RED Switch/Mix

S

sonisfear

Well-known member
To the RED team;

Any thoughts on building a basic but quality RED video switcher that could output to redcine with a minium resolution of 1080P?

This would allow the operator to shoot with say four red cams digitally mix within RED switch and output only one mixed stream to hard drive.
 
Why should this be a RED team project as opposed to third party solutions like Snell & Wilcox or Black Magic Design?

Are you wanting a switcher/genlock for RAW?
 
Good point Roxco ..okay anybody thinking of making a RED compatible video mixer that could handle ingest at least four RED RAW or REDCODE feeds and output 1080p,1080i, 720p live and record the mixed feed to RED drive.

I was hoping for more than just genlock but an actual raw data stream of 4k, 2k, etc RED RAW data stream so that the recorded data is as good as a data stream that cam from one RED cam.


The reason?
-live event production
-faster production of multicam shoots for film
-television prodution
-its cool
 
Why not record both onto the cameras, and take HD-SDI out from the cameras into a mixer?

For film-style productions, this will work and no changes would need to be made.
For television production, taking HD-SDI off the camera would be fine. Hopefully third party vendors would provide support for things like tally lights.
 
It's not really looking to become a live production camera.

A camera in a multi-cam situation needs much more than a good quality video output.

Ok, so we have Genlock promised, so that we can sync the cameras. Cool.
But A studio camera also nees a CCU (Camera Control Unit) that allows one person to "rack" all the cameras from the control room / truck to match. This means remote control of all camera functions except actually moving, zooming and focusing.

No remote Iris control alone is enough to kill the idea. Them mix in other needs like: Tally to camera, 2-way communication on 2 channels, return "program" video for the oprator, and RED one is just lacking too much to be a viable multicamera camera head. Plus all the other stuff; return Program audio, IFB audio to talent, Prompter retun video. .. In fact, RED ONE doesn't even have any one camera cableing interface, but rather individual signal connectors. You could make adapter to combine some of them, but it's a far cry from built in Triax, which is prety much the worldwide standard for multicamera production.


It's a digital cinema camera, not a live production camera. There is no need to even worry about a Video mixer or other studio equipment to support it, not untill the camera is built for that environment.

- Mikko
 
mikkowilson said:
It's not really looking to become a live production camera.
Click to expand...

Granted but that does not mean it won't be used as such successfully. I can see a situation where the CEO wants to be put up on the projector at better than HD quality and some one will hook up a few REDs with a computer controlled BOB.

All that triax and IFB is necessary for sports and news, but for video reinforcement a few REDs might be really suite. As for CCU's, they are not as necessary as they once were. Solid state sensors tend to match and stay matched pretty well throughout the day.

Guerrilla Video is alive and well!
 
No Live Multicam?

No Live Multicam?

Based on what the Red Team has told us so far about the RedOne camera it would be virtually impossible to integrate the first shipping models into a standard live multicam environment, fair enough. I do not share the opinion that the Red Digital Cinema Camera Company has no interest in that market. Once there is a B4 mount option and a fiber based pipe coming out of the rig that can run several hundred meters I think putting together a remote package that uses RedOne bodies will be viable. I imagine the first implementations will be for concerts which could feed HD-SDI for a line cut and be isoed to RedDrive mags for later post. Why go to that trouble when 1080 is the highest ATSC format in use? Asset longevity. Bands break up, the members get old or die but a seminal concert from their heyday could be a valuable library item someday. While it may be a decade or more before the general market content delivery infrastructure for moving images passes the 4k mark that day will come.

Blair S. Paulsen
RedOne #19
 
Roxco said:
All that triax and IFB is necessary for sports and news, but for video reinforcement a few REDs might be really suite. As for CCU's, they are not as necessary as they once were. Solid state sensors tend to match and stay matched pretty well throughout the day.

Guerrilla Video is alive and well!
Click to expand...

The corporate example you gave is far from Guerrilla.

Anywhere where you have to work fast, Triax is indispensable. Time = Money.

And with the detail accuracy of HD, and 2K/4K, proper camera matching is more critical than ever. Camera shading (using the CCU) is a critical component in any production. So important that in larger events, generally there are multiple shaders as the job is busy enough (in today's solid state world...) that one shader can only manage up to about 8 cams at a time. CCU, or RCU, control is critical for proper multicamera work.

- Mikko ... standing by his comment that RED is a Cinema camera, not a Studio camera-head
 
Studio?

Studio?

Its not our current focus, but creating a studio configuration is not that hard. Key elements are remote iris control, CCU, genlock and tally. Utilize the RAW Data Port to send uncompressed RAW sensor data to a remoted CCU and you can perform camera matching, use the same optical cable can carry back any desired audio, tally, video, lens control signals via an appropriate adaptor.

Again this is not our current focus, but this type of work has already been done for other camcorders, the main difference with RED being that the RGB processsing is best performed in a CCU/DSP combined head end, and not in the camera head under CCU control.
 
Sorry Mikko I'm a little older and forgot that Guerilla Video is identified with radical low budget films. I was meaning "guerilla" in terms of unconventional methods and tactics which is what a Multicam RED solution would be today, but as I see from a few other's thoughts, it's not too far out there.

I was thinking the corporate event was indoors and the podium lighting would be fairly dull and unchanging and I'd have two hours to match the cameras - and yes I do believe in the tooth fairy! Triax is great, but hopefully we can charge the client more for the higher quality images even if they are not perfectly matched minute by minute.

Or maybe down the road Graeme will have a encoder matching app that compares the incoming RAW and makes them "perfectly' pleasing to the blink of the human eye.

Rosco
 
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Similar threads

Similar threads

The discussion of ENG/EFP applications covers many of the same issues in the Switch/Mix thread. I actually posted there today covering several aspects that Stuart and others adressed here. IMHO the suitability of the RedOne for any mainstream application will likely be resolved by purpose built interface solutions that leverage the image quality of the RedOne into that space.

Blair S. Paulsen
RedOne #19
 
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