Blurry playback monitor from Premiere CS6

[Johnny Friday]

Did you open up in RCX on full screen to COMPARE images there VS. Premier's program monitor? Sounds like you just have soft images....if you are getting clean & crisp images from other non red clips....and as everyone keeps suggesting...paused rez at full....I'd start at a compare to see if images are soft all together--wait, makes no sense---you said your R3d's are sharp in FCP? then just sounds like your rez settings are not correct...play with those a bit...for some reason in 5.5 i had to set BOTH paused and playback to full to get the OPPOSITE one working....in other words had full set in puased rez, but was fuzzy, then chose full in playback and scrubbed around a bit and then it kicked in.....

[Michael McCaffrey]

Hi Micheal,

All I am referring to regarding debayer settings is the resolution at which Premiere runs the debayer operation. To change this for your source monitor, load an image into your viewer > right click on the image and you will see options in that list for "playback quality" and "paused quality". The higher resolution debayer you choose, the sharper your image will be.

Regarding entering into the source settings and changing the debayer detail, this didn't make any difference in CS5.5 - but I think that was a bug. I haven't had a chance to check this in CS6. If you are wanting to change this across a group of clips, you should be able to select all of the clips > right click > source settings > change debayer detail > ok :)

Will check to confirm that this works when I get a chance - but am out working all day today :P

Oh and regarding the soft RED images - my guess is that you are probably noticing the strong OLPF that RED uses on their cams + the fact that no in-camera sharpening is done. This is intentional as it helps to alleviate aliasing problems and gives you the flexibility to sharpen things up in post to the correct level with more precision :)

Brad,

The OLPF is a possibility. I've messed around with the unsharpen mask in Premiere and that helps but still not impressed. Especially when I look at what others are getting and checking out their still frames and R3Ds. I'm getting nothing as sharp as those. What process do you use to sharpen your footage and to what degree (specific settings)?

[Brad Allen]

Hi Michael,

Regarding the process of sharpening, sharpening is typically the very last step I do before exporting - this means for me that it comes after downscaling to the desired export resolution. This is especially important for the use of unsharp masks (which are also my most common sharpening tool), because the final resolution of your export will affect what radius you are wanting to use in that unsharp mask. I don't have any fixed settings for the unsharp mask as it really depends on the type of footage it is, the resolution it's being exported at and the lenses plus filters it was shot with. :)

Also - I checked that you can batch select R3D's and change the debayer detail on all of them at once and it seems that you can. I also checked whether it actually makes a difference in CS6 and from my own testing, I can't find any difference in sharpness or detail at all.

[jimhare]

Hi Michael. I've used RED since the beginning in RCX and FCP and can definitely state that any issues you're having with Premiere are user error or system based.

Premiere displays a glorious image so keep working at it, you'll crack it.