More HDRx...

[Gavin Greenwalt]

You seem to be trying to compare this with a standard alternating over/under motion capture. It isn't.

Jim

No I'm comparing it to a currently non-existent 'normal' camera which could capture 18 stops natively. Aka RED Krakatoa or whatever your fourth generation chip is going to be called. :D

I get it. Exposure begins. Depending on the HDRx +Stops exposure value it reads out a copy of the exposure early as the x Channel and then finishes up the normal exposure. That is a better solution than alternating I agree. No weird gaps. But it's certainly different from a normal exposure. Perhaps better. Perhaps sometimes better and sometimes worse. Perhaps always worse. Either way we don't have 18 stop cameras available yet except with unwieldy 3D rigs so wherever it fails we'll be no worse off than we are currently. Where it does work, we'll have something better. Win Win (as long as you didn't assume that HDRx was going to work without any testing and overexposed your normal channel).

[Alex Mack]

Where it does work, we'll have something better.

I get the sense that its working in all situations...
MM is quite like burning through layers of film crystals.. the motion seems a cut above anything digital I've ever seen.

[Matthew Cernohorsky]

I get it. Exposure begins. Depending on the HDRx™ +Stops exposure value it reads out a copy of the exposure early as the x Channel and then finishes up the normal exposure. That is a better solution than alternating I agree. No weird gaps.

That was my guess on how they did it originally. Has this been confirmed or is it just speculation? I think it's a pretty clever approach.

[joshua csehak]

That was my guess on how they did it originally. Has this been confirmed or is it just speculation? I think it's a pretty clever approach.

The article (in which the guy interviewed Jim) says it takes an exposure normally (say, 1/48), and then without any gap, takes a shorter exposure. It's pretty clear that they're not taken at the same time, unless I read it wrong.

Gavin: you clearly have read the wiki article more closely than me. You win ;)

[Matthew Cernohorsky]

The article (in which the guy interviewed Jim) says it takes an exposure normally (say, 1/48), and then without any gap, takes a shorter exposure. It's pretty clear that they're not taken at the same time, unless I read it wrong.

Hmmm...but Jim has confirmed that there is no temporal difference between the exposures. I guess we'll figured it out in due time when epic is released or possibly sooner....

[Gavin Greenwalt]

The article (in which the guy interviewed Jim) says it takes an exposure normally (say, 1/48), and then without any gap, takes a shorter exposure. It's pretty clear that they're not taken at the same time, unless I read it wrong.

That's incorrect. The HDRx exposure is a subsection of the main exposure and it's at the beginning not the end. As to whether the normal exposure includes the HDRx timeframe or the two are split and then averaged back together to form the "normal" exposure even without Magic Motion is unknown and really ultimately irrelevant since they would look exactly the same if it was in fact possible to do that without a gap. I doubt it's possible without a gap. That's why I'm betting the trick they've pioneered is probably the early readout without interrupting the normal exposure and it sounds like that's a cool hardware trick they had to build into the chips to achieve.

Jim also said it's only possible to have the HDRx read at the beginning not the end. So that also discourages the idea that they are two separate frames stitched together and not an early read of the same exposure. If it was just recording another frame without a gap they could do it arbitrarily anywhere in the frame (even centered). The fact that it's only the very first part is a strong hint that it's two reads of one exposure at different times through the exposure.

[Uli Plank]

@ Sanjin: We did extensive testing when we had our RED (#1462) for half a year and didn't find any tone-mapping algorithm that didn't create strange fluctuations in motion. They seem to be all optimized for stills. I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

@Gavin: I agree that Optical Flow algorithms from RE:Vision are better then The Foundry's, but nothing would stop us from experimenting with them as soon as we have those two streams from HDRx™. There are so many possibilities to apply them and blend/mix/combine the results in any good compositing program.

Regarding "Magic Motion", I think RED discovered something very interesting about human vision accidentially AFTER developing the most intelligent solution to HDR in motion – even if it's RED I don't believe this was planned. But it definitely deserves further investigation. I got to apply for some funding from our research institutions…

[Sanjin Jukic]

@ Sanjin: We did extensive testing when we had our RED (#1462) for half a year and didn't find any tone-mapping algorithm that didn't create strange fluctuations in motion. They seem to be all optimized for stills. I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

Regarding "Magic Motion", I think RED discovered something very interesting about human vision accidentially AFTER developing the most intelligent solution to HDR in motion – even if it's RED I don't believe this was planned. But it definitely deserves further investigation. I got to apply for some funding from our research institutions…

Uli,

I just finished rendering 1 (one) second of my experimental R1-MX HDR enhanced footage and didn't discover any motion related issues.

DOWNLOAD R1-MX HDR test footage 1.4 MB >>>>


A snapshot from HDR generated part of the test footage in Photomatix Pro.


A snapshot that used for HDR processing @ ISO 100.


A snapshot that used for HDR processing @ ISO 1600.


Curve Settings at RCX for the second part of the test footage for those skeptics who think is better solution than using HDR, but really not..

[William Young]

Nice!

[Shane Betts]

No I'm comparing it to a currently non-existent 'normal' camera which could capture 18 stops natively. Aka RED Krakatoa or whatever your fourth generation chip is going to be called. :D

Gavin, I'm curious as to what you're labelling a 'normal' camera. Is it a film camera? If so, at what shutter angle? Is it a video camera? If so, interlace or progressive and what shutter speed? Is it a digital camera? If so, once again, what shutter angle?

I don't believe I'm the only one who has found progressive motion capture from electronic cameras to be somewhat less pleasing than the images that come from film cameras. I believe this is partly to do with the motion blur and partly to do with the 48Hz cadence of 24fps footage as delivered by film projectors.

For me, and quite a few others it would seem, the effect Magic Motion™ delivers, with its combination of sharp and blurry motion is the most pleasant representation of motion seen - from electronic or sprocketed cameras yet and delivers what appears to be a leapfrog over the look of film. Only time will tell.

Of course, there could be pitfalls ahead. Of course SFX guys might find the whole thing a pain in the arse. But, ultimately, story wins out and, if this motion makes the movie easier and more seamless - more believable - to watch, then post people had better get used to it. From what I've seen, I'll need some pretty strong convincing not to shoot everything this way. I love the look!