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4K RAW?

I

inkexit

Anybody taking this seriously? Supposedly the new BlackMagic URSA will be able to do 4K 12 bit Cinema DNG RAW with a global shutter. Now we can get into the noise problems their previous 4K camera has and all that, but even if the picture was perfect, would anybody want to shoot 12 bit 4K RAW? I've heard the data rate would be something like 8MB per frame. So that's 240MB (mega-bytes, not mega-bits!) per second if you're shooting at 29.97; or about 14GB a minute! I can't even imagine what kind of a rig you would need to edit that.
 
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Let me edit that for you, Dave.

Hal_9000_by_JohnnySlowhand.jpg
 
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Probably shooting stuff like that at 24fps, so it's more like 200mb/second. New mac pros should handle that reasonably well with a decent external array - something like an 8-drive thunderbolt 2 array with 16TB of drives will hold about 20 hours of footage and edit it in real time. It's not a cheap setup, but not insanely expensive - maybe $10k. Do you need it? Probably not, but depends a lot on the project - if you do, I'd consider it pretty accessible overall.
 
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I have a 4k Black Magic. (Mine doesn't have noise issues) I've not installed the new firmware to get raw on it yet, but the 4k raw files I have seen, I seem to recall the filesize being something more like 12MB/frame. ;)

:lol:
 
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ItDonnedOnMe said:
16TB of drives will hold about 20 hours of footage
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Probably closer to 16hrs, and that would be full, so you'd need somewhere else to dump renders too, not to mention also needing at least an additional 16TB of space for storage that's not part of a RAID array... preferably something designed for long term storage, like LTO tape and/or Bluray data discs... lots of them in either case... :lol:
 
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Definitely, but it's still fairly easy to do and not terribly expensive overall - drives are cheap! 3TB drives are less than $150 now, so with an 8-bay array you could actually run 24tb total for under $1200 + the cost of the enclosure, maybe $2k total. If you're shooting at a 10:1 ratio that's more than enough online storage for a 90 minute feature, even at 12mb/frame.

I wonder if the 8mb/frame number is based on the lossless compressed DNG they use in the pocket camera - I believe it's supposed to be coming to the 4k models as well.

Plus, there's still the question of whether you really need all of your footage online as 4k raw. Personally the workflow I'd look at would be to use a drive dock with single bare drives to offload footage for storage purposes and archival purposes, then generate ProRes HD versions for the online edit and run them on a smaller, less expensive array. Then you can conform back to the raw files for the finishing process if you want the maximum quality.
 
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After hearing about the new Rec2020 color space and the next DCI spec, upcoming televisions, yeah, people are taking 12bit RAW seriously.

Honestly, if that blows your mind, check out 32bit float, which really isn't that far away. ;)

Is it necessary? Of course not, but people are definitely taking it seriously. :)
 
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Aside from leveraging 32bit float during post production I don't see it being used for delivery, and probably not acquisition any time too terribly soon. Hell ACES is only 16bit, which is still significantly more color information than any current delivery format.
 
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What I'd like to see is a 1080 or greater resolution version of a light-field camera, but for video instead of stills.. it's pretty crazy tech.. focus after the fact, because it captures information about the direction, angle, and power of light rays entering the lens. It's like magic. :D
 
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I'm presuming that video/moving image technology will eventually go the way of music technology. The CD spec (16bit, 44.1kHz), finalised nearly 35 years ago, already exceeded even the theoretical capabilities of the human ear but by about 10 years ago the manufacturers had saturated the market and run out of ways to market it. So they came out with the 24/96 delivery format which was ridiculous. Not satisfied with the ridiculous, the audiophile market is now after 24/192! Which is not only way beyond ridiculous but actually quite sad because although 24/192 is a bigger number and therefore appears to be better, it actually results in poorer audio quality/fidelity than the original CD spec. The power of marketing eh!!

Hopefully the same won't happen with images! I don't think we're there yet with 4k as a consumer delivery format but certainly the advantages of 4k over HD is a case of diminishing returns, compared to the advantages of HD over SD and relatively few will notice much improvement. I can certainly see 4k's advantages as an acquisition and editing format though.

G
 
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Something like a light field camera would be a good use case for higher than 4k resolution. I believe the current ones use a 4x4 sensor area to derive each pixel in the final image, so to achieve a full 1080 final image we'd need a sensor capable of approximately 8k resolution. Realistically that's not too far off as far as sensor technology goes, but it's also going to require faster processing, bus speeds, storage capacity, etc. I'm sure it's doable now in an expensive tethered studio setup, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that in a practical self-contained camera system within the decade.
 
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Light field possibilities are interesting at high raster sizes, for sure. Also quite interested to see data acquisition merged into cameras as well. Basically capturing 4+K and a dense point cloud, and z axis depth simultaneously.

Exiting stuff.

G - Interesting that the higher sample rates are not received as well by the human ear. If I understand what I am reading correctly, the fovea (part of you eye responsible for rendering fine detail) is about 6K +/-. Other parts of the retina are not as sharp apparently. So it will be interesting if marketing tries to push delivery sizes larger and if the result is similar.
 
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