Uncompressed vs REDCODE

[Jonas Drehn-Knudsen]

Dear Jim and the RED team.

Since the original thread from Jim regarding this is closed, I post a new one.

I'm sad to read this statement from you :

"Peter Jackson and his team couldn't tell the difference with a RED ONE, in fact... guessed wrong. People here think that the Milk Girls footage was uncompressed. It was REDCODE. There were many things along the way that changed in a RED ONE that caused image issues, but REDCODE was not one of them. REDCODE had to change to compensate for other things in the chain."

This might be true - BUT I think it's very important to the future success of RED to understand why people are talking about Uncompressed. Because the current RED cameras has for sure some compression issues! And acting like REDCODE is perfect is just so wrong.

The hype about RED is less than 2 years ago and being at the end of the chain doing high-end commercial and features grading (with almost 50% shot on RED) I can feel that people start turning away from RED and I understand why.

I have seen some really compressed looking images - and the last 3 feature film camera-tests I have done, the DOP's has chosen to go for 16mm & D21 instead ... only because of this. Specially low light and low exposure images has these problems.

I think it's wrong to offer people uncompressed - the success of RED is the easy workflow and file handling - BUT you need to listen to this, and understand the reason for these requirements instead of offering some silly very expensive box. Hopefully you already had and this thread is not necessary - I'm really hoping to see virtually lossless images in the next camera releases so we want see compression with our eyes.

If you disagree I like to post some stills where you can really see what I'm talking about.

Happy New Year - Hope for 2009 being the year all this changes.

Jonas Drehn
Duckling A/S
www.duckling.dk

[Christian Edwards]

Jonas,
Is the Ronaldinho vid on your link Visual F/X or is it real ?

[Peter Karlsson]

The statement is pretty old, but yes, in the Milk Girls footage its hard to see any compression going on.

For chromakeying, the compression becomes a problem. And Im sure you got plenty of stills showing the problem, because I've encountered it aswell (as will most people).But Red already stated that Epic will have something closer to a 3:1 compression instead of the current 9(or something):1 as Red currently have. Red are working with what they can, and I think Reds success has mainly been that they indeed delivered a compressed format as RedCode. For most people handling 300MB/s instead of 30MB/s is unrealistic.

But I think uncompressed is the wrong way to go. A 3:1 compression would infact be enough. And higher resolution with compression will still look better than lower resolution uncompressed. So the future is looking better than ever, so don't be sad Jonas.. Red One was the first step, and I believe 100% that Red is taking the future in the right direction. Uncompressed is not really the future in my eyes.

[Jonas Drehn-Knudsen]

Jonas,
Is the Ronaldinho vid on your link Visual F/X or is it real ?

I don't know how much I'm allowed to say - even that it's quite old. But you could wonder why it's on our VFX reel ;-)

[Jonas Drehn-Knudsen]

Hi Peter,

If you're right about that they're aiming around a 3:1 compression, this sounds brilliant. We use HDCAM SR all the time, and this is also compressed 4:1 but it's both a very good compression and visually lossless. The Milk footage and alot of other stuff we have been working on looks really good, while other footage looks really bad - and that is the issue.

I'll never vote for uncompressed, I just hope for everybody that next released is a big improvement on this. And hopefully there will be a update to all the RED one cameras out there - so we'll get better footage.


The statement is pretty old, but yes, in the Milk Girls footage its hard to see any compression going on.

For chromakeying, the compression becomes a problem. And Im sure you got plenty of stills showing the problem, because I've encountered it aswell (as will most people).But Red already stated that Epic will have something closer to a 3:1 compression instead of the current 9(or something):1 as Red currently have. Red are working with what they can, and I think Reds success has mainly been that they indeed delivered a compressed format as RedCode. For most people handling 300MB/s instead of 30MB/s is unrealistic.

But I think uncompressed is the wrong way to go. A 3:1 compression would infact be enough. And higher resolution with compression will still look better than lower resolution uncompressed. So the future is looking better than ever, so don't be sad Jonas.. Red One was the first step, and I believe 100% that Red is taking the future in the right direction. Uncompressed is not really the future in my eyes.

[Stuart English]

Jim has already stated here that RED would offer an uncompressed solution, with accompanying recorder, PROVIDED enough people put down a deposit.

The next generation of cameras will also include much higher data rate / lower compression ratio options within REDCODE. Also, compression is only one part of the camera's image processing chain; improvements have been and will continue to be made across the board - for RED ONE and the new cameras.

[Peter Karlsson]

Mmm it will interesting to see how many would put down a deposit on something that can record uncompressed 28K in 30fps or even 6K at a 100fps.. I guess it will cost a bizillion dollars, and record 10 seconds until it chockes on itself :)

[Graeme Nattress]

REDCODE is under continual development and improvement.

Graeme

[Mark Pugh]

REDCODE is under continual development and improvement.

Graeme

Graeme - what advances have been made to Redcode since build 16? That was the last time there was any noticeable improvement. Can you foresee any visually significant improvements coming to the codec for the Red One (RC 28 & 36) this year?
Thanks.

[Graeme Nattress]

Fresh out of crystal balls, I'm afraid.

Graeme

[Mark Pugh]

I'm lost - If Redcode's under continual improvement - why can't you describe how it's improved since build 16, or may improve into this year? I'm wondering if the great hope for people who aren't satisfied lies in Epic.

[Kwan Khan]

Hummm...

[Jannard]

I'm lost - If Redcode's under continual improvement - why can't you describe how it's improved since build 16, or may improve into this year? I'm wondering if the great hope for people who aren't satisfied lies in Epic.

REDCODE (and everything else) is under continual improvement. We aren't going to talk about every detail along the way for a few reasons. We'll keep you posted on major advancements.

If there is any question that things are constantly improving, just check the difference between Build 1 and Build 18. But we aren't telling you every detail of what we are doing and why.

Jim

[Ryan Valle]

REDCODE (and everything else) is under continual improvement.

After the release of scarlet and epic, i think you guys should take a break...maybe 10 or 15 years...

just to give Sony and friends a chance to catch up.

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Dear RED team,

I think it's all fine of Jonas to bring this up. He's not suggesting that you should consider uncompressed. He's merely saying that RED has a great market in his business (one of Scandinavia's most prestigious and biggest post houses). That your cameras are involved in Scandinavia's high end market, but is now declining slightly because of this.

I've encountered these compression problems many times and is learning how to work around it, but knows that many productions will not take the risk after being burnt ones. With me there's no problem since they know my background and can see many successful RED commercials on my reel.

BUT if I was to shoot for example green screen and it's a little more elaborate in it's lighting then straight forward (still talking about well lit green but around it). Well then I wouldn't shoot RED Code because of it's compression. I've had a 2 mayor green screen shoots were we had a lot of "cleaning" up to do.

(PS I now know how to shoot RED Code green screen successfully but it would undermine my creativity).

So I agree with Jonas that just like me seems to like your camera and the look of it (I've actually grown into liking it more then film). That just bare this in mind when you're working on it for the future.

The 2 achilles heels right now, IMHO, are rolling shutter issues (strobe and skew) and compression when it comes to post production. Strobe and compression being the biggest thorns in my side.


regards,

Fredrik Callinggard

[Vinit Borrison]

I'm actually really excited about the higher data rate cameras. i'm sure RECODE will continue to grow and improve as writing mediums become faster and better. SSD benchmarks are still something we haven't seen....

[Christian Edwards]

I don't know how much I'm allowed to say - even that it's quite old. But you could wonder why it's on our VFX reel ;-)
HA! i knew it even though hes a great player there is no way that is real !
thanks mate i admire your works

[Christian Edwards]

Graeme - what advances have been made to Redcode since build 16? That was the last time there was any noticeable improvement. Can you foresee any visually significant improvements coming to the codec for the Red One (RC 28 & 36) this year?
Thanks.


Fresh out of crystal balls, I'm afraid.

Graeme


"OF COURSE!Thats how hey do it... they use crystal balls! . the answer is so obvious ."

[Joe G.]

"If you disagree I like to post some stills where you can really see what I'm talking about."


I would really like to see some stills of the codec noise (which I've never seen) from anyone who has them. Also some detail about how the images were taken (lighting, color temperature(s), ISO, histogram, etc.).

What is the proposed compression ratio of the new Scarlet FF35?

[Steve Sherrick]

Are we talking specifically about the compression as it exists on the original R3D file or in the implementation of the various debayering methods? In other words, are you certain that all of the artifacts you are seeing are in fact compression of the RAW signal or could some of them be attributed to the process of changing those RAW images into RGB? I would like to see specific comparisons you might have between original R3D files and the debayered, transcoded files.

Redcode is not perfect, but it has improved quite a bit. It should be no surprise that RED has learned a lot over the past couple of years, but let's not underestimate how well they did right out of the gate either. Redcode is quite impressive for a first attempt.

Jonas, I respect your work and therefore my asking for examples is merely to help build a lot of reference data to help educate people about shooting with Red and to possibly help RED identify some real world challenges to the codec. Anything you can provide to help that cause I'm sure will greatly be appreciated by the community.

Thanks!

[stephan orlandic]

People here think that the Milk Girls footage was uncompressed. It was REDCODE. There were many things along the way that changed in a RED ONE that caused image issues, but REDCODE was not one of them. REDCODE had to change to compensate for other things in the chain."

1.
the Milk girls clips were only available as recompressed quicktime hd.
And there were no red raw files, or uncompressed image sequence so they could be properly analysed.

Most people probably watched it on some computer lcd or notebook,
again, in recompressed hd quicktime, which can not by any means,
be a reference to make a delicate judgment like the above mentioned.

2.
A great deal of redusers at the moment of watching milkgirls had very limited or no experience with high resolution digital cinema files, or high resolutions scans.
Therefore, their observation of limited quality clips,
should not be a reference to RED company, and mr. Jannard.
Espacially, it should not be used as a statment that RECODE is almost perfect,
and that noone can say that it is compressed.



is anyone really unhappy with REDCODE? I haven't heard that one

Peter Jackson couldn't tell them apart. Actually, no one has been able to.




Let me start with this,
it is very obvious for a qualified person (CTO, colorist, post or vfx supervisor, equipment purchasing consultant, ...) to see an image quality differences between different film scanners (Northlight, ARRISCANNER, Ditto, Director, Spirit) which all provide uncompressed 2k or 4k files 10bit DPX or 16bit TIFF files.

It is impossible not to see a difference between uncompressed RED RAW,
and the RECODE 36 in technically well prepared conditions.

Since we don't know anything how the screening was setup ( resolution, type of files, projector, server, vcr, ...) , I can't make any claims what
went wrong.

However, it could be possible that machine-server which reproduced both materials was not properly setup, so all the beauty of RED RAW couldn't
come up to the screen. Or the RAW files were not prepared as they should be. It could only be a guess since there are no details about screening.






"Peter Jackson and his team couldn't tell the difference with a RED ONE, in fact... guessed wrong."

At the end, it would be a great shock that even by worst conditions,
Peter Doyle or Andy Cole wouldn't see a difference.
Of course, it they were there.


For anyone interested I could upload many examples of compression issues, starting from Monday.


No disrespect or offence meant.


Best Regards

Stephan

[Fredrik Callinggard]

I just want to take a moment and say that no one is saying that RED Code isn't beautiful. Shoot right you can fool anyone from believing it was shot on film.

That's not the problem. The problem occurs when you have to dig deeper into the image. We all know that the blue channel is particular weak and that's IMO the general issue.

I think this is a great article made by Art Adams at Provideo Coalition - it explains the issues together with some great illustrations :biggrin:.

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/aadams/story/red_and_green_screen/

[GlennChan]

Perhaps it's not the compression that is the issue here... unless you hit a particular build where there are codec bugs. There are other codecs out there that do a lot more damage and are still keyable (blur and erode the crap out of that matte you know?).

Have you considered:
1- Perhaps the way the image was exposed and processed in RA/Redcine caused noise to go up. Take a look into how DRX works (compare between 1 and 0), use the histogram warnings to not clip any highlights, etc.
2- Tungsten lighting can cause a very noisy image. Watch out!

I think the compression bashing here is misplaced. An example would be the show Lazytown... for workflow reasons, then no longer online from DPXes but from DNxHD files (according to the Avid website anyways). And that show has probably made some crazy amount of money.
They've done a great job with keying (from what I can tell from watching the show on cable). The main nitpick I see with their job is on motion blur... more sensitivity + higher shutter would be helpful. I don't think compression is a problem for them as they are adding it into their workflow. (And it is highly likely that Redcode is way better than theDNxHD codec, which is older technology.)

[Eric Lange]

Dear RED team,

I think it's all fine of Jonas to bring this up. He's not suggesting that you should consider uncompressed. He's merely saying that RED has a great market in his business (one of Scandinavia's most prestigious and biggest post houses). That your cameras are involved in Scandinavia's high end market, but is now declining slightly because of this.

I've encountered these compression problems many times and is learning how to work around it, but knows that many productions will not take the risk after being burnt ones. With me there's no problem since they know my background and can see many successful RED commercials on my reel.

BUT if I was to shoot for example green screen and it's a little more elaborate in it's lighting then straight forward (still talking about well lit green but around it). Well then I wouldn't shoot RED Code because of it's compression. I've had a 2 mayor green screen shoots were we had a lot of "cleaning" up to do.

(PS I now know how to shoot RED Code green screen successfully but it would undermine my creativity).

So I agree with Jonas that just like me seems to like your camera and the look of it (I've actually grown into liking it more then film). That just bare this in mind when you're working on it for the future.

The 2 achilles heels right now, IMHO, are rolling shutter issues (strobe and skew) and compression when it comes to post production. Strobe and compression being the biggest thorns in my side.


regards,

Fredrik Callinggard

I think its very important (of course ) to understand the limitations of a particular system so that you can get the most out of it or be able to put your best foot forward. We are just contemplating/developing some chromakey capability for a new software that very cleanly extracts new and various types of texture mapped models for 3d composit/vfx work from stereo live action footage (S-3d). We are mainly software engineers and technical photographers/photogrammetrists.

So, on a practical note could anyone kindly recommend the optimal conditions and techniques to get the best out of green screen with RED one? [I read the link offered above from provideocoalition] In essence we are not necessarily hampered by “creative freedom” but rather we are looking to get the best technical test results for our software that may also end up as tutorial data sets when the software ships.

Any help or advice beyond (don’t shoot unfiltered tungsten) would of course be greatly appreciated?

(What also would be the practical differences in using a D21 instead?) [We are keen on RED as we like higher res imagery and large sensor size for our type of work]

Cheers

Eric

[REDneck]

I think its very important (of course ) to understand the limitations of a particular system so that you can get the most out of it or be able to put your best foot forward. We are just contemplating/developing some chromakey capability for a new software that very cleanly extracts new and various types of texture mapped models for 3d composit/vfx work from stereo live action footage (S-3d). We are mainly software engineers and technical photographers/photogrammetrists.

So, on a practical note could anyone kindly recommend the optimal conditions and techniques to get the best out of green screen with RED one? [I read the link offered above from provideocoalition] In essence we are not necessarily hampered by “creative freedom” but rather we are looking to get the best technical test results for our software that may also end up as tutorial data sets when the software ships.

Any help or advice beyond (don’t shoot unfiltered tungsten) would of course be greatly appreciated?

(What also would be the practical differences in using a D21 instead?) [We are keen on RED as we like higher res imagery and large sensor size for our type of work]

Cheers

Eric

I don't know if it's always this way, but I've seen HD dailies of two movies shot on the D21 and both were surprisingly noisy. Like, very noisy.

[Dylan Reeve]

So, on a practical note could anyone kindly recommend the optimal conditions and techniques to get the best out of green screen with RED one? [I read the link offered above from provideocoalition] In essence we are not necessarily hampered by “creative freedom” but rather we are looking to get the best technical test results for our software that may also end up as tutorial data sets when the software ships.

There was a link to a ProVideoCoalition article a few posts back that seems very helpful. Can't say I've tried what they suggest, but they seem to have tested well.

I've been involved with a number of chromakey RED shoots now and have generally found th results very good. Even when suffering from tungsten lighting we found the key was still very recoverable with some tweaked processing for the RED RAW file.

Certainly the REDCODE codec is compressed, and in certain circumstances that compression will be apparent, but so far in the work I've been involved with it hasn't become a problem. All formats have their issues, RED is no exception.

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Certainly the REDCODE codec is compressed, and in certain circumstances that compression will be apparent, but so far in the work I've been involved with it hasn't become a problem. All formats have their issues, RED is no exception.

Absolutely but film still stands better if your in a scenario we're for example you have a lot of low light levels on your objects (shadows or dark material) and/or there's a lot of reflective/ see through material.

All of them being harsh problems to the blue channel.

Main problem for me has been that the compression noise is a compression artifact. Redcode has some kind of "streak" in it, which is very difficult to deal with.

I had a job were there's normally maybe 3 nodes to clean up (when on film) to make a key. Well on our RED material we had to use 18 nodes to be able to clean it up. All channels together looked stunning, but blue channel singled out, broke. There was a lot of shadows and reflective material that was affected by this and needless to say we spent a month in only cleaning up.

If I had a straight forward green screen shoot which was completely evenly lit in every way, with daylight, I would not hesitate. I'd shoot on RED. But as I said it does limit you creativity.

[Petr Dvorak]

If you disagree I like to post some stills where you can really see what I'm talking about.

Jonas Drehn
Duckling A/S
www.duckling.dk


Jonas, 1 image is more than 1000 words.
So don't hesistate a second and post stills and 1:1 crops with appropriate explanation for us less experienced ones.
I am hungry to learn more about it.
Thank you.

Devil is in details.

[Eric Lange]

Jonas, 1 image is more than 1000 words.
So don't hesistate a second and post stills and 1:1 crops with appropriate explanation for us less experienced ones.
I am hungry to learn more about it.
Thank you.

Devil is in details.

I second that, would be (very) nice to see specific artifacts and also their “cure” as far as is possible.

Some of the posts seem to be a bit “down” on the blue channel from RED ONE. I used to work with a variety of very high end film stocks, neg and diapositives used in aerial photography/reconnaissance and these were scanned on some the most expensive scanners on the planet (about ten years ago) and with these “films” you would still get a weak or noisy blue channel. (Have also found the same to be true when shooting close range even on subjects that were pre-dominantly blue.)


Is the “blue channel” on scanned film really that much better than the blue channel on digital/RED One or a D21? (I have no direct experience of this)

thanks for the posts so far on chromakey technique and RED,

Cheers ,

Eric

[M Most]

I don't know if it's always this way, but I've seen HD dailies of two movies shot on the D21 and both were surprisingly noisy. Like, very noisy.

It's not always that way. Never judge a camera based on footage from one DP or one production. Not D21, not Red, not anything, including film stock. Especially when the DP is not you.

[REDneck]

It's not always that way. Never judge a camera based on footage from one DP or one production. Not D21, not Red, not anything, including film stock. Especially when the DP is not you.

two productions. two DPs. same camera.

[M Most]

two productions. two DPs. same camera.

What are you using to convert the RAW files? And with what settings?

[REDneck]

i'm not working on either show, but they captured to HDCam SR and ingested with Prores 422 HQ. from quick looks at several scenes, I got the impression that it is noisy. maybe the DPs don't know how to work it yet?

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Some of the posts seem to be a bit “down” on the blue channel from RED ONE. I used to work with a variety of very high end film stocks, neg and diapositives used in aerial photography/reconnaissance and these were scanned on some the most expensive scanners on the planet (about ten years ago) and with these “films” you would still get a weak or noisy blue channel.

It's not noise that's the problem with redcode, it's the compression. It's the artifacts that is perceived as the noise which is the problem. And yes it's always the blue channel which is weak on all cameras, but since it's a bayer sensor in the RED, the blue channel is even more so.

[Jarred Land]

It is impossible not to see a difference between uncompressed RED RAW,
and the RECODE 36 in technically well prepared conditions.

Since we don't know anything how the screening was setup ( resolution, type of files, projector, server, vcr, ...) , I can't make any claims what
went wrong.

Hey Stepen no disrespect, but The test Jim is referring to was not at RED.. it was in one of the 4k reference facilities at one of the biggest studios.. that was completely calibrated the day before the test... And it was not just Peter there.. it was a whole bunch of very qualified individuals who's job it is to tell the difference.

We all know REDCODE isn't perfect, we make it better all the time. But some of the artifacts that you may be seeing may not be caused from REDCODE itself, but may be from a poor implementation of REDCODE (that we indeed very well have done in some of the builds in the past), or possibly from user error.

( i.e i have seen alot of really crappy H.264 encoded material, and some really good encoded H.264 material, its easy to blame the codec for user error, or lack of knowledge )

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I have worked with every build since the release of the camera in a wide variety of lighting situations. IMHO the most telling changes have often been dot releases that appeared to dial back the image quality a hair in response to codec errors. This is pure conjecture as to WHY the level of compression artifacting has varied, but unless I need a trip to the eye doctor it is obvious that the short history of RedCode is one of twists and turns.

That said, the good news is that milder compression is on the menu for the new rigs. How awesome would it be to be able to choose your compression rate based on project requirements and/or recording media capacity? Sign me up!

I can't wait to see what Graeme and the Red Team can do with a bigger bit budget. I am imagining a 5K Bayer file compressed in camera to around 140MBytes/sec, the first off camera processing step would include demosaicing and downsampling to a 2K (or 1080) 10 bit RGB file for offline and a 4K 16 bit RGB file for grading/conform.

[Anders Holck]

Jonas brings up an important issue.

It's not really the noise in the blue channel, but the point where the organic camera noise dives into compression noise. No need to defend the codec and say it isn't there, because it indeed is. Whether you can live with this artifact is of course a matter of taste.

Shooting 4k, daylight with a rich exposure and you might not experience the problem, but this can still pop up occasionally if you utilize the bottom stops of the dynamic range.

Photographic style is also a determining factor in this, because some WILL prefer tungsten lighting, even without the lighting budget to go 160ASA with a 80C filter, and some will combine that with a slight underexposure to protect the highlights.

And then combine that with 2k resolution for high speed, and redspace viewing and you will experience problems. This is not an operator error. And we still see this in build 17 using the newest tools.

It's important to realize that Jonas isn't saying that the camera doesn't deliver beautiful images because it does and his post house has embraced the RED from the get go (He even had a reservation at some point).

But what he is saying is that his clients are beginning to look for other options because of this issue, which will be a problem for all of us.

This is a balancing act of praising the good aspects, but still be serious and inform about the downsides, everything else would simply be unprofessional. But it is of course also important not to blow this out of proportions, because redcode does perform very well most of the time.

[Eric Lange]

This should be called the brotherhood of the anti aliased pixel, where for some applications you literally have to split hairs!

So what some of you are saying is that its difficult to compress (high frequency) speckly noise from blue channel or dark current in a spatially accurate way and efficiently without compromising the whole efficiency of the compression scheme; (probably not a big surprise) I.e. theoretically one could effect accurate representations, but you wouldn’t be able to shoot at 24fps (ish). So in terms of various bandwidth trade off s, this is the most sensible thing to do as such artifacts are normally invisible for a “regular” RGB image thrown up on the screen. I.e. it is computationally very inefficient to accurately represent high frequency noise in any compression scheme.

So I think I seem to understand some of Jim’s frustration about requests for RAW or near raw, as it’s the “on the fly” compression as the scan lines are being acquired that makes that RED ONE function ( I am guessing) so that you can shoot at 30 or 60 fps. Presumably with the line of new cameras, it’s the gargantuan bandwidth that will allow a 3:1 compression ratio, so perhaps by the end of the year these types of problems may be done and dusted.

We/(my company) very much have to consider what is happening at the pixel scale as we try to employ and develop various 3d extraction algorithms from stereo footage and stills. Standard algorithms are not very intelligent and tend to be fooled or trip up on compressed imagery as the algorithms try to look for unique matches to extract 3d. When the images are composed of repeating wavelet blocks you tend to get a lot false matches and hence spurious 3d points. The issue for us is do we spend development time and funds on developing pattern matching algorithms that are not fooled by compression artifacts or do we wait for 3:1 compression that may be spatially more lossless? I.e. you spend a lot of effort to solve a problem and by the time you finally get there the problem has vanished and no longer needs to be solved!

[conrad gaunt]

Camera 1912.. produces amazing 2k/1080p downsamples, from the 4k bayer, compression artifacts aren't an issue.

Now, unfortunately, 2k doesn't allow this level of downsample, and viewing 4k at 1:1, isn't so pleasing either IMHO

The R1 2k is best for generating 720p downsamples.

[M Most]

i'm not working on either show, but they captured to HDCam SR and ingested with Prores 422 HQ. from quick looks at several scenes, I got the impression that it is noisy. maybe the DPs don't know how to work it yet?

If they captured to HDCam SR, they weren't capturing RAW data. They were capturing over HD-SDI, which is a processed signal. This was further complicated (at least in the noise department) by compressing using ProRes. My experience with the D21 is based on the RAW files, delivered over T-Link to an S.two recorder, and converted to RGB via Arri's Image Booster software. The material I've dealt with was shot anamorphic, and is very, very clean, very sharp, and in general, very nice.

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Camera 1912.. produces amazing 2k/1080p downsamples, from the 4k bayer, compression artifacts aren't an issue.

Good for you

[stephan orlandic]

We all know REDCODE isn't perfect, we make it better all the time. But some of the artifacts that you may be seeing may not be caused from REDCODE itself, but may be from a poor implementation of REDCODE (that we indeed very well have done in some of the builds in the past), or possibly from user error.

( i.e i have seen alot of really crappy H.264 encoded material, and some really good encoded H.264 material, its easy to blame the codec for user error, or lack of knowledge )


Dear mr. Jarred,
first of all let me again clearly state, that I don't mean any offense to You, mr. Jannard or RED company.
The RED ONE has made a lot of money for us directly through camera rent, and indirectly through postproduction, and in general we are very happy with it. And we will continue to purchase more red Epic cameras in the near future.

I fully understand that You are being suspicious about people complaining about camera all the time.
And this has become a major issue on this forum, because too many people, non-owners, owners with very small experience, and many others, complain too much about great many things with questionable reasons.

The only reason I posted massage in this thread is that I have been working for a very long time in postproduction (15 years), and handling high res film images for 10 years now.


It seems that there are people here, who are confusing very often camera/sensor noise with compression artifacts.

And also there are people who say that they haven't ever seen any compression issues.


Although we are working with our red camera for 8 months, we are working with RED files for almost 12 months. And I think that we have been proficient with handling the RED files.

We had worked with RED on more than 50 high profile commercials (SWATCH, TELENOR, TETRAPAK, US STEEL, VODAPHONE/MOBILKOM AUSTRIA, ...),
10+ music videos (UNIVERSAL MUSIC, ...), three 30min feature film, ...

Our clients, have very big experience with 35mm film telecine or DI, and also with Phantom HD, Viper, and D20/D21 cameras.
Therefore, many of them have the ability to see when there is something in the images which they don't like (Noise, Compression, ...).

Also, our reference monitoring is 45.000 us$ SONY BVM 24" monitor, and 50.000 us$ DLP 3chip projector, which both provide more than a good insight into any image issues.
For REDCINE viewing we use calibrated Eizo CG241W, which is currently the best computer display money can buy.

Now back to Your reply,

You have mentioned few things:
1.Old builds with less efficient codec implementation.
This is not the case since we have been working with stable builds 15,16 and 17, and still the same things are visible.

2. H264 compression or any other type of compression
We don't work with compressed images. We are working at shots native resolution (4k,3k,2k) in fully uncompressed 16bit workflow.
Our RED files have been finished with tools like Autodesk Lustre, Smoke, Flame, Avid DS, and we keep it uncompressed all the time.
Sometimes our clients want REAL TIME 4k grading, with 10+ layers, and than we send them to BASELIGHT 8 facility.

After we finish the complete post, we deliver hdcam sr, hdcam or digibeta to
the clients.

3. User error
As I said previously we have some very good experience with RED files.

First of all,
We see the compression in the REDCINE, and we see it exactly the same in the 16bit tiffs or 10bit dpxs later in post.

Second of all,
we don't make any compromises when it is about image quality.
We only do FULL debayer, with no downscale. if it's 4k, than it's the 4k all the way.

When we started to encounter the compression issues, in some cases very heavy ones, we consulted with a number of leading european post houses, and we have learned that all of them had same or very similiar issues as we had.

For many cases, this issue can be solved, but there are cases when it's realy very complicated to resolve the problem.
In several jobs, we had to go 35mm and do a DI for commercials, because after tests, for those commercials and those clients the RED wasn't satisfying enough.

Kindest Regards

Stephan

[stephan orlandic]

Hey Stepen no disrespect, but The test Jim is referring to was not at RED.. it was in one of the 4k reference facilities at one of the biggest studios.. that was completely calibrated the day before the test... And it was not just Peter there.. it was a whole bunch of very qualified individuals who's job it is to tell the difference.


As I said previously, neither me or other members here have any detailed info about setup, and what was going on at the projection.
So every comment made about it is nothing more than a speculation, which in general I realy dislike.

However, since there is a reference that nobody could tell a difference between the REDRAW and RAWCODE, I feel the need to try to explain some things.

As I said in my first post on page 3, myself and a great deal of people I know and who are from the same film bussiness, can tell You with no problem a difference between high res uncomressed images from different film scanners in both a digital file or on a projection.
And this is by all means a much more subtle difference than between RAW files and very heavy compressed 36MB/s REDCODE.

Also many of us were envolved in many digital (cinema) camera test shootings and their image quality comparisions.


I don't question technical knowledge or visual capabilities of Peter Jackson and his crew, moreover I have nothing but highest regards for them.

Not seeing the difference between those two files REDRAW and REDCODE, could mean three things from my point of view:

1. The hole crew can't see it because they lack the visual capabilities
(It is almost impossible)

2. REDRAW is not performing as all of us are expecting it to perform, meaning that REDCODE isn't so bad, but REDRAW isn't so good
(I realy do not want to believe this)

3a. Something went wrong in the preparations for projection.
If the projection was 4k uncompressed for both REDRAW and REDCODE, at that moment I know only of DVS Clipster 4K and Baselight 8 to be capable to playback 4k uncompressed. Neither of those two can't make any degradation issues which would make the difference between files not to be visible.

If the 4k playback system was jpeg2000 based, or something like that,
than conversion from REDRAW to this playback format caused it to be just like the REDCODE and of course the difference can't be easily seen on some projection.

3b. Original conversion of REDRAW files by Your side caused REDRAW's underperformance.


Kindest Regards

Stephan

[Miguel "Macgregor" De Olaso]

Some JPGs directly from redcine at Full quality (yes highly compressed JPGs, but the artifacts you see are there). Shot in 4K 16:9 RC36 5000ºK 80C filter with Master Prime 65mm:

http://www.macgregor.autoecstasy.com/red2K/rgb.jpg

It´s true that when watching RED footage in RGB we´ve never experienced any comrpession artifacts. Images look good and in the worst case scenario they get soft when there is a lot of detail in the image.

But when you need VFX...







http://www.macgregor.autoecstasy.com/red2K/green.jpg

http://www.macgregor.autoecstasy.com/red2K/blue.jpg

http://www.macgregor.autoecstasy.com/red2K/red.jpg

[Axel Mertes]

Hi Macgregor,

we have seen similar issues, many times. Its not only specific to RED ONE, other cameras can show similar artefacts. But RED ONE does too.

It has a lot to do with the different sensitivity for R, G and B on sensors, plus how the specific channel is being processed. As the human eye has a different perception of R, G and B too, it is NOT really wise NOR fair to watch single color channels as grayscale images, because you switch your perception of that color then. You actually visually increase the artefacts presence this way.

The human eye can distinguish many more green levels than blue ones. So when watching a blue channel in anything but blue you force to show up the artefacts way more than watching them in blue.

That being said, the blue of the RED ONE is generally weaker than e.g. the green. This is much related to the sensor itself I suspect (maybe someone from RED can chime in hear). The new upcoming sensors are mainly addressing these issues by increasing sensitivity and bit depth (well, within physical limits).

On the processing chain: Maybe the three color channels get compressed with even different compression ratios, to gain quality on green, while loosing some (mostly not percepted) blue - I don't really know, but it could be the case. Its thinkable.

Its very hard to complain about the REDCODE compression to be an issue if having no chance of storing uncompressed for real comparison.

So my question would be if RED could implement kind of an uncompressed still frame mode to shoot a single frame in totally uncompressed RAW. This way it would be very easy to compare "lossless uncompressed" and "compressed" to find out the real difference. The best would be to store a single uncompressed RAW image and all along the very same image with the R3D REDCODE compression applied.

I would understand if RED is not interested in the above, because it would open up the door for many nay-sayers that RED CODE is doing something bad here and there, and that is apparently not always "visually lossless". But on the other hand it would put this whole discussion to a more objective and productive level of analysing images side by side and seeing the real loss, to improve from real world issues.

Any compression system is a compromise - we all have to have that in our minds, all time.

The compromise I see with RED is that we are enabled to work 4K in days of HD at an affordable price level for both acquisition and post production due to a compression being applied that melt down the massive data to something we can afford to handle.

At the same time I see the real interest of RED on improving RED CODE in terms of e.g increased data rates (not likely to happen on RED ONE, but the upcoming systems) and therefor less lossy compression. Depending on the way the compression works, there might be a minimum loss that can not be avoided at any data rate, but I am not a RED CODE programmer and therefor can only make assumption here. But the idea is to get less artefacts, whatsoever. Visually lossless, as much as possible. Its pure nonsense to not think that RED isn't concerned about this (no offense to anybody).

We also have to think about how many of the artefacts may be related to noise issues due to sensor "issues". The more perfect a sensor becomes, the less the compression artefacts will be that relate to noise. As the blue channel is weaker than the green channel, its just normal that blue noise will cause more compression artefacts.

I do believe that RED is aware of this. And I also agree on keeping this kind of discussions going on, so I really thank you for sharing the example images here and pointing our "there is something".

My intention is to give a little balanced comment on this to say "its not as bad as it looks in first place, but bad enough to think about addressing it" and "its not RED only".

If we get footage from a HD-CAM it may look even worse, shot under similar conditions. It'll be far away from RED ONE footage in many terms (except the F35 for instance, which is extremely good in low light conditions). In that context the RED ONE is a compromise.

When someone does not want a compromise at all then there are potentially other options. If money doesn't play a role, go and use an D21 or F35 to get potentially better color and less compression (but less resolution - another compromise in that context) or go for film.

I do not think that RED is owing us a CODEC with less artefacts, but they try to give that to us - isn't that a nice attitude?

RED says they are constantly improving on RED CODE. When was the last time I heard something like that from Pana & Sony? Did I ever? I don't think so...
They just released new ones with new systems.

Just my thoughts on this,
Axel

[Axel Mertes]

Hi,

just to show everybody what I tried to explain above about viewing color channels not in their native color and what that means to visual perception, here the three channels in their native color.

The artefacts are there, unchanged, but way less visible.

Axel


red channel in red color:
http://magnamana.com/images/r.jpg

versus

red channel in gray color:
http://www.macgregor.autoecstasy.com/red2K/red.jpg

[Axel Mertes]

green channel in green color:
http://magnamana.com/images/g.jpg

versus

green channel in gray color:
http://www.macgregor.autoecstasy.com/red2K/green.jpg

[Axel Mertes]

blue channel in blue color:
http://magnamana.com/images/b.jpg

versus

blue channel in gray color:
http://www.macgregor.autoecstasy.com/red2K/blue.jpg

[Eric Lange]

AXEL, from a psycho-visual point of view I 100% agree!

However from an algorithmic point of view I don’t think the grey scale images go far enough in explaining why such artifacts trip up chromakey and other processes for compositing. The math (apart from the occasional tone curve) does not “look” at things from a human point of view. If you were to “look” at these images from the image processing algorithms point of view you would have to imagine each tone value represented as a Z height. I.e. a 3d landscape. Imagine you are the hapless convolution filter (a committee of automatons armed with slide rules sitting in a rickety raft trying to navigate through a giant landscape and seascape). To a spatially based image processing algorithm an exotic compression artifact looks much more like a 100 foot maze of canyon walls that are almost impossible to navigate directly through. You have to look at these things from the machine’s point of view. Unfortunately machines and their algorithms are not very smart (right now) and do not understand what is intended, I.e. what is obvious to a human being. Most algorithms still munch through individual channels and then compare notes later with their complimentary color channel (I.e. there is not a truly unified color representation.) Unfortunately automated processes in machine vision and image processing are still pretty dumb. In our software designs for 3d extraction from stereo pairs we first built the best manual 3d stereoscopic editing interface (we believe) for geometry extraction first as we know that automated processes live or die by how well you can edit and correct them when they go wrong or are not “seeing” what is intended. We read just as many neurology papers and books as we do programming and signal processing books, to look for clues as to how we could be doing these things better.

The fact that these artifacts are present in the RED one images seems to indicate to me that the RED team are truly brilliant engineers. They have taken everything to the max with the existing RED ONE sensor. Simply put NO COMPRESSION, NO CAMERA or you can shoot at 8fps for 4k. It seems that the on the fly compression is absolutely integral to the camera’s performance, and it seems that RED has steered a very brave and well considered course to deliver a 4k cinematic camera. Regardless of various implementations of REDCODE etc. I don’t think anyone has ever squeezed more out of a sensor and it would be very hard to improve upon without new hardware (I.e. the new line of products).

On a practical note, if some "shaggy" composites some times crop up, how long does it take in (man hours) to correct 30 seconds of 4k footage for chromakey? [Very interested to understand how much manual or hand correction most post houses can tolerate or handle?] (any answers to this question would be greatly appreciated)

Cheers,

Eric

[Axel Mertes]

Hi Eric,

thank you very much for your post, was a fun ride to read through :)
You should write some book, you have such a "visual" wording here and there, highly appreciated!

I agree completely on the mathematical view of such "noise artefacted" image data. Having studied computer science in the past my knowledge of programming image processing pipelines is not without fundaments. We see it every now and then when doing keying / blue box / green box stuff with the RED ONE. In fact we use RED ONE for the even the smallest projects (web, PAL, HD) as keying went EASIER with it than with the other traditionally used image sources (DigiBeta, HDV, Varicam, HD CAM) in most cases, because the extra in resolution does lead to an easier keying and downscaling compensates for most of the rest issues.

But if you want to do brilliant theater release work in 2K or 4K you clearly hit an edge of what can be done, as there is mostly no downscaling anymore that smooth out some issues. Then you had to deal with artefacts 1:1. That is the moment where I point people to the phrase "compromise".

Even when shooting on film people seem to ignore that it is not really a perfect image. When scanned you reveal the film grain. Its somehow like a random pattern (a random bayer pattern whould be a wrong description) that changes every frame. Grain would cause artefacts on compression as well. So what is the real alternative to RED ONE in this moment? If you put in "budget" into the equation most if not all productions will prefer RED over film IMHO. Having to rotoscope is most time an stupid unfriendly job for the newbies around, the hard school, but often not avoidable. If true uncompressed would prevent this - we can not tell until we have seen it.

So if one shoots film, the grain can be an as unglorious pattern as the compression artefacts are. And it changes every frame. I have no idea how your algorythms react on this compared to RED footage of similar resolution. Can you shed some light on this? It would be interesting for all of us to understand if there is an underlying problem that has not yet been discussed. In case film is "as bad as RED" I have no real problem with it. In case its way better, well, we can only hope it catches up at some point.

My previous message is just to demonstrate that the weaker red and blue does not mean to have a weak overall RGB experience in terms of an image perception. When having not VFX at all, just grading, its often simply very good footage. Better than most HD/2K scans we were used to before...

I suggest that RED is adding a mode to shoot a still frame that is going to be saved in true uncompressed RAW and in compressed R3D at the same time.

This would bring many discussions to an end or to a new level, less speculative, more analytic, more targeted.

This would allow us to analyze. Maybe all that it reveals would be that we need a new sensor with better blue and red response? Or that RED CODE has to be a higher data rate? Or that we need tech from outer space? We can't say that, its pure speculation. But I do see that RED put it on its roadmap to make better sensors (better than then potentially best sensor we can get hands on right now out there) for an upcoming promising product line. To me thats at least saying its being addressed.

When shooting green screen with an HD CAM or Varicam, we used to have an uncompressed editing system on-set and capture directly from the camera to bypass its compression chain. The quality was WAY better than the tape stuff. Unfortunately such an option does not exist for RED cameras as of now, and it feels unlikely to happen, nor to happen at reasonable cost (budgetwise). Jim clearly said "we do it if 20 put down money" - but the league is small where people can hand out this amounts.

Btw, it sounds pretty interesting what you noted here and there about your 3D stuff. We have a project in pipeline that is aimed to be shot in 3D for theatrical release. Maybe you can give me some infos offlist if you like, so I can hand this over to the producer and see if its interesting for us. We are very early in planning, so there is no tight schedule on the horizon.

Best regards,
Axel

[Eric Lange]

Axel, thanks for the input and kind words! I’ll try to answer as best I can…

Our first applications were in the recording of cultural heritage, I.e. fantastically complex surfaces over a very large area that have to be accurately recorded in 3d. So about ten years ago we were using a variety of very large plate photogrammetric cameras (like ZEISS UMK 130 x 180 mm transparency etc.) to shoot many stereograms of a site [the RED 617 might be nice for this]. For some smaller film formats like 4’ by 5” we would scan at 15 micron resolution and then down sample (just like what you were saying for RED at 2k). Back then very small film grain was about 7.5 micron, but it was certainly possible to see larger grain artifacts. For conventional pattern matching algorithms for 3d extraction, film grain is not such a problem as compression artifacts. In precision 3d work it is mandatory to use lossless(ly) compressed imagery/raw as even totally invisible compression artifacts can cause a lot of false matches. Conventional 3d/pattern matching algorithms unfortunately get fooled into believing that there are many more plausible matches on an image than there really are. So you pick an area on the left image and tell the algorithm to hunt around on the right image to find the unique corresponding match. So the algorithm hunts around the right image a bit like a blind man in an alley way with a stick prodding things to find some thing that seems similar to what he has been told to “look” for. Because compression schemes largely rely on substituting the actual image with a set of pre-prepared pattern blocks (that are much more efficient to describe computationally) what happens is that there is a much higher incidence of similarity between one part of the image to another part of the image. So what happens is that algorithm find not one unique match for corresponding scan lines it might find fifteen or twenty. This translates into false parallax measurements which then translates into noisy spurious 3d data points.

However the RED ONE camera has provided a boon for the stereo 3d movie business as digital recording devices are a hell of lot more stable than film. When film travels and stops in the film gate for successive frames you get a lot of jitter, and this translates to fatiguing stereo. So for dynamic applications I much prefer/reccomend digital especially as it is possible to calibrate for focal length distortion and sensor position far more accurately with digital sensors.

Our software however is designed to circumvent conventional approaches and problems to 3d extraction. Even with the best stereo imagery you cannot have perfect AUTOMATED 3d extraction as there is simply missing data that computer vision cannot correctly infer the missing parts. Our approach was two fold. Firstly we implemented a fully immersive 3d plotting environment where an operator can plot all of the polygons by hand, you just literally trace around in immersive 3d at the object you are looking at. It is very fast at producing clean models. The second thing we do is that we have a patented process for "baking" in stereo textures into 3d polygonal substrates acording to a special relationship. What this means is that you don’t need to extract millions of points, instead you make an invisible polygonal substrate in the BASIC shape of the stereo imaged objects (through our process) and then embed the stereo textures to the model. The stereo texture does all the work to represent high frequency three dimensional features and the substrate correctly disposes the model correctly in 3d explicit space. In other words it looks visually flawless and you can get away with absolute murder, however for some applications green screen stereo alpha channel in needed. This new type of spatial representation we call a Coherently Stereo Textured Model. It is a new spatial paradigm and data format. So we add auto assist algorithms to help speed things up. However we think manually plotted CSTMs are faster and cleaner than trying to extract millions of 3d points and then try to edit them into sensible surfaces. The human visual system is so much better at finding 3d matches in stereo than any automated algorithm right now. Our goal is to enable the user to get the highest quality 3d texture mapped model from stereo sequnces. Conventional systems tend to create a bunch of unusable noisy 3d data that is nearly unusable for cinematic applications. The CSTM has many applications and would be very good for 3d composites of complex surfaces and dynamic phenomena such as fluids, plasmas, explosions etc. The CSTM is also 400x more efficient rendering time over the same conventional complex representation and therefore has many applications in stereo gaming.

So for 3d extraction with RED (stereo) I would go manual with auto assist, and would prefer it to film. RAW/lossless would make automated 3d much smoother and less error prone. Never the less we are of course looking to build systems around the new Scarlet and EPIC.

We have mainly worked with 360 degree set ups but STATIC, and have been experimenting with dynamic applications for almost two years, (test data sets etc.). We are trying to seek out some representative stereo footage to test our software for the DI and post market, so we are eager to partner with folks that can shoot good stereograms. Right now we are looking to make sure our software can work with a wide range of stereographic systems.


Will P.M. some details,

Cheers V. much

Eric

[paul gill]

So if one shoots film, the grain can be an as unglorious pattern as the compression artefacts are. And it changes every frame. I have no idea how your algorythms react on this compared to RED footage of similar resolution. Can you shed some light on this? It would be interesting for all of us to understand if there is an underlying problem that has not yet been discussed. In case film is "as bad as RED" I have no real problem with it. In case its way better, well, we can only hope it catches up at some point.
Axel

the point is that it is eaiser to deal with the grain when keying than it is the compression. Also the thing with budget is an interesting one and as the person who started the thread mentions, clients choosing the kit, at the highend, when you consider all the expense of the whole production, the saving that red gives you is not that big a precentage. ie you still have to pay for all the crew/post etc. mainly you save in the transfer costs, but to these clients, they are not going to worry over saving a few thousands of dollars and risk the many thousands of dollars spent on the whole production if the results are compromised so they will tend to go for film...

and just to reiterate here is a very simple colour diff key math shot on green:
green - max(red,blue).

so you can see how it splits the channels and it is absolutely essential and fair to view them as above to look at the compression

[Axel Mertes]

Hi Paul,

I agree on most points, especially in high end productions. Controversy, in mid and low end productions the RED turns out to be a big improvement over traditional aquisition systems, due to often lower cost (if calculated fair) in post.

We shot nearly every project this year on RED ONE. Even small jobs for web or TV. Many green screen projects etc. It turned out that the extra costs for a RED compared to an HDV or Varicam or HD CAM are a good investment, because it was so much easier to key the RED footage in the end and downscale to the desired resolution. It was pretty much forgiving in many situations (if done right).

So it really depend on a specific situation. I do see it being addressed with the announced camera lineup. Maybe it can be improved somewhat on the RED ONE too, we would all be glad to see that, clearly.

About viewing the color channels as grayscales:

Its clearly fair to view them to exaggerate the artefacts and issues you have to deal with, no question. I just wanted to explain that the impact of those noise/artefact "errors" in the final RGB image is less visible when viewed in the native color - and that its probably part of the compromise equation. If RED would try to apply a much less strong compression to red and blue channels to prevent compression artefacts there will be two new issues: First of all, data rate will grow dramatically, and the results gained will potentially not always justify that data rate nor that the current equipment will handle it. Second, it might turn out that the sensor data is still noisy enough to not really solve the issue with keying.

Again, as long as we have not seen it on our own, its all speculation. My wish would be to have RED implement a still frame shooting mode that stores an uncompressed RAW and the same image as RED CODE. THEN we are in business of analyzing that (and I do see real world applications for this too, beside artificial discussions, e.g. stop motion) and making suggestions or comments from there.

I have no real idea of the physical limits, ie. I do not know how "clean" a blue or red channel can become at some point with advancing technology. Even if we capture EVERY photon, I still wonder how clean the blue channel would be?
Does anybody know the efficiency of the current sensors, in terms of x% of hitting photons get counted?
And then again, how much noise is added during readout and black noise etc.?

As a rule of thumb, good lighting is "key" for good keying results. We have seen bad and good lighted stuff, and it can be a big difference.

The bottom line is for me that the RED ONE gives me the best keying results of any camera in that price range if treated right. I am happy with that, anything that makes it better is just adding up to this, comfortably.

If poeple decide that for their projects, the RED ONE is not good enough, well, then its absolutely fair to use e.g. film or another camera, add additional acquisition cost but potentially equal or lower cost in post than for a RED ONE. Its an very economical and not so much ideological question IMHO. It all becomes a problem if poeple think that RED must be better for everything, that is a good wish, but not a reality, not even from REDs own perspective (just think about super high speed etc.).

But I do like that this discussion brings up some good points for others to know about. So if someone has a project that stands or falls with the keying issue, it needs to be considered carefully which camera to use and under what conditions. Some will just consider to have a potentially better lighting and stay with RED ONE, others may choose a different camera. We've seen many projects where poeple went to a shooting and returned with bad exposed blue/green screen stuff. They thought "we have so much bit depth - isn't it there? Its simply not that simple...

Axel

[Fredrik Callinggard]

We shot nearly every project this year on RED ONE. Even small jobs for web or TV. Many green screen projects etc. It turned out that the extra costs for a RED compared to an HDV or Varicam or HD CAM are a good investment,

There's a big difference between that and arguing about RED vs FILM, which this thread were more intended for.

[Axel Mertes]

Fredrik,

thats true what you say about it beeing a big difference.

But the thread was primarily about Uncompressed vs. RED CODE. And in that context there is the assumption / hope that keying an uncompressed RED RAW would be so much easier than keying a RED CODE RAW.

We all know that it is very unlikely to see a RED RAW uncompressed recording in near future, and we brought up arguments that let us at least leave with some doubt if uncompressed will be the solution or not for the issues seen. But we all seem to agree that any improvement on this is cool, but there are situations where poeple prefer film - from a professional non-ideological stand point, putting other variables into the equation.

I made a wish to RED here that would finally allow us - the users - to make comparisons on this subject on our own. What do you think about THAT?

My interest for this wish to be implemented would not really be to make such comparisons, but to "abuse" the RED ONE for stop motion work. The reason is simple: It does less flicker than typical DSLR cameras used nowadays. We did a lot of stop motion in the past, and the RED would be a cool camera to do so. And as there is no time issue, I could do long exposures (many photons get counted) and could store the results uncompressed, as there is also no data rate issue.

I have no idea about the internal design of the RED ONE in that particular case, but for still frames I simply hope they can do it. And the side effect would be that we all get an idea if and how much RED RAW uncompressed would change the world.

Hey, THAT would make the decision easier for those who want that uncompressed recorder to put down their deposits as Jim originally proposed. They would be able to see what they get. No cat in a bag anymore!

Imagine, the unexpeced uncompressed recorder would finally be build and you can rent one if you like. That would be a satisfying solution IMHO. But I can live without it for now.

What about that?

Axel

[Rudi Herbert]

Imagine, the unexpeced uncompressed recorder would finally be build and you can rent one if you like. That would be a satisfying solution IMHO. But I can live without it for now.

That sounds VERY interesting indeed. I suspect that a lot of the major rental houses would not hesitate to buy the uncompressed recorder and have it available for those high end productions that wish it. However, as you say, the determining factor in making that decision would be to have incontrovertible proof that uncompressed is that much better than REDCODE, which nobody knows, except perhaps for some people at RED. Another more important point is actually the fact that we are discussing REDCODE 36 vs. UNCOMPRESSED, and why? I don't want fully uncompressed, but something with as little compression as possible that still can be viably recorded and handled in post. I've said that I'd be happy with CF cards recording 2-3 minutes instead of 7-8 or to work with color accurate proxies and do a long render at the end of the project, since I don't really need to work with original 4K sources at real time, who honestly needs that? Anyway, uncompressed may be too much, but REDCODE as it stands now, may be too compressed and its flaws show under certain conditions, that's all. Less compression would be the ideal solution to this small but undeniable problem.

[Eric Lange]

There's a big difference between that and arguing about RED vs FILM, which this thread were more intended for.

Everybody has their own applications worries and agendas. I think the scope of the thread is O.K. I am thoroughly embarrassed by the length, agenda and boringness of my last post; I think its very difficult to discuss “communally” complex subjects with many related branches. Things can get a bit retarded/autistic as quite often people glom onto tenuous parallels to a particular topic as people are so desperate for useful information especially to avoid costly or risky mistakes. A thread that says UNCOMPRESSED VS REDCODE seems to get a lot viewings and it seems to be something that people are not clear on apart from RED.

However I do think Jonas and Anders message has gotten through loud and clear, and I have no doubt that RED is absolutely aware of these situations.

One of the things that AXEL you seem to want is a RAW/ lossless image for stop motion animation and for easy workflow high res composites. I also hear you when you say a single frame RAW and uncompressed image would be great as a basis of comparison. However, I get the impression that the compression scheme in RED is almost absolutely integral to the architecture of the system. I.e. its not possible to output an uncompressed RAW. Nobody outside of RED has every seen a processing schematic for the camera, but it seems to me that the camera does not wait for a whole image to be buffered somewhere and then wait for it to be compressed. Some other type of first stage compression may be happening at the very early acquisition stage of perhaps groups of scan lines; (I maybe completely wrong and out to lunch here?). However it does seem probable that uncompressed RAW even outputting one frame is not possible without screwing up the whole architecture of the camera. I feel sure that if it was possible then this would have been a feature on the camera, rather than just an oversight or an application of the 80:20 rule.

So this thread has been very helpful to me as it tells me that I need to carry out very specific test shoots before any major production or project (I.e. part of research budget/pre production planning). This thread also seems to indicate that 3:1 compression may indeed cure most of the chromakey issues that people sometimes experience (when the new line of cameras comes out). The only thing that is left is whether there is a preference for film or the D21. Would be interested to learn what the work flow of a RAW D21 is like from a practical standpoint compared to RED, and is it any different from scanned film?

[AXEL would be interested to hear of some of the problems you have with standard digital stills cameras, we re-engineer different types of stills cameras for stereo work, would be interested to see if there was something we could solve?, Feel free to P.M. me off list etc.]

Cheers,

Eric