QC for dead pixels before RedMag erase

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Watching clips one by one on a 4k monitor on set, doing a 100% visual QC, looking for errors like dead pixels, glitches, black frames etc. And doing this right after offloading a Redmag, and before erasing the card. Is doing this manually the only method? Are there softwares that can run through r3d files and spit out a report listing any such issues? Like maybe VideoQC from Drastic or some other?

What's the standard workflow with QC for Red files? Watching each clip in real time?
How often does one come across such errors necessitating a reshoot? In my limited experience I haven't come across a Red camera that throws such errors and needs some or all shots from that mag to be reshot. May happen but must be very rare.

I have a client who's insisting on this. Wondering about the right way to go about it.

Neil

[Gunleik Groven]

Now this is a lame heads-up, but we are contemplating implementing the option for an automatic QC pass on the files ingested (and transcoded and distributed) with QC, looking for dead pixels, encoding errors and noise-floor in images.

But it will still be a bit of time to get that feature through a product-cycle.

Gunleik

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Gunleik,

Thanks for the prompt (and definitely not lame) response. I appreciate it.
This 100% visual QC is getting to be a requirement with some channels. And doing it visually is a resource hog on set, particularly with a multi camera shoot. It also needs more cards to be available since the card cannot be released till all the footage is watched by a human in real time.

A QC software which can do this in fast than real time would be very handy. I'll look forward to your update on this.

Neil

[Simon Dunne]

How do you check focus and do other dailies op based notes? The role is there for a reason.

[Gunleik Groven]

We work fine with DITs.

We just also want to help those who cannot afford all the positions of a full-size crew, and then we look at what we can help with making "better".

Dailies are pushed out really fast, and we try to help the assistant editor a lot in preparing the editorial projects, and this is the main point of control.

that said, looking for technical flaws is a part of the QC process that is pretty well suited for computer analysis.

All esthetically and qualitative decisions are human decisions.

To your question, it is possible to analyze general "out of focuses" in an image, but I don't see that as a very helpful tool as "what is in focus" is more important than "how much of the image".
I am not sure that even given a guide into the latter is very helpful :)

People look through things.
We just move a little around who does what when that makes sense for the production.

This is a more extreme case

https://youtu.be/MI0bv4TT5II

I don't dispute the value of a DIT, I have done DIT work for a significant time.

But I think it is ok to make those who cannot have DIT's less fucked :)

G

[Patrick Tresch]

I've never had a glitch or badly encoded frame in 12 years with RED.
One dead/hot pixel yes that dissapeared after a new blackshade.

Pat

[Gunleik Groven]

That fits with my experience, thus insisting on having a person looking through every frame, when that can be done by a computer does not make a lot of sense to me.