RED changing cinema

[firewallet]

I think I remember reading somewhere that the RED team did say the difference between RED CODE raw and uncompressed is practically indistinguishable visually.

Yeah, I read that also.

 

[pablovi]

According to this chart, I'd say this 4k workflow is confirmed at this point:
http://red.com/download/redcine.jpg

I think I remember reading somewhere that the RED team did say the difference between RED CODE raw and uncompressed is practically indistinguishable visually.

Well, their website is wrong then or not updated, it does say in the specs that the Redcode codec was only for 2k or less. It will take one hell of an algorithm to get that much innformation so compresse and not lose quality, but I guees we have to trust them. If they indeed pull that off (27MB/s) it will take a lot less time than a decade.

 

[laguun]

Of course you can go 4k with film, thera re 4k telecines(rank) and 4K scanners.

that is exactly the problem. you need scanners for 4k. you don´t need them when shooting digital.

And with Fincher too, that's my whole point, right now shooting at 4k, takes as long as shooting film.

this is wrong.

have you ever participated in a 4k production?

i gain more and more the feeling that you just speculate and have no experience in digital 4k workflow, at least not first hand.

some points for your consideration.
1) you don´t scan. you start
2) you don´t syncsound. you are sync.
3) you don´t bring film somewhere, miles or dozens or houndreds of miles away, to be developed, brought back to the holy tent, checked there and then be cleared to be scanned. you control at the set. you ingest there.
4) you don´t land the helicopter, undive the sub, stop the whole set every 10 minutes worth of shooting. in the best case - red workflow, you simply change the disk. seconds instead of hours.
5) you don´t walk around on the set, estimating the lightmeter, you exactly see the result on vector/wave.
6) you don´t have the bad surprise with the VFX guys with the greenscreen after prinipal photography. you discover the mistake at the set, change it there.
7....x) many,many,many things more, which you won´t learn if you stick to methods which are moving from today to yesterdays faster than one can say DCI.

sidenote : production reality is 1080p/2k, and all digital blockbuster, including genesis which have dominated the boxoffices, are 1080p, not 4k. the same, once more, is valid for the huge mayority of blockbustion movies which have been shot on film.

You have the same and more disadvantages. And it's at least as expensive.

in every single response i prove this speculation wrong with facts, repeating this mantra will not replace facts nor will it alter production reality. your individual opinion and modern production workflows aren´t aligned.

And I have yet to see a 2k or 1080p movie with a cinematography that can challenge a greta film cinematography.

even if this is a totally vague criticism, in that case you are a minority.

The audience, and many of your colleagues (i am one of them) feels and experiences different.

if you want to have the fully splendid - superman/flyboys. if you want nature, wildlife, faces, the dark jungle - apocalypto/two brothers, if you want styled vfx - sky captain/sin city, if you want rough and urban: vice/collateral and so on and so furth.

So, if those movies can´t challenge your great cinematography skills, then you certainly are a very welcome consultant, as the DOPs, directors and producersof the listed movies will be certainly highly inspired why their films are so bad and not worth of "great cinematography".

once more - we mix the 10-20% worth of 35mm with the cinealta here since years, it blends and integrates perfectly and even die-hard photochemical snobs dont take bets anymore. i won enough bottles of champagne from them.

for starters: degrain the 35mm, add that grain to the cinealta. shoot narrow angle from distance, lense wide open with the cinealta, close lense wide angle with 35mm. mix this in post. add typical lab-processes (bleach etc) to cinealta. now most sceptics will insult the 35mm footage and say "i knew it, film is so much nicer"... while seeing the digital footage. with shallow dephts, grain and nice processlooks.

moviemaking is mastering the creative and technical challenges, not whining over them or looking for excuses.

 

[Chris Kenny]

Well if they can pull that off, that would be a great advancement, since HD and system bandwith doesn't evolves that fast, having a 4k compresssed srteam at 27MB/s is quite remarcable, but I don't know how can they can pull that off. And let's see how much compression it has.

That is a remarkable news.

RED's numbers aren't that far out there. The DCI spec for digital cinema projection calls for 12-bit/channel 4K at 24 fps at 250 megabits/sec (31.25 MB/s). DCI uses JPEG2000, which is a wavelet codec, like REDCODE RAW. REDCODE RAW is only 10-bit/channel, and RED has the advantage that they're compressing RAW bayer sensor data (less data than RGB) and they've got a few more years of advancement in codec design over JPEG2000.

 

[laguun]

Well, their website is wrong then or not updated, it does say in the specs that the Redcode codec was only for 2k or less. It will take one hell of an algorithm to get that much innformation so compresse and not lose quality, but I guees we have to trust them. If they indeed pull that off (27MB/s) it will take a lot less time than a decade.

i saw that codec at IBC this year. its very nice. but i am afraid most cinemas of this world are not sharp enough to make the difference visible.

the audience doesn´t notice 2k from 4k anyhow, even experts have to switch to concentrated eagle-mode when comparing.

funny, this ibc the panavision guys themself didn´t notice that they were showing their stuff on the christie 2k insteand of the sony 4k, until someone told them...

 

[pablovi]

that is exactly the problem. you need scanners for 4k. you don´t need them when shooting digital.


this is wrong.

have you ever participated in a 4k production?

i gain more and more the feeling that you just speculate and have no experience in digital 4k workflow, at least not first hand.

some points for your consideration.
1) you don´t scan. you start
2) you don´t syncsound. you are sync.
3) you don´t bring film somewhere, miles or dozens or houndreds of miles away, to be developed, brought back to the holy tent, checked there and then be cleared to be scanned. you control at the set. you ingest there.
4) you don´t land the helicopter, undive the sub, stop the whole set every 10 minutes worth of shooting. in the best case - red workflow, you simply change the disk. seconds instead of hours.
5) you don´t walk around on the set, estimating the lightmeter, you exactly see the result on vector/wave.
6) you don´t have the bad surprise with the VFX guys with the greenscreen after prinipal photography. you discover the mistake at the set, change it there.
7....x) many,many,many things more, which you won´t learn if you stick to methods which are moving from today to yesterdays faster than one can say DCI.

1)You just start? at what? post-production? 4k Raw files need to be rendered, colo corrected, given a gamma, white balanced to be able to edit it and do CGI or VFX, so it's not only start.

2)You don't sync sound? that's new to me, you don't recorded it directly to the camera do you? On every single video production I have worked the sound is recorded to an external DAT(before) Mini Disc, or now digital recorder. and then you need to sync it in post with the slate.

3)You need to take the RAW data in the HD to a render farm, and it tales all night to render.

4) Loading a magazine in film doesn't take minutes, it takes seconds too. In a real working enviromente you have 2 AC's and a loader the loader has previoulsy loaded the magazine and you just place it in the camera.

5) I've seen many DP's on video using a FC meter and a color meter, and it takes them as long to light for film than for video. That you don't really need to know much about cinematography to get good results in video is right just ask Robert Rodriguez.

On 2K is another thing when you do get an instant image and can see the result at hand were you mostly don't need to render the footage to make it usefull, etc... And in 2K I agree that is faster, less of a hassle, and cheaper than film.



Like I said I loved Collateral and Miami vice but it doens't look like film or like video, is a different thing.

I haven't seen the Savides cinematography in the latest fincher movie. But I did saw Sin city , Once upon a time in Mexico, etc... they looked good, but not great and certainly not better than film.

2K is replacing film in the industry not in the art form, or like Mann they are using it for creative reasons. But rigth now 4K is a lot more hassle than 2K.
And I don't see how can't you notice the difference between somethign(2k) that has been inlarged 4 times so it could be scanned back to film and 4K

 

[filmmaker1977]

2)You don't sync sound? that's new to me, you don't recorded it directly to the camera do you?

why NOT?.. i'd love to be sync.. instead to do sync.. with red will be possible to get it..

 

[pablovi]

RED's numbers aren't that far out there. The DCI spec for digital cinema projection calls for 12-bit/channel 4K at 24 fps at 250 megabits/sec (31.25 MB/s). DCI uses JPEG2000, which is a wavelet codec, like REDCODE RAW. REDCODE RAW is only 10-bit/channel, and RED has the advantage that they're compressing RAW bayer sensor data (less data than RGB) and they've got a few more years of advancement in codec design over JPEG2000.

Well that's pretty impresive. The Dalsa RAW data is at 400MB/s

Combined with the 4k x 2k resolution, each raw frame of 16-bit data is at least 16MB. At 24fps, that represents more than 400MBytes per second (1.44TBytes/hr). For in-camera reconstructed 16-bit RGB, the figure rises past 48MB per file, or 1.2GBytes/sec.

There is a Bayer daata digital negative with compression but it takes a 3rd of that bandwith, so a 3rd of 400MB/s is 133Mb/s.

Forget it, I was wrong, the Bayer data is the one who uses 400MB/s that's a third of the RAW 1.2 GB/s

 

[filmmaker1977]

hey pablo, with so many on you, it's not easy to handle with all, hein?..

 

[pablovi]

hey pablo, with so many on you, it's not easy to handle with all, hein?..

Hi, no it's ok....


This article is from a year ago, but that's what I mean about how digital cinematography is still not that easy or fats to use and that it hasn't really catch up with film. It's a test of the Dalsa, Arri d20 and Panavision Genesis Cameras. The only 2k is the Genesis, the Dalsa is 4K and the Arri 3K.

http://www.showreel.org/memberarea/article.php?32


Another set of tests.

http://www.cinematography.net/digital-latitude.htm

 

[Jason Rodriguez]

1)You just start? at what? post-production? 4k Raw files need to be rendered, colo corrected, given a gamma, white balanced to be able to edit it and do CGI or VFX, so it's not only start.

2)You don't sync sound? that's new to me, you don't recorded it directly to the camera do you? On every single video production I have worked the sound is recorded to an external DAT(before) Mini Disc, or now digital recorder. and then you need to sync it in post with the slate.

3)You need to take the RAW data in the HD to a render farm, and it tales all night to render.

You hit these points right on the head . . . I think there's a false presumption with the messages that I keep reading on this board that you'll shoot REDCODE RAW and run merrily away to the on-set edit suite and have rough cuts done by the end of the day.

I know that's an exagerated example, but just saying, I think people need to prepare themselves with REDCODE RAW and REDCINE for extended render times. Even if it took 1/2 a second to render a 4K frame to a video frame (everyone is harping that my 1 second-per-frame is unrealistic), you're still looking at 12 hours to render 1 hour of shot footage.

I'm sure that RED will provide some sort of player device that will allow playback for REDCODE at reduced resolution in real-time, but for a NICE demosaic (i.e. some type of adaptive algorithm that typically requires two passes), it's going to take a while to process on 4K data.

So you're either going to get real-time playback/conversion with a very simple demosaic algorithm (and the resulting loss in resolution and artifacts it can create), or you're going to spend some time rendering for an artifact-free demosaicing algorithm.

 

[sndrk]

I think Pablo has a point that none of us has yet seen anything from the Red camera that makes a comparison with film fair. The 1k examples from the site are nice but they're studio shots against a black background, not real world examples. All we have now is Jim's word that it will be as good as we all hope it is. The same for compression, until we can compare we can tell how good it is.

The Red camera does however record 4 tracks of sound at 24 bit 48Khz, that should do the trick for syncing.

 

[laguun]

1)You just start? at what? post-production? 4k Raw files need to be rendered, colo corrected, given a gamma, white balanced to be able to edit it and do CGI or VFX, so it's not only start.

yep, you start. you don´t drive to the lab, what you would do with film.
typical workflow is HD-SDI out to on-set NLE and/or VTR, if the schedule allows primary DI is on-set with Iridias Speedgrade on-set. http://www.speedgrade.com/onset/workflow/index.html
meanwhile datatransfer. and postrecord measurement.
from there on workflow is in-line for 4k back at the studio.
shooting on film you cant do any of the above, don´t have 1080p intermediates, have to go to the lab, develop the stock, scan it, send it back. impossible. oldschool. would indeed feel like last decade.

film is slower, more expensive, requires more people and management and has less creative options here. also one has less control over the process and cannot precheck - additionally, when the filmstock has been damaged (heat?), it is impossible to detect it in time, before the nightmare begins.

2)You don't sync sound? that's new to me, you don't recorded it directly to the camera do you? On every single video production I have worked the sound is recorded to an external DAT(before) Mini Disc, or now digital recorder. and then you need to sync it in post with the slate.

TOTALLY unneccesary. scary.
TC is synced from camera to the DDR, VTR & VDR, slate doesn´t need to have digital TC in, but is typically also synced to camera master tc. Sync in the post is costy, slow, unneccesary, can cause mistakes, requires workforce and sounds worse. The poor people who still have to do it.

FYI HDCAM SR has 12 tracks 24bit uncompressed audio, automaticly synced with the cameras TC out. red "only" plans 4 (or 8?), HDCAM is 4@20bit. we always have at least a uncompressed VDR with the audio running, syncing after shooting is a blast from the past.

Film with DAT / Minidisc is catastropic.
1) Less quality - 16 bit requires heavy mixing by the audio people due to the very narrow sampling depth - this generates another level of unnecessary worked.2) only 2 channels, great in the 5.1 age... 3) not synced 4) minidisc even is datareduced, yikes 5) it generates additional totally useless steps in the workflow, 6) both medias are consumerlevel and often fail.

3)You need to take the RAW data in the HD to a render farm, and it tales all night to render.

you don´t understand - editorial & preflight is in the realworld at 2k/1080, in realtime. selected/best shots are meanwhile processed in the background. you simply cant do that withh film.

also dont forget - you have to light, scan & transfer when you use film. this alone takes longer than the "night", and then you can start were digital is already completed. also you would like to check the film before scanning it, in digital you have done that already at the set, at no costs. dailies are always there - in 1080p/2k.

4) Loading a magazine in film doesn't take minutes, it takes seconds too. In a real working enviromente you have 2 AC's and a loader the loader has previoulsy loaded the magazine and you just place it in the camera.

2AC and a loader in action vs. 1 person.
this every 10 min runtime or never if shooting digitally to the raids, 55 minutes at least when going to small, 155 minutes to fullformat tape.
155 minute tape is btw ~250$ in SR, ~175 in HDCAM. thats worth a backup...
handling film requires caution and things can go terribly wrong. and even with thousands of dollars you can secure this.
then try bringing 20 hours of footage to a remote location in the desert or better do, some aerial shots and land the helicopter for the 2ACs and the loader... or simply grab it to the disks in the helicopter or sub and don´t do it at all.

5) I've seen many DP's on video using a FC meter and a color meter, and it takes them as long to light for film than for video. That you don't really need to know much about cinematography to get good results in video is right just ask Robert Rodriguez.

nothing against FC/CM... but vector/wave and gamut are quite abit more powerful and faster tools. granted, they cost you more. once. and from there on you win back. i wouldn´t like to calibrate 2 or more cams with different lenses with FC/CM anymore...

On 2K is another thing when you do get an instant image and can see the result at hand were you mostly don't need to render the footage to make it usefull, etc... And in 2K I agree that is faster, less of a hassle, and cheaper than film.

i think many productions will go 2K. 2K is more than good enough. we had exactly the same situation with 65/35mm.

we go 4k/2k mix. having 4k is great, even if one goes to 2k master. so many reserves and headroom for post, pan/scan without compromising quality, annoying insects (dont we all love em...) in the images can be blurred and its not visible...

And I don't see how can't you notice the difference between somethign(2k) that has been inlarged 4 times so it could be scanned back to film and 4K

most blockbusters, no matter if digital or chemical cinematography are 2K.
if you are in europe, i strongly recommend to attend IBC next year, as you can see with your own eyes 2K and 4K projection side by side. without a/b split and standing testimages the differences are hard to spot in the first 1-5 rows of a (perfect) cinema, further in the back its getting impossible, especially if there is the slightest amount of pan/motionblur... the differences are nullified even for professionals.

4K is much more about having reserves. the lions share of the audience will not even get 2k in their average cinema, thats for sure.

what i like quite a bit about the reds concept (besides the price, overcranking and sensorsize flexibilty) is that its workflow will reflect the paradigm of 4K post - its so much about proxies, changing resolution etc. still, most producers i am chatting with here aim at 2K for the upcoming 07 shooting season... including me.

 

[luki]

The company I work for depends on digital worklows, so I am faaaarrr from a "film bigot," and I have helped design workflows for quite a few Viper and Genesis projects. I'm all about high-end digital acquisition. But don't go overboard.

i hate to say - but there is no way to go 4k on _film_, one has to go _fully_ digital for 4k workflow, no matter if you do a modern colorcorrection, full DI, VFX or title.

Ummm... how about finishing optically? DI is still a new and fairly expensive technology. There are still a *ton* of films that are finished optically... no DI, no scanning. I can show you spreadsheet after spreadsheet that shows that finishing a 35mm film optically is insanely cheaper than going digital. There is more than 70 years of amazing color cinematography that was done long before computers came into the picture. I'd call that 4K+ finishing.

you can´t check what you shot. in digital cinematography you can. you cant_have_ luts, you have to trust a very long chain of supliers (filmstock), storage (our last shooting was in the desert, 35mm second unit in that heat was more than critical), dev/ lab (were many things can go wrong). ... that all causes delays (hours for film, seconds or minutes for digital), risks (defective negatives can´t be backed up, digital can), costs (100 minutes worth of shooting backed up cost thousands and will decrease quality, digital will be inexpensive and perfect) and need many additional workers who have to communicate and have to be managed. film is slow, expensive, risky and doen´t give you instant complete control over your work. digital is rather the opposite.

For every screw-up that can happen in a film chain, I can match it with a digital chain. A hard-drive was dropped. A hard-drive failed. The timecode wasn't recorded into the correct header metadata. Audio dropped out and is simply gone. The computer controlling the recording mechanism fails or crashes. The LUTs aren't being used properly, and shots are lit incorrectly. The LUTs are the wrong format or are named incorrectly. Gamma curves are set wrong and clip out blacks and whites. The wrong take is deleted on review. And the same way you can accidentally expose OCN, you can set a hard disk near a strong magentic field. Lots and lots of ways to screw up both film and digital.

I have been involved with several of the well-known features that have been shot on Viper and Genesis. The beautiful thing about the new workflows is that they are new. There are problems you never even dreamed of that can pop up in a heartbeat and set the entire production back!

And yeah - digital can be backed up. But for how long? The anwer is - nobody knows. It hasn't been around long enough for a valid archive test! But, I can stick a 35mm OCN in a dark, dry room and have it be 100% recoverable on well-known, easily available technology in 50 years. You want to take a bet on how long current hard-drive technology will last? How many of you out there have images on Jaz drives that are just gone? How about Exabyte? SCSI-1? Or how about Quad? BetaSX? Laserdisc? You get the idea.

HUGE difference between back-up and archive.

b) RED.
The camera is 17.500$ this is not expensive, this is fantastic.
the redcode makes storage inexpensive. read a little bit about the workflow and you will understand, that if red delivers, it will shave off tens of thousands of every full feature in any aspect: stock, production, storage, delivery

Which is why so many people are excited about RED... me included. They have clearly looked at the issues with current digital cinematography and really taken several of them head on. But just because it's new doesn't mean it's easy and foolproof.

Lucas Wilson
------------
Master of Widgets and Stuff
Los Angeles

 

[pablovi]

yep, you start. you don´t drive to the lab, what you would do with film.
typical workflow is HD-SDI out to on-set NLE and/or VTR, if the schedule allows primary DI is on-set with Iridias Speedgrade on-set. http://www.speedgrade.com/onset/workflow/index.html
meanwhile datatransfer. and postrecord measurement.
from there on workflow is in-line for 4k back at the studio.
shooting on film you cant do any of the above, don´t have 1080p intermediates, have to go to the lab, develop the stock, scan it, send it back. impossible. oldschool. would indeed feel like last decade.

I was talking specifically about 3k and 4k, when I said they take as much time and have the same and even more disadvantages than film. You are the one wo are bringing up 2k and 1080p into this. With 4K and 3k you can't start right away, you need to render and process the image. Niether the Dalsa nor the Arri D20 have HD SDI output on full resolution, they have it at 1080 for monitoring porpouses so you can't start right away, you need to render and postprocess the images and that takes as long as developing film.

This disscusion is useless we are talking about two different mediums, yeah 2k is the reality right now, I'm not denying it, but I was talking about higher definition than that. Were the process is not as fast and that much cheaper.

BTW you still need to use the Vector and Wave monitors don't you, you need to look at them and if it's not wht you want go and change a light or put a screen on one or a Nd gel, etc... Instead of a walking meter you have a static one. And BTW they don't work for the cameras I mentioned, because the video signla out is not the real image.

I don't see were film has less creative options.

And I do see a differnece between 4k film and 2k scanned to film video.

Well, if the RED camera can do all of what has been advertised it will not only replace 2k but Film as well, I mean 27Mb/s can be handled and seen on set.

 

[laguun]

The company I work for depends on digital worklows, so I am faaaarrr from a "film bigot," and I have helped design workflows for quite a few Viper and Genesis projects. I'm all about high-end digital acquisition. But don't go overboard.

don´t take me for a "digital bigot" as well, i am quite aware about the shortcomings of digital aquisition and production... one important point which wasnt mentioned at all is the chaotic structure of standards we now have to deal with... digital cinematic release is DCI in the US, MXF in the EU, the anamorphotic pixel sizes not precisely defined... as a result, we often simply see -cropped- anamorphotic in the cinematic release over here in the eu. not exactly a digital blessing. then all this fancy 3:1:1 to 4:2:2 but 1280 prefiltered, rgb/yuv translations without international norming etc. pp... many things in the brave new digital world are more than under construction, often with ugly consequemnces for the quality...

Ummm... how about finishing optically? DI is still a new and fairly expensive technology.

IMHO - totally depends on the project and its budget. 100% narrative, no VFX, mid budget, shooting film, "natural" look - optical would be the best way, isn´it?
low budget, highly motivated youngsters (students in self-enslave-mode?) and some friends with a desktop compositing package... digital. same for top-budget shot on 1080p/2k/35mm scan, especially when heavy VFX integration work has to be done.

As a sidenote, DI is a term many people use and express quite different things, especially if the aquisition format is not solely film.

Here, we use the term DI meanwhile for (whatever kind of) camera output is directly scanned/loaded into computer and won´t see any kind of inbetween film/tape/generation process until mastering, including VFX, graphics, cc/grade and various format delivery.

There are still a *ton* of films that are finished optically... no DI, no scanning.

for gooood reasons, and i am supportive of that. we do have a _massive_ shortage of inexpensive, skilled DI facilities. you can´t simply bring a VFX guy or DOP to a DI system and expect them to learn and master process and art as well. Furthermore, many of the bigger players in the marked decided to go with the good, but totally overpriced systems a la lustre etc. they have to earn these investments back, and the inexpensive system, combustion etc. don´t even get a decent monitor, so its impossible to use them, even if they could do the job very well, in the larger houses for DI.

And before compromising - optical is a proven way, certainly less expensive when compared to 3 weeks worth of booking lustre.

I can show you spreadsheet after spreadsheet that shows that finishing a 35mm film optically is insanely cheaper than going digital.

i agree, but this is quite relative, as i would at once pull out different project which would prove the opposite for other projects. at our postfacilities the DI nightshift (i am supervising one right now yawn) has become very popular especially with the inys. we charge them very (to imho) low proces and they can use the 10bit@log/4:4:4/2k incl. monitors and 4 TB storage in the nights, all 3 suites are almost booked complete. Would the _same_ projects require the presence of expensive DOP/director/colorist, the prices would explode and the better than optical offering would become the opposite...

There is more than 70 years of amazing color cinematography that was done long before computers came into the picture. I'd call that 4K+ finishing.

hmmm, hmmm, here i would rather disagree.
1st, the creative possibilities in digital grading with attached compositing assistance are simply fantastic. annoying cars in the background, assistance gets assigned, 2 hours not later but meanwhile i have the decent shot, no more cars, 0 generation loss... tracking powerwindows (aka selections/masks) into the sky to bring in/out/push/grey/colorize the clouds even in the steadicamshots... adding or removing 3d shadows... there is so much in the digital toolkit.
2nd, not endangering the neg is so relaxing
3hrd - networks are a blessing, so many things now can be done in teams which in optical required one guy in full-guru-mode, frame by frame (lightsabers, anyone?)
4th, many optical processed forced you to do many copies... decreasing quality from +4K every single step.
and finally, if you are in the lucky situation having amortized DI suites, the TCO and operation costs are basicly electricity & some IT-nerds here and there... and i worked my b**t off for 3 years to earn the 3 suites here for good reason.

For every screw-up that can happen in a film chain, I can match it with a digital chain.

be warned, here i totally disagree.

A hard-drive was dropped.

i have a copy. lossless. minimum one. my question: the neg is exposed to light. what now?

A hard-drive failed.

i have a copy. lossless. minimum one. my question: the neg is teared in the scanner/cam. what now? lossless copy? how? when?

The timecode wasn't recorded into the correct header metadata.

i resync from AAF backup (lossless), LTC/VITC or SMPTE on track 12 from tape (lossless) or use the synced cameratracks (lossless) in the camears VTR/DDR.

Audio dropped out and is simply gone.
The computer controlling the recording mechanism fails or crashes.

rule 1 when working digital : you can go redundant. you should. if the computer crashes, who cares, as long a TC-snced DDR/VTR is running paralell.

The LUTs aren't being used properly, and shots are lit incorrectly. The LUTs are the wrong format or are named incorrectly. Gamma curves are set wrong and clip out blacks and whites.

valid point, but both apply to chemical and digital, indeed a little bit more of risk in film due to handling with different stocj which in itslef might have different behaviours.

The wrong take is deleted on review.

hrrhrr, i no universe anything can prevent human error

And the same way you can accidentally expose OCN, you can set a hard disk near a strong magentic field. Lots and lots of ways to screw up both film and digital.

yes, but.
in digital world i can have control _while_ shooting and i can backup/copy _while_ shooting. in photochemical i have to trust the lab, heck even the driver with the stock and dailies can be terrible liars...

I have been involved with several of the well-known features that have been shot on Viper and Genesis. The beautiful thing about the new workflows is that they are new. There are problems you never even dreamed of that can pop up in a heartbeat and set the entire production back!

i like viper and genesis.. and i am a little bit jealus here, but otoh, our 950/750 with added 35mm here and there workflow here is after ~15 (mid-known features, 4 documentary and 2 full seasons of series pretty bulletproof. we faced many odd situations, including some really narrow timeframes and i can gladly say that we can do it pretty bulletproof here. this why i am half jealus and half not at all. new workflows vs proven ones. the chinese have a curse : "may you live in interesting times"...

but red for us is, after 5 years cinealta, now the point at which we will introduce another workflow.

And yeah - digital can be backed up. But for how long? The anwer is - nobody knows.

sorry, but this is wrong - in the former points you have mentioned, many things are specific, some (like optical) are not good vs. evil but better here vs. better there... but digital data can be and is secured daily to the level that even a direct nuclear attack on your main storage would not kill a single bit.

rotating copy well below 5 years (this means replacing the storage system, i.e. disks), always minimum 3 storage location far away one distributed in a network, always redundant, always different storage techniques. this is how important data is kept for centuries. film meanwhile ages slowy (a cup of vinegar, anyone?) and you can´t do anything to prevent that, you can only slow it down.

It hasn't been around long enough for a valid archive test!

you don´t need archive test when you underrun the specific media and use several of then in a redundant way.

But, I can stick a 35mm OCN in a dark, dry room and have it be 100% recoverable on well-known, easily available technology in 50 years.

this is not correct. first of all, we both know that there is a HUGE market for film restoration for a good reason. second, any non-digital medium which changes is information over time (as film) and isn´t digital alters the information.

You want to take a bet on how long current hard-drive technology will last?

i think i understand what makes you have this position: a digital secured storage has to be _complety_ media agnostic. you always have to elimate any single point of failure, and this requires copies and copies and copies every 3-10 years etc pp. it requires more logistics than the climate-controlled OCN storage facility, but it is secured that the data wont change, while the film _will_ change.

How many of you out there have images on Jaz drives that are just gone? How about Exabyte? SCSI-1? Or how about Quad? BetaSX? Laserdisc? You get the idea.

yeah, i get the idea, but this is not longterm archive!

HUGE difference between back-up and archive.

yes, and you can´t RAID50 a filmneg and you cannot bring identical copies of it to different locations and renew them automaticly every 5... months, years, decades and that why digital is superior here.

Which is why so many people are excited about RED... me included. They have clearly looked at the issues with current digital cinematography and really taken several of them head on. But just because it's new doesn't mean it's easy and foolproof.

luckily, we can perfectly agree on your closing comments! I apreciate your post, lucas!

Lucas Wilson
------------
Master of Widgets and Stuff
Los Angeles

yorick von krogh
------------
Slave of bells, whistles and actresses

 

[tonacidigital]

"Originally Posted by luki
And yeah - digital can be backed up. But for how long? The anwer is - nobody knows."

especially with HD-DVD and Blu-ray burners getting cheaper as time goes on...I will be backing up everything on 50 gig blu ray discs..and as burners get faster..it will be even less of a hassle. Sure blu ray discs can go bad someday..but thats why you make copies.

 

[Nick_Shaw]

I think there is no doubt digital is the future of cinema, and Red is going to be a big part of that change. Of course digital won't kill film, any more than CD killed vinyl, but I think it will be pushed out of the mainstream.

I was recently talking to somebody who is working on a major studio picture currently shooting here in the UK. He said he thought that the current film would be the last in the series to be shot on film. One reason he gave was that they have been having a lot of problems with the labs not doing a good job recently, and he suspected they were cutting corners to maximise their profit margins while they still could, as they knew they were not long for this world!

I suggested that maybe they would be shooting the next film on a Red camera, but he said they would most likely be using the Genesis. He said that he personally was very interested in the possibilities offered by Red, but that he was quite surprised how little awareness of it there was among the other people he is working with. I'm sure that situation will change in 2007.

Nick

 

[D_and_G]

You bring up some interesting points. Forgive me if this has been covered before...

1)You just start? at what? post-production? 4k Raw files need to be rendered, colo corrected, given a gamma, white balanced to be able to edit it and do CGI or VFX, so it's not only start.

Shoot REDcode RAW 4K - process in REDcine (all of the above mentioned). Since REDcode and REDcine were designed to work together, wouldn't that mean less rendering time ? Or is there a fixed physics involved in rendering ? I understand rendering for finish would be dependant on the resolution you are outputting too, but we're talking about 'starting' right ? and not 'finishing'.

I would be surprised if it took REDcine 12 hours to render 1 hour of 4K REdcode RAW footage for editing, especially if you're rendring to a proxy resolution.

2)You don't sync sound? that's new to me, you don't recorded it directly to the camera do you? On every single video production I have worked the sound is recorded to an external DAT(before) Mini Disc, or now digital recorder. and then you need to sync it in post with the slate.

For a small budget guy, I was thinking that having multiple microphones go through a mixer (monitored) into the camera would negate the need for syncing.

3)You need to take the RAW data in the HD to a render farm, and it tales all night to render.

Refer to my first point. We'll have to see what REDcine's performance is.

5) I've seen many DP's on video using a FC meter and a color meter, and it takes them as long to light for film than for video. That you don't really need to know much about cinematography to get good results in video is right just ask Robert Rodriguez.

On 2K is another thing when you do get an instant image and can see the result at hand were you mostly don't need to render the footage to make it usefull, etc... And in 2K I agree that is faster, less of a hassle, and cheaper than film.

I asked Graeme this awhile ago. He mentioned that there will be a full image processing pipeline on board, so you don't have to monitor a RAW image alone.

Like I said I loved Collateral and Miami vice but it doens't look like film or like video, is a different thing.

On that we agree. Digital Cinema isn't film. I don't think it pretends to be. However, where I'll disagree is that it is a less than satisfying aesthetic choice. From the proposed specs, and hinted at in their footage, it should provide the full pallette for an artist to express him or herself with the same deftness as one shooting on film. There are limitations, challenges, and aesthetic paradigms for each medium. No one's disputing that.

Will it look exactly like film ? No, I doubt it. Will it have the magic and many of the possibilities of film ? Yes, I hope so.

Personally, this film vs.digital debate doesn't really interest me. If Red delivers to spec, it will be just another valid choice that will stand beside film, not behind or in front of it - Like how the promise of the crayon box spoke to us as kids ...

:beer: :beer:



RED #'s rebel with a clue

 

[pablovi]

You bring up some interesting points. Forgive me if this has been covered before...

I was talking about above 2k images adquisition at the momment, not about RED since is not out yet, and right now, yes, you have to wait all night(or have a huge render farm) to see what you shot and to get a usefull video for post procesing. And I mean the Arri D20 and the Dalsa cameras. Even the Viper needs some rendering before you can use it's data since it outputs greenish images. They only saw dailies at the next morning, just like in film.

http://digitalcontentproducer.com/images/608MIL_zodiac_viperonsetacquisitionworkflow.pdf

That's Viper's workflow on Zodiac. (BTW as you can see they are using an external audio recorder and synching with an electronic slate and a lockit device)

Right now it does take a long time to render the footage, because the ammounts of information are way off what RED is promissing, the Dalsa Bayer Raw needs 400MB/s and that takes a hell of a fiber optic array to record and play, and a high end Workstation to handle it. And to render it you need a render farm and a lot of time. But If REd cna really give us 4k RAW at 27MB/s it will be a different story.