Epic and Scarlet release in 2010

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So, we start with the most affordable Scarlet fixed lens $4750 with redcode 42.

First option: 128 GB SSD, formatted space is probably about 119GB which is 47minutes at 42MB/sec.

If 47minutes is enough, that's $1500 for SSD. Total cost $6,450 with SSD reader.

If you need 94 minutes, that $3,000 for SSD. Total cost is $7,950 with SSD reader.

the $300 CF is even more expensive for these capacities.

So, the cheapest Scarlet is now a $8,000 camera and that's without any addons.



Now lets see an EPIC FF35:

It records at 225MB/sec.

Assuming the $1,500 1.8" SSD can do 225MB/sec write, it can hold about 9minutes of footage.

The 90 minutes will cost $15,000.



Is any of these cameras compatible with a HDD based solution?
 
Btw, the basis for the 90minute requirement is that in the film shooting situation, these cameras will be used for a 10 working day schedule at a 10:1 ratio, which is 90minutes/day. General use of a camera also requires at least 90minutes. How many people go to a shoot with only one 60min DV tape in their bag?
 
There is also the CF offloading scenario for the Reds with lower data rates (Redcode42). Assuming a normal laptop with a good disk and a very good reader, offloading should be realtime at 42MB/sec. Two CF cards and a laptop will do the job, but 3 is safer, so $600 to $900 + a card reader, I assume one has a laptop with enough storage space.

But offloading must be handled day in and day out. The hassle is time and time is money. Assuming 2 working days per week and a 2 year use of the camera (200days), the savings over the 2x128GB SSDs for the fixed lens scarlet are:

$3,000-$600=$2400/200=$12 per day.

Offloading is potentially dangerous business, you will have the material on a spinning laptop disk somewhere on the set for quite a lot of time, there is also room for mistakes. Someone has to invest time to start the offloading and verify the transfers before cards are erased. The 128GB disks are more practical and certainly worth $12 a day vs the 16GB CF cards.
 
Working with data stored on solid state media has become pretty common these days, and will only become more common as time goes on. It does still remain cost-prohibitive for some in the "prosumer" (say the 4-10k) price bracket...

Also, for anyone using P2 or SxS or RED, etc for the last several years, we are used to having to deal with smaller storage and shortened recording times, as well as regular offloading as part of a shoot... One of the downsides of adopting young technologies So, none of this really seems to foreign... a few cards and an on-site backup solution is how it has been done for several years now.

Things will continue to move to solid state and our recordings stored as data, rather than one-time use media (tapes, etc). And, as it becomes more and more common, media becomes faster, larger, and more inexpensive...

Many have dealt with the drawbacks for several years now. But, within the next couple of years, media will probably be large enough, fast enough, and inexpensive enough that the present day downsides of ss media will be no more. It's already incredibly less expensive than it was when 8 gig P2 cards cost 1200 bucks a pop for 8 minutes of 1080, for example.

Data based workflow, and recording to some type of solid state media is fast becoming the norm (or, isn't it already?)... from the lowest-end camcorders, to much more expensive, professionally targeted systems. Most of the drawbacks of it will fade away as it continues to mature and storage prices continue to go down.
 
Jason Ramsey said:
Working with data stored on solid state media has become pretty common these days, and will only become more common as time goes on. It does still remain cost-prohibitive for some in the "prosumer" (say the 4-10k) price bracket...

Also, for anyone using P2 or SxS or RED, etc for the last several years, we are used to having to deal with smaller storage and shortened recording times, as well as regular offloading as part of a shoot... One of the downsides of adopting young technologies So, none of this really seems to foreign... a few cards and an on-site backup solution is how it has been done for several years now.

Things will continue to move to solid state and our recordings stored as data, rather than one-time use media (tapes, etc). And, as it becomes more and more common, media becomes faster, larger, and more inexpensive...

Many have dealt with the drawbacks for several years now. But, within the next couple of years, media will probably be large enough, fast enough, and inexpensive enough that the present day downsides of ss media will be no more. It's already incredibly less expensive than it was when 8 gig P2 cards cost 1200 bucks a pop for 8 minutes of 1080, for example.

Data based workflow, and recording to some type of solid state media is fast becoming the norm (or, isn't it already?)... from the lowest-end camcorders, to much more expensive, professionally targeted systems. Most of the drawbacks of it will fade away as it continues to mature and storage prices continue to go down.
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Yes, but we are dealing with lots of data here, it's 336 to 1800mbits for the new Red models and 600 to 1200 mbits for other digital cinema cameras. Offloading 24mbit or 35 or even 100mbits is much simpler/faster/more affordable.

The good SSDs (SLC) are not dropping in price much. It's the MLC improvements that made high speed SSD media affordable. SSD prices certainly do not drop as fast as we would hope.
 
As an example:

Intel X25-E SLC on pricegrabber, in 5 months it started at $730 and ended to $720.

Intel X25-M MLC from $260 to $230.

OCZ SLC from $1,430 to $1,330.

While a 2.5" HD went from $70 to $45.
 
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Seems lots of new techs and storage devices started very expensive... had only gradual price drops for the first while.... but, eventually... the prices end up dropping through the floor (relatively speaking) in short order after the product begins to see mass adoption. SSD still isn't that common yet...

Using SSD as a recording media is definitely not common.... yet... The early adopters pay more... I just don't see this bottleneck remaining for much longer though... meaning within a couple of years. By then, solid state recording media in one form or another will be dang near common place, imo and approachable financially from the bottom end on up to the top. With large storage, fast read/writes and a comfortable price point.

However, for anyone buying dedicated recording media (and not off the shelf commodity media)... we will always pay more... Hopefully, included in that premium will be the peace of mind of having dang near bullet-proof media though.
 
Jason Ramsey said:
Seems lots of new techs and storage devices started very expensive... had only gradual price drops for the first while.... but, eventually... the prices end up dropping through the floor (relatively speaking) in short order after the product begins to see mass adoption. SSD still isn't that common yet...
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I believe the solid state prices will remain high because only consumer demand can accelerate the fall. A camcorder or a still camera does not really create demand. A 4gb or 8gb card covers a still camera quite well and many consumer camcorders use HDD. The real high volume use and the high gigabytes are in computers. I don't see consumers choosing SSD vs HDD for computers when the price is 20x and 2.5" disks are doing 100 to 50mb/sec. The HDD speed is enough for any use. Consumers want cheap capacity for mp3, videos etc and hard disk drives cover that perfectly well. In the average home and including all uses, the HDD to SSD storage ratio is too high.
 
Otis Grapsas said:
A camcorder or a still camera does not really create demand. A 4gb or 8gb card covers a still camera quite well and many consumer camcorders use HDD.
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Very true, at least for the time being.

Otis Grapsas said:
The real high volume use and the high gigabytes are in computers. I don't see consumers choosing SSD vs HDD for computers when the price is 20x and 2.5" disks are doing 100 to 50mb/sec.
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This is, in part, true. At least so I think.

There will, however, always be consumers who demand more of their product both in a professional and/or personal situation. These people will ultimately provide the coin necessary to make a technology ubiquitous. Police officers, EMTs, construction workers, the military, on-the-road journalists...all of these people benefit from and are willing to pay for the solid state nature of SSD. 3D artists, gamers, overclockers, and computer/tech enthusiasts all benefit from the potential for higher speed out of a single drive and, in many cases, are willing to pay for it.

And then there is the fact that consumers begin to lose the choice - companies are increasingly offering SSD drives in laptops and consumer products. With benefits some consumers are willing to pay for - increased speed, increased reliability, increased battery life.

Not to mention the use of SSD (though not in a packaged 2.5" form) in virtually every mobile device now, whether you want it or not. Everything consumer is always getting thinner - mp3 players, phones, TVs, computers, etc - and spinning disks just can't keep up.

Otis Grapsas said:
The HDD speed is enough for any use. Consumers want cheap capacity for mp3, videos etc and hard disk drives cover that perfectly well. In the average home and including all uses, the HDD to SSD storage ratio is too high.
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I have faith that just as banks of regenerative capacitor memory were replaced by rooms full of huge spinning rolls of magnetic tape, which were replaced by 8-inch floppies which in turn became 5 1/4-inch floppies and then 3 1/2-inch floppies, and as RAM was eventually replaced by a massive hard drive with almost a MB of storage, which was replaced by a 2.5" hard drive with orders of magnitude more storage...the current HDD, great though it is, will become superseded by SSD drives. And SSD will undoubtedly be overtaken by any number of currently experimental solutions.

Every generation of storage advances has carried - at first - high cost for gains perceived only by those who were at the limit of their technology. The general populace has always wondered - "Why would a personal computer need something like a HDD when my small stack of floppy disks work just fine? And are they kidding with that price?"

Later, as technology in general advanced, those gains became beneficial to the public at large, and demand increases, price falls, and everyone buys in. Whether they want to or not - a lot of the time it's simply a matter of a single large manufacturer changing the "industry standard" and deciding to use some nature of SSDs as standard feature in their products and the deed is done.
 
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Well the storage dilemma is rather moot when, with every passing month, the Scarlet becomes less relevant to the marketplace.

Clearly Canon has something up their sleeves with the next 5D, and there is the talk that a camcorder- like body camera exists with the large sensor.

Every month that goes by thousands more people are buying other cameras, 5D, EX1-R, you name it. People are making an investment in a system, with the 5D the are buying extra batteries, CF cards, EOS lenses, etc... For anyone to think that the small indie guy is going to just pitch things and jump to Scarlet is naive.


Most people (who are not supported by their mother ) need to rationalize their investments, and right now there is a HUGE amount of work being shot with the 5D/7D. For these jobs, 1080p/24 is just fine, nobody is looking for HDCAM-SR or they would just rent an F900/950.


I dont see this huge migration of people to Scarlet at this point, the party is well under way. There is one possibility though, and that is if Canon or Sony drop the ball. If some of the 5D/7D problems are not resolved in the next model, they too will be missing an opportunity to keep people away from RED.


While I admire Jim's drive, I have seen a side of them that will not under any circumstances survive the broad consumer market.

I can tell you right now that people will NOT be interested in beta testing their sensors, goofing with updates on a weekly basis, or otherwise participating in a "program" as a "community". The current RED One crowd might like the access to tech and the evolution of the firmware to root out issues, but this kind of model will not work once there are 50,000 of these Scarlets on the market. It will be a tsunami of tech support which they wont be able to handle. The Scarlet must be right from the moment it hits the shelves, no "work in progress" crap. I am not a tester, especially when I am paying for the equipment and have customers over my shoulder. Testers get paid to test, we get paid to deliver finished jobs.


Lastly, and this is pure speculation, but 2011 is shaping up to be a VERY shaky financial year, everyone in the finance industry knows it is coming. At this rate, there will be very little "play" money for people, capital will be even harder to raise (so shoot with what you've got!) people are going to sit on their money even more, yearly deductions in business investment are going to drop to 1/10th their current rate on January 1st , 2011, and capital gains taxes almost triple.
 
Cris Daniels said:
I can tell you right now that people will NOT be interested in beta testing their sensors, goofing with updates on a weekly basis, or otherwise participating in a "program" as a "community". The current RED One crowd might like the access to tech and the evolution of the firmware to root out issues, but this kind of model will not work once there are 50,000 of these Scarlets on the market. It will be a tsunami of tech support which they wont be able to handle. The Scarlet must be right from the moment it hits the shelves, no "work in progress" crap. I am not a tester, especially when I am paying for the equipment and have customers over my shoulder. Testers get paid to test, we get paid to deliver finished jobs.
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I absolute agree with this, and sincerely hope that RED is living up to their promise to deliver EPIC and Scarlet as true "finished products" - small firmware fixes and beneficial updates aside (as with any camera manufacturer, Panasonic, Canon, etc.).

I'm all for Canon making real cameras out of the DSLRs. But I just hope they do it in a way that really competes. A 5DMKII or 7D or GH-13 with timecode and a couple of XLRs is not what I want to step up to.
 
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Cris Daniels said:
The current RED One crowd might like the access to tech and the evolution of the firmware to root out issues, but this kind of model will not work once there are 50,000 of these Scarlets on the market. It will be a tsunami of tech support which they wont be able to handle.
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They can simply hire according to growth like most businesses do. Most of the support issues do not even reach the manufacturer these days, they are handled on a forum by other users.
 
This works pretty well for Microsoft since decades :)
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oh dont get me started about how Macs "never crash".........


They can simply hire according to growth like most businesses do. Most of the support issues do not even reach the manufacturer these days, they are handled on a forum by other users.
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Canon, Sony, all these companies already have a built in support network before the products launch. That the glitch, that you can't easily build these support teams on the fly, and the people on the support teams need to be savvy, especially on something like Red which is fairly advanced, not some clueless jerk who reads from a PDF "please turn off the camera and turn it back on, does it work now?".

When I really need help from Sony I call their Production Support team, staffed by real experts who I can talk to on the phone, who have the camera in their hands . The Internet is full of bad advice (aka things like shooting the 5D with these ridiculous ultra flat curves ), so you cant rely on the net to solve your support woes thats for sure.

People using the cameras in production call support, they dont log onto the net hoping to find a piece of advice, often emanating from someone who doesn't even own the equipment in question.

Not trying to be so negative, and I hope the Scarlet comes out soon, and sells in great number. I would buy one of it comes out by the end of this year as a finished product, as long as the image is that much better than what is already out there and all the extras are not proprietary.
 
RED do not manufacture SSD drives, so clearly they have a supplier and modify them from what is available now. 1500G rated SSD, 128GB.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820233087

All of Red's certified media, CF and SSD are SLC based, not MLC. The drop in price for the new SSD modules from $4500 for the original Red RAM introduced two years ago gives and indication where practical storage costs are headed.
 
Cris Daniels said:
Canon, Sony, all these companies already have a built in support network before the products launch. That the glitch, that you can't easily build these support teams on the fly, and the people on the support teams need to be savvy, especially on something like Red which is fairly advanced, not some clueless jerk who reads from a PDF "please turn off the camera and turn it back on, does it work now?".
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Small companies with one or two products have many advantages over a large company. The actual designers are in house, nobody has to learn the product from a book and they don't have to travel to take seminars, it's a very efficient process. Training for one model is much faster than training for 20 different models.
 
there was a thread about it... but, that was not a clear statement of release dates. that was merely a rsponse to a question "IF everything goes according to plan"...
 
Jason Ramsey said:
there was a thread about it... but, that was not a clear statement of release dates. that was merely a rsponse to a question "IF everything goes according to plan"...
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Well, I must concur on this with you. Jim announced today Soderbergh will shoot with Epic...Tatoo for a feature (Contagion) nowadays in pre-production with Oct 21 2011 as release date. I'm afraid he wouldn't make mention of Tatoo if so many units could be in hands of many by December as previously said.
 
Postmaster said:
This works pretty well for Microsoft since decades :)

Frank
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all microsoft EVER had to do is offer a SOLID version of ANY operating system, and they would have crushed apple. I use windows to edit every day, and i must say our 2 editing/rendering machines we DARE NOT update anything lest it upset the tenuous workflows, but still costs less than apple alternatives.
 
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