PNGs

[jbeale]

PNGs are great for sharing files across the Internet (which is what they were designed to do) where bandwidth and storage size are premiums.

I think that's where this thread started out: What is the best format to share your latest Red frame grab (with all the original dynamic range) with the audience here on reduser. PNG seems best for that to me.

PNG is also useful if you need to archive the maximum # of processed frames on a given storage media (DVD-R etc) while still maintaining full original quality. Of course if it's straight from a .r3d file, then just that portion of the actual .r3d file would be even better, as far as size goes. Bringing up the question: can you segment a .r3d movie file into separate single frames and store those as separate files on the disk? I assume so, given Redcode apparently doesn't do inter-frame compression.

[Ryan Sims]

Yes, the sooner we can post and share .r3d files, the better. We just all need access to REDcine or alert before that can happen. When .r3d files are the standard, forget TIFFs, DPXs and PNGs. We'll most likely then just share JPEGs for the CC looks we created from the .r3d raw files.

[PatrickFaith]

Resurrecting an old thread ... but this is the closest one I could find were someone was playing with png. I have been doing speed tests for vfx intermediate work ... and am often finding my best times are r3d -> png then back from png to composite with r3d. I am doing separate passes for shadows and z-depth, so don't really need those options from openexr. Also when I need to code some vfx i'm finding more interfaces for png. The png sizes at 4k are often 3x smaller then openexr and 5x smaller then dpx, so this saves me a lot of speed on reads, and reduces my disk requirements. Since png is not lossy, seems like it works way better then jpeg2000 (which is sometimes hard to find the plugin for), and png is only about 2x bigger then jpeg2000. PNG also has alpha channels, which i use a ton. For "indie" vfx, does it make sense to use png ?