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RED production schedule


Carl Brighton

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Hi,

 

You want examples, ask no further than Google - http://hannemyr.com/photo/defects.html#bayer is one example which explains the differences that can exist between algorithms.

 

I've offered three times now here (and many more elsewhere) to discuss the reasons you have for feeling that your algorithms are so much better than any that have previously been considered. I'm really not interested in going round and round the houses with you - it is becoming clear that you are being deliberately obstructive. The offer stands. Let's talk about it. Why won't you? Why are you wilfully ignoring the obvious solution to this disagreement? And I have to say this because you beg it so much - what have you got to hide?

 

Let me make this really clear: You are getting screamed at a lot by professionals in this industry. This is happening because you are making extraordinary claims. This is fine, but you must then expect to be questioned. Again and again I have made this point. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and you are point-blank refusing to supply that evidence, either by example images or discussion of your techniques. In short, you give every appearance that you are working as hard as possible to make it appear that you are lying, that you are acting from commercial rather than technical motives, that you do not have the abilities and technologies you claim to have.

 

Do you not see that? Does that not impinge upon your mind when you interact with people outside the company? It seems to me - seems, it may not be true - that you are going out of your way to give the appearance that you cannot do any of the things you claim to be able to do. It's like someone claiming he can jump from the earth to the moon, and coyly refusing to do it for absolutely no reason. What the hell are we supposed to think?

 

Phil

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Phil, whether or not your concerns & analysis are valid... if you want professionals like Graeme Nattress, or John Pytlak, or anyone else who works for a manufacturer to want to even visit this site and contribute to a discussion, you have to stop being so confrontational -- otherwise they'll simply drop out. Maybe you don't care if they do or not... but I think the site is better off with a broad mix of people that includes manufacturers.

 

They can't say anything that would hurt their product's sellability, even if they are an engineer, not a marketer. They'd get fired. So you have to respect the position they are in; absolute openess, especially about a product that hasn't even hit the market yet, is not possible. And certainly a maker of a Bayer-filtered camera is not going to side with critics of the Bayer-filter design!

 

Any image technology, when looked under a microscope, reveals its basic structure, so while no doubt there will be artifacts unique to de-Bayered images, the only thing that matters is the visibility of those artifacts in the likely ways the image will be presented and how it might be manipulated in post.

 

We've had these same arguments with Alan Lasky of Dalsa over the whole 4K issue and it didn't go anywhere either. I've reached the point where I don't really care about whether a 4K Bayer-filtered image can create a decent RGB image that is truly "4K" -- I just want to see something and make up my own mind. Let manufacturers use whatever marketing lingo and hype that they want to. Getting worked up over the claims of Bayer-filter sensor manufacturers is a little like getting upset over the claims of diet pills. You've done your own research and you won't convince them and they won't convince you.

 

We all know the time is coming soon when anyone will be able to test the RED camera in whatever ways they want and make their own judgements about the quality of the image. At that point, pictures will speak louder than words and the marketing will become meaningless.

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And I have to say this because you beg it so much - what have you got to hide?

 

What he's got "to hide" is a product that HAS NOT BEEN RELEASED YET, and he is therefore not obligated to tell you or anyone else outside of the company he is working for anything about it. Phil, you may know your stuff, but your attitude that you're the only one who does and your constant implications that everyone who doesn't see it your way is either a snake oil salesman or an idiot is really, really condescending and a bit tiresome.

 

You are getting screamed at a lot by professionals in this industry.

 

Other than you, I really don't see a whole lot of screaming going on here or elsewhere.

 

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and you are point-blank refusing to supply that evidence

 

When the product is ready, that will be the evidence, good or bad. Until then no "evidence" is required, because nothing is available in the first place. You're arguing about something that is, at this point, a proprietary device in a private company's lab. If anything, you're the one who's being out of line here. And I say that as someone who's been quite open about my own skepticism regarding some of the early claims of the product.

 

What the hell are we supposed to think?

 

You're supposed to think, gee, won't it be neat if the product, when released, actually comes close to matching the pre-release specifications. And until it is released, you have no real right to be "demanding" "evidence" about anything. Just as Intel is not required to show you things they're working on in their private labs, and just as Apple is not obligated to show you things they might or might not release as products a year from now, Red is not obligated to show you intimate details of what they're doing until it's complete and on the street. And even then, they're entitled to trade secrets, unless they decide to release it as open source.

 

Personally, I couldn't care less about numbers. What I do care about is the images and their quality, flexibility, and adaptability to different release and finishing formats.

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Hi,

 

I think the point here, Michael, is that outfits like Intel don't release specs until they're ready to prove that they're genuine, by releasing samples for review. They're generally very, very cautious about exactly this sort of thing, because as I think this proves, there's no room for a half-way house. Either you're open about what you're doing, or you're not, but making wild claims without backing them up just leads to unpleasantness, especially if you've already taken people's money, as Red have.

 

I'm not calling anyone a liar; I'm attempting to make it clear that this sort of talk may give the appearance of disingenuity, much as I doubt they need my advice on customer relations. They might be genuine; they might not. I've no idea, but either way, It's a quite unfathomable way to go on. I'm more surprised by the conduct of the people involved than I am about the claims for the device.

 

I could go on, but I'm getting bored; whatever the camera turns out to be like, it'll now, for me, be forever associated with all this negativity.

 

Phil

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This is the last time I will allow Mr. Rhodes to infer that we are "lying" about anything. Or that we owe any explanation to Mr. Rhodes about any topic. My suggestion, Graeme, it that we all spend our time in a more productive forum.

 

Jim

 

Hi Jim,

 

After 4 months of absense, I will hope you stick arround.

 

Stephen

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I for one am grateful that Phil is asking some tough questions since manufacturers understandably will not point out weaknesses in their product by themselves. At least he provides some info beyond what Red is saying, which to be honest, is not going into any practical details at all.

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I for one am grateful that Phil is asking some tough questions since manufacturers understandably will not point out weaknesses in their product by themselves. At least he provides some info beyond what Red is saying, which to be honest, is not going into any practical details at all.

 

Practical details? We are in development. We have shown 4k footage (from a 4.9K sensor). Major studios have seen it (one CTO said it should be compared to 65mm film and not 35mm). David Stump had the camera in his hands to shoot green screen. This with our early prototype. His reaction was that we surpassed 35mm film in resolution and color. What do you want from us? Why should we explain our methodology to you? We have a camera to finish and deliver to 1500 customers. We don't need to be called liars, or have some heckler tell us we have a 1k resolution camera. The most successful director in the 2000's (with Academy Award) has seen the footage 1st hand. He has his order in. So tell me again what it is you want? What kind of argument you want to engage in? What verbal format you need to show off your expertise? Quite frankly, we have all the expertise we need. And we are not interested to waste time on this.

 

Jim

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Like I said Jim, I don't expect you to go into the weaknesses of your product at all, since you want your camera to be seen in the best light possible. But I appreciate that Phil points out the drawbacks of Bayer reconstruction, because it offers an alternative view to what Red is saying. I can completely understand that he is getting on your nerves with his hard questioning, but there is no denying that his posts are informative as well.

 

In the end though all this is just words, what it will really come down to is what the images look like and as David pointed out, sharpness is just one factor of many.

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Hope you'll stick around Jim. The widely professional readership of this forum appreciates a balanced debate and I for one appreciate your first person accounting of the RED development. Good questions benefit us all, as does civility. The pictures will speak volumes.

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Hope you'll stick around Jim. The widely professional readership of this forum appreciates a balanced debate and I for one appreciate your first person accounting of the RED development. Good questions benefit us all, as does civility. The pictures will speak volumes.

 

The "debate", criticism (packaged in disrespect) and heckling here has not helped our project one bit. I came here asking for suggestions. I have been treated to being called a liar (several times by more than one person) and told that we cannot do this project. I have listened to mindless debate of why film is better than the product we are building. That 4.9K bayer is really 1K. There is no productivity here. Only those who use this forum (the RED one at least) to be a counterpoint to all the fans we are generating elsewhere. I encourage anyone to look back at the last year of posts here and find ONE suggestion of merit. One that wasn't posted somewhere else 1st. Just one post of a suggestion that would make our project better.

 

With only irritation here and honest suggestions elsewhere, where would you go if you were me? We have stepped up to go toe to toe with Sony, Panasonic and the rest of the industry at the top. I do not consider Mr. Rhodes worthy of the time to engage based on disrespectfulness alone. If this board is bent on an adversarily relationship with RED, it wastes the very purpose of this board.

 

Jim

Edited by Jim Jannard
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I'm afraid that Red's approach to marketing is at least partially to blame for the criticism that they are enduring. One one hand it is understandable that they want to get the word out about their camera, in order to gauge interest (i.e.number of reservations), but the drawback of opening their devlopment to pretty much anybody is that people will demand answers to question that Red might not want to give yet or might not yet be able to give.

 

Other manufacturers get feedback during product development as well, but they do so from selected and trusted professionals with whom they have a relationship so that discretion is guaranteed while the specs of the product are still not set in stone. Once the product is released and anyone can get their hands on it, people will be able to make up own their minds, instead of being told by the manufacturer how great the product is. Because let's face it, manufacturer's opinion of their products are always inflated (Larry Thorpe anyone?) and need to be taken with a pinch of salt, especially if the company doesn't have a track record yet.

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I'm afraid that Red's approach to marketing is at least partially to blame for the criticism that they are enduring. One one hand it is understandable that they want to get the word out about their camera, in order to gauge interest (i.e.number of reservations), but the drawback of opening their devlopment to pretty much anybody is that people will demand answers to question that Red might not want to give yet or might not yet be able to give.

 

Other manufacturers get feedback during product development as well, but they do so from selected and trusted professionals with whom they have a relationship so that discretion is guaranteed while the specs of the product are still not set in stone. Once the product is released and anyone can get their hands on it, people will be able to make up own their minds, instead of being told by the manufacturer how great the product is. Because let's face it, manufacturer's opinion of their products are always inflated (Larry Thorpe anyone?) and need to be taken with a pinch of salt, especially if the company doesn't have a track record yet.

 

And your constructive suggestion on what we can do to make our camera better is? A feature set you are interested in? Some suggestion on which accessories you use to make sure they are compatible with our system? I guess I missed it.

 

Jim

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You know Jim, you always take everything too personally. Not every post I make here is just for your own benefict, but that of other users as well. I honestly wish you all the best with your camera and I am curious how it will turn out.

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And your constructive suggestion on what we can do to make our camera better is? A feature set you are interested in? Some suggestion on which accessories you use to make sure they are compatible with our system? I guess I missed it.

 

Jim

You, your staff, and your fans have a tendency to come across as really defensive whenever anyone posts something critical of you. It's kind of cool that you guys are taking the time to interact with potential customers, but to be honest I see almost as much negativity coming from you guys as from your detractors. I'm sure you're aware that you're building the image of your company and your product through your posts. Seeing you get upset that people are being critical of you does not give me any confidence in you or your camera, it tells me that you're worried about it.

 

"He was flaming me, so I had to defend myself" has been the classic excuse of internet trolls for years, and it really doesn't help to build a positive image of your camera if its creator feels the need to troll everyone. Maybe you don't think that that's what you are doing, but I think a lot of people on this forum will agree with me that you and your staff tend to come off that way.

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Hi,

 

Oh durn, I promised myself I'd have nothing further to do with this.

 

The only suggestion that springs to mind is to make very sure that it has dual-link (and single-link too) HD-SDI outputs, because last time I asked the implication was that it wouldn't, which would be pretty disastrous. I'm sure the thing has the potential to produce very reasonable 1080p HD.

 

But all this griping about "disrespect" really gets at the core of the issue people are having with it. Respect is earned; you can't make me respect the camera by telling me it's great, you have to show me it's great. Mr. Jacoby is correct.

 

Phil

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You, your staff, and your fans have a tendency to come across as really defensive whenever anyone posts something critical of you. It's kind of cool that you guys are taking the time to interact with potential customers, but to be honest I see almost as much negativity coming from you guys as from your detractors. I'm sure you're aware that you're building the image of your company and your product through your posts. Seeing you get upset that people are being critical of you does not give me any confidence in you or your camera, it tells me that you're worried about it.

 

"He was flaming me, so I had to defend myself" has been the classic excuse of internet trolls for years, and it really doesn't help to build a positive image of your camera if its creator feels the need to troll everyone. Maybe you don't think that that's what you are doing, but I think a lot of people on this forum will agree with me that you and your staff tend to come off that way.

 

Scott... you might be right (probably are). I am just so over the inference that we are liars that my frustration shows in my posts.

 

From yesterday... "In short, you give every appearance that you are working as hard as possible to make it appear that you are lying, that you are acting from commercial rather than technical motives, that you do not have the abilities and technologies you claim to have."

 

Imagine the amount of work we have to do and what we have accomplished just to hear this stuff. I do take it personally. This is my project. If my frustration leaks out, at least you know why.

 

The only thing I am worried about is taking care of the 1500 customers that believe in our project. I will do everything in my power to not let them down. I just don't do well with disrespect. And it bothers me even more when it is directed to one of my team members that is #1 brilliant and #2 working his ass off for the cause.

 

I apologize to the respectful here on the board for my words if they are too harsh. But the disrespectful probably need not visit the booth at NAB.

 

Jim

 

Hi,

 

The only suggestion that springs to mind is to make very sure that it has dual-link (and single-link too) HD-SDI outputs.

 

Phil

 

These are in the original specs from a year ago, but I appreciate the effort to contribute. I'll ignore the back end of your post.

 

Jim

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Scott... you might be right (probably are). I am just so over the inference that we are liars that my frustration shows in my posts.

 

From yesterday... "In short, you give every appearance that you are working as hard as possible to make it appear that you are lying, that you are acting from commercial rather than technical motives, that you do not have the abilities and technologies you claim to have."

 

Imagine the amount of work we have to do and what we have accomplished just to hear this stuff. I do take it personally. This is my project. If my frustration leaks out, at least you know why.

 

The only thing I am worried about is taking care of the 1500 customers that believe in our project. I will do everything in my power to not let them down. I just don't do well with disrespect. And it bothers me even more when it is directed to one of my team members that is #1 brilliant and #2 working his ass off for the cause.

It's understandable that you'd take it personally; I'm sure I would too. But you've really just got to suck it up. It's the internet- people make fraudulent claims all the time, and everyone is incredibly skeptical as a result. Some people are going to insult you, it's just going to happen and there's nothing you can do about it. If I were you, I'd worry more about proving them wrong with my finished product than arguing with them on the internet. There's really no benefit to you in it.

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I apologize to the respectful here on the board for my words if they are too harsh. But the disrespectful probably need not visit the booth at NAB.

 

So, are you going to be displaying live 4K images at NAB then? I'm only asking because I'd really like to see it in operation, (just as I'm sure I'm sure an awful lot of your "usual suspect" competitors would like to see it NOT in operation :D )

 

The fact is, I've never seen any kind of HD camera in action that can take standard cine lenses, and I'd really like to see how the RED performs as a studio camera.

 

Frankly I'm getting rather tired of these trade shows where every year the same gaggle of manufacturers seems to trot out much the same range of TV cameras, that all seem to produce the same sort of pictures, on the same sort of monitors. If nothing else it'll be nice to see something different for a change.

 

 

On that note, have you given any thought to some sort of "Life after RED" project? How about some sort of revolutionary "huge-screen" video display, than can be viewed in direct sunlight? For the first time in history,you could have matinees at the drive-in :D

 

But seriously, imaging something like THAT in the NAB car park. (Or the Oakley headquarters).

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So, are you going to be displaying live 4K images at NAB then? I'm only asking because I'd really like to see it in operation, (just as I'm sure I'm sure an awful lot of your "usual suspect" competitors would like to see it NOT in operation :D )

 

Of course we will show 4K footage at NAB and have working cameras there along with our REDCINE workflow. Other announcements at NAB. We'll be right next to Apple if you are looking for us.

 

Jim

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I think the nature of this debate brings to light the importance of Internet forums in general. Hitherto consumers would have been more susceptible to powerfully biased marketing from companies whose products hadn?t yet been released for public consumption.

 

I do not agree with the assertion that Phil is heckling the Red Team, nor do I get the impression that he is specifically calling you liars. Red?s advertising is making some big - public - claims about a camera that is still under development. Phil?s concerns are valid, and he is not out of line in expressing them in a forum like this. Access to this type of open debate levels the playing field, giving potential consumers the opportunity to make more enlightened choices before committing to expensive purchases. This is less a matter of defending principle than it is an issue of practicality. As an indie filmmaker on a budget, who really hopes that your camera will produce the goods, but for whom tossing eighteen grand down the well would be a costly mistake, this type of debate, dialog, call it what you will, is indispensable to me.

 

Of course this project is personal to you, as it should be. You are clearly invested, and there is a lot at stake. Consequently, I don?t believe that taking such a defensive posture is a productive marketing strategy. Phil is correct in that a better time to champion such claims would be when your camera is available for public road testing. Not that I believe for a second that your intention is to condescend anyone here, but calling someone with a valid concern a heckler, and then qualifying that assertion by saying that an unnamed, big studio director knows better comes off as an insult toward Mr. Rhodes and anyone else with concerns about your claims. Maybe a better strategy would be to keep your heads down until the gate is open. The proof will ultimately be in the images that your camera does or doesn?t produce. I personally have high hopes for your success, for obvious reasons, so I am looking forward to race day.

 

Cheers,

 

Ken Cangi

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Of course we will show 4K footage at NAB and have working cameras there along with our REDCINE workflow. Other announcements at NAB. We'll be right next to Apple if you are looking for us.

 

Jim

Next. To. Apple.....

Er OK. I suppose it'll be handy for you if something breaks down :P

 

But if you have the same colour scheme as last time, you'll be hard to miss!

Is there going to be going to be a demo of film-out?

And, (I know it sounds silly) but will we able to see the live images downconverted to ordinary NTSC (and PAL if you can swing it)? Like it or not, that's where most HD images wind up getting seen at the moment!

 

Oh by the way, is the $17,500 price tag just for the first batch of signups, or will that apply to everybody once the RED hits the general market?

Edited by Carl Brighton
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Ken... I agree with most of what you said. The one thing I disagree with is that Mr. Rhodes has pulled out the inference of lying on several occasions, including inferring that we staged the break-in at the RED offices (quite an illegal activity BTW) and faking our footage. Oh, I forgot... paying off David Stump. I can not see that being called anything but destructive and disrespectful heckling.

 

I do agree that it is best to keep our heads down and make it to the finish line. We get productive suggestions on other boards so I will concentrate my focus there until we are done. At that time, I'll be happy to return here and field valid questions about our shipping product. The speculation will be over.

 

Additionally, for those that are interested, we are not just talking about our development. We have posted 4K images and footage on several boards. We have included green screen 4K grabs shot by David Stump. We have shown the evolution of the system, body and accessories. Most of the changes to the system are a result of feedback we received. I am happy that we tried an open platform for development. We have had suggestions from many people that have influenced our progress. I expect that our program will continue to evolve after we begin shipping. Maybe I can encourage posters here to join in with suggestions at that time.

 

My best to you all until after NAB.

 

Jim

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