Red "digital magazine"?

F

FatBird19

Well-known member
http://usuarios.lycos.es/supermanreturns/genesis3.jpg
Apparently this is the Genesis camera and on the back it has its storage device in the same place where a film mag would be. (I think).

^^^Would RED use storage like this? I've liked the idea of using a swappable digital mag for a long time.
One that attaches to a universal output connecter with HDMI data rates that could additionally be connected to a hard-drive storage housing on the back of the cam, a blu-Ray writer, a P2 card storage housing, or even straight to a computer or recording deck by way of a long cord.

I guess those are just ideas I'd want if I was designing my own cam: a universal high-data rate connector on the back of the camera (or 2) with interchangable "digital film magazines" that connects to the data port and mounts on the cam. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
Then I could have several swappable magazines on set, each filled with a RAID 1 pair of 200GB hard drives! Or I could have swapable magazines with 5 P2 card slots! OOOH!!! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D


.....alright, I'll shut up now....
 
The camera as it stands now has a slot in the back which a hard drive cartridge slides in. I can only guess that a 90 minute cartridge to be somewhere south of $1000. I expect the Raid Ram cartridge to probally be a little more. Those are just wild guesses though.

Thats for internal recording though. There is a pair of HD-SDI outs and a high speed port for external capture, the Red Raid drive array will probally be some sort of external block.. not sure if it will be actually mountable to the camera, i doubt it.

And it looks like a HDMI port may make it onto the camera.
 
Jarred Land said:
And it looks like a HDMI port may make it onto the camera.
Click to expand...

From my published interview with Jim Jannard:

Gibby – “What’s included for inputs and outputs for the camera?”

Jannard – “There’s going to be dual link HD-SDI, XLR audio, USB, FireWire, a couple of SD cards slots to support future features, HDMI, D.C power in and out, timecode and many others.
In some of these cases, we’ve made the conscious decision to go with small format connectors, as opposed to standard size, because we’re trying to keep this camera as small as possible.”

(Note: Keep in mind these are preliminary specs, and RED naturally reserves the option to add or eliminate features mentioned - S.G.)

Gibby
www.cut4.tv
 
Also from my published interview with Jim Jannard:

Gibby – “It sounds like you’ve included the ins and outs that would be needed with a camera of this scalability and options.”

Jannard – “Yes, that is correct. There are basically two styles of operation we support. You can record internally to the camera. There the choices would include REDFLASH, which is a multi-gigabyte flash memory device in a 21/2” SATA form, or RED-DRIVE, which is a high capacity 21/2” SATA drive. To get the information off them, there are FireWire, USB and SATA that let you get that data to wherever you need it to go.

The other style is external recording, and the idea is to give the shooter as many options out of the camera as possible, and therein lays the dual HD-SDI for 1080p or 2K RGB at 24fps, and support for RAW camera data via a high speed serial data interface, such as Infiniband etc."

(Note: RED reserves the option to change these initially announced specifications - S.G.)

Gibby
www.cut4.tv
 
Jarred Land said:
The camera as it stands now has a slot in the back which a hard drive cartridge slides in. I can only guess that a 90 minute cartridge to be somewhere south of $1000. I expect the Raid Ram cartridge to probally be a little more. Those are just wild guesses though.

Thats for internal recording though. There is a pair of HD-SDI outs and a high speed port for external capture, the Red Raid drive array will probally be some sort of external block.. not sure if it will be actually mountable to the camera, i doubt it.

And it looks like a HDMI port may make it onto the camera.
Click to expand...

Yeah, my thought on that though (not like it matters in the grand scheme of things :crybaby: ) is that it'd be nice to have this thing completely future proofed and highly flexible.


If it were my camera with my design(which it's not obviously), I'd rather have 2 or 3 high bandwith dataport plugs on the side that can then have devices plug into them that can convert formats and bandwidth as needed.
Why have a plug for only sata drives, a plug for only firewire, a plug for only etc(I'd have to look at the list again to know what exactly's on there), when you could just have 2-3 universal plugs that can individually adapt to anything you need?
2-3 HDMI ports would probably fit this bill. They can transmit 3000mbps, correct? And that's just data, right? It isn't limited to any specific video format?

What if RED wanted to include a codec later that gives a less compressed image but the bandwidth of the hard-drive slot couldn't handle it? Or what if users want a redundant RAID 1 enabled device like the HVX users are desiring out of the Cineporter?

Like I said, if I were designing a camera system, I'd love to have several 200GB RAID 1 hard drive unit Cineporter-like devices on set that I could just lock onto the back of a camera like a film magazine and then plug into a universal data port.

And as the technology gets better, like if there was a professional speed flash-based storage card that came out in the future(or if Panasonic just licensed out P2 ;)), then I could use a similar device in basically the same workflow as before; plug the P2 cards into a housing, lock the housing onto the camera like a mag, plug into the data port, shoot.
Then from there, detatch the housing when it's full and dump it to a laptop and switch it for a different one, or I could keep the housing attached to the camera and swap out the P2 cards individually like regular P2 workflow.

And I know there are defenitely a few people out there(like the George Lucas types) that would want to be able to send their video from the cam through a high-bandw cord directly to a computer for immediate editing without all the storage requirements of HD-SDI. And I know there's defenitely people that would want to be able to send the video straight to a large capacity recording deck.
I'm not saying anyone would have to make these devices immediately, but at least it's a possibility if someone wants to put the work into it later.

I would defenitely contend that there should be an HD-SDI, component, and maybe SVHS port on camera; no need take a digital signal into an out-of-camera device to convert it into analoge. But for digital formats, I say output from the camera in the most flexible and futureproof way possible, and then ffdsaafsd in devices specific to the camera user's needs.

anyway, just dreaming about what I'd want to work with on set.... :)


....my guess is that this is too long for anyone to read. Oh well, I had fun. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
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fatbird.. some good ideas in there.. And Im sure Jim is reading. Not too long at all, but I wouldn't say baby blue text and dark grey are the best combo you could of picked.
 
Jarred Land said:
fatbird.. some good ideas in there.. And Im sure Jim is reading. Not too long at all, but I wouldn't say baby blue text and dark grey are the best combo you could of picked.
Click to expand...

Better? :D

and thanks
 
There are still a lot of questions to be answered about the recording issues. It sounds like Red is going to give a hard drive option and a flash memory option. However, I want to know how stable this hard drive is going to be and how much it will cost. I find solid state memory cards to be pretty reliable, but very expensive right now. That's one of the reasons I didn't want to go for an HVX200. On top of that, I imagine 2k footage is going to take up a lot more space than a 720p HD image. I've gotten excited about cameras before only to be disappointed in how expensive it would actually be to use the camera in a practical workflow. The biggest concerns for me are essentially:

1. How much footage will these Red Drives or Red Flash hold at 720p, 1080p and 2k?

2. How much will these things cost?

Too often people concentrate on just getting the camera body and lens and don't think about storage issues, post production issues, and all that other stuff that will put a hole in your pocket.
 
Of course everything is in development, but its pretty safe to speculate.

Hard drives will probally be 2.5" 7200rpms. Nothing too fancy going on inside them, pretty much be similar to a little G-Tech drive with multiple ports. ( firewire, USB, etc. )

now we know nothing (well better put, I know nothing) about the bitrate of the RED codec. assuming its somewhere in the 100-150mbit area, it will probally hold about 2 hours of 720p material and i cant imagine it to be anymore than $1000.

The Red-Ram, I would see it being on the same price level as the P2's.. it all depends on what format of Ram they use and what those ram prices are at the manufacturing stage.

And i dont think people are forgeting about storage and post issues anymore . The HVX and JVC HDV cameras kicked off the whole pre-purchase workflow contemplation. Its not like those few glory years where you just saw the Minidv logo or the HDcam/DVCpro logo and asked the next question.
 
I hope for the sake of everyone planning on shooting with RED-Drives that a single 2.5" SATA RED-DRIVE doesn't cost more then twice what an SATA drive would cost in a BestBuy store. I never liked the idea that just because something is made for cinema the price automatically gets hiked 10 fold.

I mean really what will a RED-Drive be? Probablly nothing more then just an external 2.5" HDD with a case designed to lock into the camera and maybe a proprietary SATAII interface. I'm guessing of course. But that makes sense.
 
Jarred Land said:
assuming its somewhere in the 100-150mbit area, it will probally hold about 2 hours of 720p material and i cant imagine it to be anymore than $1000.
Click to expand...

the compression is going to be wavelet based, right?
Can you compress 4k into 150mbps and have it look good?
 
I'm assuming we're getting 4 recording options (from RED) that will look something like this:

1) RED-DRIVE - I'm assuming this will be the cheapest option and will record 720, 1080 and 2K compressed using REDCODE. Onboard.

2) RED-FLASH - As above but obviously solid-state which means more expensive and smaller capacity (at present). Onboard.

3) RED-RAID - Fairly expensive option I would imagine but capable of 4k and 2k RAW. Off-camera.

4) RED-RAM - Also capable of 4k and 2k RAW, but onboard and with limited capacity (but good for Steadicam etc).
 
good summary Stephen, but the red-flash may have the added benifit of adding a higher frame rate in 2k or color space.. because the bandwidth isn't as limited as it is with the hard drive.
 
About the data rates you can read some information at the Steve Gibby interview with Jim Jannard at www.studiodaily.com:

"Gibby: Data rates? You’ve published 100, 80, 60, 50, 25, and 19. Are there other data rates, or are those set?

Jannard: I think that goes to the first comment about this being under development. Those were put up as estimates, and quite frankly, that’s one of the things that changed. We’re now looking at data rates that may be as high as 200-plus mega bits per second onto a REDDRIVE, and we’ve seen encoding solutions down as low as 12. There are a lot of exciting developments going on with compression, and we’ll take full advantage of these as we optimize our REDCODE codec."
 
roxics said:
I hope for the sake of everyone planning on shooting with RED-Drives that a single 2.5" SATA RED-DRIVE doesn't cost more then twice what an SATA drive would cost in a BestBuy store. I never liked the idea that just because something is made for cinema the price automatically gets hiked 10 fold.
Click to expand...

I will be upset if we're stuck with using RED-supplied hard drives within the RED-DRIVE enclosures. We should have the option to buy the RED-DRIVE enclosures alone and source our own SATA hard-drives. Of course it will be our sole responsibility to make sure that we use hard-drives that are of ample performance, but I can't see that being a major problem.
 
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