Technical question on sharpness of RED cameras

[Fred khoshtinat]

Dear All

three months ago ive shot a music video using RED, although the music video itself came out good , im not satisfied enough with the sharpness of the faces and etc.

you can check out my video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggbZJcv-WGE

Kanye West's Good life MV inspired me alot for my project but i couldnt get the sharpness that he has in his video for mine :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEKEjpTzB0Q&feature=fvst

Im more like a post production guy, but since im directing now its so important for me to know what have i done wrong , was it in shooting or was it something that i could fix in color correcting.
Can anyone help me on how to get such result?

[Johnny Friday]

Fred,
How about more information:
1. PL or Nikon or Cannon Lenses?
2. Lens details
3. Format you shot your video
4. Format you transcoded to
5. what software program?
6. you are viewing the soft images in what program? or just the QT proxies? since those show up looking soft.

MOre info about your entire shoot and setup and post flow in order for folks here to give you a proper response

[Fred khoshtinat]

Dear Sir,

The DOP used Nikon ZF Mount Zeiss Lenses
it was in 2K that the production house we were working with converted it into AVI uncompressed. And i used After Effects and Premiere afterwards

thanks for your attention

Regards

[Tom.Wong]

RED is soft at 2k, or at least not as sharp as if you downsampled from a 4k standard. The power of the downsample gives you a lot, not just more dynamic range and less noise. It really helps resolve the quality of your optics and your image a lot better. I've been on shoots with the exact same lenses, they are some of the sharpest lenses I have ever seen on a RED...

[Graeme Nattress]

There are many factors to consider.... You might want to consider a higher shutter speed to reduce motion blur as that effects the perception of sharpness, as does the f-stop which effects the depth of field. Unless you need slowmo on the RED, best to shoot in 4k, dropping to 3k if you need up to 60fps and 2k only if you need up to 120fps. But 2k is not soft if handled well - it just needs a bit more love and attention than a 4k source.

Then there's the workflow - good downsampling to the edit format pays dividends. Also, remembering that the RED footage is not sharpened in camera, and does respond very well to a small amount of post sharpening to taste, as necessary, with the output format in mind.

Graeme

[Johnny Friday]

i've shot PLENTY of 2k at high speed and high shutter and had great results for natural history...not soft in my opinion, but guess it depends a lot on who's operating and how the material is handled.

[Fred khoshtinat]

It seems like its DOP's fault then.. But is it possible that Converting R3D footages to AVI uncompressed files cause this trouble?

[Tom.Wong]

the codec wrapper would have little to do with it, considering it IS uncompressed, although I'm unsure of the values of AVI other than it has a file size limitation. But being uncompressed that should have nothing to do with it. Are you sure you debayered at maximum quality? If so, as Graeme said and knows, you might wanna try a small amount of sharpening on it in post, and just as a piece of advice for the future, you might wanna consider DNXHD or cineform as your choice of codec to edit with, as it's going to be easier on your system than uncompressed will.

as mentioned, a lot of factors go into sharpness, how much your lens is stopped down, shutter speed, and how much you've downsampled. If you are downsampled to 1080p, u might want to try 720p if that's not going to be a big issue, you should see it come together quite a bit better. 2k makes a better 720p then it does a 1080.

Also you should shoot at 4k next time if you don't need high speed. The results are much better.

[CJ Roy]

2k on Red is soft compared to some other cameras. Ends up being 1.6k measured resolution at full debayer.