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Compact Flash...


Jim Jannard

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Just to give everybody a mind-twist, we are now recording 4K REDCODE RAW (same as was used by Peter Jackson in shooting "Crossing the Line") to compact flash extreme 4. An 8GB card holds about 4 1/2 minutes of 4K at 24fps. We also got our 48GB 2.5" flash drive up and running. That is about 30 minutes of recording. The 96GB RED RAM (Flash RAID) records for about an hour. The 320GB RED DRIVE (mini RAID) records for about 3 hours. Just so you know.

 

And no, it is NOT film... it's RED.

 

Jim

Edited by Jim Jannard
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Just to give everybody a mind-twist, we are now recording 4K REDCODE RAW (same as was used by Peter Jackson in shooting "Crossing the Line") to compact flash extreme 4. An 8GB card holds about 4 1/2 minutes of 4K at 24fps. We also got our 48GB 2.5" flash drive up and running. That is about 30 minutes of recording. The 96GB RED RAM (Flash RAID) records for about an hour. The 320GB RED DRIVE (mini RAID) records for about 3 hours. Just so you know.

 

And no, it is NOT film... it's RED.

 

Jim

The prophecy comes true!

 

You know, it was well over twenty years ago I started hearing one of those urban fairy tales that seem to come from nowhere.

 

In the early 1980s the first color CCD cameras for home and industry use began to come into use. There was a story that a camera had been developed that used no tape! All the pictures were kept on a solid-state memory, with no moving parts!

If the story teller were from the USA, it was a German or Japanese company. If it was in Europe, it was an American or Japanese company that had done this.

 

Some people said they had heard this from "a friend" others claimed they had seen this for themselves. Sometimes the recording was a few minutes, sometimes a lot of minutes, sometimes an hour.

 

Then an industry magazine carried a three page item on how in "two or three years" videotape would be obsolete. You should be crazy to buy a new VTR now, why not wait a "couple of years" for solid-state storage.

 

At the time people who knew about memory laughed their ass off. At that time 256K dynamic RAM chips had just entered the market. That is 256K x 1, you need eight of those to give you 256 kilobytes of RAM, so you needed 32 to give you ONE megabyte! Each chip drew about 30milliamps, so about one amp per megabyte.

 

How much top-quality PAL or NTSC does one megabyte hold? (There was no compression then) About two frames worth, not counting the sound! So that's about 12 megabytes per second, or 720 megabytes per minute, or over 14 Gigabytes to equal one Betacam cassette! 14 thousand megabytes would need just under half a million 256K x 1 chips. And would ask for 14 thousand amps at five volts! A mere 70 thousand watts. And that would have to be there all the time, otherwise your pictures would develop ammnesia rather quickly!

 

Confronted by this, the story then switched to "secret new technology".

Which oddly enough has never come to the surface. Flash memory is recent, basically coming from the marrying of cheap compact micrprocessors and old-fashioned quartz EPROM technology. Compression did not gain headway until the late 1980s with RCA's pioneering work.

 

But now Jannard is announcing fully solid state storage with the RED! It has taken a whole generation, but we are finally here!

 

And no, it is NOT film... it's RED.

 

And so neither is Star Wars 2, Star Wars 3, Superman Returns, Miami Vice and others :rolleyes:

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Just to give everybody a mind-twist, we are now recording 4K REDCODE RAW (same as was used by Peter Jackson in shooting "Crossing the Line") to compact flash extreme 4. An 8GB card holds about 4 1/2 minutes of 4K at 24fps. We also got our 48GB 2.5" flash drive up and running. That is about 30 minutes of recording. The 96GB RED RAM (Flash RAID) records for about an hour. The 320GB RED DRIVE (mini RAID) records for about 3 hours. Just so you know.

 

And no, it is NOT film... it's RED.

 

Jim

All we need now Jim is the abilty to edit it on aN ORDINARY PC Not just FCP on a mac! and then my next request will be some dilithium chrystals! AMAZING stuff.

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All we need now Jim is the abilty to edit it on aN ORDINARY PC Not just FCP on a mac! and then my next request will be some dilithium chrystals! AMAZING stuff.

 

Sorry Mark can't support you on the PC front.

 

I hope Red sticks with Mac only editing, the Mac is of course superior to any PC in every way.

 

Haven't you seen the ads? The PC is a fat dorky guy, the Mac is a cool slender guy. What does that tell you?

 

I have a new idea, instead of film v video all the time, we can turn this thread into a good ol' PC v Mac debate. It would be a change of scenery at least.

 

Hey you PC people, try and send me a virus via a PM! Ha! My Mac won't open it so you're screwed!

 

(ok it won't open 9/10 things I'm sent)

 

R,

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And no, it is NOT film... it's RED.

 

Jim

 

This is what I don't like about the RED company. Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to use a RED camera. It'll be awesome. BUT this camera nor any other will ever make me stop shooting film. Don't even care if it's RED III the 100K camera or whatever. Film is a different medium with benefits of its own that are well worth its cost.

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Sorry Mark can't support you on the PC front.

 

I hope Red sticks with Mac only editing, the Mac is of course superior to any PC in every way.

 

Haven't you seen the ads? The PC is a fat dorky guy, the Mac is a cool slender guy. What does that tell you?

 

I have a new idea, instead of film v video all the time, we can turn this thread into a good ol' PC v Mac debate. It would be a change of scenery at least.

 

Hey you PC people, try and send me a virus via a PM! Ha! My Mac won't open it so you're screwed!

 

(ok it won't open 9/10 things I'm sent)

 

R,

 

I thought the two were eventually going to become compatible? If the Red can make high end editing possible on consumer computers and NLEs with films that can be acceptable to any format then they have achieved a milestone in advanced film making.

 

If people could buy a one stop camera that was upgradable and especially if it didnt take advantage by trying to rip customers off then that would be the logical common sense route to take.

 

The red project seems to be maturing into a serious threat to mid-high video cameras.

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All we need now Jim is the abilty to edit it on aN ORDINARY PC Not just FCP on a mac! and then my next request will be some dilithium chrystals! AMAZING stuff.

 

REDCINE supports both Intel Mac and Windows XP.

 

Jim

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This is what I don't like about the RED company. Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to use a RED camera. It'll be awesome. BUT this camera nor any other will ever make me stop shooting film. Don't even care if it's RED III the 100K camera or whatever. Film is a different medium with benefits of its own that are well worth its cost.

 

There is nothing out there that can compete with film. There are alternatives but thats it and is likely to always be it. We see the world because of light without light we would see no color nothing. Film is physical and stores a reflection that is formed by light that is reflecting the real world and all its randomness. its not using mathematical formulae its using a reflection of creation. To compete digital would have to become a physical process which would really only be a different way to create film.

 

Film is way beyond what video can do its potential is limitless. Even 8mm outperforms video as a representation of reality. And by a long chalk.

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Hey Mark,

 

The mechanisms that allow us to see with our eyes are more similar to the system used in digital technology than to film capture and presentation. Plus, film is easily and almost unarguably the more limited format when compared to digital and digital's potential.

 

This much is clear, one day film will be the oddity. Not now, not tomorrow, and probably not 5 years from now but one day it'll be as outdated as daguerreotypes.

 

I shoot film. I shoot mostly Super 35mm film and a lot of Super 16mm. I prefer film to anything I've seen digitally to date but it's easy to see the direction the wind is blowing even if it is blowing more softly than the digital-pundits would have us believe.

 

Evan

Edited by Evan Winter
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Hey Mark,

 

The mechanisms that allow us to see with our eyes are more similar to the system used in digital technology than to film capture and presentation.

 

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Well no actually Seeing is a chemical process the results of which are turned into electrical impulses A process not yet fully understood

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Plus, film is easily and almost unarguably the more limited format when compared to digital and digital's potential.

 

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Film is unlimited in potental You could if you wanted increase the frame size to any.

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This much is clear, one day film will be the oddity. Not now, not tomorrow, and probably not 5 years from now but one day it'll be as outdated as daguerreotypes.

 

----------------------------------------------------------

Film is a phsical process. The chemicals may change but not the method.

-----------------------------------------------------------

 

I shoot film. I shoot mostly Super 35mm film and a lot of Super 16mm. I prefer film to anything I've seen digitally to date but it's easy to see the direction the wind is blowing even if it is blowing more softly than the digital-pundits would have us believe.

 

------------------------------------------------------------

Well I guess soon we will be able to use nanobots to relign atoms into different substances too. But my feeling is that the idea behind film making will be here long after digital has disapeared.

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We see the world because of light without light we would see no color nothing. Film is physical and stores a reflection that is formed by light that is reflecting the real world and all its randomness. its not using mathematical formulae its using a reflection of creation. To compete digital would have to become a physical process which would really only be a different way to create film.

Hi Mark,

 

What you're describing is the difference between an analogue medium and a digital one - much like the way that audio purists to this day will tell you that a vinyl recording is superior to any "lossy" digital representation. Yet here we are today where the CD rules and crappily-compressed mp3s on the web are far more prevalent than 45s and LPs.

 

What makes the difference is not purely quality (to the dismay of many creatives - and justifiably so), but rather convenience, cost, durability, and a slew of other reasons. The film industry is a business, don't forget that. And there are certainly advantages that digital acquisiton unarguably has over its celluloid counterparts - lossless duplication being a major one.

 

I think Evan has pretty much summed it up to a "T." No one will ever force you to shoot digitally, and if it's not your cup of tea, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But to declare that "film will be here long after digital has disapeared," seems quite a bit foolish to me; one only needs look at the history of analogue and digital to see where we are headed.

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Yes thats true vinyl has better sound quality and to expand your analogy, more people watch TV or compressed film on the net than they do going to the cinema. But I wouldn't dream of telling those who want to listen to high quality sound to get an MP3 player because its just as good

 

There is room for all. Going to the cinema is not an every day event for me but watching TV is. If I want to experience a thrilling adventure and have my senses challenged I could watch a film at the cinema. Or reap some of the benefits of film through any of the lesser formats that can carry through some of its traits.

 

Film is a physical process.That process may very well be altered and changed in the future but the way its done will be the standard long after digital is gone. Kodak and fuji have not simply stuck to a rigid adherence to a dying standard they have in fact improved it and made advances. As much as digital has a limited ability within its spec. Film has an almost infinate abilty to use creation itself to reflect and recreate through billions of separate chemical reactions.

 

Quality wise digital never stood a chance to compete with Film

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This is what I don't like about the RED company. Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to use a RED camera.

 

I don't understand what it is that you don't like about the RED company. Jims quote? "It is NOT film...it's RED"? I think that is pretty fair that Jim is stating it right up front. Don't compare the two. It's a different animal. It's especially odd that in not liking the RED company, you "can't wait to use a RED camera".

 

Looking forward to the maturing of this technology Jim. The flash option rocks!

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First post here...

 

Mark,

 

At what point do you think that companies are going to pony up to the expense of creating your dream of a Higher-Res 400mm film for you to shoot with? Will it be just shortly after the release of HD Reel to Reel??? Or do they need to create the Vinyl Walkman first? Last time I checked for a client there were only 6 houses here in AZ that could convert BetaMax.

 

Digital, because of its "Softness" in nature will exponentially increase in quality. It will become cheaper and better than any other previous technology to date.

 

And here is the kicker...Will it look equal to film? IT WILL LOOK BETTER.

Edited by Daniel Gourley
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First post here...

 

Mark,

 

At what point do you think that companies are going to pony up to the expense of creating your dream of a Higher-Res 400mm film for you to shoot with? Will it be just shortly after the release of HD Reel to Reel??? Or do they need to create the Vinyl Walkman first? Last time I checked for a client there were only 6 houses here in AZ that could convert BetaMax.

 

Digital, because of its "Softness" in nature will exponentially increase in quality. It will become cheaper and better than any other previous technology to date.

 

And here is the kicker...Will it look equal to film? IT WILL LOOK BETTER.

Can you explain why you think video will look better than film?

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I will let you know. Just let me know when it hits you. :lol:

 

Hi,

 

Well I will keep may eyes open, but I won't hold my breath.

 

There is already talk of a sensor upgrade in 2 years time, if it's 24 bit then maybe you will be right!

 

Stephen

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Can you explain why you think video will look better than film?

 

Can you honestly tell me that your opinion on the subject isn't sentimental at best?

 

Technology, whether analog or digital is constantly changing and improving. In a networked, multi-access world, can you honestly say that film will live on forever as a format that is present in an expensive, single access, linear medium?

 

Movies are already benefiting from a digital workflow with editing and sfx work. Let me put it this way, if George Lucas filmed Star Wars Episode 4 NOW and when it came for the landspeeder shot, the DP pulled out a jar of vaseline to smudge on a clear filter in front of the lens to hide the wheels, would you think that was weird?

 

Of course, because your thinking is used to a "We'll scan our High-Res film to 2k and do it in post" mentality. Just like your current mentality will adjust to a 4k Red Camera shooting most major productions, workflows that almost mirror an IT Department more than a film crew, and a "craft" that looks more technical than organic like "it used to be."

 

I think that right there is the reason that scares most veterans of an industry and makes them posture and position against newer tech. It makes it easier for people like us to move up and show our skills, hard work, and most importantly our ability to adapt to a changing environment.

 

Brought to you by Red#249.

Edited by Daniel Gourley
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Can you honestly tell me that your opinion on the subject isn't sentimental at best?

 

Technology, whether analog or digital is constantly changing and improving. In a networked, multi-access world, can you honestly say that film will live on forever as a format that is present in an expensive, single access, linear medium?

 

Movies are already benefiting from a digital workflow with editing and sfx work. Let me put it this way, if George Lucas filmed Star Wars Episode 4 NOW and when it came for the landspeeder shot, the DP pulled out a jar of vaseline to smudge on a clear filter in front of the lens to hide the wheels, would you think that was weird?

 

Of course, because your thinking is used to a "We'll scan our High-Res film to 2k and do it in post" mentality. Just like your current mentality will adjust to a 4k Red Camera shooting most major productions, workflows that almost mirror an IT Department more than a film crew, and a "craft" that looks more technical than organic like "it used to be."

 

I think that right there is the reason that scares most veterans of an industry and makes them posture and position against newer tech. It makes it easier for people like us to move up and show our skills, hard work, and most importantly our ability to adapt to a changing environment.

 

Brought to you by Red#249.

 

Yes but Can you explain why you think video will look better than film?

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