DC Metro FCP UG

With the advances made with the RED camera sensors, color science, codecs and the like, we can all learn from the fundamental science of what’s happening with all things digital and the impacts to digital cinema.  Take a look at a series of videos we posted from Panavision in 2008 by searching on the keyword: PANAVISION and take a look at the 7 part series: DEMYSTIFYING DIGITAL CAMERA SPECIFICATIONS.

You will quickly find out that we are just scratching the surface of what we consumers see as HD (720/1080P) as the high end market pushes beyond 4K to 5K and up.

One of our DCFCPUG sponsor companies’ founder, Graeme Nattress [yes, the same guy who makes those impressive plug-ins at NATTRESS], is heavily involved in the color science work at RED.

Graeme Nattress is behind the FLUT, Image Processing, Colour Science and Demosaic Algorithms and RED4K delivery at RED.








Being a Computer Science major with a minor in Computer Studies, I love his tag line:

Science enables stories. Stories drive Science.

While he is the public face of the mad science work going on, there are other smart guys working with him pushing the limits of resolution to all time highs.  Keep up the good work Graeme and the team at RED!


Keep your eye on the Mysterium sensor:

4520 X 2540 pixels… DATA TO BURN. At the heart of RED lives the 12-megapixel Mysterium™ CMOS sensor, Super 35mm sized, with unparalleled fidelity and flexibility.

It combines low noise with superior charge capacity for dynamic range and color fidelity that allows you to finally have a no excuse digital imaging alternative to shooting 35mm film.


DIGITAL SUPER 35MM

Record 2540 progressive at up to 30 fps REDCODE RAW. With 4520 X 2540 pixels, Mysterium™ puts pure digital Ultra-High Def in the palm of your hand.

RED ONE™ and REDCINE™ also support down-sampling to 1080p and 720p for in-field monitoring and compatibility with non-linear editors.

You get the same breathtaking field of view and selective focus found on film cameras. Mysterium™ boasts a greater than 66db Signal to Noise Ratio thanks to its large 29 sq. micron pixels. And 12,065,000 pixels deliver resolution that can only be called Ultra High Definition.


How does 4K compare to 35MM Film?

Most 35 mm film outs that have gone through a scanning process have been scanned at 2K, or one quarter the resolution of 4K. Only extremely high content VFX work is generally scanned as high as 4K. Viewers that see RED footage for the first time either describe the quality as 65 mm film or “grainless 35”.  More pragmatically, it is the elimination of the cost of film and processing that make the RED ONE so economically attractive, in addition to its extraordinary quality.





What are the Advantages of Shooting DIGITAL vs. FILM?

Beyond the obvious advantage of cost savings with the elimination of film and processing, both consumable products, it is the benefit of being able to watch dailies immediately, in real time, that make shooting digital such a superior experience. In adding the extraordinarily high quality of 4K capture and at such an affordable price, RED has tipped the scales for the industry.

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Follow us as we learn from the pioneers at RED, Canon, Nikon, etc in bringing digital science and resolution to yield real options to shooting on film.  Just like our Larry Jordan FCP Tips, we will have similar words of wisdom from the team at RED.

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Head on over to SHOT ON RED and get excited!

Enjoy the ride!


Rod – DCFCPUG Leader

THREE 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.

So what is FLUT? FLUT is the brain child of Graeme Nattress. The “F” in FLUT stands for Floating Point and LUT stands for Lookup Up Table (LUT). More on FLUT in another post…

So, to put it all together simply:

FLUT™ is an underlying technology, designed to help you avoid clipping unnecessarily.
It works primarily through ISO and FLUT™ Control, but helps all RAW development controls.
Exposure works just as it’s always done if you need it.
The ISO and FLUT™ controls work together – think of them as “better gain.”

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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Courtesy Jim Jannard – RED Leader

Final Cut Pro – The Hidden Value of Mixdown

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When nesting, this is an essential audio step.

Final Cut allows up to eight levels of nesting, putting sequences inside other sequences.

However, when you nest, your audio sometimes gets confused, resulting in missing audio or bad audio levels.

Whenever you start creating nests with both audio and video, make a point to select Sequence > Render Only > Mixdown (or press Option+Command+R).

What this does is mix all the audio in all the sequences into a single stereo pair. This reduces the load on the processor and results in cleaner audio playback.

Note: Feel free to use mixdown when ever you have lots of audio tracks in a project, even if you don’t nest. Mixdown will always result in smoother playback.

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Courtesy of Larry Jordan