Budgeting a small feature to shoot on RED?

AuditoryVisuals said:
Will anybody at all be shooting in 2540p?
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I think it'll depend alot on Redcode RAW and what peoples setups will be to edit it. Offline Edits shouldn't be much of a problem for it and Online edits have been touted as being possible without investiging in the greatest setup ever imagined. As a question of choice given 2540p is the largest available size too shoot in I dare say many will want to, it's just a question of whether it makes the process to slow and expensive for them.
 
Muttondraw said:
If everything goes south you could always put out an emergency call on this board, an owner may be able to help you out.

Martin
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I plan on making my camera available to rental houses if they run out. I won't make as much as renting it out myself, but at least it will be under the rental's insurance. I won't be using my camera until the RED Zoom lens is shipping....
 
Guys, I want to have a good field monitor and possibly an onboard monitor for the AC. For a one-month location shoot, how much will I need to budget for a monitor? Can I use a 30" Dell LCD? A rented plasma? If i am shooting 4K compressed, what kind of output signals are available to run to an HD field monitor?

thanks!
 
AuditoryVisuals said:
Will anybody at all be shooting in 2540p?
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I was first very interested in shooting 2k RAW uncompressed, but as I see the dev of the REDCODE and the quality it can achieve, as well as necessary investment in a REDRAID, it might make me change my mind for a REDCODE RAW 2540p and 2k windowed when focus is an issue
 
No way to output to computer directly?

No way to output to computer directly?

Not that it's a huge deal, but I'm a little surprised that there'll be no way to shoot in a "tethered" arrangement when you have AC power indoors, as you often would if you're doing greenscreen stuff. The compressed bitrate should fit into several of the announced connection standards on the camera.

I'd like to save wear on the proprietary Red drives as often as possible, not to mention saving the time of copying the footage off of them. Granted, output to a computer will require the development of a capture utility for both Mac and Windows, which Red may not have the time or personnel to undertake at the moment.

Which brings up an interesting question: Inside, will the Red drives be an array of off-the-shelf laptop drives or something? I'm thinking of DIY drive replacements or upgrades in the future.
 
There seems to be a lot of impatience here.

The workflow for shooting 4k and editing 4k compressed right now is theoretical.

Will Apple have an 8 proc Mac Pro by NAB?

Will there be a 4k capable Final Cut Pro by NAB? And how many updates before it's rock solid?

Will Quicktime be able to handle 4k of any sort, and do I really want to use QT, even though it's essential for FCP.

Same questions for Premiere Pro.

Do you guys really want to start a real project before testing the workflow?

What about the things you may not be thinking of?

Even a small feature may need a few visual effects shots, or at least opticals.
How about title design work?

Definitely color correction/grading right?

Any idea how expensive it would be to do all this in 4k? Not just $$$ but also in computer power and time.

On top of that, what's your output going to be? 4k filmout? What's that going to cost you?

Digital projection? Mostly HD and 2k. Sony's 4k projector is not wide spread.

Before basing budget and workflow on theoreticals, how about letting the products hit the marketplace first, and see where the options lead to.

Then test out the workflow options BEFORE the real jobs begin.
 
That's what I was thinkng too. If I had to shoot a feature on RED right after it hit the street, I'd shoot 4K compressed (just to future-proof my images) and do all the rest of the work in DVCPRO-HD, a tried and true codec, and pretty good for most forms of exhibition (digital projection, HDTV, and some nice filmouts too).
 
"and do all the rest of the work in DVCPRO-HD"

IMO the problem with DVCproHD is that everything ( including 1920x1080) is processed at 1280x1080 .. it s a good in camera codec and was a good post workflow codec for it's time AND there are better codec's out today... IMO find a codec that processes HD at 1920x1080 ..
 
Agreed that a proxy HD codec should be 1920x1080 square pixels - it avoids a load of issues. There are codecs here that can do the job though, so that's great.

Graeme
 
Okay, but you get what I mean. Unless I can count with people that really know what they are doing and the budget to do my post in a respectable place, I wouldn't worry about 4K for now...
 
Amigo,

I'm afraid what the RED customers are expecting it is to have all the powerful* possibility of the 4K capture and post (especially after the David Newman's words: online editing 4K @home it is already possible around the $5,000 mark). And for sure, your output will be @what platform or format your needs are asking.

* IMHO, that's the great advantage of the REDCINE codec or am I wrong? :)
 
Graeme_Nattress said:
…a proxy HD codec should be 1920x1080 square pixels
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The problem that we have at the moment in FCP is that the only 1920x1080 square pixel codecs with RT effects are un-compressed 8 and 10 bit. For a proxy offline RT is very important, but drive space is at a premium, so neither of those are very suitable for anything vaguely longform, or with a high shooting ratio.

It will be interesting to see what happens when REDCODE and Cineform for FCP become available, but I'm assuming (although hoping I'm wrong) that RT won't be there initially.

What would be great to see would be Apple updating FCP to allow non codec dependent RT, and mixed codecs on the same timeline, but I gather that would involve a major re-write of the core code. Here's hoping that might happen with FCP 6 at NAB '07.

Maybe Graeme know's something the rest of us don't.

OK Graeme knows vast amounts of stuff we don't!
 
Graeme_Nattress said:
Agreed that a proxy HD codec should be 1920x1080 square pixels - it avoids a load of issues. There are codecs here that can do the job though, so that's great.

Graeme
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Besides possible native REDcode editing (a future possibility?), what codec on the list of ones currently able to output from REDcine would you suggest ?

:beer:


RED# cautiously optimistic
 
Emanuel said:
Amigo,

I'm afraid what the RED customers are expecting it is to have all the powerful* possibility of the 4K capture and post (especially after the David Newman's words: online editing 4K @home it is already possible around the $5,000 mark). And for sure, your output will be @what platform or format your needs are asking.

* IMHO, that's the great advantage of the REDCINE codec or am I wrong? :)
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It's all great, but if I was going to shoot an independent feature (without money to back me up), I woudn't risk it by trying methods that while probably are much better than today's, are still risky.

Sure, for smaller projects, you can try to shoot in new formats, but I wouldnt be very happy if in the middle of editing a feature, I discovered that the codec is still not handled well by the NLE...
 
Tom Lowe said:
Yeah, I share your concerns. We will be shooting on only one camera, and way out on location in the mountains and stuff, so I guess we are going to pre-arrange some kind of deal with a rental house to have a RED on standby/FEDEX for us. It's definitely risky.

Is the RED team itself going to support indie owners out in the field if the camera goes south under warranty? As many of us know, when you're out on location and a camera goes bad, it's panic time, because the money is flying away and nothing is getting shot.
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That's a good question. Jim said cancelled RED pre-order numbers would not be resold, they will be kept for Demos and Reserve units. That sounds alot like they'll have some support units.


Jim's a stand up guy. If you called him in a panic, I'm sure he'll help you out with one of those demo units. Heck, it wouldn't surprise me if he loaned out Red #1 when one of his supporters is caught between the Scylla and Charybdis.
 
taubkin said:
It's all great, but if I was going to shoot an independent feature (without money to back me up), I woudn't risk it by trying methods that while probably are much better than today's, are still risky.

Sure, for smaller projects, you can try to shoot in new formats, but I wouldnt be very happy if in the middle of editing a feature, I discovered that the codec is still not handled well by the NLE...
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I agree (clever assumption as usual with all your inputs) but I believe Graeme will give us a reliable tool and there will be good post solutions* besides its recent age. Above all, there will be more than 1000 RED users asking for it. That's a lot and the democratization process of the 4K (capture & post) itself.

EDIT -- * The existence of offers like the David Newman's Cineform (if not coming from others or even considering the RED via if available) allow us to believe with it.
 
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You're right Emanuel, I'd just wait a tad longer for embrace the 4K workflow. I also trust the RED people and know they will get it right, as developing the 4K workflow is as important as the camera itself. Looking at a tech viewpoint, I'm excited as you are, and actually anxious to be able to start using this camera and workflow as soon as it's availiable. But to be on the safe side, if I were TODAY budgeting for a feature, I woudn't even consider RED, simply because it doesn't exist. Maybe production will be delayed, maybe the first batch will have a huge problem. Then what? You loose a film? There's no way I'd risk looking a film for a technical problem.

Of course, the chance those problems actually happen is minimal, especially the part about the camera being bad, we can all agree to that. But nevertheless. Better safe than sorry IMHO.

But I agree with you that democratizing desktop digital cinema is a great thing! Bad for big buck labs, but great for us indies. I just hope the film transfer prices keep falling too... :)

Thanks for the nice words,

e não se esqueça de testar tudo muito bem, antes de começar a filmar!

Abraço!
 
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