Wild Guess

[sonisfear]

My wild guess is this cam phase shifting a native 1080p/i CCD and doubling the scan info like the Andromada mod gets HD 4/4/4 out of the DVX100.

[Jack_Felis]

Subtract one of those 4's there sonis, 4:4:4 is the color space the Andromeda captures. But nobody knows what the RED is going to do, we've just got the current supposed spec sheets as to what it may do.

[Policar]

No.

The Andromeda uses three CCDs, each with resolution slightly over 720X480. The green pixels are shifted 1/2 a pixel away from the red/blue pixels, allowing for root(2) more detail in either direction. This gives you about 1,100 pixels by 700 pixels maximum resolution in terms of maximum actual resolving power. But while it records a 4:4:4 signal, the actual resolution is much closer to 4:2:2 or 4:1:1 depending on what you're recording. Of course, it does allow for true 4:4:4 in 720X480 resolution.

The RED uses a single 4k bayer sensor. Each pixel site senses either red, blue, or green, and then an algorithm combines the data. So, theoretically, you'll get 4k maximum resolution but in reality a tiny bit less than that, and color resolution should be a bit more like 4:2:2, depending on the quality of the bayer sensor and what is being recorded. This will provide incredibly sharpness, though, and "true" 4k resolution unlike the hvx's fudged 1080p mode. While a 3CCD system would provide even more resolution, it would be expensive to implement and require massive amounts of data processing.

So no pixel shift, no upscaling, but also only a single CCD. This means your images will look a lot like what you get out of Canon or Nikon dSLRs (assuming they use an effective bayer algorithm).

[Jack_Felis]

Oh, okay... I'm not too technical but I was just stating the basic advertised feature of the Andromeda which is the 4:4:4 thing. Haven't used one myself.

Thanks for the breakdown on what's expected from the RED, sounds pretty simple compared to the process of going through 3 CCD's.