Jim Jannard

From Ken's March 19th post: I just received a phone call from Jim Jannard. He was very frustrated about having been implicated with the Red hype that has been so prevalent on this site for the past few weeks. He stated, emphatically, that he has no professional association with Chris Kenny and the others, nor is he personally acquainted with them. He asked me why I would make the comments that I did, and I explained to him that I had done so for two reasons. I wanted him to know that, if it had in fact been him behind it, his tactics were not gaining him any respect among many on the site. On the other hand, if he had nothing to do with it, then hopefully the radical fanboys would get the message and give it a rest. In retrospect, even if the latter were the case, as it seems to have been, I realize that it still was none of my business and that I could just as easily have ignored that particular thread. In that regard, I want to apologize to Chris Kenny. He has as much right to his opinions and interests as does any one of us. I asked Jim why he would care at all about what I had to say, and his response seemed sincere. He told me that he did not care what anyone thought about his advertising, but that he resented being called a liar. I can relate to that, and, in light of our conversation, I feel that my posts were not fair to him. Consequently, I want to publicly apologize to Jim. I am guilty of resenting being called a liar. But it appeared to me (and you at the time of your posts) that we had gotten over that issue in an appropriate manner. I did accept your explanation, you seemed to get over my frustration and we ended the call on a very friendly note. I did, in fact, invite you to see the camera. The fact that you keep bringing up the phone call and how it seemingly has changed over time in your mind, puzzles me. If you are not happy with my responses to others here, no problem. Just say so. But please don't use our phone conversation to attempt to lend credibility to your irritation. In another thread, you insinuated that my "I wish you the best" was only said to placate you. I'm not sure why I would do that. If I'm frustrated, I will (sometimes not so elegantly) say so. Jim

Ken... please decide which story you are sticking to. It kind of makes you look, well... From Ken Cangi post of March 20: Let me set the record straight for anyone who thinks Mr. Jannard is making threats. He has in no way threatened me. He asked me why I had written what I had in a few posts, and he told me that he was bothered by it. He told me that he loves filmmaking and that he is passionate about this project. On that note, I offered him my apology for the unfriendly words, and I offered to post my apology on this site if that would assuage his concerns. He thanked me for the gesture, and then he offered me an invitation to check out his new camera. He was a perfect gentleman in spite of my inconsiderate posts. That is all of it. There is nothing intriguing about any of this, so my suggestion is that you all let it go. His camera will be available for testing very soon, at which point the mystery will have been put to rest. BTW, Like I said before on our phone converstaion, and you seem to acknowledge on March 20th, I still wish you the best. You are welcome anytime at RED to personally see what we are doing. Jim

Graeme has stated, for the record, that Phil claimed we were a 1K camera (person to person) at IBC last year. His post infers that our sensor is sub 2K 4:4:4. He has also posted that we are at best a 2K camera (does that also infer that it is less?). As for our personal converstation, looks like you just did post it. At the end of our 20 minute "personal" conversation I told you that I only wished you the best. Still do. Jim

Phil... from your post in Nov. 2006 it looks like we have you on record 70 times: For the seventieth time. Say the sensor is 4096 pixels across (it's something like this, I can't be bothered to look it up). Given the standard Bayer pattern, the green-channel "virtual sensor" is at one half that resolution, and the red and blue channels are at one quarter. The highest resolution data is at one half the total size of the sensor. One half. Zero point five. OK? That's 2K. The red and blue channels are at half that. That's 1K. So, you could consider that the picture off this sensor has a similar amount of real information to a 4:2:2 subsampled 2K image. This is perfectly legitimate; it's how most DSLRs work, but if you're not upfront about it, you're being deceitful. Phil You spew out so much bs that it is no surprise that you can't remember from one day to the next what you are saying. Now why don't you go heckle somebody else? Jim

Phil... with all due respect, we don't really care what you choose to believe. No one that has seen the 4K footage projected has ever any complaints about the resolution from RED or thinking it is less than advertised. It is not our job to convince you of anything. We are doing quite a few new things that you obviously haven't figured out... and we are not about to tell you, or anyone else, what that is. That just wouldn't make sense. If you had some theory that translated to the real world... maybe people would pay more attention to your rant. But your theories just don't hold up to the big screen. You are arguing that we are 2K or less, and others in the industry are arguing if we should be compared to 65mm film. So why are we listening to you? If you want Graeme to give you a lesson... don't bother to ask. Jim

Sorry Thomas... I have to disagree to a point. Until someone knows every nuance of Bayer pattern and exactly what it yields (BTW, there are many variations of "Bayer" configurations... the term is often used broadly) and has a full understanding of the entire image chain... which we are not going to give out, you are not going to be able to plot the exact course of the technology and have it directly correlate to the final image. If you have enough info, you may get in the ballpark, but you won't have the whole story. You can go to science books and Wikipedia all you want, but what you will find there is history, not the present. Graeme and the team have done many things that have never been done before, let alone published. That's why one can talk tech all you want, but until you have an image to reference, you'll never get the full "picture". We have a saying here at RED. Trial and error is a valid form of development. Getting the result 1st is what matters. We use known science and technology, theories, experimentation, trial and error and blind luck as our toolset. You might be surprised what we have discovered... that other "big" companies are not doing. I have handcuffed Graeme to some extent. He can talk about known theories and obvious techknowledge, be he is biting his tongue more than you know. Our job is to make a high quality camera at a very low price. Not necessarily to explain everything we are doing to get there. Jim

I would suggest that you are not thinking straight. Again. It is much easier to see (which is how people view motion pictures) resolution differences the larger you project an image. It is very difficult to see a difference on a one foot screen, very easy to see on a 60' screen. And that represents the screen size that most love to see in a theater. You may be mediocre (Geoff B. might agree with you), but Graeme is exceptional. No matter how much you would like him to be at your level... Jim

The size/speed constraint is the clock speed of the sensor. Jim

Thomas... that sounds like a test that I'm sure someone will do. We are busy building cameras. BTW, you posted earlier stills from the PJ shoot. Please understand that we have come a long way since then. Both in demosaic quality and compression. Is there any way to post 4K images from current shoots on the forum? If you want to analyze something, it should at least be current. My best, Jim

Our sensor is only capable of 60fps at 4k. It is also capable 100fps at 2k windowed this month, with more 2k speed possible in the future. Jim

Late last year you wrote... "Say the sensor is 4096 pixels across (it's something like this, I can't be bothered to look it up). Given the standard Bayer pattern, the green-channel "virtual sensor" is at one half that resolution, and the red and blue channels are at one quarter. The highest resolution data is at one half the total size of the sensor. One half. Zero point five. OK? That's 2K. The red and blue channels are at half that. That's 1K. So, you could consider that the picture off this sensor has a similar amount of real information to a 4:2:2 subsampled 2K image. This is perfectly legitimate; it's how most DSLRs work, but if you're not upfront about it, you're being deceitful." Phil If you want to call RED a 1K (or a 4:2:2 subsampled 2K) camera that has more resolution than S35mm film scanned at 4K projected on a 60' screen, then I guess Graeme really is a genius! Phil... call RED whatever you want. Now, do you have anything productive to add? Jim

You are trying to be funny... right? Is the back of your hand up to your forehead? So I have a question for you. I know you will talk around the answer and not give a direct response, but I'll ask it anyway. If unsharpened compressed REDCODE RAW 4K has more resolution than 35mm film scanned to 4K and projected on a 60' screen, how is it possible that your technical understanding differs so much from the reality of what everyone is seeing with their own eyes? Jim

We have RAW ports available but have not enabled that recording option in the firmware yet. We can do so as soon as we have an order, but we have other, more pressing features to enable that our customers do want now. Hypothetically, the answer to your question is yes. Practically, not one of our customers has asked for a RAW port. Jim

Absolutely... a customer can always add the RAW port if we can't provide another solution. But we also don't want someone to buy a RAW port, then ask us for a workflow solution! :-) Jim

We are working on other high speed options that don't require the RAW port. Nothing announced yet. Jim

We can certainly deliver a RAW port... we just don't have an order for one. And I continue to "not recommend" it. Our image is now so clean that you have to wonder why anyone would want to record 335MB/sec. if they don't have to. We'll sell you one, but be warned. You can use a Codex box to record to or other options. We haven't spent too much time thinking about all the other options because there is no demand. And we still have our hands full getting all the features enabled. We are delivering the camera body, rail system, batteries and charger, 18-50mm zoom, 300mm, CF cards and some mics. extras now. The 50-150mm zoom will deliver in small quantities 1st of November, larger quantities after that. The Prime set is delayed until March 2008. The 18-85mm is now scheduled for Summer 2008. Hope that helps, Jim

I hear noise... I've asked for constructive suggestions that might make RED a better system (this is the RED forum) and I still haven't heard anything except the same old thing. Is it your job (Max and Phil) to save the world from RED? Do you have anything to contribute that could be considered positive? Can you actually add something to the program? The noise you generate here is deafening. Jim

Sorry, I didn't see your question. The RED camera has a provision for /i but it is not enabled yet. Our two RED zooms (18-50mm and 50-150mm) will be /i enabled. Jim

Tim... there were over 5000 replies on this forum BEFORE we started shipping, so someone was interested to post something about RED. Unfortunately, it was mostly about what we "couldn't do" or if we could, why it wasn't worthy of any consideration. You can imagine the frustration of hearing that while you are busy building a camera. Even today, there seems to be more interest about whether or not we are a 1K camera, a 2K camera or a 3.2K camera. I wonder how much time was spent debating whether or not an HD Cam is really a 1440x1080P camera or a true 1080P camera. In the end, the images speak for themselves. There are some here who profess to be experts on so many things about a camera that have never built one. Those experts told us we could never build our own sensor. Even last week saying that we had an Altasens sensor (although they don't have anything that approaches our specs). It is these experts that care more about trying to debunk a perceived myth than embracing the reality. We are doing many things that most thought were impossible for us to do. It should be no surprise that we are not keen to tell every detail how we got it done. That just doesn't make sense. People are now saying that the RED image is the cleanest they have ever seen. And these are images captured on compressed REDCODE RAW at 27MB/sec on a Compact Flash card. That seems pretty amazing to most, but not here. It has never received notice. We are happy to be here to answer questions and listen to suggestions that might help our program along. If our program gets better, our customers will benefit. But debating whether or not we are valid is simply a waste of time. The members of this forum will determine the future of our involvement here. I came here asking for help a year and a half ago. I'm here now with the same request. But if we have to put up with Phil's nonsense, our time is better served somewhere else. That is pretty easy to understand. I don't need to hear "great job, Jim". But I don't need to hear that our program is a scam or "film is all that matters" either. I would like to hear intelligent suggestions on how we can improve our program. So far, offline suggestions from Stephen Williams are about all I have heard. And I have gained some good insight from him. It would be nice and productive to hear more from the rest of the group. We have changed our program radically throughout development because of suggestions from the industry. And we are not done listening. Jim

Tim... with all due respect, you may not have liked how we have marketed this camera. I can understand that. I hope you can also understand that we have not liked how this forum has been allowed to be such a disrespectful environment. I certainly did not want to answer questions that were loaded for an argument. Now that the camera is what we said it would be, maybe we can move forward with more productive discussions. BTW, Stephen has done a very good job as moderator. Slowly but surely he has turned this board around. Jim

I'm not interested in a long term war. Plenty of productive things to do. Respectful (not loaded) questions should and will be answered. My presentation here may have not always been the best (I leak passion fluid) but I'm willing to make a better effort. Jim

Phil... you would have more credibility if you stuck to the same story. Either RED is 1K or 2K (in your mind). Graeme has been clear on his position, and is much more knowledgable in this area than anyone you can point to. You certainly can properly use the word pejorative, but that does not necessarily mean you are a CMOS-bayer pattern, compression expert. I'd have to say that Graeme is. He has done what you said couldn't be done. Actually, he has done what a lot of "experts" said couldn't be done. Your "anti-RED" posts are beginning to lose credibility. As for support, why would we be able to properly support Soderbergh and others, but not you? Are you afraid that your attitude has in some way made you a candidate for "non-support"? I had tried to open the door for a civil and respectful dialog with you. I still hope we can get there. Jim

Matthew... I can't disagree with anything you said. RED is not film. And it does not look like any other "video". Much of what makes film look organic is random pattern grain and no sharp edges. Some say that 65mm looks less "film-like" than 35mm. Maybe that's because 65mm has less grain on projection and greater resolution? We have a different animal on our hands. It is an new alternative. It is too easy to say, "just add some grain and it looks like film". I prefer to think of RED as a new look. A new tool. And one that can be put in the hands of many. Thanks for your comments. I apologize for any harsh exchanges in the past. This is a passionate topic. Jim

Film guys who haven't seen footage think RED is less than 2K, those film guys who have seen it say it looks like 65mm film, and certainly doesn't look like video. Go figure. Jim

We are anxious to see what our competition does as well... :-) We do have a plan that extends out several years. Jim