4K Finishing Folly

[Bruce Allen]

I was at a good cinema recently, where I saw two trailers that I had worked on, back to back. Only later did I remember that for one we did the graphics at 4K, while for the other, the graphics were at 2K.

This sparked off some thoughts...

When watching Master and Commander did you think:
a) Wow, it's going to win a best Cinematography Oscar
b) This is so soft! I wish they'd taken time and money away from the grading and sky replacement work and spent it on going to 4K instead

When you saw Amelie did you think:
a) Wow, such intense golds and greens! And she looks so good with those wide angle lenses
b) Typical French, only working at 2K and worrying about aesthetics instead of tech specs. What were they thinking?

Trailers are finished on everything from 4K to 2K to D5 / HDCAM. I've done many trailers that went through roughly 5 stages of compression before being printed to film. But they were for projection in small art-house theaters so nobody saw the difference. The clients were just happy that we'd saved them enough money on the online for them to have a budget to do a proper sound mix.

Any thoughts on this? To me, 4k RAW acquisition is great. But a 4K finish is stupid pain... unless it's specifically to impress a tech-spec-crazy investor / buyer.

Why not just finish at 2K and if by some crazy chance someone offers you a ton of money for theatrical distribution on screens actually big enough to show the difference... then you can go back and do 4K all the way through.

Why is everyone obsessing about 4K for finishing so much? It's so expensive and time consuming to do right now. On the post side, I'd suggest stopping trying to hack together a system that can online 4K... and instead just put something together that can do HD / 2K reliably and quickly. In a few years' time, ONCE you get that big distribution deal on the basis of the wonderful stuff you've shown at HD / 2K res, then you will be able to put together a 4K system quickly and easier because computers will be faster and cheaper. Also it won't be like you're spending money on a pipe dream of making a feature film in the future. It'll be because you've shot a great film that people love at 2K and want to pay you money to see it finished at 4K.

For my 2c, I think 4K finishing in 2007 is way out in the "stupid" side of the bang-for-the-buck curve. Nearly everyone would be better served by shooting RedCode 4K RAW but immediately going to 2K in RedCine or via some kind of proxy method, except for specific cases where you need to blow up shots. And then once you've finished blowing up shots, etc, do your finishing at 2K.

Anyone disagree?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Brainstorm]

Bruce, I think you've offered a smart and informed opinion.

[Bruce Allen]

Thanks! I also realized it was very long-winded. Summary:

1. 2K was good enough for Amelie and Master And Commander and most trailers
2. Shoot 4K RAW, finish 2K / HD
3. In a few years, 4K will be cheaper and easier to do on computers
4. In the meantime, only go 4K if someone is paying you to do it (eg a distributor saw your 2K-finished movie at a festival, loved it and now wants to distribute it on big screens where you can actually see the 2K/4K difference)

Bruce

[Kristin Stewart]

Bruce,

Your opinion is very interesting, as usually everyone's obsessed about 4K without taking care of the actual most usual way of discovering a movie : TV (from DVD or network).

I completly agree, except for the "Amelie" thing : "Typical French"... :biggrin: you know, for French artists (I'm not one of them, I'm just a French girl, but I have a good address book !), Amelie isn't French at all, on the contrary it's more an American view of France full of cliches... Typical French cinema is cinema by André Téchiné, Jean-Luc Godard, François Ozon, Patrice Chéraud, etc... And French technicians are amongst the best (yeah, I'm not fair !)... look at Philippe Rousselot, Darius Kondhji, etc...

:biggrin: Kristin (just kidding)

[Clayton Harper]

Bruce,

I am 100% in agreement with you. I can do uncompressed 1080p on my FCP set-up but I have no way to author it to something that plays back nicely on my HDTV in my livingroom.

For now and for most users, 4K resolution is overkill but later who knows? That's exactly the point with RED, it wants to be future-proof.

My one wish though is that somehow in the future you could carry over your home-based color-corrections from your NLE to a higher res workflow at a post house. I think it will take some wide adoption in the use of universal LUTS across all kinds of displays.

[Poi Boy]

Totally agree Bruce.
-A

[Bruce Allen]

Thanks Kristin... now that I consider it, I think you are very right about Amelie!

[Simon Blackledge]

I think "Amelie" was stunning. 4K is very high-end/buzzword. I'd be very happy editing grading very fast at 2k.

[Christian Berg]

Yes 4K is a buzzword mostly because people who want Digital cinema to be better than film has to crush all critizism about digital with high resulotion. Of course 2K looks good and I totally agree that finishing in 2K will do just fine for most of us. But soon we will have the 4K editing as standard and when it goes as easy as editing DV the barrier will be gone, and the "buzzword".

[Bruce Allen]

Bruce,
I am 100% in agreement with you.


Thanks!



My one wish though is that somehow in the future you could carry over your home-based color-corrections from your NLE to a higher res workflow at a post house. I think it will take some wide adoption in the use of universal LUTS across all kinds of displays.

That would be great - it will take a while though because not all 3D LUTs are equal. So, all of the players will need to go to a higher-precision / more-control-points LUT at the same time... We also need a unversal language for power windows! Also, plugins. That's kinda do-able now - eg if you edit on Avid Xpress, and finish on a fire / DS / Symphony and your hard work keyframing Sapphire plug-ins seems to make it across. Similarly I've heard you can go FCP -> Quantel if you use Automatic Duck.

Still, I totally agree, it's too painful. That's another reason why I am going to wait it out - hopefully soon either you'll have more interoperability of desktop and finishing apps, or you'll be able to finish more easily on desktop systems.

Bruce

[david farland]

Fair to say most of us are new to 4K.....
However let's say your'e master is going to be distributed in 2K/HD.
You Redcine and produce an SD offline print. Edit it and then think?
CC, some compositing and some reframing......ummm
What format would you prefer to be in doing reframing / panning /compositing?
You know, I'd be testing that stuff and I'd probably be testing the time to do a CC at 4K/2K verses the results.
You know Bruce...I bet your right.....
But then human nature being what it is and I'm looking at my 2K masterpiece and it goes soft....well I'd be glad more than anything else, that I've got the tools to fix it especially if it's noticeable to others and like most things, just a matter of time.

DF

[Nick Shaw]

Just because you finish at 2k/HD doesn't mean you can't go back to the 4k original for particular shots that would benefit from re-framed or rotoscoped at 4k, then down-scaled to 2k. Just no need to do the majority of shots at that rez.

[Bruce Allen]

Fair to say most of us are new to 4K.....
However let's say your'e master is going to be distributed in 2K/HD.
You Redcine and produce an SD offline print.

Okay.


CC, some compositing and some reframing...... ummm
What format would you prefer to be in doing reframing / panning /compositing?

For an extreme re-frame of a shot, I would go back to the 4K RAW and use RedCine to make a blowup of the right portion of that shot, rendering the blowup out to 2K. For a blowup + pan / zoom, I'd RedCine that specific shot at 4K... but once I'm done processing it, I'd render out to a 2K file. There would be no point to write that shot out to film at 4K. If you're doing a 200% blowup, you'd have no more than 2K's worth of information on the screen anyway.

Bruce

[Bruce Allen]

Nick, you got there before me! Sorry about the duplicate (and again more long-winded) info.
Bruce

[HD Hildebrand]

[QUOTE=Bruce Allen;14632]Nearly everyone would be better served by shooting RedCode 4K RAW but immediately going to 2K in RedCine or via some kind of proxy method, except for specific cases where you need to blow up shots. And then once you've finished blowing up shots, etc, do your finishing at 2K.


That's exactly my method to the madness.

[Michael Schrengohst]

Just because you finish at 2k/HD doesn't mean you can't go back to the 4k original for particular shots that would benefit from re-framed or rotoscoped at 4k, then down-scaled to 2k. Just no need to do the majority of shots at that rez.

Bingo....
Most of us here will never work on films but we do the occasional spot that might benefit from higher res for EFX work....
I have been editing greenscreen from an HVX and they are going back to re-shoot a few shots that just did not cut the mustard....
If I only had the RED now....

[david farland]

Thanks for the solutions guys....

Saw a demo of Quantel Pablo 4k system the other night.
He was doing a little color correction, reframe, compositing.
No proxy's here.
There was a little render engine constantly running in the background trying to keep the system realtime. It sorta keep up but not quite. It was manipulating multiple 16bit 4K files quickly, but not quite real time.
The operator said for number crunching they didn't use typical CPU architecture, it was PLA's (programmable logic arrays) to get this kinda speed. The system was about $A500,000.

DF

[Michael Schrengohst]

Great! At that price I can two!

[Thomas Mathai]

Thanks for the solutions guys....

Saw a demo of Quantel Pablo 4k system the other night.
He was doing a little color correction, reframe, compositing.
No proxy's here.
There was a little render engine constantly running in the background trying to keep the system realtime. It sorta keep up but not quite. It was manipulating multiple 16bit 4K files quickly, but not quite real time.
The operator said for number crunching they didn't use typical CPU architecture, it was PLA's (programmable logic arrays) to get this kinda speed. The system was about $A500,000.

DF

Demos are rehearsed dog and pony shows. They don't reflect real world most of the time.

[MikeCurtis]

I 90% agree with Bruce about shoot 4K deliver 2K/1920x1080, with a Nick Shaw 8% quibble - yes, I agree about going back to the 4K for VFX - pulling keys especially, or roto, or repo, or pan/scan.

Lucas, however, said he could push in about 30% from F900 footage for Episode 1 before it was, I forgot how he described it, either noticeable or painful or something.

That said, I've been watching a lot of HD lately (just got my first HDTV, a 60" 1080p set). Already having a fairly picky eye (I've been working with high res images for print/video/film/etc. for 15+ years), I can already eyeball 720p vs 1080 originated material, or the quality of the film transfer, or the sharpness difference between new/old film stocks or first rate vs. not-so transfers.

Sharp matters.

But having good source matters too - so shoot 4K, do VFX work at 4K (or at least render 2K mattes or results from 4K comps), but 2K/HD will be fine for most folks most of the time.

This'll be true for 99% of the folks shooting. But hey - if you have budget and are doing a big movie with known distribution and it won't be stealing budget from your color correction, sound, VFX or other post production steps, why not!

You can usually go back and re-render (if you've set your pipeline up correctly) to 4K if you want/need to.

I think this'll be valid advice until there are many more 4K outlets.

And even if you have a known 4K outlet, don't forget that if:

-you aren't in the first X rows (what, 25% or so?) of the theater,
-the lenses you shot with were totally first rate
-the focus when you shot was spot on
-the focus in the theater's projector is spot on
-your vision is 20/20 and your glasses aren't smudged

...you probably can't eyeball the difference between the two...

...but marketing differences (Shot & Projected in Glorious 4K!) DO matter as well...

-mike

[Ace]

When you downsample from REDS 4K sensor down to 2k, you are still sampling colour, tone and range from 4k.. Youre still getting all the benifits of a 4K picture but on a smaller pixel grid. Also due to the benefits of oversampling get a much finer picture.. So for most, editing in 2K should not have any impact on the artform. If you were shooting 2k windowed, that would be a different matter though.

Ive said it before and ill say it again though, art will always take precedence over technique.

[GlennChan]

Our vernier resolution exceeds our "eye chart" vision by several times. Vernier resolution is our ability to detect the relative alignment of two dots/lines/whatever.

"Eye chart" vision, to me, is our ability to read letters on an eye chart.

If we want *perfect* resolution, then we would need greater than 4K to achieve perfect vernier resolution. In practice, I think the industry will be 2K for a while (image quality can be improved more by focusing other areas).

Info about vernier resolution:
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/lum_hyperacuity/index.html

[Lucas Wilson]

Demos are rehearsed dog and pony shows. They don't reflect real world most of the time.

I have worked as a professional full-time demo artist for both Avid and Quantel.And I can tell you from having done (no exaggeration) thousands of demos, that this is categorically untrue at the high-end.

At NAB, IBC, Interbee, Broadcast Asia, and the other major industry trade shows - of course there are canned presentations. That's the only way to cover a large amount of material in a short time for a varied audience from multiple disciplines.

But for one-on-one demos, any good demo artist avoids a script like the plague. The ultimate purpose of a demo is to sell a system. And the best way to sell a system is to show someone how it will work in the real world. If you sell someone a bag of tricks, it *will* come back to haunt you, and it will most likely end up in bitterness, acrimony, and possibly legal action.

Most of the fulltime demo guys I know are very honest about what their system can and cannot do. It's pointless to lie or try to overly inflate capabilities, because a customer will find out on the very first day with a system that what you told them was a crock and they will hunt you down.

As a prospect, your duty is to be a conscientious consumer. Buying a high-end post system is like buying any other expensive item - car, house, education, etc. Caveat emptor.

I know from experience demoing and selling Avid|DS, Quantel eQ/iQ, and ASSIMILATE SCRATCH - the last step in any evaluation process is putting a system in at the prospect location and letting them try it in the real world on their projects with their artists. If you blow sunshine at first, it will only make you and your company look bad at the end.

Best,

Lucas
------
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Ralph Oshiro]

You can usually go back and re-render (if you've set your pipeline up correctly) to 4K if you want/need to.Great post! Good to see you posting here, Mike! As for me, I'll acquire in 4K (and archive it, just in case that big studio deal comes through), but only finish in 1080p.

[Jim Arthurs]

When you downsample from REDS 4K sensor down to 2k, you are still sampling colour, tone and range from 4k.. Youre still getting all the benifits of a 4K picture but on a smaller pixel grid. Also due to the benefits of oversampling get a much finer picture..[/B]

Gosh, half of my early posts were summed up by this statement. I've always said that the RED will be the best 2K camera in the world because it's 4K.

There is always a "sweet spot", and for RED ONE that sweet spot is the relative ease of post at 2K/1080 and the benefits of super-sampling to give you that 2K.

I've had a decades long philosophy to "shoot one higher" than you post.

[Michael Morlan]

Great thread! As a CONTENT CREATOR, I am always interested in "what is good enough?" I avoid, like the plague;

o early adoption (with one rare exception, the RED One);
o buying the latest, fastest gear, or;
o working in resolutions higher than my anticipated deliverable.

First and always, I'll spend my money on the production value that goes into the frame. I'll spend my time tweaking a script to perfection and inspiring actors to finding truth in their performances. I'll scrabble for additional funds so I can hire the best and brightest crew. But, I certainly won't agonize over building a 4K editing/finishing solution... until it's time to do so.

Michael

[Chris Kenny]

Finishing in 4K doesn't have to cost a fortune, if you never go uncompressed. If you're sufficiently patient, I don't see why you can't do a 4K conform on a decent desktop these days, without high-priced specialized tools.

The real issue is, what do you do with it when you've got it? You can't write it out to any sort of standard video tape or disc format. Computers generally won't play it back in real-time even off of hard drives (if it's compressed, the CPU isn't fast enough, if it's not, the disks aren't fast enough), and assuming they could, there are hardly any displays out there with that sort of resolution. The number of 4K projectors in the world is pretty small, and getting things encoded for the media servers they connect to does require using specialty tools, I believe.

Realistically, most indie filmmakers are going to be interested in producing standard and high-def DVDs to send around to potential buyers, and maybe going out to HDCAM, which some festivals want. These are all 1080p or less. And people who aren't doing features are going to have even less reason to create deliverables at anything above 1080p.

4K acquisition + 2K/1080p finishing is, as others have said, definitely the way to go.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I'm more interested in short format right now than long format (commercials, short films etc) just because I usually bore of the subject matter after 6 months and I'm a stickler for focusing all of my efforts onto something instead of spreading out my energy across a huge unwieldy process.

For me I'll probably never 4k online until it'll run on my mom's home computer. Why? Because I HATE WAITING! I'm the most impatient human being on earth. Waiting is time when creativity is dripping out my ear down my arm and into the drain. I hate rendering, I hate capturing, I hate scanning, all of it, I hate it. I love working with creative talented people and I expect the same of the equipment I and they use. Your editor wouldn't ever sit you down and say "Hey Gavin, I know you want to see what I'm working on, but everytime I make a change I'm going to go into a corner and stare at the wall for 15 minutes while I process the idea that just came to me." (Especially if your name wasn't Gavin! :blush:)

That is why I plan on shooting in 4k (so that I have more control later) and editing in SD. That's right SD. I don't even understand what all the hubbub is about in doing 2k onlines. A nice Anamorphic SD is far more detailed than I would ever need to edit.

Grading and compositing are trivial tasks to undertake with proxies. The one time my no waiting policy is absolved when I'm asleep. If I can point it to the 4k online footage, walk away and take a nap and drink a cup of coffee while it chugs away for 2 days. I don't mind. I already know what's going to come out if my deadline isn't too soon, it can take a week for all I care, I already have an SD master to show.

So to summarize this overly long winded rant. I agree with the OP, but I also disagree. Yes, online 4k is stupid. But when a 4k deliverable is practically free, why not?

I can't count how many times I have had a 720p project that I finished only to later be incredibly discouraged I didn't have a full 1080 or 2k copy. Or before that when I had an SD copy to be dissapointed I didn't have a 720p copy. I can't think of a reason why I would want 4k now. But I just know in the bottom of my heart in 10 years I'm going to be sitting around dissapointed I didn't have an 8k copy for some current work.

And yes to answer your question having a little technical glitz such as "4k" on the project spec can excite investors. Rational or not on their part, that's profitable.

[Bruce Allen]

im.thatoneguy, I agree with you 99%... comments follow:

> That is why I plan on shooting in 4k (so that I have more control later) and
> editing in SD. That's right SD. I don't even understand what all the hubbub
> is about in doing 2k onlines. A nice Anamorphic SD is far more detailed than
> I would ever need to edit.

Your SD idea is not crazy at all. That's how we do all conceptual work for trailers & main titles. We usually don't even bother with anamorphic - we keep it plain, letterboxed SD. Only once the studio has given us the green light, then do we do the up-res to 2K. Otherwise, we are restricting our creative options through excessive render times too early in the process.

> I agree with the OP, but I also disagree. Yes, online 4k is stupid. But when
> a 4k deliverable is practically free, why not?

4k for finish is not free because even if you're rendering overnight (making CPU time "free"), you're still going to need 4x the hard drive space. Which gets costly especially once you consider that you want that those 4k renders need to be backed up because otherwise you're going to lose a month's worth of overnight renders. I speak this as a someone who approves of and uses your workflow ;) Actually I am even crazier - I used to sometimes work for an hour at night, set an overnight render to go, then wake up half an hour early the next morning and try to tweak it and set the render to go on my home PC during the day when I'm at work.

> But I just know in the bottom of my heart in 10 years I'm going to be sitting
> around dissapointed I didn't have an 8k copy for some current work.

Naah, unless they make some major breakthroughs to human vision in 10 years' time. I'm sure our eyes have an equivalent resolution way, way beyond 8k, but I'm sure that 10 years in the future you'll still have no problem watching classic movies, some of whom I think were pretty close to 2k in resolution. Hopefully we'll have some great-looking 2K finish Red movies included in that collection then...

...and if I'm very lucky, maybe my little film shot on an $1000 HV20 with a $1000 35mm adapter but with good script, acting, lighting, sound, editing and production design might squeak in there too...

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Jim Arthurs]

That is why I plan on shooting in 4k (so that I have more control later) and editing in SD. That's right SD.

I wouldn't rule out using DVCPRO 720p as your new RED "off-line" format. After all, it's only 2X the pixel count of SD yet still cuts like butter on laptops. I'm amazed at what I can do with several real-time layers with the stuff in FCP.

My motto; "720p is the new SD".

[Michael Schrengohst]

I like that motto, that is my new mantra as well.....

[Poi Boy]

I would go one up and say 1080p is the new sd.
-A

[Mike]

I'd say ultimately it depends on your resources and your intended audiences.

If you have the resources and think it's cool to output to 4k , why not. And of course, if your intended audiences are tech people who can see the difference between 2k and 4k with one glance, 4k definitely is an option.

But for most of us who's working on budget constraint, 2k is realistic. My intended audience are the general public, I shoot on HD most of the time, and none of them even know what film, HD or DV means, and definitely have no idea what 1080, 2k or 4k is. And 99% of the general audience won't know if a film was shot on HD , 2k, 4k etc unless maybe you put them side to side and point out the difference to them. A lot of films are projected on 2k all over the world and there have been no issue.

For now, we'll set up our post for 2k finishing.

[Ralph Oshiro]

I'm more interested in short format right now than long format (commercials, short films etc) just because I usually bore of the subject matter after 6 months and I'm a stickler for focusing all of my efforts onto something instead of spreading out my energy across a huge unwieldy process.

For me I'll probably never 4k online until it'll run on my mom's home computer. Why? Because I HATE WAITING! I'm the most impatient human being on earth. Waiting is time when creativity is dripping out my ear down my arm and into the drain. I hate rendering, I hate capturing, I hate scanning, all of it, I hate it.We have a lot in common! I'm so over my own projects after a few months! And, I HATE waiting!

[Graeme Nattress]

Isn't it nice to have the choice though. Um, do I finish in HD, 2K or 4K today..... ? :-)

Graeme

[Jim Arthurs]

Hey Graeme... if you guys continue to push 4K post for the little guy, realize that one of the ONLY places IN THE WORLD they can look at it on the big screen is projected by YOUR shiny new 4K projector... so you'll have to set up screenings times at your facility for RED owners FREE OF CHARGE.

It's the least you can do... :)

[Mike]

Isn't it nice to have the choice though. Um, do I finish in HD, 2K or 4K today..... ? :-)

Graeme


Definitely good to have such choice. So hope that Red will keep on helping the indie filmmakers to push the frontier.

[Stuart English]

One of the key points about RED ONE is we are building a camera that is capable of servicing our customers in the future as well as today. So if 4K isn't what you want to do right now, that's fine - go ahead and do 720p, 1080p or 2K and when you are ready for 4K finishing the RED ONE camera and REDCINE are already there.

[Mike the beginner]

It would be nice to be able to compress any 4k material much further than the ten times compression i think red are talking about. This would be useful for archiving purposes. I have one particular project i have in mind that i would like to produce it on 1080p then perhaps in ten years time return to the master copy in 4k and just press a button to restore the footage from say thirty times compression to 10 times and re- do the whole project in 4k.

I wonder if that will be possible? As an aside i loved Graeme's intepretation of colour in the images seen so far with red. I hope we will get some fixed settings so the in-experienced can get on with learning without fiddling with the colour set up.

Mike the beginner

[Bruce Allen]

Stuart, I state in my first post that I think you should record in 4K (REDCODE RAW). Just don't finish that way. Finish in 2K.

I also think that if you guys cut any features from the RED, it should be the 720p recording option. Practically nobody is going to use that and it's just wasting Graeme and his team's time.

Mike the beginner - if you really wanted to, you might be able to approach a 2:1 compression ratio well, by doing a non-realtime compression method on the REDCODE RAW stuff - eg RAR, to a lesser extent ZIP. But I think that'll be as far as you can go without losing quality. If someone figured out a lossless 30:1 compression scheme that can compress already-highly-compressed data at that ratio, they'd be a millionaire. I fear it might be mathematically impossible however...

If you were to go further, you might also lose the joys of RAW. Maybe 4k Cineform is what you want if you're really crazy about achieving a higher compression ratio? But they haven't invented that yet.

Also, 4K REDCODE RAW is pretty great in terms of data rate to quality. If I were you I'd just stick it.

If there was some kind of RedCine tool where you can delete the parts of the footage that you don't end up using, but keep little chunks of data from where you're pulling your shots, that would be great.

Yes, I definitely think if I were a Red owner, I'd rather see Graeme working on that than on 720p recording... in fact if he made REDCINE really great, I'd be fine to only have REDCODE RAW 4K and windowed REDCODE RAW as shooting options.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Mike the beginner]

Good points Bruce. But hey, Red Cine is already great:biggrin:

I think Graeme will spring a few surprises by the time we reach NAB:wink:

Mike the beginner

[Finner]

Stuart, I explicitly state in my first post that I think you should RECORD in 4K (REDCODE RAW). Just don't finish that way. Finish in 2K.

I also think that if you guys cut any features from the RED, it should be the 720p recording option. Practically nobody is going to use that and it's just wasting Graeme and his team's time.

Mike the beginner - if you really wanted to, you might be able to approach a 2:1 compression ratio well, by doing a non-realtime compression method on the REDCODE RAW stuff - eg RAR, to a lesser extent ZIP. But I think that'll be as far as you can go without losing quality. If someone figured out a lossless 30:1 compression scheme that can compress already-highly-compressed data at that ratio, they'd be a millionaire. I fear it might be mathematically impossible however...

If you were to go further, you might also lose the joys of RAW. Maybe 4k Cineform is what you want if you're really crazy about achieving a higher compression ratio? But they haven't invented that yet.

Also, 4K REDCODE RAW is pretty great in terms of data rate to quality. If I were you I'd just stick it.

If there was some kind of RedCine tool where you can delete the parts of the footage that you don't end up using, but keep little chunks of data from where you're pulling your shots, that would be great.

Yes, I definitely think if I were a Red owner, I'd rather see Graeme working on that than on 720p recording... in fact if he made REDCINE really great, I'd be fine to only have REDCODE RAW 4K and windowed REDCODE RAW as shooting options.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

Bruce

I am pretty sure the 720p recording feature gives us a 120fps option. So the 720p is actually a very valuable option.

[Mike the beginner]

Bruce

I am pretty sure the 720p recording feature gives us a 120fps option. So the 720p is actually a very valuable option.

It does. i am hoping to make use of this facility on my first fishing project.

Mike the beginner.

[Bruce Allen]

Ah, 120fps only at 720p. Gotcha! Thanks for the correction.

Although as an ex computer programmer, I'd say that if Graeme only had to worry about 2 formats (4k REDCODE & 2k windowed REDCODE) instead of the ton he does now, maybe he would have the time to optimize the 2k windowed REDCODE to do 120fps. Which would be better for all of us.

But I don't know enough about the setup they're using (FPGA, right?) so that's pure speculation.

Bruce

[david farland]

....if Graeme only had to worry about 2 formats (4k REDCODE & 2k windowed REDCODE) instead of the ton he does now, maybe he would have the time to optimize the 2k windowed REDCODE to do 120fps. Which would be better for all of us.
Bruce

.....Sure for now he could be concentrating on 2k@120fps for the 'few' that actually need it, but how would he get it out of camera?
No raw port as yet!!

DF

[Graeme Nattress]

Stop all this "Graeme" stuff - there's a team of people working on this, and I'm not writing much code on it at all. I've been more on the guiding the design and prototype code side of things. Now the prototype code works, but if you saw it, and compared it to what the full REDCINE is like, you'd laugh your pants off at how ugly my prototype is. But it's great for experimenting with algorithms and working things out, so it meets it's purpose.

Graeme

[Bruce Allen]

Sorry, Graeme. It's just you're the guy who answers all the time ;) If other members of the coding team show up on the board I'm sure they will be similarly showered with praise.

By the way, good luck with everything! If everyone who read "The Actor Prepares" also had to read "Wavelets for Computer Graphics", the respect for what is being done here would grow even further.

I'm very impressed with the results you guys are getting, just based on Cinematography.net samples (which I know are preliminary anyway). From ther I don't see the need for uncompressed RAW at all, really.

Question - there's no reason you couldn't put a faster compression chip in the Red in the future, right? Everyone assumes that the only thing upgraded would be the modular sensor, but couldn't you also go the other route - eg in 2 years' time, keep the same sensor, but have a compression engine that does REDCODE RAW 60fps 4K and 120fps 2K?

Bruce

[david farland]

I think your name is misused as a shorthand in this forum because you're the mainface or voice of REDCODE here. Maybe some of the others in the team would like to chime in. But I for one hope your not the only guy working on REDCINE. We expect you're a chief strategist in this area thou and doing a great job. Apologies to any other members on team (unsung heros) who would be doing a bucket load of great work on REDCINE!
DF

Stop press: Bruce, you beat me to it!

[Mike the beginner]

I suppose we all get carried away when you see so much going on.

So well done to the red team (all of you) and remember to keep a few surprises for us all at NAB.:biggrin:

Mike the beginner

[Graeme Nattress]

The rest of the team is too busy working to post on forums :-) I just like to give credit where it's due.

Graeme

[Jaime Vallés]

I just saw this thread now, and have to agree completely with the first post. I'm going to shoot in 4K Redcode RAW using Nikon lenses, but finishing in either 1080p or 2K. After seeing Mission Impossible 3 on 2K digital projection at the Zigfield theater in NYC, I can't think of a single reason to finish in 4K. And that was a full-blown big-budget Hollywood production! Indie films (which is what most of us here will be working on, I assume) have even less reason to spend the $$$ of 4K finishing, when 1080p or 2K is good enough for Tom Cruise! Spend the extra money on improved coloring or VFX. THAT will make a much bigger difference in the look of the movie than the whole 4K vs 2K thing.

[david farland]

Made me think of this quote from here (http://www.carltonbale.com/category/home-theater-audio/page/2/)

'......the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) states the the most important aspects of picture quality are (in order):

1) contrast ratio,
2) color saturation,
3) color accuracy,
4) resolution.

Whoever the ISF are!!

DF

[Rob Lohman]

The rest of the team is too busy working to post on forums :-)

*waves* :bye2:

It is true I'm really too busy though..... and of course let's not forget Deanan as well! And Graeme's magic pixies!

[Bruce Allen]

Yaay Rob and Deanan. Hope your week of coding goes well.

Bruce

[Graeme Nattress]

I've got the pixies working over time.

Graeme

[Stokestack]

'......the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) states the the most important aspects of picture quality are (in order):

1) contrast ratio,
2) color saturation,
3) color accuracy,
4) resolution.


Interesting and curious that noise didn't make the top four.

[Graeme Nattress]

I don't think you can rate image quality like that. Noise is important, and really it's part of dynamic range, which you could call contrast ratio if you want.

[Tom Lowe]

I really don't understand this. A few months from now -- perhaps even now -- any high-end editing PC should be able to edit 4K REDCODE online, should it not? Why would you edit in anything else?

I remember when people were saying it's impossible or nuts to online 720p without a proxy... that was quickly shown to be simple as pie once people starting rocking HVX's and similar 720p cameras. Why wouldn't the same exact thing happen for 4K compressed? The Data rates are not that different. Either the REDCODE itself, or some other codec like Cineform Prospect 4K should be able to make 4K editing a reality for everyone.

Then, you edit and CC in 4K REDCODE (or Cineform or whatever) and export out the finished product to whatever you want -- SD, DVD, 720p, 1080p, 2K or 4K. Your master edit will be your native 4K REDCODE footage archive, and this would include, if I am not mistaken, even your overcranked RAW DATA PORT footage, which would at some point have been converted to REDCODE by a computer cranking away at it off camera.

Am I wrong about this? Something I am missing?

[GlennChan]

As soon as you add effects, performance will slow down a lot. Currently, editing systems like Final Cut Pro don't really do real-time HD (full 1920x1080). It's not very interactive once you try to do basic painting, color correction with masks, etc. etc.

If you have a very effects-heavy timeline, then it's all the more reason to work at a lower resolution.

2- You still will have difficulty viewing 4k. There's currently lots of HD viewing options, and they are getting more affordable.

3- And still no way of showing 4K. Not everyone is doing a theatrical release... and even then, not all projectors will be 4K.

(Ok, this is just a re-iteration of what other people have said in this thread.)

[Tom Lowe]

Sure you might not have a 4K monitor but that won't stop you from editing the 4K footage on the best monitor you have.

Another thing to do is to get your edit done, then save CCing for last, which should make the whole thing go more smoothly.

I don't know anything about effects. I'm just talking about a small indie feature with basic edits and dissolves and fades and CC as the last step. Why not do it 4K from beginning to end? On the off chance you get distribution, you're ready to transfer to 35mm, and if not, you always have a pristine 4K copy from which to export whatever resolution you need, downsampled for superior quality.

[Bruce Allen]

I really don't understand this. A few months from now -- perhaps even now -- any high-end editing PC should be able to edit 4K REDCODE online, should it not?
I am doubtful. AFAIK, Red has never said that you could edit 4K REDCODE. They don't even have a QT wrapper for it announced yet. That's why they have REDCINE - you need to convert to a format that you CAN edit.


I remember when people were saying it's impossible or nuts to online 720p without a proxy... that was quickly shown to be simple as pie once people starting rocking HVX's and similar 720p cameras. Why wouldn't the same exact thing happen for 4K compressed? The Data rates are not that different. Either the REDCODE itself, or some other codec like Cineform Prospect 4K should be able to make 4K editing a reality for everyone.

The hard drive data rates are only part of the problem. Cineform is promising, as would be REDCODE if and when they make a QT codec, I agree. But at some point you're going to have to decompress fully in order to push the pixels to the graphics card, or to your dissolve or whatever. 720p is just DV x2.5. 4K is full HD x 4. Which is a lot.

Also, for one thing, the hardware might be able to do it, but the software needs to optimized to work with that hardware too. You can't just add more cores and expect linear scaling of performance.

Bruce

[Chris Kenny]

Desktop computers are more than four times as fast now as they were when people started editing 1080p on them....

That said, 4K online just isn't really necessary at the moment. If you don't have a screen which can display it anyway, why not just online at 1080p and conform the 4K later? In many cases it would probably be much later, since there's not much reason to do a 4K conform of an indie film unless it actually gets distribution. (It's probably not worth doing on your own dime even if you get into Sundance or something. They'll take an HDCAM tape, and if your movie is any good, that'll be enough for buyers to get interested.)

[Tom Lowe]

Desktop computers are more than four times as fast now as they were when people started editing 1080p on them....

That said, 4K online just isn't really necessary at the moment. If you don't have a screen which can display it anyway, why not just online at 1080p and conform the 4K later? In many cases it would probably be much later, since there's not much reason to do a 4K conform of an indie film unless it actually gets distribution. (It's probably not worth doing on your own dime even if you get into Sundance or something. They'll take an HDCAM tape, and if your movie is any good, that'll be enough for buyers to get interested.)

Not to be stubborn, but why bother with proxies and EDLs and conforms and all that, when you can just edit the native footage at 4K compressed? Does anyone really think the hardware will not be able to handle it? Computers are already blazing fast now, and will only get more powerful over the next year. I have no interest at all in offlining my Red footage if I do not absolutely have to. I like having everything self-contained and archived at the higest res possible in its finished form.

I believe the guys at Cineform when they say 4K will be a walk in the park on a top-end PC over the next 2 years. I also believe that the Red team will offer a great codec we can work with on superfast machines.

[Chris Kenny]

As others have pointed out, you don't want unnecessary slowdowns while editing; it screws up the flow of the thing. If Red can deliver something like the Cineform workflow, where you're editing lower resolution video extracted in real-time from the 4K files, and if your NLE will do real-time regardless of codec (as some people suspect the next version of FCP might), then yes, editing from the original files will be the way to go.

But if one or both of those things doesn't happen, editing 720p DVCPRO HD (or whatever) and conforming later is going to be much smoother at first. Sure, in five years editing 4K at full resolution in real-time will be easy and software will all support what it needs to support. But we're not quite there yet, and we probably won't be on the day the cameras start shipping.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I'm in agreement with Tom. I think the biggest folly with editing 4K is the lack of ways to display it full res without expensive projection systems. REDCODE RAW and even REDCODE RGB don't take up that much space. REDCODE RAW eats up way less disk space than uncompressed 480p 4:2:2 RGB, which lots of people edit in. Most current workstation level systems can handle 2 or more streams of 1080p/2K without stressing, why is it so hard to believe that 4K is that big of a stretch.

Mark my words, by the end of 2008, shooting, editing and finishing in 4K will be no big deal. Just as shooting, editing and finishing in 720p or 1080p is no big deal now when it was just a few years ago. The biggest stumbling block for 4K finish and delivery is going to be film out if needed. And that's not a big deal either, it just costs more than 2K film out. I don't know if it's going to get much cheaper either... Demand for film delivery is going to decline as digital projection increases.

[Chris Kenny]

Most current workstation level systems can handle 2 or more streams of 1080p/2K without stressing, why is it so hard to believe that 4K is that big of a stretch.

Like I said, it's mostly going to be a matter of software support. Cineform has already demonstrated the hardware is up to it. (Well, not working at full 4K resolution, but working directly from 4K files, which is basically the same thing at this point since almost nobody can display 4K material.)

[Tom Lowe]

Like I said, it's mostly going to be a matter of software support. Cineform has already demonstrated the hardware is up to it. (Well, not working at full 4K resolution, but working directly from 4K files, which is basically the same thing at this point since almost nobody can display 4K material.)

Yep. This conversation is giving me deja vu, because I remember these same things being said about 720p and 1080p. But computer technology just moves at an unassailable pace, and 4K wavelet compressed editing online is the next natural step.

[Bruce Allen]

I believe the guys at Cineform when they say 4K will be a walk in the park on a top-end PC over the next 2 years. I also believe that the Red team will offer a great codec we can work with on superfast machines.
Me too, but that's on a high-end machine in 2 years' time. Not now, not 6 months' time, but 2 years. That is a big difference.

Being even just 6 months ahead of your time... sucks. I remember shooting a music video on an FX1E before FCP or Avid could ingest HDV natively. That was a dumb idea. I think I was playing the song 4% faster than it should have been and that my post workflow was 50i -> 25p -> 4% timeline slowdown -> 24p. I thought I was so cutting edge and indie becaise I was going to get a similar product to what I had been doing in the beginning of 2004 with Varicams with Technocranes, but for 1/30th of the budget. Anyway, the process was horrible. If I had waited just a few months for the post side to be solidly there, I would have saved a ton of pain.

Obviously we will get to 4K soon. I mean, in 1996 I was using MediaStudio 2.5 on a 120mhz Pentium and remember that I'd have to cross fingers and defrag the SCSI drive in order to get it to play 384x288 @ 25fps without dropping frames.

All I am saying is that, here and now, 4K finishing is not there yet.

Bruce
www.boacinema.com

[Bruce Allen]

ADDENDUM:

By the way, the reason I am up writing this at 2:40 AM is because I am finishing opening titles for a film and #&#&@ After Effects keeps crashing when I try to render an effect on a stack of 10 3000x1800 layers with 3D & shadows. I need to do it at 3000 because I am panning across the layers.

This is on a dual 2.7 G5 with 4gb RAM or something - the second fastest Mac available for AE (until they release an Intel version and Intel versions of all of the plugins I use). I am having to farm out the damn layers one by one across the other 5 G5s.

Thank goodness I don't have to deliver 4K on this one or else I'd have to make the layers I am panning across some stupidly big size like 6000x3000 and then I'd be in even more of a world of pain than I am now.

Okay, I am going to end this happy bulletin from a post house somewhere in Santa Monica and wish you all a more pleasant night than the one I'm having.

Bruce
www.boacinema.com

[Jim Arthurs]

Thank goodness I don't have to deliver 4K on this one or else I'd have to make the layers I am panning across some stupidly big size like 6000x3000 and then I'd be in even more of a world of pain than I am now.
www.boacinema.com

That's my #232 good reason to post at 2K/1080... Doing fx at 4K nominal means often needing to do things at a LOT bigger resolution...environment maps, over rendering to prevent jaggies, etc. Stuff that we cringe at today doing 2K. It just isn't pratical YET to do that for a volume of FX shots posting 4K...

[Tom Lowe]

I mean, in 1996 I was using MediaStudio 2.5 on a 120mhz Pentium and remember that I'd have to cross fingers and defrag the SCSI drive in order to get it to play 384x288 @ 25fps without dropping frames.


Haha, the good old days.

Bruce I understand what you are saying about 4K uncompressed or with effects, but I think you are underestimating current computers and their ability to edit wavelet compressed 4K at reasonable data rates.

Maybe Graeme, Rob, or David Newman from Cineform will chime in. Even since David said Cineform was doing 4K on a high-end PC a few months ago, it seems that PC power has doubled lately, with no end in sight to the amazing leaps in processing power due to the whole multi-core trend.

Well I'm hoping so anyway.

[P Andersson]

that's the way that I understand it to, you should be able to go through and make a rough edit selecting the flow of the piece without color correction etc directly from the 4K wavelet compressed footage, without having to go throught redcine first

then i agree again, as soon as you start to do the effects and more precise moves, you might want to select that part and render it out to different size and add your multilayered stuff onto that

and perhaps we will see a NLE with the ability to handle different sizes in the same timeline so both the unrendered original raw wavelet footage and the sized and manipulated footage can just be exchanged piece by piece

[Tom Lowe]

So is it basically that Cineform Prospect HD works with the 4K native wavelet footage, but shows you a sort of proxy on your editing screen, 1080p or whatever? That would be fine, because none of us have monitors that can do 4K anyway. The Dell and Apple cinema widescreens can do 2K, I believe, so maybe that is a good proxy resolution.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

When you work in a wavelett codec you get 1/2^n resolutions for free.

So 4k also is 2k, 1k .5k etc.

So what the editor is able to do is to just show the editor the 1k version and only call/process the 1k version in the viewport until you hit render. And then it does all the math on the 4k resolution image. Essentially they're built in proxies.

I believe what was previously discussed was not real time 4k editing, just real time cc and editing on one of the lighter proxies.

[Chris Kenny]

So is it basically that Cineform Prospect HD works with the 4K native wavelet footage, but shows you a sort of proxy on your editing screen, 1080p or whatever?

Yes, exactly. Wavelet compression makes it fairly easy to extract a low resolution proxy without having to decompress and downscale the entire frame. It's not clear if Red could get this to work with just with a cleverly written QuickTime codec or whether it would require more extensive NLE support. If the latter, expect to wait awhile for NLE vendors to catch up.

[Tom Lowe]

Yes, exactly. Wavelet compression makes it fairly easy to extract a low resolution proxy without having to decompress and downscale the entire frame. It's not clear if Red could get this to work with just a cleverly written QuickTime codec or whether it would require more extensive NLE support. If the latter, expect to wait awhile for NLE vendors to catch up.

This is great. You could use a Dell 30" for your timeline 2K monitor, right? It does better than 2K resolution.

http://images.pcworld.com/reviews/graphics/124908-2405p054-1b.jpg

[david farland]

Thank you guys…you rock

How difficult/accurate is it with wavelet compression codecs to conform a low rez version of a high rez master back to that high rez master.....particularly after you’ve done some offline slicing/dicing of the low rez version?

I’m think this is what Rob/Stuart/Graeme have done very successfully with REDCINE!

I think it makes no sense to do ANY traditional offline works in anything other than in a REDCINE low rez offline version i.e. DV, DVCPRO.

Hopefully, RED’s exporting & importing via RPL of REDCINE’s downrezzed footage i.e. DV, DVCPRO will be clean enough when you come to reimport it back into REDCINE.
I don’t know how they do it, but I think as long as you keep to standard offline EDL/XML compliant edits, REDCINE will track those changes via RPL & their pixel mapping between REDCODE and QT/Other codecs.

This tracking in/out of the offline stage hopefully is above the quality bar of what REDCODE produces anyway, so as the RED team have been saying for ages….do it the RED way…use a lowrez REDCINE offline copy….don’t bust your arse offlining in 2K until your ready to online in a 2K/4K version and we’ll help you there with an excellent 2K/4K ‘offlined’ negative! Said like a true fanboy!

So only spend excessive amounts of cash on online computer tasks!

Just a point with future proofing however, i.e. outputing a 1080p master now and when you’re ready produce a 4K copy in the future
…..you’ll need to go back to your 1080p offlined master and do all your online secondary CC’s, compositing, etc again in 4K…Whohoo!

Obvious note: Those other in-camera formats are also required for monitoring and tape (non REDCINE) workflows.
Be interesting to know what the ‘compliance’ is/will be between in-camera outputs i.e. HD-SDI, RAW and REDCINE.

Cheers,
DF

[GlennChan]

How difficult/accurate is it with wavelet compression codecs to conform a low rez version of a high rez master back to that high rez master.....particularly after you’ve done some offline slicing/dicing of the low rez version?

Ideally and theoretically, the process would be frame accurate. In some current SDI-based and data based workflows, it is not. When you capture off SDI (i.e. a VTR), sometimes things will come in a frame or more off. (I'm not sure why.)

With data workflows, somethings the FCP Media Managler has weird little bugs that results in non-frame accurate results. But otherwise, if there are no bugs, the process should really be frame-accurate. XML (as implemented in Final Cut and Final Touch) has problems in that speed changes don't carry over (whereas speed changes do carry over with EDLs in other systems).

2- I'm not exactly sure what you mean by pixel mapping.

a- With EDLs, there are fields for source in+out, and project in+out. It's all timecode based and uses references to timecodes.

The EDLmax website has a good guide on how EDLs work. And yes, EDLs do work.

b- Or perhaps you are referring to creating offline cutting copies (as references for audio work, and online conforms). When doing an online conform, you can bring in the cutting copy, superimpose it over what you're conforming, and apply the subtract composite mode. With DV, the picture rarely 'lines up' correctly. (This is hard to explain unless you've done it yourself.)
But basically what's happening is that DV has extremely odd pixel aspect ratio + frame size. The pixel aspect ratio is some weird number. On top of that, not all of the frame is used for active picture- there are extra pixels padded on the sides. On top of THAT, there are different interpretations as to handling PAR and so forth. So when you try to line up the cutting copy on top of the HD footage you're conforming, the pixels don't exactly line up.

A solution to this annoyance (if it's really necessary) would likely be to send offline cutting copies on a HD format (square pixels, no padding).

[Jeff Kilgroe]

This is great. You could use a Dell 30" for your timeline 2K monitor, right? It does better than 2K resolution.

Yep. I'm staring at dual 30" Dell monitors sitting in front of mey right now. 2K and 1920x1080 HD fit nicely in their own window on these displays with ample room around for all your other tools and widgets. It just reminds me how large 4K really is. These two monster displays together only comprise 1/2 of a 5K frame. :w00t:

[david farland]

What I’m suggesting here is not only is the export from REDCODE to a QT wrapped DV, DVCPRO codec…frame accurate, but pixel accurate as well.

Meaning when REDCINE maps a ‘macro block’ (if that the right phase…maybe ‘bunch of pixel’ is better) of REDCODE 4K pixels to a lower rez DV/DVCPRO pixel, REDCINE is somehow able to re-map back that DV/DVCPRO pixel to it’s respective ‘macro block’ of REDCODE 4K pixels.
Either that or they don’t have to, as they’re confident there will be no loss of pixel data when they export from REDCODE to QT’s DVCPRO (for example) and then re-import back to REDCODE.....provided only offline EDL/XML compliant tasks have been performed on the code in the interim.

DF

[Finner]

Yep. I'm staring at dual 30" Dell monitors sitting in front of mey right now. 2K and 1920x1080 HD fit nicely in their own window on these displays with ample room around for all your other tools and widgets. It just reminds me how large 4K really is. These two monster displays together only comprise 1/2 of a 5K frame. :w00t:

How much did you pay for them Jeff?

How long ago did you buy?

Do you know what the cost is now?

[Tom Lowe]

Yep. I'm staring at dual 30" Dell monitors sitting in front of mey right now. 2K and 1920x1080 HD fit nicely in their own window on these displays with ample room around for all your other tools and widgets. It just reminds me how large 4K really is. These two monster displays together only comprise 1/2 of a 5K frame. :w00t:

haha, nice. Hey can you post a pic of your work area? I'm jealous.

Dual Dell 30s seems ideal for a RED 4k editing computer. Or you could just use a 24" or 27" for your NLE main view, and the 30" for your 2k view. A firebreathing new multicore computer, a few terabytes of storage (maybe 1TB of performance RAID in the system itself), and you're rockin and rollin'. :w00t:

[david farland]

Don't forget to read ExtremeTech's review of the 3 major 30" monitors here. (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2077914,00.asp)and in particular the new 30" Dell here (http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?page=2&articleid=915&cid=2)
I'm also hearing Apple are about to release better range of lcd's. I also heard up to 50" but that sounds like BS for now.
Wait till NAB I guess! ?@#K, I hate that phase!

DF

[Tom Lowe]

What do you think the next bump in resolution will be? I guess you could say those 30 inchers are "1600p"... what's next? something close to 3000x2000?

[GlennChan]

Meaning when REDCINE maps a ‘macro block’ (if that the right phase…maybe ‘bunch of pixel’ is better) of REDCODE 4K pixels to a lower rez DV/DVCPRO pixel, REDCINE is somehow able to re-map back that DV/DVCPRO pixel to it’s respective ‘macro block’ of REDCODE 4K pixels.
Either that or they don’t have to, as they’re confident there will be no loss of pixel data when they export from REDCODE to QT’s DVCPRO (for example) and then re-import back to REDCODE.....provided only offline EDL/XML compliant tasks have been performed on the code in the interim.
I don't see why "pixel mapping" / accuracy is necessary???? What goal or advantage would it have????

Take a look at EDLs, they are fairly simple and they already work.

[david farland]

I was expecting pixel accuracy was required for feeding offline dissolves, wipes, back into REDCINE for online output.
Seems on the surface, EDL can handle that. If your notion is EDL=All offline tasks, then yes EDL is sufficient.
Obviously pixel accuracy is required if you go beyond the limitation of what EDL’s can track and you’ll want to ensure those changes are communicated back to REDCINE.

DF

[GlennChan]

David, I believe Redcine will mostly follow the traditional offline/online model.

1- Offline edit. This can be with proxies, or Redcode RAW (no transcoding/converting).
2- Output EDL.
*3- Open EDL in Redcine.
*4- Redcine will de-bayer your footage in higher quality. This is a slower than doing a quick, low-quality debayer. Redcine might do other image processing magic ("best light" or "one light" operations like white balance). All the settings are presumably stored in Red pull list.
*5- Redcine exports high quality footage to online system.
6- Online system reads edit information from the EDL. It then captures/ingests footage.
7- Typically, many effects are not conveyable in an EDL. Non-standard dissolves (i.e. anything that's not a cross dissolve), filters, effects, etc.
To solve this, these effects are manually re-created (using paper notes + a copy of the offline edit as reference).
8- Online edit. Color correction, effects are applied. The final master is created from high-quality footage (i.e. least compression as possible).

*Steps 3-5 are specific to Red, since Bayer RAW --> RGB conversions involve trade-offs in quality and speed. Also, Red records a 'raw' digital negative without image processing baked in (color matrix, sharpening, white balance, gamma curves). Redcine allows you to tweak this image processing depending on your needs.

Step 7 may seem a little ridiculous. Other schemes aim to expand the feature set of EDLs to allow more effects to be translated. AAF, XML, OMF, Automatic Duck, FCP project file, Avid project file. The problem with some of these schemes is that they don't have widespread industry support... or the implementations simply aren't that good.

I don't believe "pixel accuracy" would solve the problem of effects not translating.

For most work, the offline edit contains only scratch effects and filters. Not much effort is put into them, and they are only there to convey intent. It is much more efficient to do/perfect the effects in the online editing system. And to re-create effects in the online conform is not that big a deal, since the effects are going to be tweaked anyways.

***Other workflows are possible with Red. For example, you may do all your editing in one program. In this case, it may be possible to switch a Redcode codec setting to use the high-quality, slow de-bayer method (with RPL for changing image processing for particular shots?). From your editing software, you'd render out your high quality master. Cineform does something like this already.

[Tom Lowe]

See, what Glenn points here is exactly why I want to edit at 4K on my own editing machine. When I am working on an artistic project, I will spend hours and hours just getting one or two dissolves exactly how I want them. I'll change a single dissolve 25 times just to get it to work perfectly with the music. No way am I going to trust all my work to an EDL, nor can I afford to rent an online studio for the hundreds of hours I would spend editing an entire feature. EDL lists and paper notes... no thanks! :)

[wlaroussi]

Hi ,

I did this same post in that forum elswhere . After a tour in many forums i heard that grading or "color correction" may take hours in some compositing softwares that can handle 2K/4K resolution . As far as i'm concerned Red one is a revolutionary 2K/4K camera , otherwise HDXcam or Panasonic P2 can do the job. Now the question is when transcoding using redcine to sequence files (the ones to be used by speedgrade or the expensive lustre while premiere pro use finesse plugin) . Does the file size remain the same (as small as redcode) ? Did anybody made a test on a specific computer station to see the speed of processing a 15 min 4K movie including editing , grading and watching the final results ? The answer should give an idea on the NLE station to purchase and the prices may go from some (1-9)K$ to (10-100)K$.

Regards .

[david farland]

Thanks for that Glenn…helped me a lot!

Be nice to have something on workflow similar to what Mike Morlan has done re: Camera/ Redcine diagram.
Even a flow chart of the basics options may clarify quite a lot, to which we can add to.

Cheers,
DF

[JohnF]

Personally I think, for the next couple of years anyway, that RED shooters are going to be very much working using traditional offline then online workflows.

For 4k editing computers simply aren't fast enough (yet) to make editing the smooth creative process it should be. So I think until they get faster you're going to see alot of people doing 1080/720 or even SD edits(I know I will at first) of RED footage for the offline anyway.

That said I haven't seen it mentioned on this thread but Quantel's edit systems are 4k compatible and have the added advantage of dynamic bit rounding(dbr) which dithers images to give non-quantized(banding) image output for 8bit workflows (DigiBeta, DVD etc) whilst at the same time able to produce your 4k master!

So I will be using Quantels to maintain RED footage quality when the output needs to be the business but I will be "carefully" working with EDL's and paper from my own editsystem. Whilst for lower budget shoots I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and expect slower workflows until technology catches up with 4k.

Oh I could go on and suggest that with there being, shall we say, a significant shortage of 4k monitoring options that there is no point in mastering at 4k unless you have a guarenteed need to actually output in it. But the great thing about RED is that at the end of it all you'll still have your 4k digital negative to remaster from if you get a request for a 4k copy, for which you'll be able to charge...

JohnF

[Jeff Kilgroe]

How much did you pay for them Jeff?

How long ago did you buy?

Do you know what the cost is now?

I have 4 30" displays spread out on 3 systems. I bought my first Dell 30" a bit over a year ago, Jan/Feb '06. It was $2499 then, same as the new Apple 30". I went with the Dell one because it used the same Samsung panel and backlight system, included a 3 year warranty standard and it has an adjustable-height stand that can rotate the monitor for portrait mode work. Apple is still using their ergonomically-challenged stands that do nothing but tilt for vertical viewing angle adjustment (read: needs third-party add ons in many situations).

All that said, my second 30" was an Apple unit bought last July as a refurbished unit from the local Apple Store. $1599.

I bought another 30" Dell the first week of December to add a second 30" display to my primary workstation. $1349 shipped from Dell (after I cleared up a sales tax glitch). Unfortunately, when paired with the 1 year old display, which uses an older revision Samsung panel and light system, I couldn't get them to match completely. The older one was just slightly less bright and lacked some saturation on the blue channel. Dell ran a forum special last month along with another price break so I picked up one more 30" (now I have an identical pair) and I moved the oldest one to another system. The last one I paid $1289 shipped.

Dell has dropped the price again and they can be had for $1274 without coupon right now. Free shipping deals can be usually found from various coupon sites and Dell often just has that deal anyway.

I use a Gefen 4 port DVI|DL switcher to switch one of the displays on my main setup between a Mac and PC. This PC is moving out of here in a couple months when I get my 8 core Mac (I hope) and at that point, I'll probably get another DVI|DL switcher so I can switch both displays between the two systems.

HP's current 30" display is really nice too (although it's aestetically butt-ugly) it has 3 DVI|DL inputs on it, so no switcher required and goes for about $1500 from most vendors.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

haha, nice. Hey can you post a pic of your work area? I'm jealous.

Dual Dell 30s seems ideal for a RED 4k editing computer. Or you could just use a 24" or 27" for your NLE main view, and the 30" for your 2k view. A firebreathing new multicore computer, a few terabytes of storage (maybe 1TB of performance RAID in the system itself), and you're rockin and rollin'. :w00t:

This current G5 quad setup I have is made of the following:

G5 Quad 2.5GHz (2xdual core), 8GB RAM, FX4500 video
PCI-E FiberChannel controller
250GB System/application drive
2*500GB drives in a RAID-0 stripe
16X DL SuperDrive
Dual Dell 30" displays

Here's a crappy pic I already have that I snapped when first setting up the dual 30" screens. I'd be happy to take some more if you want to see something specific. It's not clear just how cool these things are until you have full 1920x1080 running on the screen and you realize how many pixels you actually have to work with.

[Finner]

Thanks Jeff,

What are your thoughts on the mac / dell monitor comparison (pro's/con's).

[Thomas Mathai]

See, what Glenn points here is exactly why I want to edit at 4K on my own editing machine. When I am working on an artistic project, I will spend hours and hours just getting one or two dissolves exactly how I want them. I'll change a single dissolve 25 times just to get it to work perfectly with the music. No way am I going to trust all my work to an EDL, nor can I afford to rent an online studio for the hundreds of hours I would spend editing an entire feature. EDL lists and paper notes... no thanks! :)

Then you need to use the right tool.

If you see the need to spend hours finessing a dissolve, then do it in a vfx app, render it out both high and low quality and bring it into your NLE. Don't let your NLE be bogged down with needless processes.

For me editing is more about getting the pacing, rhythm and feel of the story right, and as unencumbered as possible. While it helps to have a good image to look at, you don't need a 4k image to edit with.

[GlennChan]

Tom: EDLs will work fine for cross dissolves. If you are trying to do something other than a cross dissolve, a NLE like Final Cut Pro probably can't do it at 4K resolution real-time. (It seems like only the cross dissolve is RT at 1080 resolution; everything else isn't.) Whereas with SD or 720p, you may be able to do the transition real-time and be able to tweak it interactively.

2- I'm not sure what's not to trust about an EDL. In some cases the conform process is not frame accurate, but you can get an assistant editor to check sync and slip (edit) everything. It's kind of tedious, but it works.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

What are your thoughts on the mac / dell monitor comparison (pro's/con's).

Comparing the Apple/Dell...

Personally, I like the Dell better. They're both using the same Samsung panel and backlight system and really the screen image is nearly identical. Different OEM manufacturers using different internal electronics/processing, so there are a few subtle differences between the two. The Dell has more options to control settings (via USB from a PC only though).

Apple:
Good -- Nice color out of the box, little tweaking necessary. Firewire/USB2 ports. Matches the Mac computers with their brushed aluminum, impresses clients.

Bad -- Tilt display forward back only with included stand. No adjustable height, stand doesn't rotate/pivot. Typical Apple pricing -- it was fine when released, and they dropped the price about 8 months later, but even with that it's still too expensive for what it is given other current options.

Dell:
Good -- Great picture and color just like the Apple. Adjustable height stand, can tilt and rotate/pivot the display. Built in USB2 hub, 5-in-2 memory card reader that takes CF, SD/SM/MS/MMC cards. Nice design with thin (about 1") black bezel around display. Great price, 3 year warranty included.

Bad -- Their dead pixel policy isn't as good as Apple's (8 total or 2 adjoining), Apple replaces on 3 bad pixels. FWIW, of 4 30" displays, I only have one stuck pixel on the very first of the Dell monitors I bought. It appeared after about 60 days. But it's not an issue.

Overall, if the price isn't that big of a concern (even though there's a $650 difference between Dell and Apple), they're mostly identical. I personally wouldn't buy one until after NAB since Dell is rumored to be shipping the updated Samsung panel soon with their 30" (I think this is why they keep lowering the price every 10 days or so). Apple is rumored to have new displays soon too.

Also, I didn't specify it in the above sections regarding the displays, but out of the box the Dell's default settings are adjusted to be a bit brighter and more suitable for application use and gaming. Apple sets their displays a little less bright, but with better color tweaks more suitable for print and graphics work. Neither is better, just different out of the box and I think most of us will adjust to fit our own needs anyway.

[Tom Lowe]

Glen, yeah, all I use are cross dissolves.

I just want to avoid the extra steps involved in off-lining. That's all.

[Tom Lowe]

Here's a crappy pic I already have that I snapped when first setting up the dual 30" screens. I'd be happy to take some more if you want to see something specific. It's not clear just how cool these things are until you have full 1920x1080 running on the screen and you realize how many pixels you actually have to work with.

I thought the resolution was higher than 1920x1080 on those 30-inchers? Isn't it something like 2560x1600?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I thought the resolution was higher than 1920x1080 on those 30-inchers? Isn't it something like 2560x1600?

It is 2560x1600. I was saying that you don't appreciate all those pixels until you have a 1920x1080 video frame on your screen. ...And you still have room for everything else, timeline and whatnot, editing tools, etc.. around it! :nerd:

[Tom Lowe]

Ah, gotcha! Do you have any 2K or above video to fire up on those badboys? I guess there really isn't much video around at 2K or up.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Ah, gotcha! Do you have any 2K or above video to fire up on those badboys? I guess there really isn't much video around at 2K or up.

Well, I do most of my 3D animation at 1920x1080 these days. All the video I shoot myself is 720p (HVX200). I can shoot 1080p with the HVX, but there isn't really any true resolution gained with that system by doing so. In some ways there, some not. I also have some 1080 HDV source material to work with. As for 2K film/video, don't have any to work with here.

I went with the dual 30" because it gives me tons of room to work with my 3D applications and other tools I run. Very handy, but for now, there isn't a whole lot of advantage in terms of video editing other than some more screen real estate. But nothing that couldn't be just as good with dual 24" displays.

[david farland]

You know, I just bought me a new Dremel grinding tool.

Next I'm gonna buy 3 of those Dell 3007WFP-HCs, grind off the borders, and stick 'um portrait style for my 4.8k x 2.5k monitor!

DF

[Tom Lowe]

Well, I do most of my 3D animation at 1920x1080 these days. All the video I shoot myself is 720p (HVX200). I can shoot 1080p with the HVX, but there isn't really any true resolution gained with that system by doing so. In some ways there, some not. I also have some 1080 HDV source material to work with. As for 2K film/video, don't have any to work with here.

I went with the dual 30" because it gives me tons of room to work with my 3D applications and other tools I run. Very handy, but for now, there isn't a whole lot of advantage in terms of video editing other than some more screen real estate. But nothing that couldn't be just as good with dual 24" displays.

Well, for now.

After that thread about 4K transfers, I am thinking I will post-produce my timelapse short I intend to shoot this summer at 2k this fall. The res from the DLSR camera is basically 4K, so the downsampled 2K post should look really nice, I suppose. So a 30" Dell would come in handy for that, I guess. Adobe After Effects, as far as I know, does 2K (and 4K), so I guess as long as my video card can drive 2k to the Dell 30", I can do post for that 3-minute timelapse vid at 2k and use a 30" Dell to monitor my timeline output, right? I have a GForce 7900GTX. Not sure if it can output over 1920x1080?

Forum member Mike said I could transfer a three-minute 2K short to 35mm for around $850, which I could probably afford. I'd love to see my work projected on 35mm at a little festival or whatever.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The 7900GTX will drive a 30" dell no problem. In fact, even though it's now one generation behind, it's still a very fine video card. Actually faster than the Quadro FX4500. It just lacks a few special features of the workstation card. It also only does a Dual-Link out of the primary DVI port, so you can only drive one 30" display at full resolution. Your second DVI port would be limited to 1920x1200 if you were to run two displays.

[Tom Lowe]

The 7900GTX will drive a 30" dell no problem. In fact, even though it's now one generation behind, it's still a very fine video card. Actually faster than the Quadro FX4500. It just lacks a few special features of the workstation card. It also only does a Dual-Link out of the primary DVI port, so you can only drive one 30" display at full resolution. Your second DVI port would be limited to 1920x1200 if you were to run two displays.

I think one 30" would do the trick. I own a 24" Dell (my precious...) now and I am very happy with it, for my NLE view. If I can add a 30" for my 2K output view (and probably my on-set HD monitor shooting on Red), and if it works, yeah, cool!

[Joel Kaye]

Forum member Mike said I could transfer a three-minute 2K short to 35mm for around $850, which I could probably afford. I'd love to see my work projected on 35mm at a little festival or whatever.

A friend of mine just did a 1080P to 35mm transfer and he thought the digitally projected 1080p original looked better than the 35mm transfer... which sorta makes sense because that's the digital original. He might have gotten a crummy transfer though.

I saw his digital projection at 2k and I thought it looked sharper than most movies I see projected on 35mm film. I think by the time film gets to a podunk theater with scratches on the print, a bulb that's not bright enough and anything else that can go wrong you probably end up with something far degraded from that original 35mm neg.

Anyway - don't get your hopes up about a 35mm being something monumental. Digital projection might knock your socks off though.

[Poi Boy]

film is so done.... we so seldom see the perfect film experience because there are so many possible pitfalls that degrade the maximum projection. Digital has a much better chance at peak performance; five to ten years and film is done.
Aloha
-A

[Tom Lowe]

A friend of mine just did a 1080P to 35mm transfer and he thought the digitally projected 1080p original looked better than the 35mm transfer... which sorta makes sense because that's the digital original. He might have gotten a crummy transfer though.

I saw his digital projection at 2k and I thought it looked sharper than most movies I see projected on 35mm film. I think by the time film gets to a podunk theater with scratches on the print, a bulb that's not bright enough and anything else that can go wrong you probably end up with something far degraded from that original 35mm neg.

Anyway - don't get your hopes up about a 35mm being something monumental. Digital projection might knock your socks off though.

you might have a point. finishing in 1080p might be the best bet, for festivals.

[Joel Kaye]

film is so done.... we so seldom see the perfect film experience because there are so many possible pitfalls that degrade the maximum projection. Digital has a much better chance at peak performance; five to ten years and film is done.
Aloha
-A

Another friend of mine built a little theater in his basement. He had 8 really nice theater style seats - but MUCH nicer and bigger. He had digital projection and a killer sound system. I'm thinking it was only 60" or so projected because it was only 12 feet away or so.. but that was a great way to watch a movie. It's still kinda the group experience but more pleasant.

But about that group viewing experience everyone always talks about - I think comedies really shine there because laughter is contagious... but do you need to see most movies with a crowd?

[Poi Boy]

the group experience i really great; I occasionaly borrow a friends projector and set up a theater in my studio, about a 14' image on the syc wall..it is so much fun. I can imagine when 2k or even 4k personal projectors become a reality, what fun.
Aloha
-A

[Chris Kenny]

According to the calculator here (http://www.carltonbale.com/home-theater/home-theater-calculator/), you apparently have to sit less than about 9' from a 12' image to actually see 4K resolution. You have to sit less than four feet from a 60" screen.

The upshot is, in plausible viewing situations, you simply will not see pixels with 4K. There isn't likely to ever be much demand to go above 4K for presentation, until people start getting cybernetic eye upgrades or something.

[GlennChan]

But about that group viewing experience everyone always talks about - I think comedies really shine there because laughter is contagious... but do you need to see most movies with a crowd?


IMO, campy/cheesy movies like Snakes on a Plane and Ghost Rider should be viewed with other people.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I think one 30" would do the trick. I own a 24" Dell (my precious...) now and I am very happy with it, for my NLE view. If I can add a 30" for my 2K output view (and probably my on-set HD monitor shooting on Red), and if it works, yeah, cool!

Sounds good, although I don't know how well the 30" would work for an on-set monitor. It only has a single DVI-DL input. If you connect to a standard DVI interface, don't use a dual-link cable as it will confuse the display sometimes and you will be limited to 1280x800 resolution. To my knowledge, the monitor doesn't support very many resolutions directly (without having your computer's video card scale to the 2560x1600 output) and it doesn't support EIA/TIA style signals (HDTV). So you won't be able to use an HDMI to DVI cable for 720p display from RED. You could get 2K display from the SDI outputs on RED, but then you would need an appropriate dual-link SDI to DVI-DL converter and I'm not even sure if such a beast exists. I haven't ever seen one, but I also haven't tried to find one either. I'm sure it wouldn't be cheap...

[Bruce Allen]

Well, for now.
Adobe After Effects, as far as I know, does 2K (and 4K), so I guess as long as my video card can drive 2k to the Dell 30", I can do post for that 3-minute timelapse vid at 2k and use a 30" Dell to monitor my timeline output, right?
Yes, After Effects does 2K and 4K. It is used for this on a daily basis for finishing movie titles, trailer titles, etc (4K not so much though, I think I am one of the few who was ever asked to do 4K graphics). Also, its default 2K full-aperture preset is incorrect - 2048x1536 when it should be 2048x1556.


Forum member Mike said I could transfer a three-minute 2K short to 35mm for around $850, which I could probably afford. I'd love to see my work projected on 35mm at a little festival or whatever.
There are a million ways that filmouts can go wrong. I'd say that that will be the weak point in your image chain. If I were you, I'd be tempted to do 1920x1080 instead of 2k and spend a little time / money researching fllmout options.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Bruce Allen]

Oh, and good luck actually loading more than a few seconds of footage into RAM for you 2K After Effects RAM preview. I will usually make lower-res JPEG-compressed Quicktime proxies in order to preview longer pieces of motion without dropping frames.

Bruce

[Lucas Wilson]

Yes, After Effects does 2K and 4K.
...
Also, its default 2K full-aperture preset is incorrect - 2048x1536 when it should be 2048x1556.

2048x1556 is created when scanning a 35mm frame with an open gate and *no* aperture.

2048x1536 is the active picture area created when a Full Aperture gate is placed on the frame.

Most of the industry does refer to 2048x1556 as "2K Full Ap." But technically, it is not - it's "2K Open Gate."

In this case, Adobe is correct and most of the industry is mistaken. :)

Lucas Wilson
------------
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Bruce Allen]

Most of the industry does refer to 2048x1556 as "2K Full Ap." But technically, it is not - it's "2K Open Gate."

In this case, Adobe is correct and most of the industry is mistaken. :)


Awesome! Now I just need to convince all of those damn finishing houses in Hollywood that they don't need everything at that weird resolution.

Bruce

[Tom Lowe]

Oh, and good luck actually loading more than a few seconds of footage into RAM for you 2K After Effects RAM preview. I will usually make lower-res JPEG-compressed Quicktime proxies in order to preview longer pieces of motion without dropping frames.

Bruce

As far as I know, 2K Cineform Prospect HD intermediates edit perfectly on today's systems. Right now I'm not doing anything complicated enough to worry about the RAM preview thing, although it does raise some interesting issues for people trying to do effects at 2k or 4k. Editing wavelet 27MB/s on FCP or Premiere is one thing, trying to work with 4k footage and effects in After Effects is another, and I guess you are right that it could take a hell of a lot of power.

I wonder Cineform's codec or REDCODE will work inside of AE?

[Bruce Allen]

Current versions of AE cannot play back from disk. They must load frames into RAM. So, yes, as of the Mac beta, Cineform will "work" in AE (it would be read through Quicktime, previously it would work via Windows Media / AVI)... REDCODE will work if they write a Quicktime codec for it, otherwise you will have to transcode using REDCINE. But none of these will enable realtime playback of 4K without loading into RAM first. I'm sure this will change one day.

I'm actually doing graphics for another trailer at 2K right now... actually 2048x872 since they only want scope... that should be doable... let me see if it plays nicely... yup, looks like it does.

Bruce

[Jim Arthurs]

As far as I know, 2K Cineform Prospect HD intermediates edit perfectly on today's systems.

Even two (or maybe three) NAB's ago CineForm was demoing realtime 2K playback inside of Premiere... so I suspect the last couple years have done nothing but improve on that...

Here's hoping that REDCODE will perform in a similar fashion. But, if it doesn't, I doubt the initial copy over to CineForm would be all that damaging in terms of generation loss... certainly coming down from 4K camera source would make amazing CineForm 2K...

[Michael Brennan]

According to the calculator here (http://www.carltonbale.com/home-theater/home-theater-calculator/), you apparently have to sit less than about 9' from a 12' image to actually see 4K resolution. You have to sit less than four feet from a 60" screen.

The upshot is, in plausible viewing situations, you simply will not see pixels with 4K. There isn't likely to ever be much demand to go above 4K for presentation, until people start getting cybernetic eye upgrades or something.

I know we are stuck with the legacy of the limitations of film projection which isnt going to go away overnight.

Soon we need to take another step forward and build bigger screens in new cinemas that can cope with the new digital cameras and digital projectors.

Think multiplex imax. Maybe even think the beginning of the end of letterbox aspect ratios....


Mike

[Barend Onneweer]

I think I am one of the few who was ever asked to do 4K graphics.

You'd be surprised how many visual effects shots are put through AE every year. Loads of animated mattes at 8k, and even fx shots for IMAX, starting at 4k and beyond.

It's not the most sexy tool, but it's been one of the most stable desktop compositors over the last decade, and as such is still in use at nearly all facilities.

[Chris Kenny]

I know we are stuck with the legacy of the limitations of film projection which isnt going to go away overnight.

Soon we need to take another step forward and build bigger screens in new cinemas that can cope with the new digital cameras and digital projectors.

Think multiplex imax. Maybe even think the beginning of the end of letterbox aspect ratios....


I don't know about that. It's important to remember that movies are art, that the goal is not necessarily to reproduce the experience of viewing something directly. Selective framing (like selective focus, the reason everyone wants shallow DoF) is one of the tools a filmmaker uses to tell a story.

The IMAX thing, where the screen practically fills your field of vision, and shots are framed appropriately for that, is a neat experience and has benefits with some subject matter, but is very possibly not the right approach for most narrative work.

[Bruce Allen]

You'd be surprised how many visual effects shots are put through AE every year. Loads of animated mattes at 8k, and even fx shots for IMAX, starting at 4k and beyond.

Very true! Sorry, I was meaning 4K trailer graphics specifically - 4K is still very rare in the trailer world.

Bruce

[Bruce Allen]

Okay, Anandtech gave us some more info on the Intel roadmap today. I think it has a definite bearing on the whole 4K thing...
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=2955&p=1

I know computers are always getting faster, but this is just so... solid.

Summary:

late this year:
- quad-core chips hit $250-$300

early next year - "Penryn" (45nm Core 2)
- quad-core hits 3.2 - 3.6 ghz
- new instruction set that accelerates some video tasks
- if some cores are waiting for others, the cores that ARE working can be dynamically overclocked
- better virtualization
- more cache

late next year: - "Nehalem" (45nm successor)
- faster architecture
- 8 core-per-chip desktop
- 4 core-per-chip laptop?
- integrated memory controller (lower latency, maybe better bandwidth)

I'd peg Nehalem with a nVidia 9 or 10 series as our first chance for desktop 4K editing that doesn't suck. Or HD editing and effects that rocks at a sublime level.

Until then, follow the 2K / HD flame!

Bruce

[Hrvoje Simic]

Thanks Bruce, very interesting.

I like the your comment at the end:


...HD editing and effects that rocks at a sublime level.


heheh nice