Information about RED camera

[Carl Brighton]

we often shoot "cinerama-style" with several cameras, just recently a ballet with 5760*1080.

Often?! Oh yeah, and what to you actually do with this 3 x 1920 x 1080 footage?

[Sam Wells]

But no, he insists on drizzling it with Dr Nattress's Patented Canadian Serpent Oil so he can pretend it's really a "4K" camera, so he can market it to dreamers who are never going to be able to afford 4K post anytime soon, and when it does become commonplace and cheap, so will other RED-like cameras. (AND they would have been just as happy with a 2K camera at that price anyway, I sure as Hell would!)

 

Wow Carl, Bayer (etc) seem to have proven themselves in the stills marketplace; actually something like Redcode would seem to me to be of great benefit there; a choice beyond the rock & hard place of uncompressed RAW and JPEG.

 

Are you shooting with an F23 in the meantime ?

 

Personally RED can skip *video* formats entirely for my money, I'd be glad to pay less to be without them.

But that's "just me" as they say.....

 

-Sam

[Jérôme Keller]

this is totally off topic, but I just saw Lynch's "Inland Empire" and for me it made a convincing argument that to make a great movie you will need everything EXCEPT a great camera. drooling over the RED is like masturbating over a Marilyn Monroe poster and then expecting to have to pay child alimony.

[Nate Downes]

this is totally off topic, but I just saw Lynch's "Inland Empire" and for me it made a convincing argument that to make a great movie you will need everything EXCEPT a great camera. drooling over the RED is like masturbating over a Marilyn Monroe poster and then expecting to have to pay child alimony.

 

I still want to see that.

 

To me, it remains that the camera is not the key, never was, never will be.

[Ruairi Robinson]

You can turn it any way you want, if you want 4K overcranked then you need the Raw Port/External Raid. Period.

 

For a camera that claims to be 4K, I was obviously talking about 4K, à la limite I could accept 2K downrezzed from 4K, but certainly not windowed 2K.

 

Do you want the camera to blow you as well?

 

So get the fu**ing raw port option. Whats the problem? it's still priced cheaper than anything else that comes close to competing.

 

Jesus.

 

fu**ing.

 

christ.

[Max Jacoby]

So get the fu**ing raw port option. Whats the problem? it's still priced cheaper than anything else that comes close to competing.

You'll pardon me if I only quote the informative parts of your post before I answer it.

 

And what do I hook the Raw Port up to? The Codex recorder which rents out at a mere 1000 dollars a day?

[Stephen Williams]

From the forum guidelines:-

 

You may not make personal attacks on other users

 

There will be no excessive use of profanity

 

Please keep foul language to a minimum

[Luke Haywood]

his right shoe would be permanently stained dark brown.

masturbating over a Marilyn Monroe poster and then expecting to have to pay child alimony.

Well you chaps certainly know your way around a poetic turn of phrase! Ever thought of writing for Mills and Boon? :lol:

 

Thanks for all your help by the way. My overall task is basically "threat assessment", and from what I've seen so far, I don't see the RED as all that much of a threat. I think most organizations are fairly similar where the engineering people dismiss this sort of "revolutionary" carry-on for the eruption of hot air that it always is, but the non-technical folks (who unfortunately make up most of the upper management) see the same B.S. repeated over and over so many times that they think there MUST be something to it. It's great that there's at least ONE forum where you read something different for a change, and 90 percent of the posts aren't in the order of "You Rock Jim!!" and "Way to go Jim!!! and so on :rolleyes:

 

Frankly I/m baffled as to what Jim Jannard hopes to achieve from all this carry on. I can only speculate that he's trying to relive the glory days at Oakley, before their disasterous diversificaton into branded apparrel resulting in him getting booted off the board. I don't think he'd have been keen to see the place sold off to Luxottica and sharing stable space with Ray Ban! But I guess he can cry all the way to the bank with the 1.3 Billion he pocketed from the sale.

 

The sad thing is, if he listened to the right people, he would have a better than even chance of turning the new venture into a major success, but he seems to fixated with hanging out with totally the wrong sort of people. He sort of reminds me of Jiggs in Bringing up Father

 

Oh well, the rest of us will just have to deal with out mid-life crisis the traditional way, like with a diamond earring or a red sports car :lol:

[Craig Schober]

Well you chaps certainly know your way around a poetic turn of phrase! Ever thought of writing for Mills and Boon? :lol:

 

Thanks for all your help by the way. My overall task is basically "threat assessment", and from what I've seen so far, I don't see the RED as all that much of a threat. I think most organizations are fairly similar where the engineering people dismiss this sort of "revolutionary" carry-on for the eruption of hot air that it always is, but the non-technical folks (who unfortunately make up most of the upper management) see the same B.S. repeated over and over so many times that they think there MUST be something to it. It's great that there's at least ONE forum where you read something different for a change, and 90 percent of the posts aren't in the order of "You Rock Jim!!" and "Way to go Jim!!! and so on :rolleyes:

 

Frankly I/m baffled as to what Jim Jannard hopes to achieve from all this carry on. I can only speculate that he's trying to relive the glory days at Oakley, before their disasterous diversificaton into branded apparrel resulting in him getting booted off the board. I don't think he'd have been keen to see the place sold off to Luxottica and sharing stable space with Ray Ban! But I guess he can cry all the way to the bank with the 1.3 Billion he pocketed from the sale.

 

The sad thing is, if he listened to the right people, he would have a better than even chance of turning the new venture into a major success, but he seems to fixated with hanging out with totally the wrong sort of people. He sort of reminds me of Jiggs in Bringing up Father

 

Oh well, the rest of us will just have to deal with out mid-life crisis the traditional way, like with a diamond earring or a red sports car :lol:

 

wow great thread guys. i learned a lot about...?

[Emmanuel Decarpentrie]

And what do I hook the Raw Port up to? The Codex recorder which rents out at a mere 1000 dollars a day?

 

 

Your concerns are quite valid but I think life is a matter of choices. And with many choices comes the "compromise". You may desire the maximum quality (4K + overcrank), but right now this type of quality is still expensive. this is very likely gonna change a few years from now, but right now there only are a few solutions capable of recording 4K RAW. So, either you have the budget and you can afford this sort of quality or you don't... But there are multiple "work around" solutions.

 

1) Shoot in Redcode Raw, 2K scaled except for the few times you truly need overcranking in which case you'd compromise with 2K Windowed, which might actually be pretty good...

2) Minimize the number of days you might need to rent a recorder. After all, even if you need such a recorder for an entire week for a feature, you won't pay 7x1000 dollars in total, more like 5000$ for the whole week. And what are 5 thousand dollars compared to the typical cost of film (if you include everything) for a feature, not even mentionning the total cost of movie?

3) Should you need more than 60 frames/s, I'm afraid you're gonna have to shoot the sequences that really must be overcranked with good old 35mm film anyway. But I'm sure Red footage will intercut almost perfectly with film, as long as entire scenes are shot on the same medium...

 

Bottom line is: why should we worry? Why should we try to find any reason to complain about this camera? Don't you think what Red proposes us already is almost unbelieveable?

Edited August 7, 2007 by Emmanuel Decarpentrie

[Ruairi Robinson]

You'll pardon me if I only quote the informative parts of your post before I answer it.

 

And what do I hook the Raw Port up to? The Codex recorder which rents out at a mere 1000 dollars a day?

 

As I understand it, any raid able to sustain the data rate. I could probably build my own. Though I could be wrong, since I haven't exchaustively researched the options or data rates required. But still - 1000 bucks a day? so what? Max you were bitching about the cost of the raw port - as though any other alternative comes remotely close to the price range. Expensive? in comparison to what exactly? What other digital alternatives are you comparing this negatively to? And if you are talking about film, how much film stock would you chew through in a day shooting high speed?

 

Shooting high speed on red may be unwieldy/expensive from the outset, but at least they've designed the camera in such a way that will let it take advantage of faster/better/cheaper data options as CF gets faster/cheaper etc.

 

Now all that remains, is that they make the thing available, and the pictures live up to the hype. (I have a reservation, but the jury is still out for me on this one)

 

The rest, blah. Posturing. Whatever. Sorry if my previous post was a little caustic.

 

R.

[John Sprung]

And what do I hook the Raw Port up to?

Has anyone considered the S.two disk to LTO tape solution for Red recording?

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Ruairi Robinson]

Wow great...

 

If I shoot 4K, I would want all the framerates to be 4K. If any overcranking results in merely a 2K image then that is not going to match too well is it? Especially if that is only 2K windowed (as opposed to downrezzed from 4K), so my 35mm lenses will suddenly not be wide enough and I might have to get in additional lenses designed specifically for Super 16mm.

 

 

 

people have been watching movies for years with vfx shots done at 2k that were intercut seamlessly with other shots in the film.

 

So is having 2k for some slowmo shots really that much of a compromise?

 

can you ALWAYS tell when you are a vfx shot because the picture is suddenly soft, or is it usually the dinosaurs in frame that give it away?

 

R.

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't think a 2K slo-mo shot is a big problem in a 4K movie -- usually slo-mo shots are tighter or long-lensed anyway, plus the viewer is noticing the motion at that point, not the resolution so much.

 

In HD, I've had to convert 60i/1080 to 60fps for slow-mo and hardly notice the loss of half the vertical resolution, because, as I said, a slo-mo shot is sort of odd anyway. It would only be an issue if it was a slo-mo wide shot where you wanted maximum resolution. Or if a lot of the movie was slo-mo.

[John Sprung]

IIn HD, I've had to convert 60i/1080 to 60fps for slow-mo and hardly notice the loss of half the vertical resolution, because, as I said, a slo-mo shot is sort of odd anyway.

Did you see the 60i to slo-mo filmed out, or on a 1080 line DLP projector? If you saw it on a CRT or RP, that would mask some of the resolution loss.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Hmmmm let's see I try to offer helpful information. I get insulted. You're welcome would have done nicely but whatever.

 

In regards to codex:

 

Let's say you shoot 5 minutes of overcranked 35mm in a day. That's about 1000 feet.

 

Stock: ~$500

Processing: $160

4k Davinci and Transfer to HDD: > $800

--------

$1460

 

Yep. Sure am glad I didn't spend $1000 on a Codex!

[Mitch Gross]

Did you see the 60i to slo-mo filmed out, or on a 1080 line DLP projector? If you saw it on a CRT or RP, that would mask some of the resolution loss.

-- J.S.

Anyone who saw "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" saw tons of exactly what David is describing.

[Max Jacoby]

people have been watching movies for years with vfx shots done at 2k that were intercut seamlessly with other shots in the film.

 

So is having 2k for some slowmo shots really that much of a compromise?

Before DIs I never found that 2K shots intercut well with the rest of the film, they always looked softer to me. I think it's only the advent of 2K DI that has led to a lowering of standards.

 

However I have my doubts that a 2K windowed Bayer image is going to intercut well with a 4K Bayer image. Now downsampling the 4K Bayer image to 2K would be a much better match, but that is obviously not an option. As a filmshooter I am surprised that as soon as one goes even a single frame over the Redcode's capabilites (and at the moment that does not include the PAL standard 25fps), that becomes a very big deal as one immediately lands in the land of uncompressed 4K which is a whole different ballgame than the convenience of Redcode.

 

I do not appreciate being insulted for pointing out drawbacks/inconveniences in Red as I am merely trying to find out where its (current) limitations lie. Contrary to popular belief I have nothing against the Red camera itself, in fact I think it's a terrific tool that will give people who haven't had access to 35mm or the latest digital cameras the possibility to get a much better image quality than previoulsy possible.

 

Now Red marketing is completely different matter of course...

[Max Jacoby]

Let's say you shoot 5 minutes of overcranked 35mm in a day. That's about 1000 feet.

 

Stock: ~$500

Processing: $160

4k Davinci and Transfer to HDD: > $800

--------

$1460

You'd have to include the rental of a 35mm camera in there as well.

 

Yep. Sure am glad I didn't spend $1000 on a Codex!

And if you shoot for 18 days with a Codex, that's the price of a Red one ;)

[Luke Haywood]

wow great thread guys. i learned a lot about...?

Sorry. After the appalling mess I made of a previous post spelling-wise, I decided to let MS Word "proof read" that post for me. Somehow it decided to delete two of the sentences, and (as I subsequently discovered) you have only a very short time to edit them! :blink:

 

As for: "I learned a lot about..." I've had some helpful and informative private messages, and just reading over the RED folder at cinematography. com generally has given me lots of valuable information, (and a great deal of entertaining reading, not all of it from people specifically trying to be funny) :lol:

 

As far as information goes, I think the signal-to-noise ratio of this forum is vastly superior to Reduser.net and a number of other pro-RED forums. I signed up to CML as well, but while there is good information there, accessing it can be tedious in the extreme! And I didn't expect my mailbox to fill up quite so quickly! As far as user-friendliness goes, this forum leaves the others for dead.

 

In general I find a respectful and polite approach will often get the most results in the end, but you do wind up with an awful lot of chaff for the handful of wheat you want. I don't think the heated name-calling and profanity achieves terribly much; it merely indicates that you have reached the limits of your knowledge.

[Luke Haywood]

I do not appreciate being insulted for pointing out drawbacks/inconveniences in Red as I am merely trying to find out where its (current) limitations lie. Contrary to popular belief I have nothing against the Red camera itself, in fact I think it's a terrific tool that will give people who haven't had access to 35mm or the latest digital cameras the possibility to get a much better image quality than previously possible.

 

Now Red marketing is completely different matter of course...

 

Since we're having a quiet period at work I've been reading through the "back issues" of the RED folder, and I seem to find that sort of thing over and over again. People who clearly have industry experience and can be presumed to have at least some idea of what they are talking about, mostly support the concept of the RED, and acknowledge that if it works as advertised it will be a valuable additional to the professional cinematographer's tool kit. I certainly don't see it as a threat to the Status Quo, it would be just another option to have up our sleeves.

 

However, if they dare to add the all-too-true observation that if you are not already a pro cinematographer, the RED is certainly not going to turn you into one, they are immediately branded as stuck-in-the-19th-century film-o-philes, RED-haters, Digital Haters (including I note, people who already use digital cameras on a regular basis :lol: )

 

It has become an accepted factoid on Reduser.net that this forum has never yielded a single sensible suggestion for the RED; but if you have the time to read through the whole thing, you would see that there are dozens of what I thought were perfectly sound ideas. The problem I think is that most of the denizens of the Reduser forum wouldn't recognise a good idea if you delivered it to them by Fedex.

 

Which raises the intriguing question of how good is a camera going to be if that lot had a hand in designing it :lol:

Edited August 8, 2007 by Luke Haywood

[Ruairi Robinson]

Before DIs I never found that 2K shots intercut well with the rest of the film, they always looked softer to me.

 

I'll gve you some freedom of movement, and assume you meant "generally" instead of "always". Because, if you really meant always, You'll excuse me if I find this hard to swallow. What you are saying is, you could spot every single effects shot, of every film that EVER had 2k effects done to it. even just for wire removal. I just don't buy this at all. Even, as David said - shots that are on long lenses, so they are significantly soft anyway... as a general thing, yeah, maybe. But always? Thats just silly.

 

However I have my doubts that a 2K windowed Bayer image is going to intercut well with a 4K Bayer image.

 

Well that remains to be seen. But obviously you have pretty high standards, which is a good thing.

 

Now downsampling the 4K Bayer image to 2K would be a much better match, but that is obviously not an option.

 

except for the raw port option, right?

 

I am surprised that as soon as one goes even a single frame over the Redcode's capabilites (and at the moment that does not include the PAL standard 25fps), that becomes a very big deal as one immediately lands in the land of uncompressed 4K which is a whole different ballgame than the convenience of Redcode.

 

yeah, kinda sucks, if that turns out to be the case. I suspect by the time of release, we'll have at least 30fps bare minimum in redcode from CF/red drive. Hopefully a little higher, though thats just conjecture on my part. In an ideal world, we'd have a camera that can shoot 120fps in 4k. At least the sensor etc are upgradeable, so the camera should be able to keep up with whatever the current tech develops into. You gotta admit, it's a pretty good start though, and high speed at 2k won't be THAT bad. I'll be working at 1080p anyway, so it's not such a drawback for me. 4k workflow is just not practical at all for VFX at this point...

 

I do not appreciate being insulted for pointing out drawbacks/inconveniences in Red as I am merely trying to find out where its (current) limitations lie.

 

Yeah, I apologised. Sorry about that dude. Heat of the moment, and all that. I had sort of bundled you with people that tend towards negativity coupled with factual innacuracy, but I think you tend to be a bit more level headed, if a little on the skeptical side. Guess there's nothing wrong with that. But you have to admit you were wrong on a few points in this thread. It's a shame nobody here ever seems to be able to acknowledge that. Whenever people are shown to be wrong here, they ignore it, or change the subject (as you did), or attack the person who has corrected them on the facts (as others have). It's becoming grating.

 

Contrary to popular belief I have nothing against the Red camera itself, in fact I think it's a terrific tool that will give people who haven't had access to 35mm or the latest digital cameras the possibility to get a much better image quality than previously possible.

 

Thats probably because you tend to never seem to say anything positive, and always seem to dwell on the negatives. But I'm glad you did say this, finally. Maybe the camera will be delayed, maybe it won't live up to the hype, but I think it's awesome that they are ploughing ahead and trying to make the thing, since if they weren't, it's pretty certain that nobody else would be, at least not at this point in time, at this price point....

 

best,

R.

[Ruairi Robinson]

As far as information goes, I think the signal-to-noise ratio of this forum is vastly superior to Reduser.net and a number of other pro-RED forums.

 

the quickest way to skim the red forums and skip past the noise is to only bother looking at posts from the red staff (they all have variations of the red logo as avatars). They usually quote the question they are responding to also, so you don't have to read the noise.

 

 

It has become an accepted factoid on Reduser.net that this forum has never yielded a single sensible suggestion for the RED; but if you have the time to read through the whole thing, you would see that there are dozens of what I thought were perfectly sound ideas.

 

I think the accepted fact is more that not many uinque ideas were posted here, that they already didn't get elsewhere, from people that gave them less of a hard time, or accused them of being dishonest constantly. For examples of both, See every single thread here.

 

In general I find a respectful and polite approach will often get the most results in the end, but you do wind up with an awful lot of chaff for the handful of wheat you want. I don't think the heated name-calling and profanity achieves terribly much; it merely indicates that you have reached the limits of your knowledge.

 

This goes both ways. For example, people accusing Jannard of dishonesty repeatedly was probably not the best way to get him to engage this forum. Some of us find constant sly implications, bitching and negativity far more of a turn off than naughty language.

[Max Jacoby]

I suspect by the time of release, we'll have at least 30fps bare minimum in redcode from CF/red drive. Hopefully a little higher, though thats just conjecture on my part.

Yeah, it would be nice to have a bit of a higher framerate in Redcode. 32 fps is a good speed if you want to do a small overcrank that slightly heightens the moment without drawing attention to itself as slow-motion. Any current 35mm sync sound camera is able to do that as well. For framerates over 50 fps it is generally accepted that one has to get specialized gear anyway.

 

Are speedramps possible in camera or would they have to be done in post by the way?

 

 

Thats probably because you tend to never seem to say anything positive, and always seem to dwell on the negatives.

Haha, I know. I always exasperate my friends because I constantly critique the films that they like ;)

[Emmanuel Decarpentrie]

Haha, I know. I always exasperate my friends because I constantly critique the films that they like ;)

 

Tss! Tss! Just remember those famous words:

 

Some things in life are bad

They can really make you mad

Other things just make you swear and curse.

When you're chewing on life's gristle

Don't grumble, give a whistle

And this'll help things turn out for the best...

 

And...always look on the bright side of life...

Always look on the light side of life...

 

(Monty Python) ;)