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JJ has taken his business elsewhere


Guest Jim Murdoch

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Guest Jim Murdoch

You all must have noticed that Jim Jannard appears to have abandoned this forum, but he is still alive and posting on the big-time DV Info forums. (There are also some new pictures posted that were taken at cinegear, but you have to be a member to view them, they're not scaled down to suit a computer screen, and they don't really show anything new anyway)

 

Unfortunately there appear to just as many well-informed sceptics over there as there are here, and in response to some pointed questions about his expected working sensor "yield" (usually dismally low) in the as-yet-unnamed chip foundry he's using, his withering response was:

 

"This business is NOT for the faint of heart..."

 

Oh yes, and Ed Wood is NOT a homosexual....

 

Where's he going to go next? About.com? :P

Edited by Jim Murdoch
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I don't see any point in continued sniping at Jim Jannard. He has been given a hard time, here and elsewhere, sometimes with justification, sometimes not. How about we all lay off and wait until there is a camera to evaluate. When, or if, that day comes we can all have our say.

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I don't see any point in continued sniping at Jim Jannard.

 

I'd have to agree. I don't have any relationship with the guy - in fact, when I met him at cinegear he gave me about three words of his time. Which was fine, I had nothing really to ask or say anyway.

 

However, I will say that all the Red folks I did talk to are very aware of the difficulty of what they are trying to achieve - yet they are trying to do it anyway. They're not saying "this is easy!" They're saying "this is hard! Let's try!" I've noticed in the last month or so that Jeff Krienes (Kinetta) has also been lambasted on the CML. Another guy who is trying to push the technology both forward and into the hands of more people.

 

Now - i was at a Panavision seminar and heard some vaguely snide remarks sort of kinda in lieu to "marketing hype" on things - and I can understand their point of view. Its a competitor.

 

But why on earth would filmmakers be standing on the sidelines of what is essentially a marathon race and be jeering "you suck!!!! You're not going to finish!!!!!"

 

I'd rather my fellow filmmakers look at everyone who is innovating in this industry - especially with their own financing and on spec and say, "Wow - good luck to you! We'll check it out when you're done."

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I think part of the problem is that we are barely making the transition to HDTV with a lot of standard definition programming that is still being broadcasted and we are already talking about obsoleting it in favor of 4k. However high definition has been around a long time and was ready to be implemented in the 1980's. It however was stonewalled because HDTV was a bandwidth hog and the television executives thought people wanted more choices (more advertising) rather than better picture quality. Then they told us we had to wait for digital television to be invented before we could have HDTV. When the digital VHS tape format was invented for HDTV they told us we had to wait for Blu-Ray. My point is that had HDTV been implemented 20 years ago wouldn't we be ready for a change to 4k right about now ?

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Guest Jim Murdoch
But why on earth would filmmakers be standing on the sidelines of what is essentially a marathon race and be jeering "you suck!!!! You're not going to finish!!!!!"

Unfortunately that isn't a particularly apt analogy. We're not looking at an unknown but reasonably lean, fit and athletic looking amateur, in the process of giving the race everything he's got. The picture is more like some overweight boring barfly telling us how he's gonna race in the marathon come next fall....

 

In the first instance, while we have no way of knowing whether the guy will actually finish or not, our past experience suggests that there is at least a credible mechanism whereby he may do so: he at least looks like he can run an appreciable distance! Apart from that, there is no readily available means of determining whether he is actually capable of lasting the distance, since most athletes tend to look pretty much alike, just as it's not practical to predict the winner of a horse race by simply inspecting the entrants.

 

All JJ has done thus far is the equivalent of showing us the fancy running shoes he has just bought.

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Guest Jim Murdoch
However high definition has been around a long time and was ready to be implemented in the 1980's.

Only in the overactive imaginations of certain company executives! The cameras were rubbish, there was no practical portable recording system, the only practical method of transmission was via satellite, and most importantly, there was no practical large screen display technology available. Even now, true 1920 x 1080 displays (big enough to make it worthwhile) are very thin on the ground.

 

However, it is a bit of a mystery why the HD VHS format was never pursued, since it would do most of what the majority of consumers want.

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All JJ has done thus far is the equivalent of showing us the fancy running shoes he has just bought.

 

You've made it clear that you're highly skeptical of the RED camera, as you also did about the Genesis. I don't know whether you're right or wrong about this camera - only time will tell, but I do know that there is no point in your continued attacks on Jim Jannard. Gloating about how you've scared him off this board is just childish. That kind of behaviour is beneath us all.

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However, it is a bit of a mystery why the HD VHS format was never pursued, since it would do most of what the majority of consumers want.

 

I think this comment shows how little you know about video tech (or how twisted your view on current technology is) VHS could barley provide 1/3 of the resolution or colorspace that an uncompressed SD signal could, and very suredly, an HD VHS would be worthless. Consumers have gotten used to the random access provided by DVD, along with the quality. Blu-ray or HD-DVD is the future (Blu-Ray I hope, just for its capacity and java capabilities) but like anything market decides.

 

jim, your a good guy and I have gotten a lot of insight from some of your posts, but you are roasting this guy unnecissarily. Its unproven, nobody here is ready to sell their SR-3 for the Red, but yet you continue to bask in this guys failure (even though he has yet to fail or succeed.)

 

I am hopeful he will be successful in providing another tool. But in the end who the hell really cares? If your shooting 24p or 60i you dont really change the way you shoot. If your shooting HD or 4K I doubt it would matter, or film vs video etc. You use the tools to get the look you want. Some looks are easier with one format or another, but (and this is the important part) if you get yourself too wrapped up in the tools, you forget we are here to tell storys for the eyes. I can recall shooting videos when I was young on a b/w camera that could only record if hooked up to a VHS recorder. I think the story still came through, even if it was amaturish. Thats the key. I think I could make a movie on nothing more than a camera phone if I wanted too.

 

i guess what Im saying is ease up on JJ, hes honestly working hard in a difficult and ologopoliptic environment (I know I cant spell ologopoly, but I know what one is, and what makes it so hard to break) we should be cheering him on. The more people we have trying to advance our field, the better it becomes.

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I think this comment shows how little you know about video tech (or how twisted your view on current technology is) VHS could barley provide 1/3 of the resolution or colorspace that an uncompressed SD signal could, and very suredly, an HD VHS would be worthless.

I believe he's referring to the D9 HD format, which is built on the VHS shell and transport. This format has been popular with some productions for viewing HD dailies. It's too bad that the format hasn't been more supported, especially in terms of NLE compatibility, since the decks cost a small fraction of any other HD tape format deck.

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Guest peter orland
You all must have noticed that Jim Jannard appears to have abandoned this forum, but he is still alive and posting on the big-time DV Info forums. (There are also some new pictures posted that were taken at cinegear, but you have to be a member to view them, they're not scaled down to suit a computer screen, and they don't really show anything new anyway)

 

Unfortunately there appear to just as many well-informed sceptics over there as there are here, and in response to some pointed questions about his expected working sensor "yield" (usually dismally low) in the as-yet-unnamed chip foundry he's using, his withering response was:

 

"This business is NOT for the faint of heart..."

 

Oh yes, and Ed Wood is NOT a homosexual....

 

Where's he going to go next? About.com? :P

 

Hello Jim.

 

Something that struck me while reading through this and your other posts regarding the RED camera and Jim Jannard is, why do you care either way? Why do you write so passionately about this? What do you hope or are you trying to achieve?

 

Just curious.

 

Thanks.

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Either Jim will, or will not, bring a viable product to market. The name calling is pure BS.

 

I'd love to see him pull it off but some days the entrepreneur eats the bear, some days the bear eats the entrepreneur. Either way one or the other has a good meal.

 

If RED works as planned it'll be a heckuva toy to play with.

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Guest Jim Murdoch
I think this comment shows how little you know about video tech (or how twisted your view on current technology is) VHS could barley provide 1/3 of the resolution or colorspace that an uncompressed SD signal could, and very suredly, an HD VHS would be worthless.

Quite the contrary it would seem.

 

VHS is an uncompressed analog format; S-VHS technology could accomodate the bandwidth of suitably compressed digital HD, particularly if MPEG4 compression is used. With a digital recording, all that is necessary is that the playback circuitry be able to distinguish "1s" for "0s". With modern 32- or 64-bit quasi-analog QAM systems, the signal density is much higher.

 

It is routinely stated that consumers set great store by the random acess capability of the DVD format, but I've never found this to particularly be the case. In fact most consumers tend to be more irritated by the way most DVD players "forget" where they were up to on a disc when it is ejected, something that doesn't happen with VHS. Modern VHS decks have extremely high rewind speeds, which erodes the distinction still further.

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Guest Jim Murdoch
Hello Jim.

 

Something that struck me while reading through this and your other posts regarding the RED camera and Jim Jannard is, why do you care either way? Why do you write so passionately about this? What do you hope or are you trying to achieve?

 

Just curious.

 

Thanks.

 

I did actually give him quite a bit of sound technical advice, which is more than most of the posters here were capable of.

 

"why do you care either way?"

Because the Red story is already being printed by ignorant journalists as fact; as though the camera actually exists.

 

OK I'm really on Jim Jannard's payroll. I'm his "failsafe"; if he gets the camera to work, he can point out that experts like me were wrong, and if he doesn't, he can throw a manufactured tantrum and blame me for "stealing his mojo" and so on, and more or less storm out of the public arena :P

 

A more pertinent question might be: "What do some of the other dreamers here think this is going to achieve for them?"

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Guest Jim Murdoch
Gloating about how you've scared him off this board is just childish. That kind of behaviour is beneath us all.

When did I do that? I'm just pointing out that when he can't stand the heat, he just moves to a cooler kitchen :rolleyes:

 

How about we all lay off and wait until there is a camera to evaluate.

 

Alas, I am an old man, and fear I will never live to witness this miracle ;)

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What I don't like is buying a high definition camera and as soon as I buy it it is already obsolete and people sneer at me and refuse to hire me. This happened to me when i bought the JVC JY-HD10 720p HD camera and as soon as I bought it everyone told me that only 1080i is real high definition so everyone bought the 1080i camera and now people are saying that only 1080p is real high definition and pretty soon they will say that it has to be 1080p at 60 frames per second is real high definition and it will never end. What Red Digital Cinema promises is that his camera will be obsolete proof and it can always be upgraded to meet peoples expectations.

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Guest Jim Murdoch
What I don't like is buying a high definition camera and as soon as I buy it it is already obsolete and people sneer at me and refuse to hire me. This happened to me when i bought the JVC JY-HD10 720p HD camera and as soon as I bought it everyone told me that only 1080i is real high definition so everyone bought the 1080i camera and now people are saying that only 1080p is real high definition and pretty soon they will say that it has to be 1080p at 60 frames per second is real high definition and it will never end. What Red Digital Cinema promises is that his camera will be obsolete proof and it can always be upgraded to meet peoples expectations.

I'm not saying the Red wouldn't be a fantastic product. It would be a staggering development; not only would it drastically lower the "entry level" requirements for cinematic release, it would also make a damn fine full-blown broadcast HD (AND SD) camera with access to a terrifically expanded range of lenses. It would also make an absolutely spiffing surveillance camera.

 

Yeah, it would be fantastic. So would an $1,000 all-electric car that runs on solar power, or a genetically engineered tree that produces all the varieties of fruits and vegetables known to mankind and will grow in salt water with no fertilizer, or a single pill which will destroy all pathogenic viruses without harming the host etc etc.

 

Unfortunately, nobody seems to be able to actually produce any of these things yet.

 

It's fine to speculalte about what what would happen if such things did eventually come to pass; that was the original meaning of the term "Science Fiction", but talking about as though the fiction was already a reality is really pretty juvenile.

 

Ten years ago I would never have imagined I'd be able to buy a quite good 4 Megapixel still camera for under 50 quid, in fact I don't think anybody with all the money in the world could have bought one. The reason we have them now has nothing to do with the pioneering efforts of any lone eccentric billionaire and everything to do with millions of engineer-hours of slow, hard, expensive slog.

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What I think the problem is that not that the technology does not exist to build the 4k camera but people will nitpick the camera because it will be built with the limitations of todays technology. To build this camera using todays technology it will require massive parallel processing. In other words I could be wrong but it may not be possible to build a single monolithic 4k chip that can clock at 60 frames per second without burning up. So I suspect a battery of 4 each of mere 2k chips will be assembled into a 4k configuration. Although each of these chips will be blended and calibrated with each other for seamless viewing nevertheless under difficult lighting conditions a splitscreen or checkerboard effect may be noticed which could either be regarded as a limitation or a serious defect of the camera.

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Guest Jim Murdoch
So I suspect a battery of 4 each of mere 2k chips will be assembled into a 4k configuration. Although each of these chips will be blended and calibrated with each other for seamless viewing nevertheless under difficult lighting conditions a splitscreen or checkerboard effect may be noticed which could either be regarded as a limitation or a serious defect of the camera.

That's precisely how most chips work. The CMOS sensor used in the Arri D-20 uses 32 separate "blocks" of about 200K pixels each. The biggest problem is geting uniformity of the Analog performance over the entire chip surface. Modern cameras have lookup tables in Flash RAM with an "custom" correction pattern for every individual pixel, but that can only do so much, and only at the temperature it was calibrated at. They have certainly come a long way, but there's still a long way to go.

 

However, I've recently been reassured that if Jim Jannard doesn't have a working camera to show at NAB '07, he'll appear without any trousers!

 

There was some comment about "The Emperor's New Clothes" but I'm not sure what they meant :P

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However, I've recently been reassured that if Jim Jannard doesn't have a working camera to show at NAB '07, he'll appear without any trousers!

 

Hi,

 

I was expecting to see 4k pictures from the camera at IBC in September.

 

Stephen

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Guest Jim Murdoch
Hi,

 

I was expecting to see 4k pictures from the camera at IBC in September.

 

Stephen

 

On re-reading, what he actually said was: If it didn't live up to his expectations, "he would appear at NAB '07 without trousers". <_<

 

I seem to remember his saying that he expected to have working pictures "next Fall" but he didn't specify which hemisphere the Autumn would occur in :P

 

Perhaps this is all just a convoluted plot to pander to some sort of closet exhibitionist fantasy :D

You know what these über-rich dudes are like... :rolleyes:

Edited by Jim Murdoch
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What I don't like is buying a high definition camera and as soon as I buy it it is already obsolete and people sneer at me and refuse to hire me. This happened to me when i bought the JVC JY-HD10 720p HD camera and as soon as I bought it everyone told me that only 1080i is real high definition so everyone bought the 1080i camera and now people are saying that only 1080p is real high definition and pretty soon they will say that it has to be 1080p at 60 frames per second is real high definition and it will never end. What Red Digital Cinema promises is that his camera will be obsolete proof and it can always be upgraded to meet peoples expectations.

 

 

 

The only thing obsolete proof is the tripod the video camera is setting on.

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People say that standard definition is dead and to get high definition because it is obsolete proof. But the paradox is that the high definition cameras are the cameras that become obsolete and not the standard definition cameras. You see with a standard definition camera as long as it is professional grade the expectations are not that great so it becomes a workhorse for many years as long as it is a standard definition shoot. But with a high definition camera the bar is raised to such a degree that unless you have the latest cutting edge technology your high definition camera is considered a piece of garbage and no one will hire you even if your camera blows away those standard definition workhorses.

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Guest Jim Murdoch
Images from full 4k sensor were accomplished this week. See you all at IBC. I assume you'll be there Mr. Murdoch? I would hate to miss meeting you in person.

 

Jim

I will be there. And if you've got a working 4K prototype to show us, I'll appear with no trousers.

kilt%20001.jpg

 

Mind you, with my heritage, that's not such a big deal :rolleyes:

Edited by Jim Murdoch
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