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Thread: How Far Digital Has Come Already

  1. #1
    Senior Member Ducatista47's Avatar
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    How Far Digital Has Come Already

    This is not strictly about audio, but for those of us who follow film sound it might have a drool factor.

    The insane resolution of Sony's Gigahertz DSD sound recording technology now has a counterpart in video. Have any of you been watching Sanctuary on the SciFi channel? It is nearly 100% green screen, and to keep up with the FX resolution the actual camera shooting is done with a RED One "camera."

    Not to be confused with an earlier generation digital motion picture camera, such as the cameras that shot the newer Star Wars films, it is described as a computer with a lens and captures five times the information of HD. Yep, five times. This video will show what a piece of cake it is to work with as compared to my beloved but doomed media, film.

    http://dvice.com/archives/2009/01/how_the_red_one.php

    This graphic shows what is in store for the near future.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UHDV2.svg

    Clark
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    Too many audiophiles listen with their eyes instead of their ears


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    Administrator Mr. Widget's Avatar
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    I was having dinner a few weeks ago with a buddy who works at ILM. He was talking about the Red One. Apparently it is still more or less a prototype, but it may be revolutionizing digital filming. It is supposed to be ridiculously inexpensive.

    On a side bar, but under your initial heading... I installed a Samsung LN52A850 52 inch LED lit LCD TV last week... we popped in a Blu-ray of the recent Batman film and it was really creepy looking. I have been on film sets before and typically you can get a glimpse of the in-camera video feed that Panavision and other film cameras have via monitors just off set... they always look super contrasty and strange... this movie looked like that. While it was as sharp as sharp gets and typical digital noise and motion artifacts were minimal, the picture quality looked hyper real... not at all film like and not at all like real life.

    I didn't have time to do any calibration or make any contrast adjustments, but I have never seen a TV image that looked like this... I can imagine just as some people like tweaked and unnatural audio, there will be those who love this look, but to me it was down right disturbing.

    Locally there is a theater complex that has recently been renovated and they have several theaters with THX rated DLP projectors... they have looked pretty good... definitely the way of the future.


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    Senior Member CONVERGENCE's Avatar
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    Differences In Film and Digital Projection Resolution

    Differences In Film and Digital Projection Resolution




    SDS (SUPER DIMENSION) 70 (SDS 70) 22 MILLION PIXELS

    35 MM NEGATIVE 12 MILLION PIXELS

    35 MM PRINT 3-4 MILLION PIXELS


    DLP 1-3 MILLION PIXELS



    http://www.superdimension70.com/arti...en-article.asp


    http://www.superdimension70.com/


    .............................................

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    The Giga pixel barrier was broken years ago so the film industry is lagging more than a little.

    Allan.

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    Senior Member CONVERGENCE's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Allanvh5150 View Post
    The Giga pixel barrier was broken years ago so the film industry is lagging more than a little.

    Allan.

    Televison or DLP uses lines to describe it's resolution.
    Film uses size of grain aperture lighting FPS.
    Pixels is still the best way to compare both.

    Film breathes more than DLP.

    plus 70 mm films have 5mm of space to put 8 distinct sound track.

    SDS 70 at 48 FPS can use 10 k quartz light. DLP is limited to 7 K quartz.

    ..............................

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    Senior Member jcrobso's Avatar
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    All of this at what cost?

    I saw my first HDTV in 1983~84 at the CES show in Chicago. It was prototype analog system from Panasonic. I remember the years of battles of which system to use. I bought my HDTV in 2005 20 some years later!
    Don't hold your breath waiting for this be at your local store. John

  7. #7
    Senior Member Ducatista47's Avatar
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    I was sniffing around some links and found this lucid explanation of how the RED One differs from video and film cameras. It is a completely different animal.

    "The RED One™ is a digital FILM camera. It is not a video camera. While there are some common terms and concepts because of the nature of digital imaging - the One is much closer to a Single Lens Reflex (SLR) Digital Still camera than it is to any existing video cameras. I will touch on this point again."

    http://opticalvelocity.com/RED%20One...of%20Operation

    This support page has the official Operations Manual available for download, as well as other fascinating stuff. Notice that the newest offerings are available only for Macs. I downloaded the PDF and I guarantee this is the wildest digital camera manual you have ever seen.

    http://www.red.com/support

    The Sanctuary video link in the first post shows some awesome Mac gear in the camera truck. Two seriously loaded towers and a 9 Terabyte RAID system for storage would look nice in Heather's digs. Probably more like what she uses at work.

    When they get the hard drives back from the "lab", they are re formatted right on the camera. What an operation...

    Clark
    Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom
    Too many audiophiles listen with their eyes instead of their ears


  8. #8
    Administrator Mr. Widget's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ducatista47 View Post
    "The RED One™ is a digital FILM camera...
    I suppose you mean digital "still" camera.


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  9. #9
    Senior Member Ducatista47's Avatar
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    Yes and no. Still cameras don't have frame rate controls! Try this from RED's FAQ:

    Are EPIC cameras considered cine or still cameras?


    RED's concept of DSMC (Digital Still & Motion Camera) carries over from its Scarlet program into EPIC, in that any EPIC camera can be used as a world-class still camera, offering from 13.8MP to 261MP still frame resolution, but it is the extraordinary frame rate abilities of EPIC that define it as a PRO CINEMA camera. Shooting a 5K digital cinema camera at up to 100fps, at full 5K resolution, is a dream come true for the feature film maker, but imagine the breakthrough for IMAX quality 9K resolution at up to 50fps or full 6 x 17 cm. ultra wide at up to 30fps, a format that competitors get excited about 1fps. EPIC, in all its forms, set the standard for what digital cinema will be in the future.

    261 mega pixels per frame, good lord.

    The stuff in quotes in post #7 is not mine, but click on the text you quoted for some elaboration. It is the page linked to below it. The Master page is here: http://opticalvelocity.com/tiki-inde...age_ref_id=190 RED made some aesthetic as well as technical decisions that put the camera, intuitively, in the Mitchell, Panavision and Arriflex experience continuum. There is nothing in common with a camcorder.

    The first link is a private site, a fellow who in his enthusiasm put together a introductory manual of his own. The support link is the company site. Between the official manual and the third party manual, I think I get the picture. No pun intended, of course...

    Clark
    Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom
    Too many audiophiles listen with their eyes instead of their ears


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    I find it strange that they can stretch a 12 mega pixel sensor all the way out to 280!

  11. #11
    Senior Member Ducatista47's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Allanvh5150 View Post
    I find it strange that they can stretch a 12 mega pixel sensor all the way out to 280!
    I have not found the answer to that yet, but in searching the FAQ's I enjoyed these:

    EPIC cameras are described in terms of “K”. What is the meaning of 5K, 6K, 9K and 28K?


    The original RED ONE, anchor of the RED Digital Cinema Camera Co., is a 4K camera, meaning that the horizontal resolution of the sensor is over 4000 pixels. EPIC S35 is a 5K camera, providing over 5000 horizontal pixels, EPIC FF35 is a 6K camera, providing 6000 horizontal pixels, EPIC 645 is a 9K camera that provides over 9000 horizontal pixels and the phenomenal EPIC 617, a 28K camera, offers a mind-numbing 28,000 pixel horizontal resolution. In comparison, an HD video camera offers 1920 horizontal pixels. EPIC S35 offers 6 times the resolution of HD, EPIC FF35 offers 10 times the resolution of HD, EPIC 645, over 30 times and EPIC 617, well over 100 times the resolution of HD.



    What are the applications for a 9K camera, or a 28K camera. I thought a 5K camera was overkill.


    It is a question that we have heard more than we could ever have imagined. It's funny, because it makes us realize that we don't think conventionally. The whole philosophy of RED is to stay at the very cutting edge of technology and the only way to do that is to stay ahead of it. We are developing technology now for applications that haven't even been thought of yet. We have been in conversation with like-minded forward thinkers that are already developing plans for our cameras, in configurations and scenarios that will boggle the mind. Digital medium format, 65 megapixel, at 50 frames per second. Do you think the cover of Sports Illustrated will ever be the same? Digital Stereo IMAX....... in slow motion. If you can't imagine it, you will be very entertained by it.


    What is REDCODE?


    REDCODE is the magic codec that compresses 4K RED RAW into a manageable file size that can be recorded on any media from a compact flash card to a spinning drive. Without REDCODE, a 4K 24 fps information stream runs as high as 20GB/min.


    What is REDCODE 28 vs. REDCODE 36?


    Although it is tempting to ascribe MB/sec. to the two compression choices, they simply represent a rough value to the compression, which varies as a function of the image complexity and detail. Traditional shooting would be well suited to REDCODE 28, while REDCODE 36, using less compression, would be beneficial for high detail or complex scenes. It's also important to note that these figures are megaBYTES per second, not megaBITS per second. As an example, HDV is a format that provides 25Mb/sec (megabits per second) while the RED ONE runs, as a default 4K, at roughly 28 MB/sec (megabytes per second), which is equivalent to 224 Mb/sec. (megabits per second), almost 10 times the amount of information as HDV.

    What is RAW?


    One of the most unusual facets of the RED ONE is the fact that it captures information, unprocessed, off of a Bayer Pattern CMOS sensor. This raw data is simply all the information that the sensor is able to "see", comprising all color information in a single channel, and is not processed. Identical to the way a DSLR still camera captures a RAW file, this enables the user to adjust parameters after the fact, as color, gain and sharpening can all be done post capture.




    How does shooting RAW affect my white balance, levels, ASA and exposure?


    Shooting RAW differs from traditional video recording in that recording a video signal requires adjusting color temperature, exposure, gain, sharpening, knee, toe, pedestal and black levels prior to processing the signal. In a RAW capture, all this information can be addressed after the recording is made. The sensor simply captures what it sees and all processing takes place in post, offering the ability to make all adjustments for the perfect picture in the editing process. Exposure, in the form of shutter and iris, is the only finite adjustment that need be made, at time of capture, to obtain the correct image.



    To make sense of it, there is more than one camera. The Epic and Scarlet are distinct from RED One. My ignorant take at this time is that these are hardware and software updates. I do not know if the EPIC parts will fit in the RED One frame. But a sensor upgrade is available. The limitation at this point seems to be how much information can be transmitted by a cable in real time. HDMI is, to this system, low rez and only for viewing the image. I think a SATA (serial ATA) cable is used for sensor to storage transmission.

    These are in a functional sense "Hollywood" cameras. You need a cinematography crew, sound crew included, to use them. Camera Operator, Focus Puller, dolly if you need it, boom and mike, just no magazine loader. The sound goes into the camera through up to four mini XLR ports. If you want to do tests, pop a flash drive in and scoot your three to four minutes to the truck or just view it at the camera position.

    To get back to sound (this is an audio forum ), the camera bodies are pretty compact, as with no moving parts there is no need to blimp them. The 140 pound Mitchell BNC was, after all, the Blimped News Camera originally. If that is all Greek to you, a blimp is a sound deadening jacket for a film camera. They replaced the original sealed booths that began the sound era. You can't allow camera noise to be recorded, and the noise of a film camera grows rapidly with the film size, so a quiet 35mm camera tends to be heavy. The original blimps were fabric jackets, but the Mitchell BNC's blimp is integral to the case. Until the Easy Rider era forced more compact, even hand held cameras, the silence and the rock steady film drive of the Mitchell ruled. Then the newer, smaller cameras took over. Look at vintage stills of movie and TV sitcom production and it will be difficult to see anything but a Mitchell. Here is a look inside of one, and Stanley Kubrick on the set of Dr. Strangelove. Filmmakers have such great toys.



    Clark


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    Fascinating.
    Out.

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    The info on the website is a tad misleading. It only gives specs for the Red1 but then talks about the others as well. The Sensor for the 617 is actualy 168 x 56mm with a 261Mp, I think, resolution. The Red 1 is only 24.4 x 13.7 mm. The pixels haven't been jammed onto the same size chip, instead the chip has been made much larger. Simple.

    Allan.

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    Senior Member Ducatista47's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Allanvh5150 View Post
    The info on the website is a tad misleading. It only gives specs for the Red1 but then talks about the others as well. The Sensor for the 617 is actualy 168 x 56mm with a 261Mp, I think, resolution. The Red 1 is only 24.4 x 13.7 mm. The pixels haven't been jammed onto the same size chip, instead the chip has been made much larger. Simple.

    Allan.
    True enough, but the only down side I can think of when employing larger sensor chips is the shift in focal lengths of the lenses needed to yield a particular angle of view. (The attendant cameras might weigh a bit more and be slightly larger, I kind of doubt it, but not anything like the increases associated with the larger transport wider film needs.)

    I admit this is not trivial for hand held work. My favorite television show, Homicide: Life on the Street, was deliberately shot with Super 16 cameras, a single sprocket perf 16mm format. Selected for their mobility and short focal length requirements, their compactness, lightness and outstanding depth of field were all the result of a small active film plane area. It is all about aspect ratios and image width. This page explains the advantages pretty well. http://www.catrack.com/pages/cam.htm

    Compare these images of the basic RED One camera shell with the Mitchell BNC. It is very compact.

    I think the bottom line is that the "little" RED One is already flat out amazing, never mind what it will morph into.
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    As far as I am aware, the system is modular. Pick your viewpiece, your brain (sensor) lens and so on. The top sensor module is about $55KUS and then you need the rest of the camera.

    Allan.

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