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 Best RED Image Tips
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:12 pm    Post subject: Best RED Image Tips Reply with quote

Released online from RED:

"The 3 important things to do to get the best image from a RED camera are:

1. Expose properly. "Stay inside the goal posts".
With the new "goal posts" in-camera and the addition of FLUT Color Science, you now have a TON of exposure tools. USE them. There is no excuse to miss exposure and cut short the latitude available to you. If you do not clip RAW, you will not clip RED footage at any ISO.

2. Set White Balance BEFORE converting to RGB space for grading.
Color science is based around White Balance. If you lock in a twisted (rotated) color matrix to RGB space for grading, there are no tools to un-twist the color. If you set 5600 and the real WB is 5000, you will only be off a little bit and probably not notice. But if you mistakenly set 3200 and the real WB you want to achieve is 7000, you will NEVER get there with any grading tool in RGB space. You will need to go back and re-white balance your R3D and try again. People who complain about RED's color usually find out that they have made this tactical error. The easiest thing to do is hit AWB in camera and/or shoot a white or grey card in the scene and hit it with the WB tool in REDCINE-X or other app that uses the SDK.

3. ALWAYS do a full resolution debayer output for grading and finished work. Half-res ONLY for offline editing."


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"RED spinning Drives are a "no go" at concerts and on helicopters. The sound levels and/or vibration will cause dropped frames. For long takes use RED Ram or 16GB-64GB CF cards only."

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"RESOLUTION.

RED 4K-RAW cameras have 4096 horizontal pixels. Since RAW is a Bayer pattern, the actual measured resolution is less. You can use 80% to figure out exactly what the final measured resolution will be. For example, 4K-RAW will end up as roughly 3.2K (4096 x 80% = 3276) measured resolution. 5K RAW (EPIC) will actually measure 4K (5120 x 80% = 4096).

4K delivery.

We believe that 4K delivery (4096 x 2160) is the future of cinema, both in theaters and in the home. 4K is roughly 430% more resolution than 1080P. We also believe that it is not a good idea to acquire in 1080P or 2K for a 4K delivery.

A 4K film scan has measured resolution of about 2.8K for fast film (ISO 500) and about 3.2K for slow film (ISO 100). We do believe that 3K of measured resolution will scale to a 4K delivery with no problems. 3K of measured resolution is 256% greater than 1080P (3072 x 1728 = 5308416 vs. 1920 x 1080 = 2073600)

We don't believe that we are alone in this thinking. Sony, Christie, Barco, Meridian, JVC and Epson have 4K projectors (the newest Sony T Model is incredible). Panasonic has just introduced their 152" 4K plasma. Samsung, Sony and Sharp have all shown 4K displays. Now all they need is RED 4K (RED Ray) to deliver the content."

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"RED LCD. You need to use the top arrows on the LCD to gain up to maximum brightness... then tick down 4 clicks to get proper brightness that matches the rest of the system."
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 11:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote


"TIPS...

CAMERA FIRMWARE
Perform frequent firmware upgrades. We are improving builds on a regular basis. Take advantage of that. If you experience anything outside of normal camera operation, re-load firmware and email log files to RED for evaluation. Do a black shading calibration after EVERY firmware upgrade.

HEAT
If you're not recording audio, then set the fans to "Hot" to avoid ever even getting close to over heating. Don't tape off/block the ports on the side of the camera since heat escapes out of those ports. If fans get noisy, replace them. Professional cameras need maintenance"

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Last edited by RedCam Central on Sat Jan 23, 2010 6:23 pm; edited 1 time in total
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 11:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"REDundead.

REDundead is a command line tool that recovers R3D files from drives and CF cards that have been formatted to the file system that has been corrupted. It does a great job of recovering the R3D files unless the drive was erased and then recorded onto again... but it might recover the remaining files.

Filesystem corruption usually happens when a drive is unplugged from the computer when the filesystem is being written to.

REDundead has saved many a project. Thank Deanan."

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 11:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"REDcolor vs. Camera RGB.

Camera RGB is the native color coming off the sensor. REDcolor is corrected Camera RGB matched to industry standards. The punchline is... use REDcolor."

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 11:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"MYTHS.

"RED doesn't do good skin tones".
Last weekend, Tony Pratt of Park Road Post showed footage from The Lovely Bones with film intercut with RED footage. All the scenes were "skin tone scenes". He challenged the audience to tell which was which. Between the presentations, he confided that whenever he actually gets an answer to that question, most get it wrong.

So if Park Road Post can get great skin tones from Build 15 and Build 16 footage, why can't others? Here are some possible answers:

1. You committed to RGB space for grading without a proper white balance first. If you are off a significant amount in WB, it will make it very difficult to get back where you want. This has been discussed in Post #2 of this thread.
2. Early RED color science was not as exact as it is now, which meant that some work was necessary (as opposed to none) to get great skin tones. Today's new FLUT Color Science (see Post #11 above) makes it extremely easy to get proper color, including skin tones.

"RED footage is soft".
Sorry, nothing could be further from the truth. Peter Jackson has compared RED 4.5K-RAW footage to 65mm film as recently as one month ago. If you have actually seen projected RED 4K footage, you realize how incredible this statement is. So why do some people say this?

1. They actually didn't see RED footage but heard someone else say this.
2. They shot 4K footage and did a half-res debayer to 1080P (half-res throws away 78% of the recorded information) and did not "un-sharp mask" the RAW footage because _________ (insert another myth here).
3. They shot RED 2K footage (1/4 of the resolution) and expected it to be the same resolution as 4K.
4. They watched a bad film print.

RED 4K-RAW footage has 256% more measured resolution than a 1080P camera (assuming it actually measured the captured resolution). RED 4K-RAW footage has more measured resolution than a 4K scan of S35 film. Resolution is not something that the RED ONE is deficient at. Shoot a zone plate and see for yourself."

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PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 6:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

White Balance.

So just how important is WB? Check out the two grabs below.

The top one's WB is from metadata (about 4200K, -6 tint) left over from a previous in camera Auto WB (I forgot to do a new one in different light). The bottom is the same clip but with a picked WB in REDCINE-X (about 5100K, -2 tint). Seemingly not a ton of difference... but look at the histogram of each. The 1st is clipped in the blue channel, the 2nd not even close. If I had exported the 1st clip to an RGB space for grading, I would never have been able to bring the clipping back in.

(Note the RED logo on Force's car)

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PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 6:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Regarding clipping and FLUT™ Color Science...

"Clipping can be a tricky subject - there's strict mathematical clipping and then there's practical clipping.

FLUT™ doesn't allow anything that is not actually clipped (ie 12bit value = 4095) to actually clip. They will get crushed up towards 4095, might actually reach 4094, might in extreme circumstances get quantized up to 4095, but that's it.

In practical terms, if you crush the highlights way way up, any detail left in them, assuming they are un-clipped and have detail to begin with, will get diminished, just like what happens in film's soft clip knee. The histogram and right clip meter in the histogram are "practically" oriented. There are 9437184 pixels in your 4k image, and if just a few are clipping, then the bar on the histogram that represents that will be very very short, and probably not visible, even though it does exist.

With visual display of data over such a range of values, some manner of scaling should be used to ensure you can see a reasonable representation of that data, which means unless clipping is "significant", and the white bar at the right is to help you see that, you may have small amounts of clipped image that the histogram doesn't reflect. This is perfectly correct and normal as if it works the other way, you end up vastly under-exposing the image to save those odd pixels and ruin the over-all effect.

Hope that explains the histogram monitoring methodology for you."

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PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 6:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"FLUT™. What?

FLUT™ (or Floating Point LUT) is a science developed by Graeme that efficiently allows you to balance your mid-greys in the center of the histogram without worry that you're pushing highlight detail over the edge.

FLUT™ works to smoothly bend in any highlights that might get clipped when going to a higher ISO, working like film's smooth highlight roll-off.

As a user, you really don't need to know anything about how FLUT™ works... just that it should be your primary brightness control."

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 7:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

More from Jim Jannard:

Resolution 101

In the very near future we will see 4K delivery. No doubt about it. But who gets to play?

It seems obvious that Standard Definition is not High Definition. But is High Definition (720P and 1080P) able to scale to 4K? Not from where I sit. Pushing less than 2K up over 400% to "fit" a 4K delivery is exactly the same as pretending that SD is HD. It just isn't.

We will attempt to demonstrate exactly what we mean. I will add other cameras performance as we do the testing. But to begin with... let's start with the Canon 5D, which promises a 1080P output. While the file size is 1080P, the actual measured resolution is quite a bit less. So too is Bayer pattern resolution lower than the file size. RED 4K actually measures about 3.2K and 4.5K actually measures about 3.7K. The new EPIC 5K will measure a full 4K. For comparison, 35mm Film measures about 2.8K for ASA 500 stock and about 3.2K for ASA 100 stock... both from a 4K scan. Film resolves much less from a 2K scan... less than 2K.

Graeme has shot Zone Plates of the 5D, along with the new M-X sensor upgraded RED ONE. Here are the results.



M-X sensor (in red) and the Canon 5D (in black). The grey area is where the 5D2 provides either NO detail or corruption caused by aliasing. It really measures a "ragged" 1.4K horizontal resolution vs. about 3.7 for the Mysterium-X at 4.5K.

BTW... that is over 4 times more measured resolution.

3800x11630 = 6,194,000 measured resolution from 4.5K Mysterium-X sensor
1400x1080 = 1,512,000 measured resolution from the 5D

6,194,000 / 1,512,000 = 4.09 times more resolution

So... what measured resolution actually qualifies to be 4K delivery worthy? Same answer as what qualifies for HD. We know of no 1080P output camera that actually measures a full 1080P. There are varying degrees of uprezzing in every HD delivery. Some not much, some more. Same will apply to 4K delivery. The industry will decide.

We beg our customers to debayer RED footage at full resolution for final output. If you do your debayer at half-res, you throw away one of the primary advantages of RED... resolution. It will matter in the future."

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 7:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Resolution 102

"This is where we keep track of camera's actual resolution. This list will continue to grow as the tests are done.

Canon 5D- 1080P output. 1.4K of measured resolution (and if you look at the chart closely, you will agree that this number is generous)

RED ONE- 4K output. 3.2K measured resolution
RED ONE- 4.5K output. 3.7K measured resolution

EPIC- 5K output. 4K measured resolution

Film (ASA 100)- 4K scan. 3.2K measured resolution
Film (ASA 500)- 4K scan. 2.8K measured resolution"

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 11:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shooting RED 1, 2, 3...

This was posted online by RED's Jim Jannard today:

"While this info is also posted in "Tips and Thoughts"... I felt like it should also be posted here for feedback.

Our goal was to make a camera that was easy to shoot, easy to post and made incredible images. After a couple of years of working very hard on all of these categories, we think we are now pretty close to having the easiest/best solutions in the industry.

Shooting a RED camera.

1. Set up your camera
Load latest firmware
Do a Black Shade Calibration (lens cap on, T22)
Format media (CF card, RED RAM, etc.)


2. Set up your project.
Select a project size like 4K 2:1, 4K 16:9, 4K Quad HD, 4.5K 2.33:1, 3K 2:1, etc.
Select a project frame rate base like 23.976 (default), 24 or 25.
Select an in-camera color space like REDcolor (default) or RAW (we HIGHLY recommend REDcolor)


3. Set ISO/ASA and exposure
Set camera White Balance (or better yet, shoot a MacBeth, grey card or other white reference in the scene and set WB in post).
Use your light meter
Use the camera exposure tools
• Check your histogram.
• Stay inside the "goal posts"- Noise floor (left) and clipping (right) in RAW with Build 30
• Check "RAW Check"- Noise floor (purple) and clipping (red) in RAW with Build 30.
• Check "barber pole"- RAW with Build 30.
• Check "stop lights"- RAW with Build 30.
• Use False Color

RECORD.

GRADING RED footage...

1st Choice. White Balance and grade native R3Ds in a system that supports the R3D SDK like Scratch, Pablo, Baselight, REDCINE-X, FCP, Color, Adobe CS4, Vegas, etc.

2nd Choice. After selecting the correct White Balance, output full range (REDlog or REDgamma) and full res debayer to DPX, TIFF or ProRes 444 from REDCINE-X/RED Rocket™. Open output in 3rd party grading applications."

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 2:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

More from Jim:

"There are a ton of ways to expose a RED ONE. With the new Build 30... this is what I do. It doesn't mean this is what you should do, but give it a try.

I start with ISO 800 and set my aperture to what matches the scene on my LCD (remember to click LCD down 4 clicks from brightest setting).

I then look at my goal posts. If either the left or right has any red, I hit the RAW Check (√E) to see what is either clipping or in the noise floor. Usually with the M-X I worry about clipping. RAW Check will tell me exactly what is clipped and I can make the decision to stop down or not. For example, if I am outside, everything looks right except a chrome bumper has a bright clipped spot... I'll just leave it alone. If the side of a white car is clipped... I'll lower exposure (reduce T-stop) until it stops clipping in RAW Check. At that time... I pull out my incident meter to double-check... and it is usually within .1-.2 stops. It is very comforting that everything lines up and makes sense. While there are a few exceptions, there aren't many.

With the M sensor... the noise floor becomes more of an issue. That's why you should upgrade."

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 3:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Also...

"Both M and M-X have the same pixel size and the same sensitivity.

High ISOs are "native sensitivity" (can't believe I used that term) plus a curve.

The higher the ISO, the more you push that curve and induce noise.

The less noisy the pixel, the more you can push that curve without consequence.

There are advantages to pushing the curve/higher ISO (highlight protection)... right up to the point where you get too much noise (for your taste).

You can push the M-X sensor more than M because it is less noisy.

Hope that makes it easier to understand.

BTW... dynamic range is defined as signal/noise. This is why the M-X sensor has more DR than M."

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