Is R3D 4:4:4 or 4:2:2?

[Adam Watson]

The title says it all. Maybe there is a concept of it that I don't understand but I can't seem to find any indication of whether Red RAW is 4:4:4 in nature or 4:2:2. Anyone know for sure?

I know you can output 4:4:4 in transcode but is that 4:4:4 level of color information actually there to begin with?

[Graeme Nattress]

Neither - it's RAW. 4:2:2 etc. refers to the situation where chroma bandwidth is reduced in a Y'CbCr encoded signal to achieve a smaller bandwidth.

Graeme

[Adam Watson]

so it can be transcoded into whatever, got it.

[Martin Stevens]

Are R3Ds 16 bit or 12 bit?

Is there a way to change the recording bit depth on the Epic?

Is the Epic-X a 16 bit system?

[Yaque Silva-Doyle]

Epic R3ds are 16 bit

[Tom.Wong]

Epic R3ds are 16 bit

what about the A/D conversion? is the sensor natively 14 bit going into a 16 container? 16 to 16? 14 to 12 than padded in a 16 bit container? r1 mx was a 12 bit codec, I'm wondering if the A/D stayed the same off the r1 to the Epic and if it's just 12 bits spread out in a 16 bit container.

[Craig Parkes]

I admit my question was a bit cheeky, because I knew it was an altogether different question, but I also knew it would get the sort of responses I was looking for, which is that:

A) Theoretically modern RGB compression could do a better job than 4:2:2 downsampling pre compression, but hell, 4:2:2 is fast, known and visually pretty hard to spot so heck, so rather than bemoan the world we live in going with that for now makes sense.

and

B) Bruce might write up his 4:2:2 Open EXR workflow in a post, which is a workflow that makes a heck of a lot of sense in my head theoretically, but isn't one that would be considered the 'norm' in tradition heavy iron type workflows where a lot of the literature comes from (especially not at 4K resolution.) and one that I would need to do a bit of research to implement. Bruce, if you are ever in Auckland, New Zealand, let me buy you a beer. :)

Having only really had my head in the post game for about 5 years, and having spent much of that scrounging around for scraps of information on prosumer centric forums or boffiny personal websites of video engineers to get to grips with a lot of these concepts (because somewhat surprisingly at first I discovered even a lot of people who worked day to day in industry really had no idea about what was actually going on under the hood and would spout misinformation at the drop of a hat.) I am truly thankful for the quality of communication and openness with information that is on Reduser!

[Rob Ruffo]

I admit my question was a bit cheeky, because I knew it was an altogether different question, but I also knew it would get the sort of responses I was looking for, which is that:

A) Theoretically modern RGB compression could do a better job than 4:2:2 downsampling pre compression, but hell, 4:2:2 is fast, known and visually pretty hard to spot so heck, so rather than bemoan the world we live in going with that for now makes sense.

and

B) Bruce might write up his 4:2:2 Open EXR workflow in a post, which is a workflow that makes a heck of a lot of sense in my head theoretically, but isn't one that would be considered the 'norm' in tradition heavy iron type workflows where a lot of the literature comes from (especially not at 4K resolution.) and one that I would need to do a bit of research to implement. Bruce, if you are ever in Auckland, New Zealand, let me buy you a beer. :)

Having only really had my head in the post game for about 5 years, and having spent much of that scrounging around for scraps of information on prosumer centric forums or boffiny personal websites of video engineers to get to grips with a lot of these concepts (because somewhat surprisingly at first I discovered even a lot of people who worked day to day in industry really had no idea about what was actually going on under the hood and would spout misinformation at the drop of a hat.) I am truly thankful for the quality of communication and openness with information that is on Reduser!

It's not that hard to spot 422 when you have greenscreen, or even an aggressive secondary color grade based on HSL qualification.

[Graeme Nattress]

It's not that hard to spot 422 when you have greenscreen, or even an aggressive secondary color grade based on HSL qualification.

Back in 2001, Pananvision with Sony at NAB did a demo of just that - 4:4:4, 4:2:2, 3:1:1 (HDCAM) keying. I'd just finished keying some 3:1:1 for the other demo they were showing - computer graphics depth of field matched to lens metadata.

The idea was that most people couldn't tell which key was which. And indeed "most people" couldn't. I got all three correctly named. You've just got to know what to look for.

The situation isn't as bad today though because keying software has improved and it either incorporates, or people know to use, some kind of chroma resolution fixing filter.

Graeme

[Bruce Allen]

The title says it all. Maybe there is a concept of it that I don't understand but I can't seem to find any indication of whether Red RAW is 4:4:4 in nature or 4:2:2. Anyone know for sure?

I know you can output 4:4:4 in transcode but is that 4:4:4 level of color information actually there to begin with?

First off, if you're talking 1080p... sure RED has 4:4:4 level of detail.

But at 4K or 5K:

The Bayer sensor reconstruction can get you more than 4:2:2 quality in some cases... but for all practical purposes, no: you have either a red or a green or a blue pixel, not a RGB pixel. It's a real stretch to see how you can possibly get high-quality 4:4:4 info out of this sucker.

Personally I have been doing tests and am moving my post pipeline to 4K... but at 4:2:2.

I really haven't seen the RED getting enough chroma detail beyond 4:2:2 for it to be worth the massive increase in disk space that 4:4:4 requires.

If you compare a 1.8GB folder of 4K DPX files... you can do OpenEXR at 4:2:2 with light B44 compression and get practically identical quality but at 577MB.

Unless you have a lot of stock investments in hard drive companies, 4:4:4 4K just doesn't make sense to me.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com