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RED CPU Software Decoding
When reading RED files using the software decoder, it is a good idea to turn off the Shot/Enable Prefetch setting before opening the R3D shot . This because the RED SDK can currently decode only a single frame at a time and each frame requires a substantial amount of computer time. If the SynthEyes prefetch engine is active, ordinary screen redraws will be queued behind 8 to 24 separate frame decodes, depending on the number of processors on your system, which will temporarily freeze the SynthEyes user interface. Hopefully RED will eliminate the single-frame-decode limitation in future releases of the SDK.
SynthEyes supports RED HDR files, which contain two video tracks: a normal track and an extended range track that is stopped down via a short shutter time. HDR exposure is controlled from the Shot Setup panel ( not the image preprocessor!). Use the "F.-P. Range Adjust" spinner on the shot setup panel to adjust exposure. For RED footage, this value corresponds to the "Bias" control in RED HDR processing. At +10, the image is brighter and only the normal image is used. At -10, the image is darker, and only the extended-range (stopped down) image is used.
When HDR footage is available, the shorter exposure time of the extended-range "X" image will reduce motion blur and therefore make it easier to track than the normal- exposure image. As described in the previous paragraph, you can set the Shot Setup panel's range adjust control to -10 to use only the extended-range image. The Image preprocessor's exposure control and the Tracker Control Panel's gain control can restore visibility of dim features. This approach should not be used if the extended- range image is stopped down so far that it has excessive noise in normal portions of the image (ie, other than for bright lights).
While SynthEyes can read RED R3D files, there is no assurance that downstream compositing or animation applications can do the same. You may need to
convert the R3D movie file to an image sequence in order to export files from SynthEyes that downstream applications can read.
©2024 Boris FX, Inc. — UNOFFICIAL — Converted from original PDF.