, all of a sudden, everybody could edit. Yet Walter Murch, Stephen Morrione, and Pietro Scalia keep winning the awards.

This happens constantly in artistic industries. In the end, talent is always the final arbiter.

Lucas

[Thomas Mathai]

Question for Lucas:

Can you hook an external hard drive directly up to SCRATCH? Now that would save some major time. When we were running Lustre we were moving data over our company network which was as slow as molasses.

I'm sure you could offer some potent incite into this little debate I'm having with myself.


I can't understand how your company can spend so much on a Lustre system, yet have a slow network.

With the proper SAN config, you should be doing 2k realtime playback with Lustre

[Alex Boothby]

I can't understand how your company can spend so much on a Lustre system, yet have a slow network.

With the proper SAN config, you should be doing 2k realtime playback with Lustre

Oh realtime 2K playback is no problem once the footage is in the Lustre system. The problem was moving the DPX files from point A of our company network to point B. Our film scanners and recorders are on one floor, vfx on another, discreet on another, etc. My point is that anything less than realtime is unusual for an SD/HD telecine, which is basically what we were using Lustre for at the time. We have another Lustre dedicated to feature work which is more isolated and is rockin' & rollin' - booked solid.

This week they just installed a new 2K/4K Spirit which has a high speed GSN (Gigabyte Systems Network) optical data output which should be considerably faster. It just arrived, so I'll have to look into that option more closely. Spirit is now happily trumpetting their ability to scan 8-perf VistaVision, so something tells me their head is not yet totally immersed in pure data-acquisition. Maybe they should walk accross the hall and talk to the Viper boys to figure out some streamlined data-grading strategies.

My currenty question is where do you ingest, if your source is data not neg or tape? How much and how fast? I'll have to do some digging here.

NOTE: I'm not a colorist so aside from water cooler chit-chat, I'm not extremely telecine-ely...ely well informed. And frankly, right now 99% of our clients shoot on film or tape (or P2 stuff which is dumped to tape) so I don't know how much R&D has been put into data-specs the likes of RED. Aside from the odd IMAX job (which is scanned in LA and delivered of DLT) nothing really comes close.

[Rob Lohman]

Boothba: may I ask what you do at the company?

The Quantel guide (although heavily focussed on their products) has some diagrams for digital acquisition. Basically it's the same as film. Big SAN solution with high throughput (fiber) networks. Depending on how much data is traveling around (ie, how many projects are worked on at the same time) you want to segment your network or have multiple networks.

http://www.quantel.com/site/en.nsf/html/library_diguide

[Júlio Taubkin]

Estudios Mega, Link Digital, & Labo Cine are already customers.

Lucas Wilson
------------
Brasil e com "S."
Assimilate, Inc.
Lucas

Really? Cool! I'm going to do some research around here, but if my calculations are right, you just gave me a hell of a reason to place my order for red the next 3 day period...

[Alex Boothby]

Boothba: may I ask what you do at the company?

The Quantel guide (although heavily focussed on their products) has some diagrams for digital acquisition. Basically it's the same as film. Big SAN solution with high throughput (fiber) networks. Depending on how much data is traveling around (ie, how many projects are worked on at the same time) you want to segment your network or have multiple networks.

http://www.quantel.com/site/en.nsf/html/library_diguide

Hi Rob. I'm an Inferno artist and commercial fx supervisor at Technicolor in Toronto, although I'm not very tech savvy and have only recently begun to re-educate myself about the new possibilities of extreme data-workflows. To be honest I've been stuck in a sort of tech-bubble for a few years as we have a good engineering staff who keep us crazy artists at arm's length from technical side of things (no super-user status for me!). But I'm very excited about the new possibilities of data and ultimately hope to set up a good home system as my RED base, so that I am not so reliant on the good graces of my bosses.

Funny you mentioned Quantel, as I was a Quantel operator on Henry, Hal and Domino for about 8 years, but turned to discreet at around the time IQ was beta testing. I'll definitely have a look at that article.

Cheers. :)
Alex Boothby

[Alex Boothby]

Boothba: may I ask what you do at the company?

The Quantel guide (although heavily focussed on their products) has some diagrams for digital acquisition. Basically it's the same as film. Big SAN solution with high throughput (fiber) networks. Depending on how much data is traveling around (ie, how many projects are worked on at the same time) you want to segment your network or have multiple networks.

http://www.quantel.com/site/en.nsf/html/library_diguide

Hi Rob. I'm an Inferno artist and commercial fx supervisor at Technicolor in Toronto, although I'm not very tech savvy and have only recently begun to re-educate myself about the new possibilities of extreme data-workflows. To be honest I've been stuck in a sort of tech-bubble for a few years as we have a good engineering staff who keep us crazy artists at arm's length from technical side of things (no super-user status for me!). But I'm very excited about the new possibilities of data and ultimately hope to set up a good home system as my RED base, so that I am not so reliant on the good graces of my bosses.

Funny you mentioned Quantel as I was a Quantel operator on Henry, Hal and Domino for about 8 years, but turned to discreet at around the time IQ was beta testing. I'll definitely have a look at that article.

Cheers. :)
Alex Boothby

[Thomas Mathai]

Oh realtime 2K playback is no problem once the footage is in the Lustre system. The problem was moving the DPX files from point A of our company network to point B. Our film scanners and recorders are on one floor, vfx on another, discreet on another, etc. My point is that anything less than realtime is unusual for an SD/HD telecine, which is basically what we were using Lustre for at the time. We have another Lustre dedicated to feature work which is more isolated and is rockin' & rollin' - booked solid.

This week they just installed a new 2K/4K Spirit which has a high speed GSN (Gigabyte Systems Network) optical data output which should be considerably faster. It just arrived, so I'll have to look into that option more closely. Spirit is now happily trumpetting their ability to scan 8-perf VistaVision, so something tells me their head is not yet totally immersed in pure data-acquisition. Maybe they should walk accross the hall and talk to the Viper boys to figure out some streamlined data-grading strategies.

My currenty question is where do you ingest, if your source is data not neg or tape? How much and how fast? I'll have to do some digging here.

NOTE: I'm not a colorist so aside from water cooler chit-chat, I'm not extremely telecine-ely...ely well informed. And frankly, right now 99% of our clients shoot on film or tape (or P2 stuff which is dumped to tape) so I don't know how much R&D has been put into data-specs the likes of RED. Aside from the odd IMAX job (which is scanned in LA and delivered of DLT) nothing really comes close.



Well firewire performance really depends on the client's handling of the their drives. Some will always be wanky, while others are rock solid.

It can take hours to transfer a few hundred gigs, even using Firewire 800.

Moving files from point A to B shouldn't be as big an issue as it seems, assuming there is enough bandwidth on the network. Of course it's not going to be realtiime with 2k DPX files, but in the future it can be faster than realtime.

[Rob Lohman]

Thanks Alex!