RED Renames Scarlet - Now "Epic Light"

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My friends and I are audio guys and know next to nothing about this camera stuff. But after a few martinis we like to make predictions about them and you guys anyway. You see we're 5-10 years ahead of you in terms of getting our asses handed to us in the technological sea change department. Back in the 90s we saw warehouses full of $150,000 Mitsubishi 32 track tape machines replaced by thousand dollar Pro Tools and Digital Performer rigs, etc and I don't have to tell you what Napster and friends did to our business. Or we did to ourselves take your pick.

We think the lesson from the 5d is being missed. For us it's come down to good A-D converters and the rest is boutique third party shopping and/or dongles. We think it's about to happen to you and the 5d is proof. Build a great sensor and they will come.You can already use third party Marshall/small hd type monitors with false color and all that focus assist stuff, you already have third party Nanoflash type conversion and storage and perhaps the battery stuff is best left to specialists.We like the idea of HDRx though back when we were fooling around with our manual film cameras we called it bracketing. In other words, when we see these camera companies trying to be all things to all people (and losing valuable time trying to squeeze it all in) it seems like a lot of work which is, in the end, redundant. We foresee the day when Best Buy carries a kick ass state of the art (in 2010 terms) sensor in a box with a lens thrown in for a few hundred dollars. We know because Best Buy has a $200 stocking stuffer this year which is a Pro Tools software package with a USB microphone thrown in. It specs out better than that old Mitsubishi and has more tracks.

Show business. You gotta love it.
 
Barry_Green said:
Well, is Apple any different? Really, deep down? Jobs left, it tanked. Jobs came back, and now it's surpassed Microsoft to become the biggest technology company in the world. When Steve Jobs had his health scare, Apple stock took all sorts of roller-coaster rides. When Jim took a health-related monthlong sabbatical, I'm sure it raised questions along the same lines.
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ive wondered about apple with or without Jobs as well. will apple be less appealing if Jobs wasnt there? if i had to wager a guess it would be...yes but i hope to be wrong if that ever happens. maybe it will be better? who knows. im less and less sure of his commitment to FCP and top end computers these day anyway but im still on board with them and they will still be there when Jobs is gone.

RED is a "one guy company". Jannard always seems stressed and frustrated when he posts something. i can almost see him bouncing off the walls sometimes. its more his state of mind that i question and when and if it will bog him down so much that he will hit a wall and just go f$ck it! i think he opened up a can of worms with all of the "everyone has a voice" thing on reduser. i guess thats his hype machine (and it has worked greatly in many respects) but i think the price to be paid is the apparent annoyance with that same group when your being called out continually for everything you either did or didnt do....and there are LOTS OF DIDNT DO's!

the car company Deloreon (just stopped) comes to mind although circumstances are different, those owners were nonetheless basically left high and dry as i recall.

david
 
The REDoneMX is worth EVERY penny. Every single one. The Epic even more so. You have understand, they are delivering performance that is staggering for less than 50K. Less than a 5 series Beemer, ( which depreciates the instant you start it). This is a camera that can essentially deliver moving DSLR RAW photos @ an amazing number of frame rates, compression depths, resolutions, HDRx, etc.... Think about that for a minute. Any one that knows me knows im not a shill for RED. There are many things i HATE about that camera. However, credit has to be given when credit is due.

Think about how far we've come in 7 years. 7 years ago, i had a DVX100a, couple years later and Wayne Kinney made the SG35 35mm adapter. That was cutting edge low budget cinema technology, nothing short of Film or the P&S technic looked like that kind of image. It was a scratched up spinning clear CD, with a s**tty Canon FD 50mm lens hanging off one end, and a DVX100a on the other. I bought that thing from him for like 400$. Now 5 years later we are bitching and moaning about the "scarlet" might cost a little more... CMON! be grateful that features like HDRx and 5k resolution will potentially cost less than a Honda Civic. ( except this time the 15k+ you spend will make you money)

The Epic lite will probably fall into the same price bracket as the original REDone, 17,500 + accessories.
 
But after a few martinis we like to make predictions about them and you guys anyway. You see we're 5-10 years ahead of you in terms of getting our asses handed to us in the technological sea change department...We foresee the day when Best Buy carries a kick ass state of the art (in 2010 terms) sensor in a box with a lens thrown in for a few hundred dollars.
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that must be one hell of a martini, ;)
Things do change but not this one, your prediction is not happening in our lifetime, why?
Physics... According to it: " In the physics of photon counting, the noise in the signal is equal to the square root of the number of photons"
That s the end of the discussion. That means "a kick ass state of the art sensor in a box" will require a lot of photon that will ultimately require using more finite & an expensive source: "Silicon"
Now there are few electronic experts on this forum, hope they chime in. Economy of scale will keep bringing the cost down at certain intervals, but not for the "a kick ass state of the art sensor"
Then there is the lens part of the image making; "a kick ass state of the art sensor in a box" will need a half decent glass, ultimately another finite source; silicate & high labour.
What about a magic software, kind of like instant HD that converts any recorded image into a superb quality signal again? We hit the physics(more of sampling laws) barrier again. Not happening.

NOTE: Since "a kick ass state of the art" is a relative term and its meaning depends on your expectation of quality, one would also argue that revolution you're talking already happened. You could buy a $50 Apitec HD recorder if you consider it "a kick ass state of the art" product.
Lets face it, if you cant make a captivating movie with a $50 camcorder, you'll never make it with a handmade $60K Epic-w(hatever)
 
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Billy Barber said:
My friends and I are audio guys and know next to nothing about this camera stuff. But after a few martinis we like to make predictions about them and you guys anyway. You see we're 5-10 years ahead of you in terms of getting our asses handed to us in the technological sea change department. Back in the 90s we saw warehouses full of $150,000 Mitsubishi 32 track tape machines replaced by thousand dollar Pro Tools and Digital Performer rigs, etc and I don't have to tell you what Napster and friends did to our business. Or we did to ourselves take your pick.

We think the lesson from the 5d is being missed. For us it's come down to good A-D converters and the rest is boutique third party shopping and/or dongles. We think it's about to happen to you and the 5d is proof. Build a great sensor and they will come.You can already use third party Marshall/small hd type monitors with false color and all that focus assist stuff, you already have third party Nanoflash type conversion and storage and perhaps the battery stuff is best left to specialists.We like the idea of HDRx though back when we were fooling around with our manual film cameras we called it bracketing. In other words, when we see these camera companies trying to be all things to all people (and losing valuable time trying to squeeze it all in) it seems like a lot of work which is, in the end, redundant. We foresee the day when Best Buy carries a kick ass state of the art (in 2010 terms) sensor in a box with a lens thrown in for a few hundred dollars. We know because Best Buy has a $200 stocking stuffer this year which is a Pro Tools software package with a USB microphone thrown in. It specs out better than that old Mitsubishi and has more tracks.

Show business. You gotta love it.
Click to expand...


Reason took away my Roland JV-1080, my mixers, my Otari Radar, all my gear. Made it worth nothing in a months. Five-Ten years after that I hear this, "Tarek, you don't have to play a musical instrument to be a musician," (I swear, from someone high up in the music scene here in Lebanon). I then hung up my headphones and started shooting super8mm. 19 years doing music related sound. Adat XTs, DA-88's, all gone. Mastering to CD, all gone. Now anyone with 500 bucks is a musician.

I totally know how you feel, but there's always this ray of light from the sky once in a blue moon when a 60-year old guitarist walks into the coffee shop and says, any one of you kids know how to get this on computer for me, whipping out a reel.

Again, in the short run, it feels like crap. But in the long run, when it's all shot to hell, and no one's making money with the Best Buy stuff cause its saturated, the ONLY way to make money in music will be to get up on stage, and shut everyone up with your guitar/drums/bass, whichever.

So yeah. It'll come down to my god everyone's a DP. Then one day, someone will place a light somewhere really special, and it'll be about where you put your lights/mic/etc.

It's a cycle. And yes, Reason took everything away. That said I love reason. Logic is really driving me mad on the other hand.
 
VGurcu said:
that must be one hell of a martini, ;)
Things do change but not this one, your prediction is not happening in our lifetime, why?
Physics... According to it: " In the physics of photon counting, the noise in the signal is equal to the square root of the number of photons"
That s the end of the discussion. That means "a kick ass state of the art sensor in a box" will require a lot of photon that will ultimately require using more finite & an expensive source: (hatever)[/QUOTE

Ahem - who knows how soon this may trickle down but this is interesting http://www.tomshardware.com/news/black-silicon-photography,6485.html
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I think the reality here is that the technology in the prosumer market is moving so fast now that the real question becomes how much money do you need to spend to meet your needs?

That is why the this camera keeps repositioning itself. It must by definition being able to meet certain needs in a way that can't be found elsewhere.

As it happens the kind of needs being met by the new specs of this camera fall much more into a pro market than before.

The price will follow accordingly.
 
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Well, i'm excited to see the footage that will come out from the first handful of epic-Ms in jan/feb. Will i be able to afford the "new" epic-L? Probably not, or not now at least, but I'm glad that camera in that size and those features exist so I can still use it if I need to. I don't know what's the point of getting affected by anything else except the camera itself.
 
To me, this entire process rings almost exactly like George Broussard's disaster. Wired ran a great article last year about this.

It started as a single revolutionary product that created success, fame, and a lot of money for Broussard. That combined with his obsessive need to out-do himself, spelled the end for everything. Any time he got close to releasing the next version, he'd hear about new technologies on the horizon, or competitors who might out-do him, and so each time he'd order major revisions. Because he wasn't accountable on deadlines or money to a large degree, the vicious cycle kept on going.

It seems that a failure to disappoint is what caused all of the revisions and delays. But what happened is that after twelve years of this, they finally went bankrupt. No next version was ever released, and countless fans held their breath for nothing.

I'm talking, of course, not about a camera but a video game: Duke Nukem Forever. And I'm sure there are plenty of differences between Jannard and Broussard, but the heart of the story seems to me very similar. Obviously RED is creating a product for a moving target industry which has to be incredibly difficult. But so was Broussard with Duke Nukem, and that's the way any technological development is, inherently. You can't develop a product by requiring it to fit into constantly-changing consumer expectations. It'll never get finished that way.

Obviously I don't work at RED and don't know the true story. But reading about the story at Duke Nukem gave a great insight into how a company can drown itself by shifting focus to stay "the best".

My guess is that RED is scared by the developments from the likes of HDSLR/AF100/F3, and as a result they're constantly shifting focus. And you know what -- maybe that's a good thing. Maybe those cameras have eaten "Scarlet"s old market and it would have been a failure as a result. We'll never know. But as a practice, changing game plans part-way through is dangerous if not suicidal. Because they can't keep doing that forever. At some point they have to release something, even if it's not as revolutionary as they'd dream it to be.

Thoughts? Does the story of Duke Nukem rightfully compare or is it a completely different ballgame?
 
Red will only last if Jim Jannard steps back from the marking and promotions, and product release date announcements...They need adults up there with patience and discipline...Just the other day he claimed the s35 scarlet would be out by April...a few days later the s35 scarlet doesn't even exist anymore!... Please I would never invest in a company run this way..."billionaire genius" or not...
 
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carlweston said:
Red will only last if Jim Jannard steps back from the marking and promotions, and product release date announcements...They need adults up there with patience...Just the other day he claimed the s35 scarlet would be out by April...a few days later the s35 scarlet doesn't even exist anymore!... Please I would never invest in a company run this way..."billionaire genius" or not...
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http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=52300
 
Well the technology is and isn't moving fast. We are seeing a plethora of new models and the emergence of large sensor motion cameras or hybrids across the whole still and video market price range. There are lots of choices but so far no one else is moving beyond Mpeg-2 /4/ AVC HD video type codecs in the sub $20k space.

I don't take much from the name change other than separating the 2/3" class cameras from the S35 class cameras. Scarlet fixed and interchangeable 2/3" are still Scarlets.

Upping the performance of "Epic LT" to include HDRx will have an impact on price just as it did for the 2/3" models. We don't know yet how much that will be but I expect it will be price competitive with the F3 for a basic package. The price for the side SSD module just came down $1k, so all of the new models just got a thousand dollars cheaper on that side of the equation.

They will still be modestly priced cameras considering their performance and features. The distinction between HD video and high resolution RAW digital cinema acquisition will be even more evident once Epic is in the market.

Red does not have to be all things to all people to have a very successful and profitable business. They are making rational choices about just where they need to fall in the wider market.
 
AGAIN!!! Just the other day he claimed the s35 scarlet would be out by April...a few days later the s35 scarlet doesn't even exist anymore!...
 
carlweston said:
mean's absolutely nothing!...more films will be shot with the arri alexa next year than the red1 an epic combined!...more jobs will be taken away from the red1 and epic by the sony F3, panasonic AF-100, 7D, 5D next year too!...lol
....you don't need to rent two Arri Alexa's on a one camera shoot either!
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Well those are going to be very busy Alexa's considering there will only be a few hundred of them compared to 8000+ Red 1's. I think you are quite wrong in your estimates at least as regards both major and indie features that get theatrical distribution. Red was the digital camera of choice by about a 10:1 ratio for films marketed at AFM this year. Alexa seems more aimed at high end TV production.
 
TigerFX said:
Thoughts? Does the story of Duke Nukem rightfully compare or is it a completely different ballgame?
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It does seem eerily similar, but there are some differences. RED is in reality pretty close to shipping real hardware. Also, hardware is involved and all its associated tooling, not just software, so they're pretty much committed to getting this done. Jannard has a lot more money than $20M so they won't run out of funds soon. The Hobbit announcement also made things a lot clearer. There must be intense pressure right now to get Epic out because some big names are planning to use it. This could be good and bad because the engineers are now under the gun to release. So this is why they're releasing with 95% enabled!

As for RED's future, anything could happen. They could end up as a small player or they could just be retreating now to regroup and come back and fight in a different way. Everything could change if they shipped a stripped down 1080/60P camera, APS-C/S35 size and license an off-the-shelf 4:2:2 codec and sell the thing for $5K or less (if it can be done). This camera would do very well against the F3, AF100 and even the DSLRs. Huge demand is pent up right now for something like this at this price point.

But then this would kill their 2/3" Scarlet that they've already spent developing and possibly the Epic Lite if people would rather save their money and not go for 5K. It would also be against their ideals that 1080 is not good enough and that REDCODE and RAW is better. I don't know if they will ever be willing to let go of those ideals. Also, it seems like they don't have the engineering capacity to do this. They seem way too busy with what's already on their plates and by the time they do get something like this out, the other camera guys will have new models out. Jannard really picked a hard market to compete in.

carlweston said:
red is king of the indies, I'm talking about the major studio films.
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Alexa is doing pretty well in Hollywood feature films: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/alexa-digital-camera-choice-hollywood-46654
 
Piolet said:
Jannard has a lot more money than $20M so they won't run out of funds soon.
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I think your missing the point here. It's not about running out of money, it's that too much money can cloud the decision making process.

From the article:
Broussard was also cursed with money.
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Broussard’s financial freedom had cut him off from all discipline. He could delay making the tough calls, seemingly forever.
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Constant delay's. A perfectionist at the helm. Yes, this all sounds very familiar.
 
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