Red One and 23.976

[Jeremy Newmark]

Will the Red One have the option to shoot 23.976p?

I can't imagine that it won't, but I'm asking because I've searched both the archives and red.com and it doesn't seem to specifically say this anywhere. I asked in an earlier thread, but never got an answer. The question came up in my mind because when you look at the quicktime properties of the "milk girls" clip and the "crossing the line clip" they both read as 24fps. True 24 is fine if you are only planning on digital projection or a film out, but if you are planning to have the option to go to broadcast, 23.976 makes life so much easier.

[Evin Grant]

I believe (But don't have any concrete answers) that it will be supported.
Of course a conversion to 23.976 is a very easy operation.

[Kenn Christenson]

http://www.red.com/formatoptions.shtml

Look at the white text at the bottom of the page.

I will most likely be shooting at 23.976 as well. It just makes sense for the majority of deliverables.

[Graeme Nattress]

Yup 23.98 and 29.97 and 59.94.

Graeme

[Jeremy Newmark]

Graeme and Kenn,

Thank you! That's what I was looking for.

[Stephen Gentle]

Wow, it must suck having such a crazy TV system - We just have 25p and 50i frame rates. I think that 24fps is just played as if it were 25 on TV, as the 4% speed difference is unnoticeable.

[Alex Boothby]

No wonder American movies appear hyper in the UK and OZ!

[Stu Maschwitz]

Yup 23.98 and 29.97 and 59.94.

I hope you don't take this as pedantry, but I'd love it if the Red team could lead by example and refer to the NTSC transfer rate of film as 23.976 fps rather than 23.98. I spent years fighting maddening software bugs related to misunderstandings about this nonexistent distinction.

-Stu

[Jeremy Newmark]

I think that 24fps is just played as if it were 25 on TV, as the 4% speed difference is unnoticeable.

Yup, that's exactly what happens to most films in PAL land. It may have made sense 5 or 10 years ago, but today when there are real manageable ways to do a proper conversion I just don't get why this is still the standard. I know audio guys who go crazy over this, they spend days, weeks if not months perfecting a mix or a score until it's perfect for them, only to have it sped up 4% and crunched again for a pitch shift, that is if a pitch shift is even done. Even the large studios, who could easily afford a terranex conversion (and that is the high-end), simply speed up their dvd's for PAL delivery. I've checked numerous movies and even the largest, sometime don't even do a pitch shift. Take any one of the Indian Jones series and pop in an NTSC version and then a PAL version, you will be surprised that even on a high end, massive budget project, Harrison Ford all of a sudden has a little bit higher voice. I've had a lot of talks with industry folks about this and they always end with, "What's the problem, I don't know why you are complaining, this is the industry standard, that's how it's done." Drives me nuts.

"Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth" - Gandhi

[donatello b]

"refer to the NTSC transfer rate of film as 23.976 fps rather than 23.98"

i have to agree ... 23.976 is not 23.98 ...
there is software that you can render out 23.976 and 23.98 ( or any custom fps) ... if you do SFX mattes at 23.98 then try to match it to orginal clips that were 23.976 you will have some problems .... when i see 23.98 it always gives me the chills when something isn't matching up ...

[Graeme Nattress]

But it's not 23.976 either is it? 23.98 is correct to 2dp, just as 23.976 is correct to 3dp, but it's really 24 * 1000 / 1001, which is a mouthful. Really it's 24.00fps corrected to a stupid NTSC rate, but that's a mouthful too.

Both 23.98fps and 23.976fps refer to exactly the same frame rate, which is precisely neither.

Graeme

[redhead]

I hope you don't take this as pedantry, but I'd love it if the Red team could lead by example and refer to the NTSC transfer rate of film as 23.976 fps rather than 23.98. I spent years fighting maddening software bugs related to misunderstandings about this nonexistent distinction.

-Stu
I was under the impression the NTSC rate was 29.97002997002997002997002997... fps. Or more exactly 30000 frames per 1001 seconds. Is that wrong?

[Stuart English]

Its only shorthand anyway... to three decimal places in each case ...

24 * 1000 / 1001 = 23.976 i.e. 23.98

30 * 1000 / 1001 = 29.970 i.e. 29.97

60 * 1000 / 1001 = 59.940 i.e. 59.94

[Graeme Nattress]

AFAIK it's exactly 30 * 1000 / 1001.

Graeme

[martinnoweck]

Yup, that's exactly what happens to most films in PAL land. It may have made sense 5 or 10 years ago, but today when there are real manageable ways to do a proper conversion I just don't get why this is still the standard. I know audio guys who go crazy over this, they spend days, weeks if not months perfecting a mix or a score until it's perfect for them, only to have it sped up 4% and crunched again for a pitch shift, that is if a pitch shift is even done. Even the large studios, who could easily afford a terranex conversion (and that is the high-end), simply speed up their dvd's for PAL delivery. I've checked numerous movies and even the largest, sometime don't even do a pitch shift. Take any one of the Indian Jones series and pop in an NTSC version and then a PAL version, you will be surprised that even on a high end, massive budget project, Harrison Ford all of a sudden has a little bit higher voice. I've had a lot of talks with industry folks about this and they always end with, "What's the problem, I don't know why you are complaining, this is the industry standard, that's how it's done." Drives me nuts.

"Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth" - Gandhi

I totally agree, but i know there are theaters which even play movies at higher speed to get more time slots done in one evening.

Martin

[Lucas Wilson]

Wow, it must suck having such a crazy TV system - We just have 25p and 50i frame rates. I think that 24fps is just played as if it were 25 on TV, as the 4% speed difference is unnoticeable.

And all because in the early 1950s, the NTSC committee wanted to make sure that existing television sets would not have to be modified or replaced in order to properly tune in audio when the world shifted from B/W to Color.

And the entire production universe is *still* suffering the effects.

<sigh>

Lucas
-----
(N)ever (T)wice the (S)ame (C)olor
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

[Mark L. Pederson]

And all because in the early 1950s, the NTSC committee wanted to make sure that existing television sets would not have to be modified or replaced in order to properly tune in audio when the world shifted from B/W to Color.

And the entire production universe is *still* suffering the effects.

<sigh>


let me see ... NTSC committee ... DCI committee ....

[Graeme Nattress]

It's frightening how much we agree on stuff!

Graeme

[Jeremy Newmark]

And all because in the early 1950s, the NTSC committee wanted to make sure that existing television sets would not have to be modified or replaced in order to properly tune in audio when the world shifted from B/W to Color.

And the entire production universe is *still* suffering the effects.

<sigh>


Very true, however someone once pointed out in a discussion about this that back then, the committee had a problem and they made the decision that made the most sense to them at the time. Technology had not evolved in the way that we see it today and if it had to be decided today, it would have been different.

To counter, I agree that it would have been different, but not necessarily better. Just look at the mess that HD has become. I remember a lot of people claiming that HD would make everything easier, because eveything would be the same resolution and frame-rate. Well we've seen how well that turned out. It makes the old days of only having to deal with 2 basic formats (PAL/SECAM and NTSC) a dream.

[GlennChan]

And the entire production universe is *still* suffering the effects.

<sigh>

In my opinion, drop-frame is not very evil at all. If you know what you're doing, it's an annoyance but not a problem that you can't overcome. You just learn how to deal with it.

The truly bad decisions in my opinion are:
1- Rec. 709 changing the luma co-efficients. Some consumer equipment will assume Rec. 601 numbers and use the wrong formula in decoding the signal... this leads to color inaccuracy that can't be fixed. There was very (very very) little to gain from changing the luma co-efficients, and a lot to lose (major color inaccuracy problems, yet another format to deal with).

2- DCI/2k resolution has no technical basis. It would be much better to have stuck with 1920x1080 frame size since there's economies of scale behind it. But insecure marketers/suits feel that they must outspec home theatre in every aspect.

3- You could also make an argument against keeping interlacing in HD. Perhaps interlacing made more sense in 1980 when CRTs were dominant (and they were considering analog transmission)... but now it just makes little sense. Interlaced broadcasting is an inefficient use of bandwidth, and nowadays most broadcasters want to cram as many channels into their spectrum as possible. In satellite, material is heavily compressed in order to get more channels.

I think that a progressive format would have the greatest overall good since most people are:
A- Buying TV sets that won't do 1920x1080 resolution.
B- Those sets have poor de-interlacers.
C- They aren't sitting close enough / their set isn't big enough that 1920x1080 (or 1440x1080; effective resolution is even less) would make a difference.

From a production standpoint, I'd prefer to deal with progressive footage since a lot of online tasks require you to de-interlace. i.e. painting stuff out, roto, etc. etc.

[David Mullen ASC]

2- DCI/2k resolution has no technical basis. It would be much better to have stuck with 1920x1080 frame size since there's economies of scale behind it. But insecure marketers/suits feel that they must outspec home theatre in every aspect.


That's a bit unfair to the technicians and engineers that were part of the DCI committees. I believe the 2K resolution (2048 pixels across) was chosen because it's the most common digital file size for scanned 35mm Full Aperture, plus it's half of 4K (4096 across). And the DCI specs weren't necessarily for the benefit of people shooting with HD cameras.

Maybe 1920 x 1080 should have been a third DCI-complient format though, if it isn't.

But a 1920 x 1080 standard instead of 2K then couldn't handle scans of taller material (like 4-perf 35mm Full Aperture, which is 1.33) and any 2K scans of Super-35 material would have to be scaled down for projection. I'm assuming that the 2K DCI standards include 2048 x 1556 as an option, but I could be wrong.

But to say that 2K has no technical basis isn't accurate -- it's the most common format for D.I. work in the industry actually.

[Graeme Nattress]

I think DCI chose 2k just because it is NOT 1920. Given the vast market for the 1920x1080, and it's relatively low cost compared to 2k, making 2k different from 1920 helped keep thing seperate in the market. Remember Final Touch before Apple bought it. 1920 = $5000, 2048 = $25,000.

Indeed DCI spec was designed with film in mind, and not digital acquisition, or else it would have at least done 2k and 4k with a 16:9 aspect ratio. As it stands, all digital acquisition (practically) is 16:9, which would need pixels chopped off to fit into the DCI spec, putting digital at a disadvantage over film.

As for interlace, Glenn. Totally agree. That horrible old analogue compression method should have been dropped long ago. And indeed, given the way the digital TV is broadcast and the very poor amount of bandwidth allotted to channels, the vast majority of people would benefit if HD broadcast had been dropped in favour of 480p60 (480p24) all in widescreen, with the same or slightly less bandwidth now used for HD, which I've never seen broadcast decently.

Graeme