SCARLET / EPIC swiss army knife camera details announced

this does indeed look amazing.

My biggest worry is that when you try to be everything to everyone for everything you tend to get bogged down in tech issues and development.

To be completely honest I would have been really happy to see red one evolve as a singularly amazing camera. I just cant imagine this setup scaling world wide for all the apps it looks like it can support with proper end to end support. Its a whole lot to handle.

just my 2 cents - not being a downer - id love to see all this work. But a really strong rock solid and evolving red one 4K camera would have been more a holy grail then an everything to everyone approach - at least for me
 
By the way, it technically wouldn't be vaporware if it were actually released. Very similar objections and skepticism were raised when the RED One was announced a couple of years ago, and at that time, the company had almost zero credibility. (I still remember one of my film school instructors presumptuously scoffing at it several months before it started shipping.) Well, RED delivered the RED One, exactly as they had promised and in the exact year that they had promised that they would. So why expect any less of RED now? Perspective, please, folks.
 
good thing cinevate and letus are working on their 2/3 inch relay lenes. Get a scarlet for 2.5 k and a brevis setup for 2k and your ready to roll. I don't know I just wish the s35 scarlet was a little cheaper.
 
BrianMurphy said:
Well it is pretty simple what it is....more CG Images of slick looking units and price tags that are very different from what was originally to be....more promises NOT to meet dealines since there aren`t any !
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This is really the only thing bothers me about RED. Products look very interesting as design concepts but it seems limiting that RED seems to be ONLY aiming at hardcore indie filmmakers. Personally, as someone who owned an audio post company catering to low budget indies, I think they will eventually be failure as a company unless they create more mass market appeal. Indie filmmakers who will buy these products are mostly cash poor and I think are a very vocal, but numerically small minority in the big world of film and video.

I am not an indie filmmaker and I can tell you that products and products lines that succeed in our business are the ones that appeal to people who shoot corporate, events, news, sports, EFP, docs, DVD, EPK, BTS, etc. as well as to indie filmmakers. I have corporate clients who think nothing of dropping a million dollars at a time to pickup three edit bays and five cameras in one fiscal year. Indie filmmakers scrimp and save to try to afford a low end HDV camcorder and a Brevis or Letus. If they had money, they wouldn't be indie filmmakers, they would probably be buying real estate or mutual funds.

RED will sell a decent amount of these cameras, but I don't know if they will have anough appeal to non-filmmakers, especially the complexity of the configurations and the hassle and inconvenience of using the RED workflow. I shoot P2 these days because the workflow works for my projects and for my clients. P2 works for my projects beautifully and it works for clients who hire me and do their own editing. I can deliver the P2 files to them on a drive, lay it off to DV, they can give me their P2 cards to shoot with, it all works, is easy and straightforward.

I can't imagine telling my clients, "we shot this with Scarlet, well, you have to download this software to decode the RED wrapper and you will need to then process the files with this application to turn them into something that can be color corrected, LUTs applied, etc." It wouldn't work. That workflow is for filmmakers but nobody else wants to hassle with it.

Not saying that Jim and Co. should specifically cater to the non-filmmaker market, just cautioning that the indie filmmaker market may not be as large, wealthy and profitable as they think and that puts everyone who invests in this technology at risk in a way. Companies in this business that are much larger and more well funded than RED have gone under, been bought, mis-managed and it is us, the buyers of their products what get screwed in the end. I personally am not afraid of Sony or Panasonic going under anytime soon but RED? Who knows? The future looks bright but we are living in a new economic world that may never return back to "the way things were" as recently as last year.

Dan
 
Well, it still is vaporware. All that we have are specs and conceptual renderings.

The RED ONE was released with a slew of issues. Still the cameras have problems. Honestly, I am right with smelni. They should have revamped the RED ONE. Updated to a CCD chipset at 4K. And I would have purchased. If there was a CCD chipset on the RED ONE - I would buy it today.

Rather, RED released specs on eight different systems. At the same time. I have no idea how they are going to pull it off. One camera is one thing. Most companies release one camera at a time. But to have eight different systems. Five of which I don't even thing can be edited with. Anything over 5K is overkill. I don't honestly believe the processing or storage systems exist to deal with that yet.
 
smelni said:
this does indeed look amazing.

My biggest worry is that when you try to be everything to everyone for everything you tend to get bogged down in tech issues and development.

To be completely honest I would have been really happy to see red one evolve as a singularly amazing camera. I just cant imagine this setup scaling world wide for all the apps it looks like it can support with proper end to end support. Its a whole lot to handle.

just my 2 cents - not being a downer - id love to see all this work. But a really strong rock solid and evolving red one 4K camera would have been more a holy grail then an everything to everyone approach - at least for me
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But it isn't "everything to everyone." It's whatever you want it to be for you; that's the point of the "modular everything" approach.

A product that's "everything for everyone" is a product that integrates as much as possible -- and that's where you run into risky technical ground. The modular approach allows each module to be perfected individually, so that the whole is as strong as possible. And if one component fails, you can get just get that piece serviced or replaced, rather than send in the whole camera to determine what's really wrong with it.
 
Amazing info... Red 3D looks COOL!

The Scarlet will be great... to me it'll make the ultimate documentary camera.... EPIC is well... Epic :)
 
Mattykins said:
Well, it still is vaporware. All that we have are specs and conceptual renderings.

The RED ONE was released with a slew of issues. Still the cameras have problems. Honestly, I am right with smelni. They should have revamped the RED ONE. Updated to a CCD chipset at 4K. And I would have purchased. If there was a CCD chipset on the RED ONE - I would buy it today.

Rather, RED released specs on eight different systems. At the same time. I have no idea how they are going to pull it off. One camera is one thing. Most companies release one camera at a time. But to have eight different systems. Five of which I don't even thing can be edited with. Anything over 5K is overkill. I don't honestly believe the processing or storage systems exist to deal with that yet.
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Which in the world would you change the chipset? The Mysterium is amazing, and makes RED what it is....
 
ydgmdlu said:
But it isn't "everything to everyone." It's whatever you want it to be for you; that's the point of the "modular everything" approach.

A product that's "everything for everyone" is a product that integrates as much as possible -- and that's where you run into risky technical ground. The modular approach allows each module to be perfected individually, so that the whole is as strong as possible. And if one component fails, you can get just get that piece serviced or replaced, rather than send in the whole camera to determine what's really wrong with it.
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i am looking at the entire announcement as one product line which is trying to be everything to everyone. I am sitting here trying to think of anything that has ever been this modular that hasnt run into many more issues then rock solid single devices.

I dunno - im skeptical but hopeful
 
The CMOS based set has problems I don't want to deal with. CMOS is built in with inherent issues. Motion Tracking and matchmoving is next to impossible. The camera can't make any sudden movements. Sure it looks nice (most of the time) - but there are huge problems when it goes to visual post. CMOS is a pain to deal with.

Nothing saying Mysterium could be made into a CCD chipset rather than a CMOS based one. It would make the camera more widely usable, and would let the camera be used with digital effects.
 
Interesting, I actually don't know about the differences in the chipsets... I haven't actually worked on anything effects driven on RED ONE, so I wouldn't really know... either way, I'm excited to see what happens with all this.
 
ydgmdlu said:
By the way, it technically wouldn't be vaporware if it were actually released. Very similar objections and skepticism were raised when the RED One was announced a couple of years ago, and at that time, the company had almost zero credibility. (I still remember one of my film school instructors presumptuously scoffing at it several months before it started shipping.) Well, RED delivered the RED One, exactly as they had promised and in the exact year that they had promised that they would. So why expect any less of RED now? Perspective, please, folks.
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But until you can buy one and take delivery, it is vaporware.

Not saying RED won't deliver, just saying that with their non-commitment on delivery dates and specs and prices, it is a bizarre business paradigm. Imagine if Toyota was this way, "here is the 2009 new lineup of our cars. But we may deliver them in 2011. And we may totally change everything. These are the prices. Maybe. Or not." Toyota would go under in less than a year if they ran their business the way RED and a lot of other companies in our business are running their businesses.

I think Jim and Co. have some great minds and vision, Ted and Graeme and all of the rest of the gang are sharp cookies. But I have seen new, innovative, visionary companies in this business crash and burn (NewTek and Play come to mind) too. I think that the marketing hype machine approach is going to get old with a lot of their potential customers though, and I think that introducing a product line that only appeals to such a small niche like indie filmmakers is a mistake. The phrase "3k for $3k" is going to haunt them for a long time because it became a mantra for no budget indies for all of 2008 and now it doesn't exist.

Dan
 
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Ian-T said:
?? That's a bit of an exaggeration. There are plenty of examples around the Web that shows otherwise.
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Looking okay and being okay are totally different things. Sure, I can matchmove a CMOS set when it's sitting on a tripod or moving slowly. REDs chipset is a rolling shutter. But it scans pretty quickly. So there aren't the crazy HV20 CMOS chip issues. But if there is any slew in the frame. A matchmove or motion track becomes a nightmare. I've worked with it before and it's a pain in the ass. When a vertical line isn't exactly vertical and you are trying to track the motion. You have a problem.

Either way, in my mind, CMOS is an issue. Though I do own a CMOS camera - before I knew about it's issue, I certainly wouldn't buy another one anytime soon.
 
Mattykins said:
Well, it still is vaporware. All that we have are specs and conceptual renderings.
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No, you clearly don't understand what "vaporware" means. What you have said is not the definition of vaporware. If it were, then every product that's announced months ahead of actual shipping would be called vaporware. That practice is widespread in multiple industries, including the auto industry (ex.: Chevy Volt). But that's not the definition of "vaporware," and that's not the reason that the term "vaporware" was coined. It's called "vaporware" because the product fails to be delivered as promised. Yes, the original Scarlet was vaporware because the plan was totally scrapped. But new Scarlet cannot be called "vaporware" yet.

The RED ONE was released with a slew of issues. Still the cameras have problems.
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Did RED promise to deliver a perfectly working, bug-free product?

Honestly, I am right with smelni. They should have revamped the RED ONE. Updated to a CCD chipset at 4K. And I would have purchased. If there was a CCD chipset on the RED ONE - I would buy it today.
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CCDs are not really superior to CMOS chips, nor are they really inferior. They are an alternative, and each has pros and cons. Why should the chip type be the deal-breaker? Are you really that afraid of rolling shutter issues? You do realize that much more expensive HD cameras than the RED One, cameras that Hollywood studios use for big-budget productions, also use CMOS, right? And large CCDs suffer limitations due to power issues, which is why they aren't used very much in the high-end, studio-quality equipment.

Rather, RED released specs on eight different systems. At the same time. I have no idea how they are going to pull it off. One camera is one thing. Most companies release one camera at a time. But to have eight different systems. Five of which I don't even thing can be edited with. Anything over 5K is overkill. I don't honestly believe the processing or storage systems exist to deal with that yet.
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RED did not announce eight different systems. It announced one single system -- the DSMC -- with several different options regarding the sensor. So it's really a lot less difficult to pull off than you seem to think.
 
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