Mark Allen

To some degree it really just matters "what it looks like" in a variety of conditions. I am really hoping there are some sequenced images at some point soon not only from the kinetta but from the other potential HD options out there as well. That said, I would love to see some sequenced images from the Genesis as well (since I've not seen it in person). Anyone know if samples are forthcoming?

Hi Phil - I'm not sure a post production supervisor would agree with you. Certainly if you're thinking of shooting a feature in this format, before you end up with 900 minutes of raw images, it would be a good idea to have a specific idea of what you're going to do with all that footage. Let me rephrase my querry, though, to address what is really the heart of my question. Can you really just throw it into a converter and expect top quality conversion? It's my understanding that the advantage of shooting RAW is the increast bit depth. When you are converting to what most editing systems can edit in real time, you are going to have to sacrifice that bit depth. Once you convert, are you losing the advantage of the RAW format - or is it like film transfered to HD where despite the current medium, because the capturing medium was higher, you retain smooth gradients. How much will this depend on your color timing of the RAW footage? As for Cienerela - I do not believe there is any hardware which would let you edit RAW movies live despite the softwares ability to handle it.

wow, just read 13 pages of this forum... and I have one major question...Has there been any information released about what this camera will cost (to buy and/or rent) and what its availability will be? (I tried to look on www.panavision.com and was shocked at how low tech and empty their website is.)

So - it's still a few months before the Kinetta and other cameras of this nature are released. I'd like to know the basic production process will be - or perhaps more accurately, if my assumption is correct. Here is my assumption: Once shot - you have uncompressed RAW data - you probably dump that data onto cheaper drives to clear off your "mag" for more shooting the next day. Once on cheaper storage, you convert the entire movies to an editble format using After Effects (I'm not sure Apple's Compressor will handle RAW, I'm doubtng it). Then you do your edit with these 'proxies'. Once finished, you are going to want to assemble your edit. I'm thinking using something like Automatic duck from Final Cut into After Effects would be the trick. Then you are able to work with your RAW files in AE and time them as you need them - or get them close at least before making them RGB again. Then do a large render for further color correction or final lay off. For visual effects, the shots would be pulled as needed in a similar manner. Now, the ohter other alternative I see is to color time the RAW footage into an appoximate range the first time and have them as editable FCP files right out of the conversion. Is this in line with what others are thinking for these uncompressed formats? (BTW Kinetta updated their site, but only with a few more articles.)

It sounds promising - what chip are they using? Personally I think portability will be a huge concern though - so the ability for it to run off batteries and capure directly to a portable device would be a requirement for most (but not all uses and cinematographers). While this would surely add to the price, I think it's almost a requisite for most people's needs. (Not all though.) How would people here go about making something like this portable if it doesn't come with a solution?

J, as far as I can tell - Juan's camera is a modification of the DVX100 - I'm not sure how he is doing this or tapping into it - but it is designed to simply take the sensor's signal out raw - which provides something in the neighborhood of 9xx x 5xx resolution? Obin's camera seems to be more like an even more home made version of the kinetta that will do 1280x and be put into an Arri 16mm body. Have I interpreted the information correctly? Have you been following these threads? Do you know the current status? There is definitely something afoot with all the camera developments - quite intriguing.

Was actually looking at more September. My thinknig was that I would transfer the data nightly to storage drives and during the next day's shoot those would be proxied to movie jpg for editing in final cut (with an appropriate filtering via after effects to create reasonable approximations of the colors). Once the cut was set, we would simply do a step by step color correction of the final material taking it into regular HD space - or - if something better was available by then, we'd use that instead. Once I have raw data on a drive, I can make it work. Super 16 is actually a possibility we are considering. S16 to HD to film (the HD intermediate process so we can play a lot with the look of the movie). I saw 16mm done this way though once and it looked awful. Fotokem doesn't even show this on their reel anymore because they say the results vary too much. You think this is a viable option? I had this pipe dream prior to NAB that HDV was going to come ot at 50 kbs and not 25 and that might be a nearly viable video option - that didn't happen. I think i'd rather shoot dv than hdv frankly. But the kinetta seems to be the perfect solution - though vaporware at the moment.

Can you share the date of the challenge? I realize I'm a nosey parker - I was hoping to know all things come NAB and feel I know only a couple things. It's a shame to have caught a little bit of the positive buzz on the camera around NAB and to find out they're now doing other things. I'm looking down the road about 3 months and wondering if there will be a viable solution for shooting a couple independent features here - thus my urgency of curiousity. Only one can afford 35mm - but if the Kinetta is good enough - all of them could use this system instead and things would be grande.

I've been following the discussion of the Kinetta on a couple boards (some which discuss whether it is even close to being ready or not and doubting it's Fall release date). I would absolutely love to get my hands on a few seconds of full rez sample footage to examine. Anyone know when we will be hearing from Kinetta again?

I think the essence of Mitch's suggestion is a great point - try to see the entire story as early as possible. However, the concept of "assembly" and such that you are talking about in your original post is really ingrained more in the days of flatbeds than of digital assembly. i don't know if you've ever edited by moviola or flatbed - but it is sort of like the difference of loading film into a mag with a black bag on location verses throwing a dv tape into the camera. There were a lot of thing which have become antiquated. Here's my thought on an approach. Don't ever fight your instinct to cut something together if you see it and it's there - that's your gutt telling you something and you should listen to it. Now, if you end up doing nothing but that or have to search for elements - then forget it at the beginning and move on. The first thing I'd get done is all the assistant work - get all the scenes into bins or projects and organized into where each sub bin contains all the takes at the micro level and whatever other organizational format works with your footage. Once that's done, I would watch everything and see what your golden footage is - the moments that are perfect - because you're going to want to keep those in. Then I would build each scene making sure it includes the golden moments and then making sure that the rest includes the entire scene. Cut the script first - don't shorten anything yet. But do this quick and get through all the scenes until you can see the whole movie. Remember - you are going to go back later - you need to watch you whole movie. Since you're not splicing and retaping the film, you can cut as much as you want with no problem - so you don't have to limit yourself just to masters. But - you do want to see what your movie is as early as possible. So you'll have now and excessively long cut and you watch this a few times start to finish. Then you identify what the problem areas are for the entire film. Until those are figured out, all your detailed editing is moot because it will likely have to be cut out or changed later becaue people don't understand that the guy in the blue suit handed the letter to the girl in the red dress etc. have fun.

Do you (Mitch) or anyone know how kinetta is planning to distribute their cameras? You mentioned they are one-off's. Does this mean it's all direct order from the factory or will there be dealers?

Hm... Another question. How is the audio input? 12 tracks is great, but wouldn't that require 12 inputs? What are the inputs?

I wasn't expecting a firewire stream. My question should have been, "How does the data from the mag get to the computer?"

I read the brochure at 3am on Saturday when I discovered I could enter the site. It's obviously a well researched and cutting edge product and seems like it might be exactly what I will need. However, it's now the 19th and I still have two overwhelming questions. How much will it cost and when will it be available? And a few follow up questions: Will it come with a lense? How much are additional mags? Does it have a firewire output? How is the exposure controlled? What is the microphone used - does that come with the base camera? Are there any sample files available (in RAW format) that could be downloaded and looked at for evaluation? Thanks

Well HD works great with After Effects. I have done TV shows with it for several years. The G5 makes the process even smoother - on a G4 it got a little sluggish at times. As for laying off to film, I would suggest seeing if your lay off system (whatever one it ends up being) can simply do what is sometmes called "VGA space" - but basically instead of trying to match your work to something etherial, it matches to your work. This has worked best when I'm laying off to film - especially using 8bit 2k files. If you are using cineon files, then AE has a way for you to "convert on the fly" the viewing of these files so they look somewhat close to what will end up on film - but they are not exact - just better than the very washed out native look of cineon files (what it shows you is simply a representation of what the actual data is in normal mode). Hope some of that helps. Remember to type in lower case and not all caps when posting to boards just for internet ediquette.

Wow. A great answer, thank you. Sounds like you know enough about the kinetta to know this or point me to a link - The problem with HD I find (other than the HDcam compression) is the lack of information in the whites - almost everything else is forgivable or fixable. Does the kinetta camera avoid this? Do you know also if these drives it writes to are swapable? Does it plan on sending an SDI signal out so that it could (after capture) be laid off to D5 or capture by an editing system?

(hello, first post) I realize that NAB 2004 is only days away - but does anyone have an idea of what these solutions will end up costing even if it is a range? I've been following the development of the Kinetta for a little while (which led me to this forum) and I still haven't figured out if it is actually going to be selling after NAB or is it just showing? Same question about the Aaton. Mark