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This means Netflix operates as a production and post studio for their many and talented film-makers. The stuff with the red N on the poster -- some of it is REA

This means Netflix operates as a production and post studio for their many and talented film-makers. The stuff with the red N on the poster -- some of it is REALLY good -- uses Netflix-operated handling. Any video production goes through a lot of steps from raw studio footage to edited, finished product. This web site says that Netflix processes and people handle a lot of that. Also it looks like 4K is their minimum standard now. I bet the higher resolution makes it easier, with big*ss GPUs to clean up the raw footage. (Footage? WTF? Video measured by distance? Maybe we should say "frameage" or "pix.")

colechristensen 5y ago
When you used actual film it was long lengths of the stuff, hence footage. Lots of words have weird no longer relevant sources. Like “logs”.
- lekevicius 5y ago
  Not what I expected at all: log (n.2) "record of observations, readings, etc.," 1842, sailor's shortening of log-book "daily record of a ship's speed, progress, etc." (1670s), from log (n.1). The book so called because a wooden float at the end of a line was cast out to measure a ship's speed. General sense by 1913.* So it does have a relationship to the wooden log - it was originally a series of measurements from a floating bit of wood. https://www.etymonline.com/word/log https://www.etymonline.com/word/log
  - i_am_proteus 5y ago
    See also the unit of speed for ships and aircraft, knots, after the knots tied in the line attached to the log.
  - mwattsun 5y ago
    "mark twain" means 12 ft. Samuel Clemens adopted it as a pen name. https://www.mvd.usace.army.mil/Portals/52/docs/regional_flood_risk_management/our_mississippi/EdGuide/U4/U4%20p246-247.pdf https://www.mvd.usace.army.mil/Portals/52/docs/regional_floo...
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Yeah and knots from the literal knots in that rope attached to that literal log. Not sure what you expected though, look at the etymology of any word and you get back to something concrete and tangible eventually (with rare exceptions for a few feelings and such.) We haven't been abstract that long, so most of it is metaphor or analogy.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    On set, depending on the size of crew, part of the job for an AC or 1st AC is to make a camera report. Each shot is logged to note things like which lens was used, what filters were used, the height of the camera from the floor, the distance of the film plane to the focus point, the frame rate, aperture, ISO, etc. All of this info can then be used if they needed to do a pick up later to put the camera in the same setup. Also, it can be used in post production so that the camera can be recreated in 3D to have the special f/x match. Also, log can refer to the gamma curve which affects how roll-offs in highlights/shadows are saved (rough description). "Log" is still used daily in production work.
    - germinalphrase 5y ago
      This may not be universal, but when I was a 2nd AC/Loader - the 1st AC didn’t log anything. Always 2nd AC along with keeping the slate.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        "depending on size of crew" To get to 2nd AC, you had a good sized crew
        germinalphrase 5y ago
        I suppose, but we’re talking about Netflix here. DP, Operator, 1st AC, 2nd AC, and a loader is pretty standard on even sub-10 mil budgets (which is nothing).
        dylan604 5y ago
        Debating the size of the crew is fun and all, and yes, traditionally for a full crew, this is the purview of the 2nd AC. As the crew gets smaller, those duties roll up to the next person. The fact that a "log" is still a thing in today's productions is not dependant on which crew member is doing it. In fact, with all of the digital f/x, they are crucial.
- jiehong 5y ago
  Thank you. Now I understand why it’s "métrage” in French, and also why a “long métrage” means a long movie!
- dylan604 5y ago
  It's becoming less and less of a thing as film is used less and less, but some of the older NLEs would allow you to view your time as feet+frames and allowing to specify between 35mm and 16mm. Film was also sold by the foot. You didn't by film by 15 minutes. You bought film by 1000' rolls (35mm).
  - OJFord 5y ago
    > Film was also sold by the foot. You didn't by film by 15 minutes. You bought film by 1000' rolls (35mm). But that just makes sense doesn't it? It's only 15 minutes' worth if you run it at 1000'/15m.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Yes, I was just mentioning that for those that might not be aware. Developing your film was also charged by the foot. The soup didn't care about your framerate. Just how much was need to process.
  - gorgoiler 5y ago
    Or a fraction of a second at 10,000fps, where 400’ would be spooled through in under 3s (16mm) As ingenuous as our mechanical past was, I am so happy to have lived through the transition to 100% solid state everything.
mdoms 5y ago
> The stuff with the red N on the poster -- some of it is REALLY good An overwhelming majority of it is total garbage. It's such a bad ratio that I treat the red N as a negative signal when I'm choosing something.
- tootie 5y ago
  Yeah they greenlight almost anything. It means they take a lot of risks which can produce some really creative and unexpected treasures but also a ton of crap. It's basically the VC model applied to content creation. One blockbuster is worth ten flops.
- bredren 5y ago
  The streaming services are in strong competition for original content. Sometimes buying exclusive rights to completed work off the shelf. This content seems to get labeled as an "XYZ original," be it Apple, Netflix or something else. Do you differentiate between content greenlit and produced by the streaming services from those purchased? I'm curious because they are two different capabilities and it seems each service is attempting some amount of both.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    Yes, there is a clear quality difference between the stuff they acquire/license (some of which is quite good) and the utter dreck they produce themselves.
    - felixg3 5y ago
      I wasn’t aware that „dreck“ is being used in English. TIL
      - geenew 5y ago
        What other language(s) is that word used in? It's a moderately rare word in everyday spoken English.
mayli 5y ago
Yeah, footage.
wyager 5y ago
> I bet the higher resolution makes it easier, with big*ss GPUs to clean up the raw footage. Even if you don't do any other post-processing, downscaled video looks better than video captured at sensor resolution. This is because you can implement a steeper low-pass filter (closer to ideal brick-wall filter) in software than you can in actual optics. Hardware lowpass filters tuned to block most stuff above nyquist will also block a lot below it. A 1080p video captured off a good 1080p sensor will have vastly lower amplitude at, say, 500 line pair vertical than a 1080p video captured on a 4k sensor and lowpassed in software with a good filter.
- astrange 5y ago
  Also, video is not actually bandlimited so the supposedly perfect filter isn’t actually perfect; you can do a better nonlinear one.
  - NavinF 5y ago
    What does a better filter look like?
    - astrange 5y ago
      Selective Gaussian blur or hq2x are examples of image filters. Font hinting is an example of a nonlinear downscaling though most people don’t think of it that way. It preserves line sharpness, which is a non-bandlimited feature since lines are infinitely sharp = made of infinite frequencies. Overly sharp linear filters produce artifacts like blockiness and ringing; nonlinear ones would try to avoid that but you could still get more difficult ones like moiré.
      - marcan_42 5y ago
        This is mostly obsolete with High-DPI screens though; we're at the point where such hacks are no longer needed and we can use close to ideal filters (e.g. lanczos, which is a windowed sinc). macOS no longer does font subpixel AA or strong hinting by default for this reason. This is good, because it means we can finally treat computer graphics as properly scalable images without introducing "blurriness". Note that lines were never infinitely sharp; pixels aren't infinitely sharp, they have a shape and the screen construction determines how sharp they look. They are, however, sharper than what you'd get in a nyquist-limited system.
Closi 5y ago
> Also it looks like 4K is their minimum standard now. I bet the higher resolution makes it easier, with big*ss GPUs to clean up the raw footage. I assume it's their minimum standard for Netflix Originals as they want more content in 4K rather than making it easier for them, particularly as 4K is an up-charge subscription.
- NavinF 5y ago
  Well that and 4K60 is the new standard definition. It’s been 4 years since flagship phones that could record 4K60 were released and most of those devices are now discontinued and obsolete. It’d be hilarious if studios used their fancy optics with cameras that have a lower res than something you can get for $80 on eBay
  - rhines 5y ago
    Eh, just because it has the pixels doesn't mean it has the resolution. Often 1080p content from high quality systems still looks more detailed than 4k content from smartphones, even fairly modern smartphones, as the pixels can only record detail that gets through the optics and isn't marred by noise. With phones having relatively low quality lenses (for the size of the pixels they must resolve) and smaller sensors, this can quickly become an issue. With that said, it is great to see 4k becoming standard for productions!
- rnotaro 5y ago
  From what I've read on their documentation [1], it's mostly for future-proofing their own content. [1] https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500000258401-Image-Capture-Frequently-Asked-Questions https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/150... --- StartQuote --- Why does Netflix require UHD on Netflix Originals? Answer: In 2014, Netflix made the decision to begin shooting and delivering all Originals in UHD. This decision was made for several reasons, the most of important of which is to future-proof our content. UHD is here, and adoption of UHD in the home is increasing. In just a few years, it will be harder to find an HD television than a UHD television. For this reason, we feel it only makes sense to shoot natively in the format that most of our customers will see for years to come. The experience for customers viewing HD is still fantastic. Our encoding pipeline takes a UHD master and produces beautiful HD (and SD) streams for all those customers who are viewing on smaller or older displays. --- EndQuote ---
kaczordon 5y ago
> Also it looks like 4K is their minimum standard now. I bet the higher resolution makes it easier, with big*ss GPUs to clean up the raw footage. Resolution is far less important than bit color depth. We barely need 4K(Alexa used to be 2K) much less 8K footage for something to look good on a tv.
- shiftpgdn 5y ago
  Sure is nice to crop in though.
  - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
    If you’re shooting 4K, you have to be calculated with your lens configuration to actually get that resolution at the sensor. After that kind of effort, cropping your shot in post is going to be a silly step to take.
    - shiftpgdn 5y ago
      You don’t have to crop in significantly, but just trim edges/etc.
- rectang 5y ago
  I would think that capturing at higher resolutions makes it feasible to crop and zoom? In digital production, you always want to work at high resolution for all intermediate stages, then reduce bit depth only during the final output stage. When I worked in music production a while back, we often had the problem of source material recorded at low amplitude to 16-bit media (e.g. DAT, CDDA, ADAT). While 16-bit is theoretically sufficient, in the real world you need headroom while recording in order to avoid clipping. So we'd often wind up with grungy sound from inadequate bit-depth during capture and intermediate production.
  - ace2358 5y ago
    I know recording live music can get hairy, but yikes! How was 16bits not enough? Were all the preamps set to max? Who records at -12db - -6db? Record at a way lower level and boost at the amp stage?
Stratoscope 5y ago
> (Footage? WTF? Video measured by distance? Maybe we should say "frameage" or "pix.") I'll start saying one of those when my phone dialer icon stops looking like a Western Electric Model 500 handset. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone
robbrown451 5y ago
Regarding "footage", notice that you also refer to them as "film-makers." There really isn't film involved. And Netflix is named after the term "flick" which refers to the flickery effect you get with movies (especially in the old days), which hopefully isn't there anymore.
ancientworldnow 5y ago
Netflix farms out all this post work. That's why they have these delivery specs. You follow the white papers and then they run it through their automated systems that do QC (followed by people verifying). Then they run it through an auto pipeline to create final streaming files and archives but they don't do any further manipulation of the image. Once you start doing one Netflix job they return to your post facility consistently.

colechristensen 5y ago

When you used actual film it was long lengths of the stuff, hence footage. Lots of words have weird no longer relevant sources. Like “logs”.

lekevicius 5y ago
Not what I expected at all: log (n.2) "record of observations, readings, etc.," 1842, sailor's shortening of log-book "daily record of a ship's speed, progress, etc." (1670s), from log (n.1). The book so called because a wooden float at the end of a line was cast out to measure a ship's speed. General sense by 1913.* So it does have a relationship to the wooden log - it was originally a series of measurements from a floating bit of wood. https://www.etymonline.com/word/log https://www.etymonline.com/word/log
- i_am_proteus 5y ago
  See also the unit of speed for ships and aircraft, knots, after the knots tied in the line attached to the log.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  "mark twain" means 12 ft. Samuel Clemens adopted it as a pen name. https://www.mvd.usace.army.mil/Portals/52/docs/regional_flood_risk_management/our_mississippi/EdGuide/U4/U4%20p246-247.pdf https://www.mvd.usace.army.mil/Portals/52/docs/regional_floo...
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Yeah and knots from the literal knots in that rope attached to that literal log. Not sure what you expected though, look at the etymology of any word and you get back to something concrete and tangible eventually (with rare exceptions for a few feelings and such.) We haven't been abstract that long, so most of it is metaphor or analogy.
- dylan604 5y ago
  On set, depending on the size of crew, part of the job for an AC or 1st AC is to make a camera report. Each shot is logged to note things like which lens was used, what filters were used, the height of the camera from the floor, the distance of the film plane to the focus point, the frame rate, aperture, ISO, etc. All of this info can then be used if they needed to do a pick up later to put the camera in the same setup. Also, it can be used in post production so that the camera can be recreated in 3D to have the special f/x match. Also, log can refer to the gamma curve which affects how roll-offs in highlights/shadows are saved (rough description). "Log" is still used daily in production work.
  - germinalphrase 5y ago
    This may not be universal, but when I was a 2nd AC/Loader - the 1st AC didn’t log anything. Always 2nd AC along with keeping the slate.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      "depending on size of crew" To get to 2nd AC, you had a good sized crew
      - germinalphrase 5y ago
        I suppose, but we’re talking about Netflix here. DP, Operator, 1st AC, 2nd AC, and a loader is pretty standard on even sub-10 mil budgets (which is nothing).
        dylan604 5y ago
        Debating the size of the crew is fun and all, and yes, traditionally for a full crew, this is the purview of the 2nd AC. As the crew gets smaller, those duties roll up to the next person. The fact that a "log" is still a thing in today's productions is not dependant on which crew member is doing it. In fact, with all of the digital f/x, they are crucial.
jiehong 5y ago
Thank you. Now I understand why it’s "métrage” in French, and also why a “long métrage” means a long movie!
dylan604 5y ago
It's becoming less and less of a thing as film is used less and less, but some of the older NLEs would allow you to view your time as feet+frames and allowing to specify between 35mm and 16mm. Film was also sold by the foot. You didn't by film by 15 minutes. You bought film by 1000' rolls (35mm).
- OJFord 5y ago
  > Film was also sold by the foot. You didn't by film by 15 minutes. You bought film by 1000' rolls (35mm). But that just makes sense doesn't it? It's only 15 minutes' worth if you run it at 1000'/15m.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Yes, I was just mentioning that for those that might not be aware. Developing your film was also charged by the foot. The soup didn't care about your framerate. Just how much was need to process.
- gorgoiler 5y ago
  Or a fraction of a second at 10,000fps, where 400’ would be spooled through in under 3s (16mm) As ingenuous as our mechanical past was, I am so happy to have lived through the transition to 100% solid state everything.

mdoms 5y ago

> The stuff with the red N on the poster -- some of it is REALLY good An overwhelming majority of it is total garbage. It's such a bad ratio that I treat the red N as a negative signal when I'm choosing something.

tootie 5y ago
Yeah they greenlight almost anything. It means they take a lot of risks which can produce some really creative and unexpected treasures but also a ton of crap. It's basically the VC model applied to content creation. One blockbuster is worth ten flops.
bredren 5y ago
The streaming services are in strong competition for original content. Sometimes buying exclusive rights to completed work off the shelf. This content seems to get labeled as an "XYZ original," be it Apple, Netflix or something else. Do you differentiate between content greenlit and produced by the streaming services from those purchased? I'm curious because they are two different capabilities and it seems each service is attempting some amount of both.
- mdoms 5y ago
  Yes, there is a clear quality difference between the stuff they acquire/license (some of which is quite good) and the utter dreck they produce themselves.
  - felixg3 5y ago
    I wasn’t aware that „dreck“ is being used in English. TIL
    - geenew 5y ago
      What other language(s) is that word used in? It's a moderately rare word in everyday spoken English.

mayli 5y ago

Yeah, footage.

wyager 5y ago

> I bet the higher resolution makes it easier, with big*ss GPUs to clean up the raw footage. Even if you don't do any other post-processing, downscaled video looks better than video captured at sensor resolution. This is because you can implement a steeper low-pass filter (closer to ideal brick-wall filter) in software than you can in actual optics. Hardware lowpass filters tuned to block most stuff above nyquist will also block a lot below it. A 1080p video captured off a good 1080p sensor will have vastly lower amplitude at, say, 500 line pair vertical than a 1080p video captured on a 4k sensor and lowpassed in software with a good filter.

astrange 5y ago
Also, video is not actually bandlimited so the supposedly perfect filter isn’t actually perfect; you can do a better nonlinear one.
- NavinF 5y ago
  What does a better filter look like?
  - astrange 5y ago
    Selective Gaussian blur or hq2x are examples of image filters. Font hinting is an example of a nonlinear downscaling though most people don’t think of it that way. It preserves line sharpness, which is a non-bandlimited feature since lines are infinitely sharp = made of infinite frequencies. Overly sharp linear filters produce artifacts like blockiness and ringing; nonlinear ones would try to avoid that but you could still get more difficult ones like moiré.
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      This is mostly obsolete with High-DPI screens though; we're at the point where such hacks are no longer needed and we can use close to ideal filters (e.g. lanczos, which is a windowed sinc). macOS no longer does font subpixel AA or strong hinting by default for this reason. This is good, because it means we can finally treat computer graphics as properly scalable images without introducing "blurriness". Note that lines were never infinitely sharp; pixels aren't infinitely sharp, they have a shape and the screen construction determines how sharp they look. They are, however, sharper than what you'd get in a nyquist-limited system.

Closi 5y ago

> Also it looks like 4K is their minimum standard now. I bet the higher resolution makes it easier, with big*ss GPUs to clean up the raw footage. I assume it's their minimum standard for Netflix Originals as they want more content in 4K rather than making it easier for them, particularly as 4K is an up-charge subscription.

NavinF 5y ago
Well that and 4K60 is the new standard definition. It’s been 4 years since flagship phones that could record 4K60 were released and most of those devices are now discontinued and obsolete. It’d be hilarious if studios used their fancy optics with cameras that have a lower res than something you can get for $80 on eBay
- rhines 5y ago
  Eh, just because it has the pixels doesn't mean it has the resolution. Often 1080p content from high quality systems still looks more detailed than 4k content from smartphones, even fairly modern smartphones, as the pixels can only record detail that gets through the optics and isn't marred by noise. With phones having relatively low quality lenses (for the size of the pixels they must resolve) and smaller sensors, this can quickly become an issue. With that said, it is great to see 4k becoming standard for productions!
rnotaro 5y ago
From what I've read on their documentation [1], it's mostly for future-proofing their own content. [1] https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500000258401-Image-Capture-Frequently-Asked-Questions https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/150... --- StartQuote --- Why does Netflix require UHD on Netflix Originals? Answer: In 2014, Netflix made the decision to begin shooting and delivering all Originals in UHD. This decision was made for several reasons, the most of important of which is to future-proof our content. UHD is here, and adoption of UHD in the home is increasing. In just a few years, it will be harder to find an HD television than a UHD television. For this reason, we feel it only makes sense to shoot natively in the format that most of our customers will see for years to come. The experience for customers viewing HD is still fantastic. Our encoding pipeline takes a UHD master and produces beautiful HD (and SD) streams for all those customers who are viewing on smaller or older displays. --- EndQuote ---

kaczordon 5y ago

> Also it looks like 4K is their minimum standard now. I bet the higher resolution makes it easier, with big*ss GPUs to clean up the raw footage. Resolution is far less important than bit color depth. We barely need 4K(Alexa used to be 2K) much less 8K footage for something to look good on a tv.

shiftpgdn 5y ago
Sure is nice to crop in though.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  If you’re shooting 4K, you have to be calculated with your lens configuration to actually get that resolution at the sensor. After that kind of effort, cropping your shot in post is going to be a silly step to take.
  - shiftpgdn 5y ago
    You don’t have to crop in significantly, but just trim edges/etc.
rectang 5y ago
I would think that capturing at higher resolutions makes it feasible to crop and zoom? In digital production, you always want to work at high resolution for all intermediate stages, then reduce bit depth only during the final output stage. When I worked in music production a while back, we often had the problem of source material recorded at low amplitude to 16-bit media (e.g. DAT, CDDA, ADAT). While 16-bit is theoretically sufficient, in the real world you need headroom while recording in order to avoid clipping. So we'd often wind up with grungy sound from inadequate bit-depth during capture and intermediate production.
- ace2358 5y ago
  I know recording live music can get hairy, but yikes! How was 16bits not enough? Were all the preamps set to max? Who records at -12db - -6db? Record at a way lower level and boost at the amp stage?

Stratoscope 5y ago

> (Footage? WTF? Video measured by distance? Maybe we should say "frameage" or "pix.") I'll start saying one of those when my phone dialer icon stops looking like a Western Electric Model 500 handset. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone

robbrown451 5y ago

Regarding "footage", notice that you also refer to them as "film-makers." There really isn't film involved. And Netflix is named after the term "flick" which refers to the flickery effect you get with movies (especially in the old days), which hopefully isn't there anymore.

ancientworldnow 5y ago

Netflix farms out all this post work. That's why they have these delivery specs. You follow the white papers and then they run it through their automated systems that do QC (followed by people verifying). Then they run it through an auto pipeline to create final streaming files and archives but they don't do any further manipulation of the image. Once you start doing one Netflix job they return to your post facility consistently.