Which is better for post – the Sony F23 or the RED?

[Aaron Neitz]

In a purely workflow discussion, tape based is still simpler IMO. You digitize to whatever codec you want/need based on the size of your editing drives, you can name all your incoming clips whatever you want vs. hand naming clips that come in from RED, digitizing from tape is typically faster than processing RED, and re-conforming to full HD is pretty straight forward.

having said all that, if you’re comfortable working with the new FCP RED workflows, it’s a pretty awesome way to work. But there’s a lot of places where you can miss something or skip a step and cause massive headaches for yourself down the road.

really the decision should be: what camera’s look will be best for our delivery and production schedule? made for youtube movie? TV? Theatrical? Shoot some tests with both cameras and get them displayed in their ultimate delivery format.

[Hector Berrebi]

funny they came down to two cameras with a price difference of 200K between them 🙂

i believe F23, meaning HDCAM SR, in an offline/online workflow might be simpler (you have access to an HDCAM SR VTR?) and will generate amazing 10/12 bit footage for grading/finishing

note that even if they shoot in the camera’s lower bitrate 440 Mbs
you will still need a very fast and sturdy disk array for online and grading. or even for conforming to image sequences if you’re not doing the grading.

SR is safer (tapes)
SR is (quite) more expensive

RED is cool and all, will let the DP work with a film size sensor
and has a variety of online/offline workflows (read through posts in the RED user group)

might run into some bumps along the way but the wide and generally friendly online RED community will be happy to advise you and in most cases solve your problems

smaller file sizes and bitrates, so less work for your drives, still… you will need good raid to work properly

and double storage for backups
RED is cheaper…and sorta’ hip

however… not sure about how nicer the image is compared to SR

shouldn’t be an editor’s choice in my opinion… you might have to face their disappointments later.

both are valid feature film formats.

Hector Berrebi
Schibber Group
prePost Consulting

[David Bertman]

Cool – thanks for that info Aaron-

I think I would prefer the RED workflow cause, at least in theory, it seems faster and cooler. I’ve done the old digitize from tape workflow and as you said, it takes a while…

You said there are a bunch of steps that I could miss which would cause a headache later — can you give me an example? I’ve never done a project with the RED, so here’s how I assume the workflow would go:

They shoot on set. A data wrangler makes a copy of the digital footage on 2 drives. One drive they keep as a safety. The other drive is Fed-exed to the post hose where they add a best light color correction. They then downconvert the footage to quicktimes. I injest those quicktimes into FCP and cut… Once the editing is done, we just swap out my smaller quicktime source footage for the original RED stuff and then the color correcting is done and an HDSR tape tape is made or a DI…

Is this correct or just the dreams of an out of touch editor?

[Hector Berrebi]

i think Aaron meant tapes were faster…

you can work in the RED workflow you described, or in a myriad of other (some simpler) flows… no need really for best light or for any downconverting in a lab… its digital, so you can do it later. and the camera generates QT proxies for you to work with.

read the RED FAQ, and browse through the user group forum.

you will be surprised of how resourceful guerrilla film making and post are in RED world

Hector Berrebi
Schibber Group
prePost Consulting

[Aaron Neitz]

I’m actually saying tape is faster. Not RED. RED is a lot more like shooting film: once you’ve exposed the negative, it needs to go into the lab for processing and dailies. There’s a lot of “sitting around processing” RED files before you can really start editing with them.

Frankly if you’ve never worked a RED job before and this is what the team decides to shoot, you really need to get a camera in hand, shoot a bunch of stuff, and practice the RED workflow. It’s really cool, but it’s got a ton of idiosyncrasies that you need to be accustomed to.

I highly recommend NOT letting someone else do your quicktime conversion. Everything can and should be done by the editor (or his assistant) with RED. This includes the re-conform to 2k RED after your edit is done. I’ve worked at a large facility where we processed RED into AVID quicktimes and then tried to re-conform 2k RED from AVID EDLs…. a disaster. We ended up eye-matching everything.

Like I mention, get your hands on a RED and play with it before starting the real project. A lot of people on the forums here and on the RED forums can help you with the learning curve.

[Chris Borjis]

If your unfamiliar with RED or this is your first time, shoot with F23 and HDCAM-SR tapes.

[David Bertman]

Chris-

By that logic I would NEVER use a Red…

[Chris Borjis]

[David Bertman] “By that logic I would NEVER use a Red…”

for feature length work, doing it first time RED could be a potential disaster
unless you have retained someone who has gone through all this before.
Believe me…there is plenty that can go wrong.

learn it with tv commercials or other short form if you have to learn it yourself….thats what I did.

[Gary Adcock]

[Hector berrebi] ” believe F23, meaning HDCAM SR, in an offline/online workflow might be simpler (you have access to an HDCAM SR VTR?) and will generate amazing 10/12 bit footage for grading/finishing”

FYI some of your points here hint at a lack of experience with both systems from acquisition to post.

Sorry but there is not 12bits of data available an f23 into SR -not even in the S-Log modes
That bit depth exceeds the specs for SRW1 acquisition from the f23.

“note that even if they shoot in the camera’s lower bitrate 440 Mbs “
the HQ config on the SRW1 deck is to allow for 60p and dual stream capture there is NO ADVANTAGE to shooting in 880 HQ mode if you are not doing dual stream( 3D) or 50p/60p as Variable Frame Rates.

The SR tape format is by far easier to work with in an existing workflow, RED is new cool and hip but
it should not be a post decision, since to properly handle RED onset you will need data manager that has full understand of the camera needs and post capabilities to create the most streamlined working process possible.

No matter what you shoot you will still have to go back to SR for delivery to broadcasters in most markets.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

Inside look at the IoHD
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php

[Gary Adcock]

[David Bertman] “… Once the editing is done, we just swap out my smaller quicktime source footage for the original RED stuff and then the color correcting is done and an HDSR tape tape is made or a DI… Is this correct or just the dreams of an out of touch editor?”

well

you seem to have left out that RED’s R3D files will only work on Intel machines, that working in 2K is rather taxing even on a very good machine,

and that it still takes on average 10-15X processing time for file conversions so that color render could take a while, then you have to send it back to FCP for output.

Handling content will take time, more than FW storage and real tools for color correction. If you are thinking that you can do this without a 2K capable video and HD monitoring just because you are working with RED, think again.

Lastly – how much have you worked with RAW files or LUT’s

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

Inside look at the IoHD
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php