4K/50i? 4K/60i

[Jeff Kilgroe]

4K @ 60fps is too much for the internal processors to handle. It has nothing to do with the recording media, the camera simply can't process that much data onboard... for now.

You can't shoot 120fps using the 35mm sensor size because the sensor can't scan the full surface area at 120Hz. It can only do the s16mm sensor area at the full 120Hz. Once again that's too much data to handle internally by the onboard processors, but it can cope with a down-rez and encode to RGB. So we should be able to get 720p 4:4:4 RGB at 120fps onboard. We should be able to get 720p and 1080p @ 60fps from the s35mm sensor area at 4:4:4 RGB onboard. ...Once all those RGB functions are enabled.

[Graeme Nattress]

Think of interlace as a form of compression. It compresses, say, traditionally 60p into 60i or 50p into 50i. However, for long enough, it was never properly decompressed, the CRT display using phosphor decay coupled to your persistance of vision (and heavy interlace filtering to avoid twitter) to make it work.

Would you, in modern times, use a compression system, ie interlace, where the decode side of the problem, ie, decompression, is a problem that is yet to be properly solved. Extracting 60p back out of 60i is not easy, slow (and I'd hate to see how slow on 4k) and never quite works right anway. Everyone has their own methods of getting the progressive signal back out through de-interlacing, but there are as many methods as there are engineers, and they range from quick and dirty through to slow and nice, but even the "nice" have problems when the optical flow systems lead to bubbling or boiling of edges under certain circumstances.

[Stephen Webb]

Going off on a tangent (sorry to hijack the thread) but if the camera can do 4K@60p, why only 2K@120p? Is that just a limit of how fast the data can be read off the sensor?

[C.K.]

4K @ 60fps is too much for the internal processors to handle. It has nothing to do with the recording media, the camera simply can't process that much data onboard... for now.

For now? Does that mean that this could become possible in the near future?
And then, if it became possible, would we have any storage option fast enough to record it? Because that would make about 2*27=52MB datarate to record... Are there any CF cards fast enough for that, for exemple?

Otherwise...
It's true that I use a lot the interlaced mode on the HVX200 to make slow mo out of it... But with interlaced, you get half the definition which, in many case was ok enough... Here, with the red, my only option would be to shoot 1080p for those slow-mo shots, but then that's 1/4 of the definition which will become much more noticeable I think.

[Tom Lowe]

CK, I believe it has been stated that the processor onboard the RED can possibly be upgraded in the future to allow for higher 4K REDCODE RAW framerates. With the brisk pace of processor speed enhancements, this gives me hope.

So if interlaced video is half the res of 4K, that's still a lot more resolution than 1080RGB, right? Because 1080RGB is what most of us are going to be forced to shoot for overcranking.

[JasonAvalos]

So there is no way to under/over crank in the 4k or 2k format? i am confused.

[C.K.]

CK, I believe it has been stated that the processor onboard the RED can possibly be upgraded in the future to allow for higher 4K REDCODE RAW framerates. With the brisk pace of processor speed enhancements, this gives me hope.

I ordered mine about a week ago. Does anybody here thinks there's a chance I could get one of the hypothetic newer processors by the time I get it (some time in 2008)?

So if interlaced video is half the res of 4K, that's still a lot more resolution than 1080RGB, right? Because 1080RGB is what most of us are going to be forced to shoot for overcranking.

That's right.
But interlaced video is already an old story I guess...