Take that Sony!

Stephen Williams said:
Hi,

I don't think Sony ever made any money from Digital Cinematography!

Stephen
Click to expand...
Hi Stephen,

Sony is the worldwide market leader for digital cinematography, they sold well over 27.000 units.

http://www.ibc.org/cgi-bin/ibc_dailynews_cms.cgi?db_id=23459&issue=3

HDCAM and HDCAM SR are -the- workhorses of digital cinematography today.

Our company alone, and we are a small company in that league, bought for ~400K digital cinema gear from sony. Anyhow, i know first hand several german competitors who invested several millions in sony gear within the recent 36 months, i dob´t know a single one who invested as much (except light) in arri or aaton or GV.

Furthermore, Panavision is using sony technolgy, even the genesis is mainly sony design, including VTR, and therefore indirect sony revenue. i do´t know if panavision is manufacturing the genesis, but i would guess that its rather build in a sony fab.

so, i would be rather surprised if sony, especially given the near-monopolistic prices, didn´t make big bucks in that area.

and yes, 1080p is cinematic reality since years. Superman, Sin City, Star Wars, Sky Captain just to name a few beginning with "S" to fit "Sony".

These 4 movies btw show the spectrum Sony covers: in the Order as the titles: Genesis, F950 to uncompressed disk, Sony Cam to HDCAM SR, F900 to HDCAM. Superman alone involved 8 cameras and peripherals.

Where sony isn´t doing to well, as of now, is digital projection and servers. XDC & christie take the mayority of the market, which mainly went 2K for the cinemas, sony 4k didn´t see huge demand so far.

christie has well over 4000 digital cinema screens installed/on order, sony has no figures published, but i would guestimate <150 screens worldwide.

that btw underlines our experience here at laguun - the audience can hardly differentiate 1080p, 2K and even 4K projected once the image is running. 4k however gives you a DRAMATIC increase in options and flexibility in post (and computing power needed).

jan
 
laguun said:
Hi Stephen,

Sony is the worldwide market leader for digital cinematography, they sold well over 27.000 units.


HDCAM and HDCAM SR are -the- workhorses of digital cinematography today.

jan
Click to expand...

Hi Jan,

Tell their share holders! In February 2000 they traded over $150 split adjusted, today under $41. Thats some destruction of share holder value.

Stephen
 
RED is revolution - no doubt. I can just imagine what's going on in the SPE living room right about now as Rodriguez comes home to complain that his releasing studio hasn't even heard of the buzz-worthy ROJO system.

Despite what our blessed friends at BBC have and have not adopted as an acceptable tapeless format, I'd point to the fact that they still think 16mm is a tapeless format and wished it was still feasible to shoot news on it.

Don't write of XDCam - it's here, it's already widely deployed. It isn't in the same league as the HVX as far as my unscientific comparison proved, but it is simply ignorant to say that it is a failed format. To the contrary, it is becoming the predominant HD recording format in news television, reality and documentary as we speak.

e
 
Stephen Williams said:
Hi Jan,

Tell their share holders! In February 2000 they traded over $150 split adjusted, today under $41. Thats some destruction of share holder value.

Stephen
Click to expand...
Hello Stephen,

yes, i agree, sony is not in its best historical shape. but we should avoid mixing topics. we are talking digital cinematography, sony is the undisputed #1 for this since ~1999, 27000+ units shipped vs. 1000 orders @ red, maybe 20 @ arri etc speak a clear language. In this area, they doing quite ok.

however, some of the problems sony is facing right now are:

- hard price competition on consumer electronics (noname dvdplayers, korea, china & taiwan manufacturing etc)
- missed several trends / overestimated own market penetration power (atrac vs mp3, memory stick vs mc etc)
- problematic delays in gaming systems (PS3 almost one year late)
- sony picture & sony music could do QUITE a bit better
- manufacturing/r&d desaster in batteries market

and sony has become a behemont, that is for sure.

however, as a long-time user of sony broadcast & cinealta gear, i have to say that their products here are impressive.

what i hope is that reds competition forces sony to change their traingualar marketing and their intentional crippling of their product - they only can do that as they have a near monopoly on several markets, be it digital betacam for broadcast, 1080p cam>!corders!<, ITU709 class 1 monitors (CRT for 40K, that insane, and i even bought tem :) etc.


regarding sonys 1080p vtr monopoly, or duopoly if you count in national panasonic: i don´t want play to play armchair CEO - but what i would -HIGHLY- recommend to the RED team:

besides the camera/lenses market, which requires lots of R&D, human interface & tooling design etc, theres is the VTR/ingest market.

almost every customer of red will have the problem to playout/playin with non-red shops. If you want to show your RED-shot movie @sundance, toronto, cannes, berlinale etc, right know everyone would need a HDCAM/SR/35mm copy. (did i mention we offer HDCAM/SR & film playout btw? :)

if RED enhances the red drive or manufactures a second product, lets nickname it reddrive VDR, with RS422 VTR stlye control Interface (easy one, you can buy the necessary software off the shelf) and HD-SDI i/o that could be a -VERY- hot seller and second use of REDs R&D. If they price that @ $$$$ i would know -many- shops around here buying that device.

blackmagic / aja have demonstrated successfully how fast markets can be swung around there.
 
Stephen Williams said:
Jan,

I only said Sony had not made money from digital cinematography. I still think that is true.

Stephen
Click to expand...

That's nothing. Apparently Philips only make money on lightbulbs and Electric Shavers - everything else they make is brand awareness!
 
almost every customer of red will have the problem to playout/playin with non-red shops. If you want to show your RED-shot movie @sundance, toronto, cannes, berlinale etc, right know everyone would need a HDCAM/SR/35mm copy. (did i mention we offer HDCAM/SR & film playout btw? :)
Laguun, I'd be curious about your reasoning for a Red VTR. I brought up the Red VTR idea here (albiet for workflow, not distribution reasons):

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=72284

2- For distribution, wouldn't the high cost of the media be a problem for Red? Unless the Red VTR could also use a tape-based format (perhaps there is some method for LTO or other computer tape compatibility?!?!).

3- Certainly, making a dedicated VTR is not an easy task. Just look at the manuals for some of Sony's VTRs. They are a few hundred pages.

There could be technical obstacles, such as how insert editing would work if using VBR compression.
 
Stephen Williams said:
Jan,

I only said Sony had not made money from digital cinematography. I still think that is true.

Stephen
Click to expand...
Hello Stephen,

i think you are wrong on that one. To be precise, i do know quite exactly what i am talking about.

We startet with cinealta & HDCAM in 2001. When we finally bought the missing links in our cinealta & hdcam workflow in late 2003 (NLE), Sony used us -quite- a bit to promote cinealta in Germany, and yes, europe.

(warning, shameless selfpromotion IBC PR ahead:))
http://www.sonypresentation.com/b2b/sony-business-uk/98495-sony-laguun-gmbh-purchases-sony-equipment-seamless-hd-workflow-hdcam.html

from there on, i was i working with many, if not most, of the north/east german customers and sony execs, and do know many of the sales first hand.

i can say that it was a hard competition with arri, due to their -back then- really overwhelming dominant position in the german market which we anyhow won in most cases, as the D20 wasn´t final back then and ARRI didn´t (or doesn´t) have a decent workflow.

i do know most of the revenues Sony had with cinealta in that area, and i can clearly tell you - straight from the horses mouth, knowing the numbers - that sony EU made *nice* profits in digital cinematography in the EU.

and we were still quite behind the teams in the US, they had orders in chunks of ~100, panavision ones for the F900 might be a nice example.

once more: Sony has >27.000 HDCAM & cinealta units shipped since 2000. Compare that to whatever company in the digital -and- chemical cinema production. Do the math with *50.000$, or $40.000 if you want (a fully equipped 900/750 was >100.000$) average each cinealta unit. you will notice that more than one billion dollars in 5 years isn´t that bad.

now, if you think that they all wasted that in R&D or distribution... besides many suboptimal things sony does, they do have some nice tricks. 1st) R&D. You might have noticed that the J1, J3, J-H3, J-H1 as well as the -10, the 30 and so on as well as the IMX, DBETA, DX, HDCAM etc. pp share their 2 tapetransports. R&D once, sell 130 flavours. Same is valid for the optical units of the 900/1, /2, /3, 750, 750C, F900/H etc. same optical block, and mostly same tapetransport. sony is quite clever when it comes to develop once, retail many. 2) distribution - sony had 3 digital cinematography sales reps for north/eat germany (thats 40.000.000 people). And they were doing broadcast as well, btw.

And finally, i do know a little bit about the spans and wins sony has when selling their kits, laguun, as continental european launch customer did have some special tokyo-approved pricing... and they earn quite a bit per unit, believe me.

then - do you take sony pictures, sony imageworks and sony oems like panavision into the calculation or only sony cinealta itself?

so, if you suggest that sony digital cinematography isn´t a cash cow but making losses or breakeven, i would like to know: do you have sources to back that up or is it personal "feeling"?

ps: btw on the brighter side: i just had a look at the motioncontrol watches on your website. Great stuff! That is if i am talking to the switzerland-basing stephen here...
 
glenn chan said:
2- For distribution, wouldn't the high cost of the media be a problem for Red? Unless the Red VTR could also use a tape-based format (perhaps there is some method for LTO or other computer tape compatibility?!?!).
Click to expand...
no. to be precise, not at all.

the redrecorder (lets leave the nicknaming to the redteam) would be using the redcode raw, IF red allows using regular disks (would be a clever move) it would be ~100-150$ for a 3.5 400GByte disk.

compare that to P2, compare that to XDCAM, compare that to HDCAM and HDCAM SR. Cost is ~0.50-1$/minute for HD tape, $2-3 for HD SR.

So red"what-ever-its-called-as-long-it-has-hdsdi-and-rs422"corder would have the edge over the competition once more.

glenn chan said:
3- Certainly, making a dedicated VTR is not an easy task. Just look at the manuals for some of Sony's VTRs. They are a few hundred pages.
Click to expand...
yes and no.

1st) avoid -all- of the complex VTR operation. no pre-read, no slowmo, no etc. KISS.
2nd) you can get the necessary software of the shelf OR (mr. jannard, if you are reading, here is a tip you probably already know about... :)) partner/team/license up with the players who are already sucessful in that market:

http://www.rosendahl-studiotechnik.de/bonsai.html

we have their bonsai drive in use often, it works flawless, it costs ~1000$, and that with redcode would be exactly what most red-clients would need/want, at least for offline.

glenn chan said:
There could be technical obstacles, such as how insert editing would work if using VBR compression.
Click to expand...
now, 100% yes.
things would get complicated there. red would be wise to avoid spending manhours there - challenging the players in linear workflow can´t be the goal - for what reason should a company do that? it a dying breed, competition is supertough, one needs dozens of expert to integrate a single customers link, stuff like satelite uplink, no-stop one-source workflow are important... so simply: cut insert as feature.
do it, as panasonic did with the budget AJ-1200 did: kiss.

ps. laguun is in a win/win situation anyhow. we LOVE to rent out our HDCAM VTRs to festivals, on the other hand, we just have 2 HD-decks which tend to be overbooked, and i would gladly avoid the 3hrd tape basing if red would sell in Q4/07-Q2/08 or even sooner the cameras red-drive with hd-sdi and rs422.

btw, did i mention that the small german niche player
http://www.rosendahl-studiotechnik.de/bonsai.html
has everything they need for the software?
 
Tape=Expense

Tape=Expense

IMHO one of the reasons that Red has been able to target such a low price point for the RedOne is due to the lack of a tape mechanism. Reading and writing high data rate media onto magnetic tape requires precise (read expensive) engineering and proper maintainence to keep the units operating to spec. While the PC based SI camera and other IT style tapeless tools are still considered iffy due to their lack of track record the lack of moving parts bodes well for how quickly they can pass the test for professional field use.

In terms of VTRs for ingest and deliverables I say why tape? Hard disk based devices with industry standard connectors seem like the ticket to me. As soon as the camera, software and such are shipping I would love to see Red build a hard disk based player/recorder capable of handling 4k data. In the meantime there are several HDD based units out there and as soon as a few more players enter that market the pricing should get pretty reasonable. All you need is hard drives, connectors, some silicon and a case. Anybody interested in 10bit 4:4:4 color at 1080p or 2k, up to 4 hours of capacity with J2K wavelet compression for under $10K? Want something easier to ship, within a year dual layer Blu-Ray at 50GB per disk should allow you to back up or ship a feature in "reels" for less than $100 as REDCODE or J2K.

Blair S. Paulsen
RedOne #19
 
Most service bureaus in the post-production community commonly work with portable hard drives. If a festival requests HDCAM-SR then it's simple to hand a hard drive to the dubbing house and have the show transferred to HDCAM-SR (or D5).
 
alacritymedia said:
In terms of VTRs for ingest and deliverables I say why tape?
Click to expand...

even if i agree with most aspects in your post:
compatibility
RT-speed
cost
long time storage
large players players infrastructure
*and finally*
it works, everybody does it and nobody delivered the promise of the new possibilities as product as of yet.

alacritymedia said:
Hard disk based devices with industry standard connectors seem like the ticket to me.
Click to expand...
future yes, present: not yet.

alacritymedia said:
Want something easier to ship, within a year dual layer Blu-Ray at 50GB per disk should allow you to back up or ship a feature in "reels" for less than $100 as REDCODE or J2K.
Click to expand...
HDCAM SR is 440Mbit, 55 Mbyte a second. blueray or its sucessor will get there, certainly within the next decade.
a HDCAM SR tape runs for well over one hour at 440 Mbit / 55 Mbyte a second. without raid.

so, how was that famous churchill saying? "reports of my dead are highly exagerated".



RedOne #19[/quote]
 
Hmm let's suppose you wanted to use 3.5" hard drives instead of tape stock. I just looked at the prices, and a 3.5" hard drive does cost about the same as HDCAM tape.

Redcode:
Bitrate: Assume 27MB/s (or ~216 Mbit/s), plus 4 tracks of audio.
A 120GB hard drive costs ~$60 + shipping. This price will go down a lot in the future.
That stores about an hour (audio tapes up some space).

HDCAM:
Bitrate: 144Mbit/s for video, plus 4 tracks of audio.
Tape stock about $50 for 60 minutes.

HDCAM SR:
Bitrate: 440 Mbit/s for video, plus 12 tracks of audio.
Tape stock about $100 for 60 minutes.

However, do you really want a naked 3.5" hard drive? People may be afraid of static damaging the hard drive. An enclosure would solve that problem, although of course it would add to the cost. If the price of the Red VTR is lower, then each program may/would cost less than HDCAM would.

cut insert as feature.
Insert editing is useful when many changes need to be made to a show. This happens with TV series- the broadcaster will always ask for changes to be made.

Otherwise, KISS is good. Things like preread are convenient but not necessarily needed.
 
glenn chan said:
Hmm let's suppose you wanted to use 3.5" hard drives However, do you really want a naked 3.5" hard drive? People may be afraid of static damaging the hard drive. An enclosure would solve that problem, although of course it would add to the cost.
Click to expand...
hello glenn, people are coming to our studio almost dialy and tell us about the "super-brand-insertnamehere" they bought. its all about the caind and a e-sata interface.

glenn chan said:
If the price of the Red VTR is lower, then each program may/would cost less than HDCAM would.
Click to expand...
no/yes - a tape fails, you loose a lil bit of data, recover will be cheap. a drive fails, you loose at, recovery will be expensive. therefore, double the price for drives. but principally we have the same observations.

glenn chan said:
cut insert as feature.
Insert editing is useful when many changes need to be made to a show. This happens with TV series- the broadcaster will always ask for changes to be made.
Click to expand...
i know, i know. but as rule of thumb: 90% are ingest, 10% mastering when it comes to a recorder....

glenn chan said:
Otherwise, KISS is good. Things like preread are convenient but not necessarily needed.
Click to expand...
ack.
 
laguun said:
Hello Stephen,

To be precise, i do know quite exactly what i am talking about.

and they earn quite a bit per unit, believe me.

That is if i am talking to the switzerland-basing stephen here...
Click to expand...

Hi Jan,

Do you have any links to company accounts or fillings to back up what you know?

"Earning quite a bit per unit" and making money out of digital cinematography is not IMHO the same thing.

Yes I am based in Switzerland .

Stephen
 
Tape drive costs

Tape drive costs

Not all tape drives (recorders) cost the earth ...

www.quantum.com/Products/TapeDrives/DLT/SDLT600A/Index.aspx

Approx $ 8K List. At its 288Mb/s transfer rate it could potentially archive REDCODE 4K RAW data faster than real time, and its data throughput is almost twice the data rate of an HDCAM VTR and half the cost of even the lowest end HDCAM player, let alone recorder. The cost is much lower because it is optimised as a network attached data drive and priced to satisfy the market volume of data backup. And of course it is proven technology.
 
DLTs

DLTs

I was thinking tape drives were legacy devices that would soon be a thing of the past. I researched them when I was sending my DVD to be replicated. I sell so few DVDs that it wasn't worth the extra expense to get a DLT drive. Most people working on a G5 probably already have an ATTO SCSI adapter and DLT. I read http://www.attotech.com/troublemac.html and was scared off. I don't like anything too complex or that has trouble. I hope that RED has a troubleshooting page on ther website in the future, that will direct red owners on what type of DLT's to get and SCSI adapters and Fibre Channel stuff (for people that don't have that stuff already.)

I don't have a red reservation. I am hoping for a trickle down effect of technology and price, the way HD LCD screens have gotten cheaper and better over the years.

The Sony CEO doesn't seem to have a golden touch. I don't think it is the company that is bad. I blame the CEO. Apple wasn't doing so great when Steve wasn't there. I think leadership is what is important. My family owns some Sony stock so I don't want to see them do poorly. My mom bought some Apple stock (back when people thought it was going to go broke) and it has gone way up. My dad bought some Zenith stock. Zenith got bought out by LG in Korea. LG then cut out the share holders. The stock is worthless, but LG uses the Zenith name and patents. If you guys want to wish ill will on a company, wish it on LG. Sony is great. I am going to get a PS3. LG is run by jerks. Thats my rant.
 
Stuart English said:
Not all tape drives (recorders) cost the earth ...

www.quantum.com/Products/TapeDrives/DLT/SDLT600A/Index.aspx

Approx $ 8K List. At its 288Mb/s transfer rate it could potentially archive REDCODE 4K RAW data faster than real time, and its data throughput is almost twice the data rate of an HDCAM VTR and half the cost of even the lowest end HDCAM player, let alone recorder. The cost is much lower because it is optimised as a network attached data drive and priced to satisfy the market volume of data backup. And of course it is proven technology.
Click to expand...

How about LTO3 drives then? 640 megabits per second (over twice as fast) and $3800 (half the cost)... any reason that couldn't be considered?
 
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