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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Alexa

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Phil Jordan

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My friend is close with someone who works at a company in Holland that has an early Alexa and they consider it a joke compared to the Red One MX. They think the camera will compete with the F35 when they get the firmware right but never with Red. They say that the camera is so early that it should never have been released yet. It is way worse than the Red One when it was released as far as being not ready and they had a very early Red One. They say that a 1080P camera was a BIG mistake.
 
we shall see... a lot of brand loyalty out there and ARRI makes fine products...

but this camera does appear to be rushed to market and not exactly aimed at feature film production... television on the other hand...
 
Good to know...they will have to go through the teething process.
Sounds like it's time to bash Arriflex :-)
 
Arri has become RED of 2007 and the Red One is now bullet proof like old Arri products used to be. Who would have thought it?
 
Phil Jordan said:
My friend is close with someone who works at a company in Holland that has an early Alexa and they consider it a joke compared to the Red One MX. They think the camera will compete with the F35 when they get the firmware right but never with Red. They say that the camera is so early that it should never have been released yet. It is way worse than the Red One when it was released as far as being not ready and they had a very early Red One. They say that a 1080P camera was a BIG mistake.
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As I was writing here before all about A***A that's a big hype and slowly could become a huge flop...
 
Since Arri's forum is lame Michael Bravin will chime in shortly.
 
I'm sorry to say but Bravin hasn't done Arri any favors. They hired him to be the face of Arri and all he has done is be a poor imitation of Jim.
 
Bravin to me does sound like more of a reject RED employee than an ARRI employee to me, Arri has definitely changed alot in the last year and I am not sure for the better.

I read a post that Bravin made on the last day of June that said something like " see, I told you that we would start shipping in June" which sounds like a bit of a stab for the painful delays that RED are going through. I would not be surprised if the Alexa was indeed half baked, specially since its been so quiet on what those cameras are doing. If they were doing something important and doing that well, I am sure Bravin would be singing about it.
 
On CML Bravin has said how Arriraw has been used so much for the past 5 years and was trashing Redcode. I can't think of any show that used Arriraw and I can think of 7000 Red cameras that are shooting every day with Redcode. He says compressed raw is not a good thing and I don't believe it. It is also interesting that he says "we" when talking about Arri like he has been there more than a few months.
 
While I don't agree with just about everything Michael Bravin has said since he has been with Arri, I don't think it is productive to make it personal here. I do have a ton of respect for what Arri used to represent. I'm quite sure they will return to that type of presentation fairly soon.

Jim
 
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I have been huge fan of ARRI for many many years, but Alexa is mistake. Moreover it is a very misleading product - which hurts my feelings about ARRI the most. I have always trusted ARRI when it came to their products, but Alexa's marketing is not doing good to ARRI's reputation. Alexa suppose to be RAW camera, but in reality it only records internally ProRes QuickTimes with only 2 channels of audio. If You want RAW You need to add tens of thousands of dollars on top of the basic $50K to hook up a external recorder. Not to mention that even the smallest of these recorders is bigger then RED ONE body. Maybe we suppose to put it on the "other" shoulder to counterbalance our spine... :devil:

And what is it with the 1920x1080?!? The sensor is actually 3168x1782 pixels with active image area of 2880x1620, which is then downscaled to 1920x1080. What the hell?!? Would it kill them to make a 2K DCI mode (2048x1080)? The sensor is clearly capable of this, even if they wanted to stick to their /1.5 downscale. This would at least made it far more interesting for cine productions...

From where I am standing right now it simply looks like Alexa is a major threat to Sony's and Panasonic's broadcast cameras - not to RED. I can see it being used for TV series, shows and documentaries. Which is really silly. ARRI has indeed strong following, but in the film industry - not the broadcast industry, which is dominated by SONY and PANASONIC...

As much as I don't like to admit this - I am very disappointed with this camera. ARRI could do so much better. For their own sake I hope they release free firmware update adding the 2K mode...

Just my two cents...

Peter
 
Jannard said:
While I don't agree with just about everything Michael Bravin says since he has been with Arri, I don't think it is productive to make it personal here. I do have a ton of respect for what Arri used to represent. I'm quite sure they will return to that type of presentation fairly soon.

Jim
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You are a big man Jim to be able to say that after all the not so nice things Bravin is going around saying. Did you catch this post he made on CML a few days ago? there are so many underhanded cuts against RED in there it would make my blood boil if I was you.

"We have been offering uncompressed raw with ARRIRAW for 5 years, many people have chosen it. Not by seeing a screening of demo material on a morekay projector in a controlled environment but by shooting tests and taking it through post. Since it doesn't need to be uncompressed and then debayered its fast to work with and now can be debayered in realtime in a GPU, no "rocket" science no guessing about compressed vs uncompressed, no proprietary hardware needed in post, simple. For complicated EFX wider exposure range and maximum color correction range, NOTHING on the market beats it, (if you have the budget for ARRIRAW recording devices), but as less expensive ARRIRAW recorders come on line it will no longer be a budget issue. Um... users say this so its not OUR spin."

Sorry, I know I just did the opposite of what you asked for. It's hard not to take things personally after one of my favorite companies for the last 20 years hired someone that acts like they are in junior high school.
 
I don't think Arri understands how much Bravin is hurting their image. Sorry I know I'm not supposed to pile on but we are watching the death of a brand here. Jim has said how much he admires Arri and you can tell he is not happy with what is happening. At least he still has Leica to look up to, I understand that the head of Leica is a good guy and the new lenses are terrific.
 
Nothing against Michael Bravin but as far as I know he also recently "clashed" with Band Pro the company he was employed before Arri just because of Alexa,

actually he "took" Alexa from Band Pro sales and "brought" it to Abel Cine (the company that I do not have anything against)

that competes with Band Pro with many other equipment sales.

All that could conclude in opinion that Arri is in need of cash desperately...
 
I'm not liking the new Arri hype machine either. That post by Bravin about "morekay" and "rocket" are childish and insulting to us using Red for the excellent tool it is.

This kind of tactic from Arri is not good for the industry.
 
Grady Wilson said:
"We have been offering uncompressed raw with ARRIRAW for 5 years, many people have chosen it. Not by seeing a screening of demo material on a morekay projector in a controlled environment but by shooting tests and taking it through post. Since it doesn't need to be uncompressed and then debayered its fast to work with and now can be debayered in realtime in a GPU, no "rocket" science no guessing about compressed vs uncompressed, no proprietary hardware needed in post, simple. For complicated EFX wider exposure range and maximum color correction range, NOTHING on the market beats it, (if you have the budget for ARRIRAW recording devices), but as less expensive ARRIRAW recorders come on line it will no longer be a budget issue. Um... users say this so its not OUR spin."

I probably will respond to this nonsense...

1st off, "we" doesn't include Michael for the past 5 years.

2nd... "many people"? I'd love to know how many. And what exactly did they record to?

3rd... just screening in a controlled environment? Really? I think that we have pushed quite a bit more through post with major productions than Arriraw. I would love to know one production that was shot Arriraw in the past 5 years.

4th. Rocket science? I assume you are talking about RED Rocket. The cost is about $5K and makes 4K realtime viewing in REDCINE-X and realtime transcodes (faster actually) to anything you want with a standard Mac or PC. What does it cost to record Arriraw to anything? REDCODE records to a Compact Flash card.

5th... nothing beats it? How about 4 times the resolution, same DR and you can't tell the difference from uncompressed to REDCODE?

I posted earlier that we should not make this personal. I am doing my best not to. But Michael's post is so outrageous that I can't help but respond to the points. Ugh. I wonder how many people actually believe this stuff. (ruffled feathers).

Michael. Post some reasonable facts when doing your "marketing". Arri is held high on my list of favorite companies. You are destroying that. Please stop.

Jim
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Sanjin Jukic said:
Nothing against Michael Bravin but as far as I know he also recently "clashed" with Band Pro the company he was employed before Arri just because of Alexa,

actually he "took" Alexa from Band Pro sales and "brought" it to Abel Cine (the company that I do not have anything against)

that competes with Band Pro with many other equipment sales.

All that could conclude in opinion that Arri is in need of cash desperately...
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Do you think anyone is actually telling whoever is running ARRI how people really feel? do you think they even care anymore?

The Abel thing confused me as well, although now that you pointed it out I do see more similarities with Mitch Gross from Abel Cine ( more of a prosumer retailer rather than a professional retailer ) and Bravin, than I do with BandPro and Arri. Maybe they are the same person!!!!!
 
The dirty secret is that there are two owners of Arri that haven't spoken in 25 years. There are two camps at Arri and you are either with one side or the other. It would make for a great movie. There is so much discord at Arri with the owners that it affects everything they do, or do not do. Ask around, it is fascinating.
 
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