How difficult is format switching?

[Evan Owen]

Project frame rate maybe not, but imagine an interview where the subject deceides to get up and do something else - and you switch from 4K to 2K widowed because your shooting wide open and can´t predict its movements.

I wonder how this changes the lens characteristics though....

Ahm,.... windowed that is.....

Jochen

Exactly. When it comes to switching between 4K and 2K, having to switch cards would be a pain.

[Andy Fordham]

Lets hope that we don't have to do the same on the REDDrives when they arrive, this would be a pain not to be able to use different format selections over the drive.

Any news ?

[tj williams]

Rob????

[Evan Owen]

LOL ... this is like the question of the day.

I'm not freaking out. This is a huge issue, so I'm sure they'll figure out a way to make switching formats fast and easy before too long.

[Damien Molineaux]

Project frame rate maybe not, but imagine an interview where the subject deceides to get up and do something else - and you switch from 4K to 2K widowed because your shooting wide open and can´t predict its movements.

I wonder how this changes the lens characteristics though....

Ahm,.... windowed that is.....

Jochen

Wait, I find that very odd wanting to change from 2K to 4K not only on a same project but in a same scene ?! 2k windowed will certainly be more forgiving focus wise when projectd in 2k or HD, than 4K projected in 4k, but would it really change something if your output is with both your 2k and 4k footage the same format ?

That is, if you downres slightly soft 4k, to 2k, it'll appear sharper, and if you blow up 2k to 4k, you will loose sharpness. If you mix 2k and 4k, I don't think you will gain in sharpness with the 2k material, and more so, your images will be very difficult to mix because they will look quite different.

On the other hand, if you need higher frame rates, well you have to live with diference.

Cheers,
Damien

[Brandon Fraley]

its not a question of sharpness, it's about sensor size and DOF characteristics.

lets say you know ur going to finish in 2k or HD. You might want to shoot 4k for archive but also because it uses the full 35mm sensor. That 35mm sensor however, can make it very difficult to keep things in focus (sometimes good, sometimes bad). So for run and gun stuff, people may want to switch over to 2k windowed to get a half sized sensor with more forgiving DOF.

So yeah, people are asking about focus in relation to DOF, not overall sharpness

[martinnoweck]

hi there,

would be interesting to know more about this subject. while shooting with dvcpro hd a few weeks ago i remember i had to turn the camera off and on again after switching from 1080i to 720/50p. took a few seconds.

postproduction wise i agree with laguun -it was quite painful working with mixed formats on the same dvcpro hd tape, because selecting the right combination in the vtr menu required rebooting the vtr after every change. so try and error took quite a while ;-)

don't know if switching from 4k to 2k would really help to keep focus.

all the best,
martin

[Häakon]

don't know if switching from 4k to 2k would really help to keep focus.

Depends if it's windowed or scaled. Scaled mode takes the entire 4K image and shrinks it down to a 2K size - so the DOF is identical. Windowed mode, however, takes just a centered crop of the pixels - so in order to maintain the same field of view, you have to use wider/16mm lenses (and this expands your range of acceptable focus). Doing a "run and gun" in this scenario would probably be more beneficial to the shooter than shooting in 4K or in 2K scaled, because the focus will be easier to control.

[Rob Lohman]

I'll ask Stuart to respond to how this all came about. Today you need to reformat if you change the *project* framerate or change the resolution.