1920x1080 HD Broadcast workflow not quite there!

[twotallmen]

OK - I've just had some Red footage come in and I've had a chance to do some tests for those of us who work in Broadcast TV - ie those of us who have to work with 50 hours of footage going into on offline then being FCP/Media managed to Online for Grading in Color and output to HDCam SR. DPX and Raw files are not an option to go back to. We all work to tight turnaround

Question 1 is why doesn't the Red Camera generate a 1920 x1080 proxy? I understand there is some problem with shooting in 16x9 - is that the reason?

Question 2 - Can any one come up with a quick and easy way of generating 1080 quicktimes from the R3d files. I just put 12 minutes into Red Cine and it's taking 3 and a half hours. A days Shoot on a Discovery/Nat Geo style Documentary would normally generate 3x 40 minute tapes - Thats 35 hours processing per day!

I've tried using Compressor with the Hi Res Proxies - that seems to be much quicker but I'm getting dropped frames.

[Dj Joofa]

Question 2 - Can any one come up with a quick and easy way of generating 1080 quicktimes from the R3d files. I just put 12 minutes into Red Cine and it's taking 3 and a half hours. A days Shoot on a Discovery/Nat Geo style Documentary would normally generate 3x 40 minute tapes - Thats 35 hours processing per day!

I've tried using Compressor with the Hi Res Proxies - that seems to be much quicker but I'm getting dropped frames.

If Red One makes the format of R3D files open, it shouldn't be too difficult to write a Quicktime component or for that matter a standalone utility. I do not know if the format of R3D files is public, though.

[asheddrick]

Here's another question. When is red going to support TC when converting R3D to apples pro res, or introduce the HQ pro res transcoding feature in FCP.

Or are both of these fixes Apple needs to be making?

[Dj Joofa]

Here's another question. When is red going to support TC when converting R3D to apples pro res, or introduce the HQ pro res transcoding feature in FCP.

Or are both of these fixes Apple needs to be making?

If by TC you mean timecode, it is almost trivial to add / delete a timecode (track) to / from a QuickTime movie. Search on the Google for QTTimeCode.

[Chris Burket]

I believe Scratch can read R3D files and output them over HDSDI in 1920x1080 in real time. You could string together all your clips in scratch, play them out real time to your HDCam SR deck, then recapture it. This would also create an HDSR master of your raw footage. Wouldn't take as long as redalert.

[twotallmen]

If Red are hoping their products will be used in EFP type work (and I believe they are) some one is going to have to come up with a smoother workflow than this! No production will have the time (or the budget) to run all the shot footage through red cine. They need to pull it off the red drive straight into FCP where it plays realtime in the correct aspect ratio so the offline editor can start to cut the footage together.

Importing them into Scratch then laying off to HSCam SR then Recapturing them again is expensive and time consuming (though admittedly faster than the Red Cine option!)

[Paul Hazlett]

Gibby has been shooting lots of television with his Red. Maybe he could shed some light on this convo

[Harry Clark]

This is why many of us were sad when 1080p scaled was dropped...
Harry

[Michael Schrengohst]

It's one thing to be sad, but here we have real stories
on the front lines and no one has a decent solution.
Sorry but we all cannot buy a scratch system. Great camera
makes great images but I can't work with the render times either.

[Dj Joofa]

It's one thing to be sad, but here we have real stories
on the front lines and no one has a decent solution.
Sorry but we all cannot buy a scratch system. Great camera
makes great images but I can't work with the render times either.

I agree with you, the current work flow may be cumbersome and expensive for some people without a powerful off-line processing system.

May be that is the reason Red was able to keep its price down; they moved some upstream (in the camera) hardware-based processing including demosacing, scaling, color correction for white balance, RGB->YCbCr, etc. -- to software based solutions downstream (on a PC). Hence, moving many of these processes from RedCine / Scratch / etc., upstream shall naturally increase the price of the system, and the camera may begin to loose one of its strong selling point -- price.

[Deanan]

May be that is the reason Red was able to keep its price down; they moved some upstream (in the camera) hardware-based processing including demosacing, scaling, color correction for white balance, RGB->YCbCr, etc. -- to software based solutions downstream (on a PC). Hence, moving many of these processes from RedCine / Scratch / etc., upstream shall naturally increase the price of the system, and the camera may begin to loose one of its strong selling point -- price.

Price is not a consideration in chosing a RAW based workflow. Final image quality is.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I believe Scratch can read R3D files and output them over HDSDI in 1920x1080 in real time. You could string together all your clips in scratch, play them out real time to your HDCam SR deck, then recapture it. This would also create an HDSR master of your raw footage. Wouldn't take as long as redalert.

I'm relatively certain the OP wants full quality files not 1k simple-debayer proxies.

I'm relatively (aka more than 50%) certain that you can't do a full 1080p debayer/downrez in anywhere near real time in scratch.

Processing times for full resolution (which is what you want to go to if you are planning on downscaling currently) are what they are. Scratch doesn't magically make it happen 24x faster.


Price is not a consideration in chosing a RAW based workflow. Final image quality is.

RAW might offer the maximum image quality. But 10bit HDCAM SR in 1080p is pretty freakin' good. You add another $20,000 in electronics and you could choose which is more important. If price and time was of no object then the RED would have a 1080p out option, 60p redcode at 100MBs options and much much more, consume enough energy to fuel a small star and fire laser beams.

Of course I'm relatively certain whatever this playback device is that they're intending to announce at NAB should fit the bill (I'm assuming it has HD-SDI 1080p output from an attached REDCODE drive (and who knows it might be a pretty penny less than $20,000. But that doesn't do anything for people now.

----

Anyway all of this is beside the point. The correct answer is:

Add another $20,000 in computers. (10x quadcore machines, GIGE Switch, SAN, Rendermanager) and start distributing the load. That's the only fool proof solution to delivering a 1080p master in close to real time. Or you could sell your HDCAM deck and pay someone $60k a year to manage your $40k renderfarm and really zip along. Or you rent processor time on a dedicated renderfarm.

Convert to a 1080p RGB Format. And then you should be able to transcode to DNxHD like you're doing from HDCAM right now.

[Mark L. Pederson]

I'm relatively (aka more than 50%) certain that you can't do a full 1080p debayer/downrez in anywhere near real time in scratch.
You would be more than 50% wrong. We are doing 2K FULL (from a 4K .r3d) in RT right now at 24fps. Can't give details yet. Stay tuned.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Mark is a cheater. :D


Edit:
P.S. Is this unmentionable enhanced processing as good as a 4k debayer -> 2k RGB conversion? Can it go to any arbitrary resolution or is it exploiting a supersample algorithm in the debayer process that limits it to 1/2n resolutions? Is it taking all 4k sensor sites into account?

I ask because I'm already out one chocolate bar and I'm runnling low on candy. ;)

[M Most]

Mark is a cheater. :D

No, Mark is an Assimilate customer. The advantages he has are available to all Assimilate customers with the proper hardware and the latest Scratch builds.



P.S. Is this unmentionable enhanced processing as good as a 4k debayer -> 2k RGB conversion? Can it go to any arbitrary resolution or is it exploiting a supersample algorithm in the debayer process that limits it to 1/2n resolutions? Is it taking all 4k sensor sites into account?


Aribitrary resolutions are often created from fractional extractions (such as 1/2, 1/4, etc) via cropping, which has very little processing overhead.



(from im.thatoneguy)
Or you rent processor time on a dedicated renderfarm.

Or you can work with a post company that can do the dailies prep for you, often for less than you would ultimately spend to do it yourself, at least on an individual project.

[David Birdy]

No, Mark is an Assimilate customer. The advantages he has are available to all Assimilate customers with the proper hardware and the latest Scratch builds.



Aribitrary resolutions are often created from fractional extractions (such as 1/2, 1/4, etc) via cropping, which has very little processing overhead.



Or you can work with a post company that can do the dailies prep for you, often for less than you would ultimately spend to do it yourself, at least on an individual project.

What post company might that be Mike?

Dave

[M Most]

What post company might that be Mike?



That would be a rather lengthy list.

[Mark L. Pederson]

That would be a rather lengthy list.

But, here are three names I like -

CineWorks, Miami
PlasterCity Post, Los Angeles

oh yeah ....

Offhollywood, New York

[Gunleik Groven]

Paper Bag, Norway

(Beat you to it Fredrik)

Gunleik

[Mark Pedersen]

Price is not a consideration in chosing a RAW based workflow. Final image quality is.

OK... That's a nice grand statement, but most of us live in the real world, where price/quality tradeoffs must always be made.

Then there's the issue of time. Which equals money.

[Brent J. Craig]

But, here are three names I like -CineWorks, Miami
PlasterCity Post, Los Angeles
oh yeah ....
Offhollywood, New York

There's something brewing in Toronto as well, but I will let them announce it.

[sander kamp]

Question 2 - Can any one come up with a quick and easy way of generating 1080 quicktimes from the R3d files. I just put 12 minutes into Red Cine and it's taking 3 and a half hours. A days Shoot on a Discovery/Nat Geo style Documentary would normally generate 3x 40 minute tapes - Thats 35 hours processing per day!

I just did some quick tests on my iMac. Converting a 4k clip from the 2k proxy to 1080p ProRez takes about 1:7 or 1:8 in the Quicktime player. And that's on a 2.4 GHz duo processor. Get a 3 GHZ 8-core MacPro and that would be roughly 1:2 so a 12 minutes clip takes 24 minutes to convert. These files are not of the highest possible quality (although they look fine), for that you would need to debayer the 4k files and scale them to 1080p but they do just fine for viewing and editing. Roughly the same results you can get in Compressor or FCP.

Problem of course that these are 2:1 files, not 16:9 ones since quicktime doesn't yet work with them. A solution would be to shoot 2:1, frame for 16:9 and crop off the sides in post.

[M Most]

But, here are three names I like -

CineWorks, Miami
PlasterCity Post, Los Angeles

oh yeah ....

Offhollywood, New York

I certainly appreciate the endorsement.

One of the reasons I didn't want to get specific was that in the large markets - particularly Los Angeles - just about every post facility has or will have services for pictures shot on Red (or anything else). The choice of smaller, boutique facilities vs. larger, more comprehensive facilities is often one of personal choice, personal comfort level, studio demand, specific work flow or delivery requirements, or budgetary restrictions. And it's not always obvious as to which would better serve a particular production. For instance, if you're doing a TV series, you might well want to go into, say, an Ascent facility (they have an awful lot of experience and know-how in finishing and delivering television series on brutal turnarounds and budgets) and use a workflow that is based on a "standard" HD videotape post path - so the services you might want would be based around getting to tape at the beginning of the process - as quickly as possible - rather than maintaining a file based path. In other words, using the Red as a substitute for a film camera, and fitting that into a current, known, proven, and well supported post system that services the needs of that part of the industry well. If you're doing an independent short, you might want files converted to an offline resolution, with the expectation of a DI type finish. If you're doing a feature, you might want a combination of the two, so that your daily distribution and viewing needs are taken care of efficiently (including common studio requirements like uploaded digital dailies, DVD's with individual watermarks, and multiple viewing formats, like letterbox and anamorphic) and without having to hire additional people on your editorial staff in order to do it.

Different levels of services for different projects.

[twotallmen]

I just did some quick tests on my iMac. Converting a 4k clip from the 2k proxy to 1080p ProRez takes about 1:7 or 1:8 in the Quicktime player. And that's on a 2.4 GHz duo processor. Get a 3 GHZ 8-core MacPro and that would be roughly 1:2 so a 12 minutes clip takes 24 minutes to convert. These files are not of the highest possible quality (although they look fine), for that you would need to debayer the 4k files and scale them to 1080p but they do just fine for viewing and editing. Roughly the same results you can get in Compressor or FCP.

Problem of course that these are 2:1 files, not 16:9 ones since quicktime doesn't yet work with them. A solution would be to shoot 2:1, frame for 16:9 and crop off the sides in post.

Those are impressive speeds - Red Cine here takes 24xspeed (converting to 16x9 1080p quicktimes which as I said earlier is un useable - What are these play out options someone mentioned? maybe playing out to an SR deck @ 444 then digitising may work - but then again I dont think any Production manager would buy that extra process! (2xdigitize?)

Any one from Red care to comment here?

[Gavin Greenwalt]

No, Mark is an Assimilate customer. The advantages he has are available to all Assimilate customers with the proper hardware and the latest Scratch builds.

Is Scratch doing 2k Full in RT right now on a production version? When I saw it in December it didn't seem to be quite RT @ 2k yet with redcode.

[Mark L. Pederson]

Is Scratch doing 2k Full in RT right now on a production version? When I saw it in December it didn't seem to be quite RT @ 2k yet with redcode.
No comment. (Patience Grasshopper)

[RivaiC]

OK - I've just had some Red footage come in and I've had a chance to do some tests for those of us who work in Broadcast TV - ie those of us who have to work with 50 hours of footage going into on offline then being FCP/Media managed to Online for Grading in Color and output to HDCam SR. DPX and Raw files are not an option to go back to. We all work to tight turnaround

Question 1 is why doesn't the Red Camera generate a 1920 x1080 proxy? I understand there is some problem with shooting in 16x9 - is that the reason?

Question 2 - Can any one come up with a quick and easy way of generating 1080 quicktimes from the R3d files. I just put 12 minutes into Red Cine and it's taking 3 and a half hours. A days Shoot on a Discovery/Nat Geo style Documentary would normally generate 3x 40 minute tapes - Thats 35 hours processing per day!

I've tried using Compressor with the Hi Res Proxies - that seems to be much quicker but I'm getting dropped frames.

Take a look at :
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showpost.php?p=154334&postcount=124

at point no.2. If you do own KONA card, it will be good. It has a feature of cropping 2k to 1080, worth to try

Regards

[sander kamp]

Those are impressive speeds - Red Cine here takes 24xspeed (converting to 16x9 1080p quicktimes which as I said earlier is un useable

There are basically two ways to go with RED footage: a high quality method which uses the 4k original to debayer and scale to whatever format you want. This is the method you use in RedCine 'process:full' option. It takes a long time but especially with low-light footage it is worth it.

For viewing and editing purposes you want to use a lower quality. A 2k, 1k and 0.5k version can be extracted from the 4k original with relatively ease, you can use the quicktimes that are generated in-camera or by RedAlert.

With 16:9 footage you can't go the quicktime way but you can use the 'process: standard' (2k debayer) or 'process:draft' options in RedCine. This will make converting a lot quicker, although still slower than the direct quicktime method. On my 2.4 Ghz iMac it is about 1:15 with the standard option which would translate to about 1:4 on a MacPro 8-core. Be sure to set the Project Format settings the same as your output settings so scaling is being done RedCine instead of quicktime.