Carl Brighton

Pathetic, isn't it? You look at the credits for the average feature film, and they go on for several minutes. Even for fairly ho-hum features. Every one of those people does something, and with very few exceptions, if they don't do it properly, it shows, and the producer is stuck with it, unless he or she wants to go to the expense of a re-shoot. Do these would-be"filmmakers" actually imagine that some form of electronic camera is going to do away with the need for those hordes of people? It's both hilarious and tragic to look at the amount of editing and re-editing the "digital cinematography" page of the Wikipedia has undergone, as hordes of amateurs try to re-classify themselves as "cinematographers". Who was it who said: "If yearning was talent, my charlady would be opening at the Albert Hall!"

If nothing else, until some of you learn the difference between "infer" and "imply"! :rolleyes: Perhaps that should be a Red Velvet Cake! But will they let it past security? Maybe if you give them a slice. I once made a 14.14 inch square black forest gateau for an Arri Rep; gawd, I'll never do that again. (Note: Apply cream, cherries and chocolate after you get to location!) (And who can tell me why it's 14.14 inches square?)

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?

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).

Well, getting back to my original post, WHEN and WHERE can I expect to walk past an actual operating RED camera and see my ugly mug live, projected in glorious 4K (whatever that may mean) or at the very least, on a 50 inch 1920 x 1080 LCD monitor? All talk of upscaling algorithms and other hocus-pocus to the side, the RED should at least be able to produce respectable 4:2:2 1920 x 1080 images with only simple processing. Just that alone for $17K would be quite an achievement. I have reservations about its suitability for green-screen work, but no doubt those can be laid to rest with a simple demo of that too!

Whoah! I'm overwhelmed; So much information, and so little hand-waving and "arguments from ignorance" :D What I was really getting at was, do they (ie RED etc) start the design process by downloading samples of RAW CMOS sensor data into the hard drive of a PC, work out their processing algorithms in a non-real-time programming environment, and once they'd gotten THAT to (slowly) grind out the sort of images they want, duplicate the data processing algorithms in some sort of multi-pipeline custom processor, so they can work in real time. I thought that might be the explanation why they've only shown such limited amounts of RED footage so far. Otherwise, you'd think that once they'd started shooting footage, they could produce any amount. I can understand that the Negative Entropy Decoding paradigm must be a tough nut to crack! OK, it was just that Lance Flores sounded like he was more involved in the project than you are. He seems to know a lot about it, at any rate.

Naw, that doesn't really tell you anything Unfortunately, his software is only available for the Mac platform which limits my objectivity. I hate Macs so much that I'm convinced my negative thought processes ALONE are responsible for the unnaturally high crash rate I always experience with them. People who love Macs always insist they never crash when THEY use them, so I don't know what other explanation there is :P At least the PC format doesn't engage in that sort of emotional blackmail; they seem to crash just as consistently no matter what you think of them :D

Erm... WHO do you actually for, if it's not a rude question? When I Google "Lance Flores" and "film" I get Mockingbird Films, who don't sound like any sort of "bleeding edge" software company, at least not going by their website. How does Graeme Nattress fit into all of this? Incidentally, how does one actually go about writing in-camera image processing software? Do you start with some sort of not realtime PC-Based Editor/Emulator and then compile to some sort of dedicated high-speed processor, or do have to write directly in assembly language to get the speed up? That sort of thing has always been a mystery to me.

I'm not upset. Curious and puzzled but not upset There's not really a lot TO understand, since RED never really tell us anything that couldn't apply to any number of other cameras :blink: I know what you're saying, but that wasn't really my question. Whether you do the signal processing on the fly in the camera, or process it later from recorded RAW data (which to my mind would be a better idea anyway), you're still getting an automated machine to try to complete a sort of video crossword, turning a string of red, green and blue samples into the same number of RGB samples. A newspaper crossword usually has only one solution, but interpolated video often has more than one solution! I've never had a satisfactory explanation as to how they actually accomplish this.

I know what you mean, however I've noticed that occasionally they let real information slip out, despite their best efforts :D Occasionally I get asked questions about supposed "upcoming" technologies and I like to be able to answer them as intelligently as I can.

"Combative?" I'm simply asking the question, immediately I'm trying to pick a fight. Why I don't apost on any of the fanboy sites. >>...As for why digital still cameras don't put more powerful processors into them, I think you can make an educated guess as to why. No, I've no idea why. Well apart from the possibility that there aren't any. Or are we meandering into the land of the 100mpg carburettor that was supressed by the fuel companies:-). In any case, many digital cameras have RAW outputs where the "special sauce" of whatevr flavor you choose can be added later.

Well, OK, so who is actually developing this algortihm? I didn't find that link especially informative, all he seemed to be telling us is what needs to be achieved, rather than how to achieve it. At the end he says: "As far as the future work is concerned, an algorithm that is both superior in image reproduction and computationaly efficient is still worth pursuing given the fact that none of the existing algorithm satisfies both criteria." >> There's no reason why consumer cameras today couldn't do the same. Then why don't they?

Errr OK, so if I take a small block of pixels from a digital photo, blow them up on Photoshop so you can see the actual pixels, use the Photoshop eyedropper thingie to analyse the Red, green and blue components of each pixel, and then make a new block of pixels using the just red, green and blue components in a standard Bayer pattern, you'll be able to tell me what the red and blue components were on the green pixels, the green and blue components were on the red pixels and the green and red components were on the blue pixels? I'm not saying you can't do it, but I'd love to know HOW you do it! Can this technique be applied to consumer camcorders?

No, if you look at the above mentioned Tim Tyler post, you're not allowed to "tout" a camera that either doesn't yet exist or isn't available for independent evaluation. I think it's OK for one to talk about the RED in general terms, but not as though you've actually used one, which a lot of fanboys were starting to sound like they imagined they actually had. No thanks, I'll just sit on the sidelines. I don't really care one way or the other about the RED, and I get the distinct impression anybody who asks any sensible questions there is going to be shown the door rather quickly, a la some of the other fanboy-oriented forums.

I've gone over to RedUser.net, and I was intrigued by this post by stephen Williams He says that "cinematography.com" have banned further discussion of the RED until a working camera is available for testing. I don't recall seeing that here anywhere. They didn't stop me starting this discussion! I have to confess this is one bit I don't understand. If you have a 4K chip Bayer-masked, it means the green is only sampled 2,000 times and the red and blue 1,000 times each. You might be able to synthesize 4000 horizontal pixels that are all different from each other, but how representative are they of the actual 4000 pixels of the original light image? Also some of your images are captioned "Shot without a low pass filter." What exactly does that mean?

I seem to remember reading that Jim Jannard was quoting "late 2006" for the first production prototypes of the RED camera, and delivery to customers in the second quarter of 2007. However Dec 2006 has come and gone and I haven't heard anything further. Interestingly on the RED website they mention there's a last chance reservation window from Jan 21 to Jan 24 but nothing much else. The photo gallery is now just a series of "renders" of the RED One, whatever that means and their "News" section contains several items, all with the exact same date: 2006-08-10. Does Jannard still post anywhere? I haven't seen anything from him for ages.

I've read that all video and digital still cameras have a thing called an "optical low pass filter" fitted to the sensor chips. The effect of this is supposedly like putting a sheet of tracing paper over the sensor. Can anybody tell me what this actually for, and will the camera work without it?