M_Williams

This is interesting, but personally, I think it's a stupid way to approach this. Yes, make it sound best for the theatres, but the film won't be in theatres forever. A lot of people are going to watch it at home - probably most people will watch it at home over the course of X number of years. But, more importantly, this is really a problem exclusive to Nolan. When I was the TDKR opening scene preview before Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (in IMAX at Universal) I couldn't understand 80% of what Bane was saying. I think they went back after a lot of the complaints and remixed it, because it was better in the full release. I watched everything with subtitles at home. But when you have a film like Oppenheimer, which has some of the most intense sound effects and music I've ever heard in a theatre, as well as being almost completely dialogue-driven, you gotta make that sh*t understandable. Same with Tenet, where you wouldn't understand the plot at all if you couldn't hear the dialogue. I dunno, I just never have this problem with any movies other than Nolan films. Maybe a few lines here and there obviously, but not entire movies. That said, I don't think I missed out on anything important, it's just really frustrating. Tenet was waaaay worse.

Agreed. Most RAW is used for VFX. I know the cinematographer of Whiplash (2014) and it was shot on an Alexa in ProRes 4:4:4. Nebraska was shot on an Alexa M and Alexa 4:3 in ProRes 2K. Moonlight was Alexa XT Plus on ProRes 4:4:4. It's also more common to shot ProRes for shows. Exceptions are productions that use RED, because obviously you'd shoot REDCODE RAW there. I think RAW is becoming more common to use on mid and high budget films, probably because storage/media costs have decreased a lot, and RAW is much more easy to edit with today's computers.

Yeah this is what I don't understand (and would like a source link to for context). IATSE covers virtually everyone behind the camera. Crew members on a union shoot are IATSE. And IATSE issued a statement in solidarity with WGA and SAG: https://iatse.net/teamsters-iatse-writers-guild-dga-issue-joint-statement-in-solidarity-with-sag-aftra/

Andrew, it would be great if you could include links to the sources in your articles, like this one. Not that I don't trust it's accurate, but because I'd like to read sources as they will have additional information. (obviously this doesn't apply to like, a new camera announcement or something that is well known and covered everywhere)

Yes, a majority of SAG members are making far less money than people think. WGA even less, most likely.

Also, Hoyte van Hoytema's cinematography is spectacular. He shot Dunkirk and Interstellar and Tenant too and I think he's really brought a lot to Nolan's films over Wally Pfister before him. He also shot Nope using the novel approach of infrared Alexa 65 + 65mm film together. He was robbed of an Oscar nom for that (actually should have won, imo).

I saw Oppenheimer yesterday in IMAX. Amazing film, a must-see in the theatre. The sound is so important to the film, and unless you have a multi-thousand dollar surround system (and even then i doubt that's sufficient) you won't get the full experience. I'm not a huge Nolan fan, I like most of his movies, don't love them (I do love Interstellar and Dunkirk and Insomnia), but this one is great. The IMAX filming really adds a lot. Shallow DOF is used to well and the special Kodak black and white IMAX film that was made for it looks gorgeous, but in a very unique way. Great performances from Cillian and Robert Downey Jr. Biggest issue: some dialogue is hard to hear. This has been a problem with Nolan from The Dark Knight Rises to Interstellar to Tenant (it was especially bad in Tenant). Nolan has said he doesn't care and that moviegoers are being "conservative" about sound design. He needs to pull his head out of his ass about that. If you can't hear the dialogue in a movie like Oppenheimer, you will not follow the story. Most of the film is scenes of dialogue! It wasn't nearly as bad as Tenant in that regard, though. Just a few times I couldn't make out what was said. Best film of the year so far. Barbie is the next film I am seeing, very excited for that one.

Huh? I assume you mean the Mags he was making. The videos were never pulled. YouTube channel is still up, vidoes have been on there for 2-3 years it says. Maybe they were reposted, I can't remember when he originally did them but it seems longer than 2-3 years ago... But yeah, here's the REDCODE video, the rest are on his channel (Jinni.Tech). Nikon used his arguments in their response to RED because they appear by all accounts to be valid - I've read/watched several patent lawyers say Nikon is correct about the filing date of the patent. You're not entitled to a patent if the invention was described in a printed publication or in public use or on sale more than a year prior to the date of the application. RED filed the two patents on on April 11, 2007 and Dec 28, 2007, but Jared Land posted specs in 2005 and demonstrated a prototype at NAB in April 2006 and took hundreds pre-orders. There's also a video of an early prototype in action in early 2006. The patent filed in April 2007 doesn't describe key parts of the REDCODE patent, so the earliest date that can be applicable is December 28, 2007 - more than a year after they took pre-orders and demonstrated the camera.

Yeah it would be around that. 187 to 450mbps, but you'd rarely be anywhere nearly 400 unless you had a lot of movement and whatnot like you say. Generally about 2 to 2.5GB/min in my experience.

I mean, once projects are finished and in the rear-view, they just get stored on hard drives that aren't connected to anything, in two separate locations. The NAS is just used for backup of current projects (and for sharing files between my computer and my roommate/filmmaking partner) plus storage of anything that I need access to occasionally (music, stock footage, whatever the hell it may be), as well as all of my photography stills. So no, not really. Regular 3.5" HDDs are cheap as dirt these days. I don't shoot events or documentaries or anything that has hundreds of hours of footage. i just do narrative filmmaking, so it's not like there's an insane amount of data. I guess if I were to purchase all the hard drives at once it would seem expensive, but over time it's not a big deal. Now if I shot 2,000mbps RAW 8K or something like that... might be a different story. That's why I'm happy with 6K. Enough resolution to have some latitude in post for reframing/digital zoom/stabilization and still have a 4K file, but not so much that the storage or computing power becomes an issue. As such, I was VERY happy when the X-H2s was announced with 6.2K - and open gate at that! (why no one else, other than Panasonic, will do open gate is a mystery to me). I've been disappointed that everyone skipped right from 4K to 8K (as far as hybrids go), except for the Canon R3. BMPCC6K, RED Komodo, Z-Cam E2-S6/F6, X-H2s, GH6... that's what I like. I was kind of disappointed that the Ursa 12K didn't do oversampled 6K, which was surprising since that would be a perfect 2:1 oversample. But it made sense when I found out the sensor is RGBW with 1:1:1 RGB pixels, so a clean oversample is 3:1 (which is why it does full sensor 4K, but only Super 16 6K). Anyway... yeah I'm a huge fan of 6K haha.

Why? What? I don't know what this means. Nikon's response to RED's lawsuit is a legitimately valid argument and stands a good chance of invalidating the patent. Why no one else ever used that argument (except JinniMag) is beyond me. And notice how RED quietly dropped their lawsuit against JinniMag.... no deals were made there. RED's patent never should have been granted in the first place. But Nikon has a strong argument legally as for why it's not valid.

I probably draw the line around 600-800 mbps, which would be 4.5 to 6GB per minute. I prefer BRAW whenever possible - better than ProRes RAW - and of course it's internal on my BMPCC 6K Pro and BMPCC 4K. I generally shoot Q5 on both, which can average around 5-7GB/min on the 6K and about 2GB/min on the 4K. If I'm doing something that needs green screen work or anything like that, I might shoot Q1 on the 6K, which is a whopping 11-12GB/min or Q0 on the 4K which is about 8GB/min. But that's better than ProRes 422 HQ which is 7GB/min on the 4K. I reviewed the GH6 recently and while ProRes is a great feature to have, it takes up a ton of space, especially if you shoot the open gate 5.8K. Much prefer to just shoot 200mbps H.265 LongGOP (in 5.7K DCI or 5.8K open gate), which is a lot nicer than ProRes 422 HQ which clocks in at 1522mbps (both 23.98p). For 4K DCI I would use the 400mbps All-I H.264 4.2.2 - I wish Panasonic had at least offered H.265 All-I 4.2.2 for the 5.7K DCI and 5.8K open gate, instead of just 4.2.2 All-I ProRes. Supposedly they did this since H.265 is heavy on computers, but my Mac Studio can easily handle it - even my Mac Mini M1 doesn't have a problem with it. For me, I use BRAW whenever possible. It's the best compressed RAW codec out there outside of REDCODE RAW. Smooth as butter to edit and of course seamless integration with Resolve. CinemaDNG provides little benefit for me and produces massive files that are simply unwieldy to deal with. ProRes is more of the a convenience thing than an actual efficient codec. It just works smoothly on a lot of computers without top of the line specs, but once you get beyond 1080 HD, it becomes simply too much storage. I edit off a few SSDs in RAID 5 configuration, then I have some regular HDDs in a NAS for archival storage. Hopefully more compressed RAW options open up in the near future once RED loses their patent in this Nikon suit - at least that's what I predict will happen. It will also be hilarious to me if Nikon, the company that has historically never cared about video or filmmaking, is the one to invalidate their stupid patent. (keep in mind, everything I shoot is narrative film, so high-quality video is necessary - so I'm willing to tolerate higher bitrates, though not excessively so)

The Lighthouse was actually 1.19:1 (19:16) which was used in the 20s and 30s, notably Murnau's Sunrise and Lang's M. It was a standard super 35 frame (so 4:3) with an optical soundtrack overlaid to yield a more square 1.19:1 -- it was called "Movietone." I'm not sure if they did that on the Lighthouse or just cropped it in post. Interestingly, any theatre that hasn't moved to digital projection can use that optical soundtrack without modifications. Xavier Dolan's Mommy was shot in 1:1, though.

Personally, I LOVE being able to shoot open gate (whether it's 4:3 on a M4/3 or 3:2 on APS-C/FF). You don't lose anything at all (except larger files), it gives you the ability to reframe a DCI or 16:9 image vertically without cropping, and is far superior for tighter aspect ratios below 16:9. 1.66 is one of my favorite aspect ratios and so shooting 1.5:1 (as in the X-HT2s) is awesome. I'm really shocked that Panasonic has been the only one to offer open-gate - whether it's 4:3 on the GH series or 3:2 on their S line, so I'm very, very happy to see Fuji offer it, especially on an APS-C/Super 35 sensor which is my preference for filmmaking. Also, I was extremely happy to see someone offer 6K - everyone seemed to jump straight from 4K to 8K (as far as MILC hybrids go anyway). 6K is, right now, pretty much perfect for me. Enough extra resolution to allow for cropping/reframing/stabilization and still end up with 4K, but not so much that the file sizes are overwhelming huge (and the processing power required, depending on the codec). Generally speaking, 1TB of 4K footage would require ~2-2.25TB for 6K and ~4-5TB for 8K. Once you get up there, mainly with SSDs, the cost difference above 2TB is huge. Not to mention how much more unforgiving 8K is for focusing mistakes. 6K just always seemed like the sweet spot to me, and no one was offering it except the Canon R3. Which cost as much as an Ursa Mini Pro 12K or RED Komodo.

Y'all left out the part where I said what the patent's definition of "visually lossless" is. It's not an Imatest or anything of the sort. The fact of the matter is, Red RAW is NOT lossless. Again, if it were, you wouldn't have different compression options. Lossless is lossless, there would only be one compression ratio. It is lossy RAW but "lossless" because the average person can't see a difference.

The only situation where it really matters is within the same scene, but even then it's 1) often easy to match lenses in post (which was not so easy with film) and 2) not uncommon for one scene to have different styles of shots cut together. ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES is one that comes to mind, but plenty of films do it to some degree. In general, though, I have a set of primes (from the same lens line) and one or two zooms (of the same line) for any given project. And then I have speciality lenses, like a Helios or old Baltar or a tilt-shift or an ultra-wide, if I want something a bit more stylized. I think that's probably how most people do it. I doubt many people shoot films with ten random different brands and vintages of lenses - most have a set of some kind that they use for 90%+ of the shooting.

Andrew, let me describe two of the biggest issues with RED's patent, ignoring how insanely stupid it is to patent compressed RAW above 23fps: 1) Their patent was filed over a year after the camera was on the market. It is invalid on that basis alone. 2) The patent should never have been granted because it is SO GENERIC AND BROAD. It covers not truly lossless RAW video, but visually lossless RAW. What is the definition of visually lossless in the patent? That the average person can see no difference. That's literally it. None of RED's RAW video is actually lossless. If it were, why would you have options of 3:1, 5:1, 8:1, 12:1, 18:1, whatever they are - or now I believe they're just HQ, MQ, and LQ. None of those are truly lossless RAW like you can shoot in most stills cameras. They are lossy RAW. So, by being granted a patent for visually lossless (to the average person) RAW, they have effectively been given domain over both lossless AND lossy RAW. Lossless and lossy RAW existed in stills form prior to RED developing a single thing. They took that and said "ok give us a patent on this except at 24fps or higher" - which, by the way, a number of cameras do now (there is no defined limit of time in RED's patent for how long it can shoot, because again, it's as broad and vague as you can possibly get). It would be fair if they had a patent on REDCODE RAW, just as I'm sure BM has one on BRAW and Canon on C-RAW and so on. But to patent something that already existed - and simply taking it to the next logical extension - and then being granted that patent with excessively broad language is simply wrong. It would be like if someone had patented all forms of audio compression. Instead, patents were filed on audio compression formats, like DPCM (the first) and coding standards (AAC, MP3, DC3, FLAC, etc.).

I absolutely love SLR Magic Microprimes (mirrorless) and the APO Microprimes (PL/EF mount). They're easily my favorite budget cinema lenses. Very little focus breathing, great build, lovely lovely image that isn't too soft or with tons of spherical aberrations but still pleasing. I have the 12/2.8, 17/1.5, 21/1.6, 35/1.5, and 50/1.4 for M4/3 and I have the 32/2.1 and 50/2.1 APO microprimes... will eventually add the 25 and 85. Plus the APOs cover full-frame. Only thing that is ever an issue is glare, depending on your shot and light sources. It can be a bit much with the veiling glare if the light hits it the right way. This is a personal thing, some people love that. It's definitely more akin to vintage single-coated lenses than modern ones, but without the aberrations or focus breathing many of those have.

You can only shoot ProRes RAW up to like 4.1K (or thereabouts, I can't remember exactly). N-RAW allows up to 8.3K.

It's the N-RAW.

Thank you! And YES. I tried to make a big point of that in my review, so hopefully they listen! It sucks so much, it's such a waste of the amazing IBIS.

My review is up at Petapixel for those interested. Been using the camera for the past month and a half and I love it. Video quality is really very good. Amazing color. https://petapixel.com/2022/03/29/om-digital-om-1-review-the-best-micro-four-thirds-camera-ever-made/

Sweet! I missed that announcement.

I'm hoping they return to the 1:1:1 RGB layers (instead of Quattro's 4 (blue):1 (red): 1 (green)). Or something more interesting, perhaps. Also hoping they improve the DNG output. That was a huge step forward for many, myself included, because I absolutely loathe SPP, but the DNG files were still not as good as running the regular raw files through SPP first. I'm almost certain they'll finally drop the SA mount and go to L mount with it. I'm not even sure if the SA mount is designed to work with a FF sensor. I think it's similar to the EF mount so it would probably work fine, but they'd be stupid to keep it at this point. There's already an SA to L Sigma adapter for legacy users.

Ok fair enough. You said you found it "strange" which to me means "out of the ordinary" but I understand what you mean. It is quirky especially if you use a light meter like I still do.