RED CAMERA Prelim. Specs

Glazarus said:
What I'm concerned over is the workflow. . . . The details sounds nice but when doing a movie, having tapes or the film makes you able to batch footage if harddrives crashes. How do we store many hours of filmed footage until the movie is complete?
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I hear you. However, this is essentially the question of an HD workfow in general, really--not unique to Red. Granted, 4k RAW is alot more pungent an issue than, say, DVCPro100, but is essentially the same issue. It will be solved in time. Until then, improvise and enjoy!

Glazarus said:
When working with either film or video (tape), you can do ALOT of takes and keep them all. This is crusual for many movies and if this is going to be 4K onto a harddrive, it will be limited on set. Now how limited will it become? How much more must we pay if we want the workflow and full quality of 35mm, from shooting to editing?
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I don't quite get this. Isn't it the exact opposite? Besides, you would only be limited to the size, quantity, and redundancy of the hard disks you are willing to employ.
 
What I mean is the cost of using 35mm film and using harddrives for keeping ALL shots filmed. If you shoot on film, it costs quite a bit, but if you want to shoot and store 4K material, the harddrives required will go up so much in price that the good parts of shooting digital is lost.
If we are to use RED for making big movies, for the big cinema, a 35 master should be made that can be stored for a longer time then digital media. Such a 35 master should be made from 4K material so that the quality is top notch.

When working with big movies, 4K should stay 4K. For "general" purposes, converting down to 1080p HD is going to work just fine. The only concern I have is how the workflow is gonna be when choosing to stick with 4K.
 
the move away from tape based media is happening.. and it will be a little bit of a learning curve to get used to using drives instead of tape.. but it wont be a financial issue.. it will be actually cheaper to shoot redcode and directly offload onto 3.5" drives than hd tape.
 
The transition to a tapeless (IT) workflow disrupts business models, in many ways like the transition from analog to digital. It took me 6 months to smooth out my workflow with the P2 cards on my HVX. Now I archive everything to 3.5" hard drives on sleds, costs me 43 cents/Gig using drives from ProMax, you could do it for closer to 30cents/G using cheapo drives. I save the static bags, stick address labels on the ends and store them on the shelf like tapes. Hopefully 50 Gig dual layer Blu-Ray optical discs will be commodity items within 18 months for lower costs and longer shelf life. Active projects live on a fast RAID, just like they would if they were digitized from tape.

The issue, for those of us not in LA or NYC is access to deck rentals to create deliverables. This may not be the right thread but if anyone out there can point me to legit standards for digital delivery on hard disk please let me know. Its like the bad old days of early digital pre-press.

Of course the key driver is avoiding the high cost of a tape based workflow that requires expensive decks. Even with decent glass (yes, you can easily spend 6 figures on high end lenses), a Sachler, etc a RedOne based camera package is less than half the cost of a D-5 or HDCAM-SR studio VTR. Pushing pixels is only going to get faster and cheaper.

The RedOne camera is designed for an IT workflow that is infiltrating every link in the production chain other than optics. I expect the next couple of years will see many of the remaining issues resolved because the quality to expense ratio of data driven solutions create a value proposition that cannot be ignored.

For those of you that remain skeptical keep in mind that the announced workflow for the RedOne camera, RedCode codec and RedCine software working together can spit out just about any format you might need. If your post resources are limited then just work in DVCPRO-HD (100) - at least until FCP has native support for RedCode. The idea of working in legit 4K with only 27MB/sec storage requirements feels like the Holy Grail to me.

Blair S. Paulsen
RedOne #19
 
On a lighter note...
I predict actors will have special makeup clauses in their contracts when they see the incredible detail the Red has.:).
 
WHy would they do so unless they already do so for 35mm film. The reason they need such things for HD is not because HD is sharp, but because HD is soft and needed sharpening, and it's that sharpening that brings out nasty false detail.

Graeme
 
Graeme brings up an issue all too common in the brave new world of HD - horrendous violence done to images by "sharpening" them. From the camera head right through to the final display/screen and at several points in between the image is often "improved" based on assumptions that would be funny if it wasn't your image involved. People who tout the superiority of a 35mm film based workflow can avoid this altogether for features shown on film projectors in theaters. Film originated material delivered via DVDs and broadcast suffer from this toxic malady only in the final stages (assuming a proper telecine, DI if used, and experienced colorist) where sharpening is usually limited to the authoring of the master and the display device. Don't get me started with MPEG-2 compression artifacting, it makes my stomach turn. In order to convert the old guard to the new paradigm of a completely digital workflow we need get from sensor to final master with repeatable integrity.

Let's not forget that film has many technical compromises of its own, many of which have been mitigated by extensive efforts and years of refinement - others of which have come to be considered features, rather than flaws (it looks... organic). Most efforts at Electronic Cinematography so far have relied on technologies that were appropriated from broadcast news cameras. The "clean sheet" approach of the Red Team is a good start, to a large degree because they seem to understand the most basic issue - start with a sensor that can create a strong enough data set that things like "sharpening" are not even a consideration. Yes, they have leveraged the R&D done for digital still photography, but that, at least in the short term, had been a big plus. One great thing that Jim seemed to grasp right off was that the big dogs in the biz were so worried about the raw cost of bigger pieces of silicon that they were handicapping their cameras right off the bat. By starting with the s35mm sized chip the RedOne has a huge technical advantage. Could it really have hurt Sony to spend an extra couple of grand, or whatever it would have cost, to put bigger CCDs in the CineAltas? Would the difference between 60k and 65k have really influenced their market penetration? Can somebody tell me why the Dalsa, Viper, et al cost six figures and/or can only be rented when the RedOne is under 20k? Is it just the economies of scale that Red Digital Cinema is using to advantage? Sorry, I must have started channeling Oliver Stone there. My point is that Jim was about making a great camera, not making more money than his success with Oakley had already provided.

I would like to personally thank Jim Jannard for changing the game. Having worked with image aquisition tools from the low end up to the CineAlta I am very excited about being able to tell a story with the kind of powerful imagery I anticipate the RedOne will produce without having to bend to the commercial contraints required by any other topologies north of the HVX-200. The other piece of this equation that should not be forgotten is that the bigger pixel sites mean lower light requirements, which makes it far more realistic to shoot without a big grip truck and crew.

Blair S. Paulsen
RedOne #19
 
The other piece of this equation that should not be forgotten is that the bigger pixel sites mean lower light requirements, which makes it far more realistic to shoot without a big grip truck and crew.
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This along with weight and price led to a sale for me. Making the process more transparent and allowing craft/creativity to flourish (instead of just HUGE budgets and the HUGE ego's to do a little something cool) will raise all of our games to new level. I cannot wait.
 
fantastic post Blair.. welcome to the community, i have a feeling your gonna be a great member here.
 
The fact that I was being humorous was somehow lost in translation.

But I was also basing my observation on comments made by actors when they see themselves broadcast in HD. RED brings it to a whole new level and yes Egos will have to be dealt with, like it or not. And yes Graham, many times actors have clauses in their contracts about how they will look on screen, sometimes the bigger the star, the greater the demands. Some have egos so big, they have requirements for makeup and lighting for in person interviews. (Like Barbara Walters for instance).

But really folks, I was just having some fun.
 
The visionary behind the project is Jim Jannard, who also founded Oakley Sunglasses. Other principal and respected members include Graeme Nattress, Stuart English, and Rob Lohman. There is plenty of information about the RED team, company, and project all over the web; do some searching and you should be able to find droves of answers.
 
Jim has been a cinematographer and photographer for many years, as a hobby, a profession and as a collector. He's got a great eye, and a vision to make this project happen. It's a pleasure to be part of this fantastic team.

Graeme
 
Thanks for the background - I suppose it was a bit lazy but when I visited RED there was not a lot of background info.
This is a very exciting project - but reading through the thread I'm confused by some of the talk about lenses and how much the lens is likely to cost. I have just had a quick look on e-bay and a set of four primes (20, 50, 100 and 135mm) can be had for about USD10,000.
Since this camera is to have a PL mount then some of the 35mm optics from Russia and Ukraine could provide "entry level" lenses. Also people might own the camera and a main lens (say a 35 or 50mm prime) and then hire more/better lenses depending on the subject and intended means of distribution.
Here's a question - what will the practical effect be of using anamorphic lenses and "unsqueezing" in post?
 
Jim, I know the official spec' is not out yet, but is >66dB of dynamic range confirm or it too is subject to change?
 
We feel that >66db would only change in the upward direction (better). David Stump will post his findings in a day or so.

Jim
 
Thank you for the reply.
I don't mean to question your decisions on the design of the system, but why did you go with electronic viewfinder instead of the optical VF? because I know that you're also an accomplished still photography shooter, may be you have some good insight that I'm not seeing
 
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