ACES...

[Marc Wielage]

...work with HDTV standard - eg no log space, limited dynamic range (what people do - which is really bad because you clip stuff)

Note that there's "HDTV" and there's "modified HDTV." I've done plenty of shows (as has Mike Most) where we actually had a sort of "pseudo-log" 10-bit image captured in 1080 HD, which was then brought down and color-corrected for Rec709 colorspace, essentially a custom LUT. The Martin Scorcese concert documentary Shine a Light was done this way to HDCam-SR, I think over 300 hours of footage. It made it all the way to film out, DCPs, even Imax, and no one cared or noticed.

So it can be done. I do agree with your other points, that R3D isn't always the best solution, especially for a film with massive changes, or a TV series on a very tight schedule.

I'd like to know how Light Iron is handling Criminal Minds. That's a tough show that pushes the envelope in terms of exposure, plus they shoot a lot of footage. I think R3D can work under certain conditions, but again -- comparing it to old school film log -- there was zero industry standards in terms of what a one-light film scan was. ILM, Technicolor, eFilm, Company 3, Imageworks, Digital Domain... nobody used the same standard. The same piece of film sent to all six places will be different. The same Red footage debayered by different people using different software will look different.

As long as the essential pieces of the image are there, any good colorist can still make reasonable pictures, even great pictures. It's for this reason that the most important advice I always give to my clients is, "test the workflow first" just to make sure the system you have in place will function. I think there's about ten different log settings that will pretty much work, but my preference is for something that's essentially balanced and not biased towards one color channel, and nothing's blown-out.

ACES is a great system for the future, and I think it goes a long way towards solving the problems posed by the original CDL (color decision list) from almost 10 years ago. It's not quite there yet. The other problem is the number of different formats thrown into productions; now that we have the Canon C300 to deal with (followed soon by the C500), there will be undoubtedly be new wrinkles of log-format files -- some indiscriminatly mixed with Red files. It's not unusual to deal with Rec709 footage, log footage, crushed footage, and blown-out footage, all within the same project, sometimes even within the same scene. From where I sit, the problem is getting worse, not better.

[Bruce Allen]

It is all about how you get to EXR... we understand that VFX needs this. It is just about how you get there. You can't screw it up by putting a predetermined look on it or inducing artifacts in the process. Currently ACES does both.

Jim

OK - but I seriously think RED should go a little easy on the "Stay R3D until the end, don't convert to a film pipeline" rhetoric...

Because you're setting up a false contrast in many folks minds:
EG it's "stay in R3D (good) vs convert to RGB and clip (bad)"
when it should be "stay in R3D (good) vs convert to RGB properly (good) vs convert to RGB and clip (bad)"

Many indie REDusers say "oh great, Jim says I must stay R3D and not convert... don't do Log or anything like that".

And then they hit VFX and go "WTF do we do now?"

They haven't researched proper RGB intermediates (they believed the "stay in R3D, edit the RAW 4K in Adobe" propaganda).... then they hit this huge workflow mess right in the middle of the proejct.

The VFX guy gets handed either a clipped, Rec-709 image... or an R3D, with either no idea how it should be developed... or they give him settings and those settings suck because they clip.

This is one reason RED has a bad post reputation.

Contrast this with Alexa, where Arri basically encourages people to use LogC, in a clear manner, with defined look up tables, etc.

If RED doesn't want people to use ACES, they should encourage the use of RedLogFilm with 709 or P3 primaries... not staying in R3D. My 2c. The documentation of best practices for working with RED footage in a RGB intermediate format is kinda inadequate and "stay in R3D" is just confusing things.

My 2c. Personally I don't have this problem (because I ignore exhortations to stay R3D and instead figured out how to do RGB properly...) but I see it happening all the time.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Jannard]

Bruce... sorry to have an opposing view. Why don't we see what others are doing? You just might be surprised.

I'm meeting with Peter and his group next week. I'll report exactly what they are doing on The Hobbit. That probably is telling...

LightIron has the most experience with RED footage. Maybe Michael can weigh in?

Jim

OK - but I seriously think RED should go a little easy on the "Stay R3D until the end, don't convert to a film pipeline" rhetoric...

Because you're setting up a false contrast in many folks minds:
EG it's "stay in R3D (good) vs convert to RGB and clip (bad)"
when it should be "stay in R3D (good) vs convert to RGB properly (good) vs convert to RGB and clip (bad)"

Many indie REDusers say "oh great, Jim says I must stay R3D and not convert... don't do Log or anything like that".

And then they hit VFX and go "WTF do we do now?"

They haven't researched proper RGB intermediates (they believed the "stay in R3D, edit the RAW 4K in Adobe" propaganda).... then they hit this huge workflow mess right in the middle of the proejct.

The VFX guy gets handed either a clipped, Rec-709 image... or an R3D, with either no idea how it should be developed... or they give him settings and those settings suck because they clip.

This is one reason RED has a bad post reputation.

Contrast this with Alexa, where Arri basically encourages people to use LogC, in a clear manner, with defined look up tables, etc.

If RED doesn't want people to use ACES, they should encourage the use of RedLogFilm with 709 or P3 primaries... not staying in R3D. My 2c. The documentation of best practices for working with RED footage in a RGB intermediate format is kinda inadequate and "stay in R3D" is just confusing things.

My 2c. Personally I don't have this problem (because I ignore exhortations to stay R3D and instead figured out how to do RGB properly...) but I see it happening all the time.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Bruce Allen]

Bruce... sorry to have an opposing view. Why don't we see what others are doing? You just might be surprised.

I'm meeting with Peter and his group next week. I'll report exactly what they are doing on The Hobbit. That probably is telling...

LightIron has the most experience with RED footage. Maybe Michael can weigh in?

Jim

Not opposing... I love RAW! I just think that RED should focus more on how to make a good RGB file early on that people can grade from... and less on "screw RGB, stay RAW"

Because average RED owners don't learn how to make a good RGB intermediate file (which is a different skill from making a good contrasty RGB output).

I would love to hear from LightIron and of course Peter Jackson. I had the pleasure of meeting Ian Vertovec when I did VFX on TimeScapes - awesome guy!

I imagine that Weta and everyone else are all going to DPX or EXR/SXR (stereo EXR) frames relatively early - and ignoring the "stay in R3D" mantra.

http://www.lightiron.com/news/creati...-dragon-tattoo
"Because of the amount of visual effects, Red RAW files cannot be used in the DI."

Anyway, much respect, Jim! Thanks for the open and awesome discussion as always.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Martin Stevens]

Great thread.....Thanks to all.

[Nikhil Kamkolkar]

Amazing thread indeed. Sorry to weigh in with nothing more than this, but just wanted to share that this is awesome sharing of knowledge. Acquisition is indeed key, but helping setup a best practice workflow that people can then build variations on is also another important key. Glad this is now a stated focus at RED.

[Gunleik Groven]

Well... Point is kinda mute, as the noble Gentlemen Most and Cioni has pointed out a number of times.

As long as you non-destructively bring in all data either out of the Rocket/SDK OR through a transcode to 16 bit EXR/DPX, the signal you grade on is the same (Or... it's not "identical" from either the rocket or the SDK, but that's besides the point in this context...). What comes out of the SDK/Rocket is an RGB signal...

What is not too often focused, which I think Bruce is talking about, is that you can easilly mess up the signal (as to "technical pristine" or not - not aesthatically, which a totally different discussion) with the metadatasettings, and then it doesn't in any way help you that you haven't transcoded and stay "RAW".


Just for the heck of it, try this:
Set metasettings in resolve for the same "fully exposed from high to low" image (or any other "RAW" grader), to Redspace/Redspace at 1000 and 250 ISO, and check what you can pull out of the highs and lows.

Compare that to RedLogFilm @ 500

Play with the WB on that same clip with all those settings.

Compare the results.

Nice example of crap signal in = crap signal out "RAW" or not

Main point being that since the early Scratch and color implementations of RAW grading - that weren't really all that good - we actually grade on a converted RGB signal, which noise and signalwise is how it should be.

In the early RAW graders, we had to do "weird shit" to lock us into RGB, so we didn't mess up the developed signal and add unwanted noise in the grade.

By now, this is more a matter of preference and RAID/SAN pipelines, computing powers available and optimisation, rather than a religious either/or debate.

And I am very happy that that is the case!

But you don't neccesarily gain anything but diskspace and slow computerperformance by staying RAW.

If you want this documented, I may be willing to comply... :)


And this is - BTW - tool independant...

Hm...

This discussion - interesting as it is - is kinda derailing the ACES discussion, which is even more interesting IMHO...

G

[Jose Lomeña]

I don't know how big production do this, but for low cost we prefer raw until final grading. 5K tiff is too big!!, and resize is something that i don't want to loose. You can't sacrifice all for some fx shots.

[Gunleik Groven]

I don't know how big production do this, but for low cost we prefer raw until final grading. 5K tiff is too big!!, and resize is something that i don't want to loose. You can't sacrifice all for some fx shots.

and we don't...

[Jose Lomeña]

and we don't...

In my opinion, If you convert to tiff 16bit, you loose:
1. Space
2. Raid or network speed
3. Color space
4. White balance too early
5. HDR not separate

I do this for vfx shots only. The rest RAW.