I decided to start a new thread for this. Any questions about Piranha and REDCODE/R3D, I'd encourage posting here for now.
Just a small update on my progress with native R3D support for Piranha.
Jan 1, 2009: Audio is now functional. Support for ILM/EXR HALF types, RGB (8bit), and SHORT (16bit). Currently, SHORT is recommended for performance reasons. Multi-threaded Multi-frame decoding is now supported. R3D SDK support multi-threading for decoding the current frame. The R3D plugin for Piranha will now additionally decode multiple frames at once when requested by Piranha (this requires A LOT of memory to store multiple 4k frames in the frame buffer). Currently, on my development environment (a dual-core laptop), I am seeing 24fps from 4k media at 1/8 res, and 48fps from 2k media at 1/8 res. I am working together with IFX on the metadata interface, and to improve browsing in the clip-bin (this is requiring feature enhancements to Piranha directly). Next on my list is the UI/interface for changing metadata.
Jan 11, 2009: Added "One-Light" plugin for applying user-specified Image Processing Settings via the RED SDK. It is important to clarify, as there are many plugins that support various color correction techniques, but all are applied AFTER the frame is decoded and debayered, using Piranha or other external techniques. The One-Light essentially overrides the R3D metadata and 'develops' the R3D footage according to the values specified in the plugin, before it enters the video frame enters the Piranha pipeline. Users can still apply Piranha and other 3rd Party color tools further down the chain. Because One-Light is a Piranha VFX plugin is supports all of the standard capabilities of Piranha plugins, including the ability to keyframe values, such as exposure, or white balance. For example, a traveling shot that moves from Tungsten to Daylight, can now be one-lit properly, keyframing the values and letting the REDCODE plugin transition the white balance with the camera move. Additionally, REDCODE One-Light supports Piranha's Effect Sharing. This allows a one-light to be done on all clips in a file by sharing a single One-Light instance across all R3D clips. Changing white balance values in one clip can affect all others.
There are a few significant bugs to iron out, but I hope to have some screen casts showing the plugin functionality with a week or two (nevermind the week-long trip to DC on Wednesday). Around the same time, I hope to have a beta product available to people interested in evaluating it.
Feb 3, 2009: Mostly fine-tuning some stuff, improving memory footprint, and optimizations. The plugin is pretty stable, and usable, but it does exhibit some quirks that will hopefully be addressed in the near future. Development has slowed some, in part because I'm using it, and in part because of other distractions. As promised, below is the first of a series of screencasts. These are very rough, but prove the concept. I am looking for a very high-end machine to benchmark and further optimize development on. I'm hitting the top-end of my workstation's capabilities (4-year-old hardware). If you would are interested, and have a spare octa-core laying around somewhere with a nice NVIDIA card, and want to let me borrow it for a 6-8 weeks, that would be swell.
Screencasts:
http://www.vimeo.com/3074461
