Monstro VS V-Raptor…….

[Phil Holland]

RedUser seems to turn into an interesting social experiment whenever RED announces a new camera.
The range of emotion from excitement, elation, fear, doubt, frustration, anger, and gradations in between is kind of fascinating.

I have a hard time seeing Monstros, Heliums, Geminis, Dragons or most other REDs being somehow lost and forgotten with V Raptor.

Somewhere between the advancements and improvements, the fickle hearts of many, industry realities, and the need for progression it's moderately easy to forget that every camera RED has made to date is still a viable digital cinema camera in the modern market. That is a feat in itself.

But there have also been improvements along the way as well as new technologies, sensors, formats, etc. I get excited about new tools of all types. But I also get real curious about what they are capable of.

Agree with much of what you said there Brian.

Keep in mind we found that with LQ the Komodo files sizes were pretty comparable in size and quality to Dragon 6:1.

It's all we shoot on Komodo.

Good to hear Nick. Day one with Komodo I shot some HFD material and found good things and subtle differences between HQ, MQ, and LQ. But it does seem the movement is towards a pretty consistent quality level while still having a variable compression ratio. For the lack of a better way of saying it, I think when approaching HQ, MQ, and LQ try to forget the background knowledge of REDCODE RAW from DSMC2 and prior. It just works different and has different data rates. That's about it.

I find it kind of interesting that there is a lot of talk about the post process and heaver files and all with Komodo and Raptor. But when the R1 came out it was almost the same sound of big files and how will post handle all of this and etc....
At the rate of technology progress I don't think it will be very long before we will all have laptops that handle these heavier files. And if Red has shown us anything its that you will always be surprised by some update that shows up and your camera seems new again.

Here is a question Id be interested to see some of your comments on.
RedCine X pro has been around for quite a while. Would there ever be a possibility of a new version of RedCine that handles the new cameras files much in the same way but Exclusively for the DCT camera files.
Love these threads.

I can confirm I've worked with V-Raptor on a notebook and it edits well, but it's a beefy notebook. Don't expect anything 2013 to wow you performance-wise, but modern mobile and desktops do nicely. My biggest box cranks it out.

Not sure what you mean about REDCINE-X Pro, but it handles both REDCODEs in similar fashions as far as I can tell.

For anybody cracking into 8K properly I suggest decent GPUs however. 8GB is moderately the baseline, but 16GB+ and 2X cards is ideal if you want to really move fast. And for those that explore other processing methods, more engine = more power.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Keep in mind we found that with LQ the Komodo files sizes were pretty comparable in size and quality to Dragon 6:1.

It's all we shoot on Komodo.

But DCT compression looks worse at the same ratio.

I think the reasons to go DCT are pretty easy to understand. People never really look at storage needs when choosing a camera. I've seen productions already way into the production phase having producers or coordinators panicking over disk drive costs and the need for backups. People never really look at the budgets for storage on long-form shows and films outside of the most organized ones (i.e the ones with actual competent people calling the shots). So if DCT makes it easier for Red to reach a better shooting experience and also performance in post, that's something they can showcase to industry people without ever really getting the hard questions on storage costs.

Another reason is I think how Apple's new processor architecture for professional work, pretty much revolves around ProRes and ProRes is DCT compression. If their processors are fine-tuned to handle DCT compression, then changing R3D to DCT makes the experience of working with these files on Macbooks extremely fast. But you could easily see that as a marketing stunt. People have for years said R3D is too complex and requires too much processing power in post, so changing to DCT at the same time as Apple changed their systems and this combo makes it super-easy to work with R3D is probably a very intentional thing Red has done to show off the power of R3D. At the cost of storage space and compression quality at the same ratios.

So I think the choice of DCT is purely based on making the cameras better while the rest is marketing. Changing compression on the R3D is not something people will be aware of, they will just know that Red "made things easier with three compression choices and much faster performance on low-end systems". They won't know about the downsides until it hits them, but if they've never worked with R3D, they will never know that Wavelet was better in terms of quality and storage.

I've noticed this in the changed behavior from Red: less presence on this forum, more focus on polished videos about the cameras, more focus on celebrities getting custom made cameras, more focus on making the marketing more traditional instead of how Red used to be: more focused on the community, the "rebels", the raw brute force of image quality performance instead of easy handling. It looks like I'm stretching, but I think DCT is part of this change. Since other brands have now caught up, and we have a form of diminishing return in what improvements we can actually achieve with cinema cameras, people who needed high-resolution cameras have started to look elsewhere. Red has always had a niche "style" with their community; the "rebels", the "military aesthetics" and there are many who don't like that style, but have been forced to use their cameras because they simply made one of the best cameras in the world, especially in terms of resolution. But nowadays when Arri, Sony, Canon, etc. all keep releasing cameras with 4K+ resolution, many people have just moved on. This shows up on the traditional "award season camera usage" chart where Red has dropped significantly compared to Arri, Sony, and even Canon. Many indie productions have even gone with BM Pocket cameras instead. The only Red camera that is used at the same level as Arri and Sony is Panavision, which has a whole other marketing and status in the industry.

So what does Red need to do in this scenario? They released an s35mm camera that was supposed to be just a crash cam but quickly changed focus to be a smaller A-cam (without losing the crash cam idea). This exploded with indie filmmakers, obviously. But it won't change the dropping rate in camera usage for larger budget productions. So changing how Red plays the game is probably an intentional strategy to increase the status of Red among the largest stage productions. Keeping some of the "military" style, but engaging more with the industry in more in traditional and new marketing ways; building celebrity ties (high-level influencer marketing), clean information videos, less engagement with the "crowd" (this forum), closed beta testing groups instead of testing tech with folks here on the forum, reveals when a camera is done instead of years before and so on. One of the major things, in order to keep the relevance in the industry when many people move over to other systems, is to make a splash with a new system. The splash here was the smaller DSMC3 camera body and performance, first in Komodo and then now with Raptor. In order to succeed they had to make the performance of R3D better for the camera and post. Simplifying it, making it closer to industry standards (ProRes-like DCT compression) so that showing the performance on the industry-common laptops (Macbooks) looks like a revolution in performance for Red cameras.

Changing from Wavelet to DCT, from an industry perspective and marketing of Red cameras to the industry, this makes a lot of sense. The problem comes for those who already work with Red cameras, who built an infrastructure around knowing the numbers. I, for one really have no problem with the old compression numbers. It was pretty easy to understand and any argument that it's easier now misses the point of the old system showing actual numbers. 4:1 is four to one ratio, 6:1 is six to one ratio. HQ, MQ and LQ have no numbers, you don't know what the compression ratio actually is and can only guess, while at the same time the ratio looks different between the two. It's only easy for new people. Which is the point. They market all of this to get new people into the Red architecture since new people seem to focus on other systems instead, systems these people deem easier to work with, both on set and in post.

DCT will be no problem for those who already did post-production using ProRes as the main file format. They will feel at home. This is the point for the post-production reason to change to DCT. I just miss wavelet because it was simply better. But at the same time shooting with Komodo feels much better, less cumbersome, faster, which I don't want to go back from. But wavelet was superior and it can be felt in post, in grading and storage. I just hope marketing and pushing Red into industry standards more than before doesn't ruin the things that are actually good about Red. Streamlining for new people to get on board can have the effect of losing what Red really was before, the ones who pushed the industry, not following it.

Of course, I can be completely wrong, but the business side of my brain can't ignore the broader picture surrounding changes like these. If a change comes with only positives and improvements, it's logical, if it's a compromise choice to get some improvements by losing other positive aspects, the reasons come from something specific, a choice made by carefully choosing the path forward to be on that specific road.

 

[Phil Holland]

But DCT compression looks worse at the same ratio.

This is incorrect. DCT will look worse at very high compression ratios/lower data rate encodes, that is where it falls apart. DCT can look better than Wavelet at higher data rate encodes as it pertains to micro-contrast and fine detail. It should be subtle, put observable difference.

Things like 22:1 or whatever, DCT will not look as good as Wavelet. I don't know where the reasonable threshold is and when degradation takes place at higher ratios, but generally at an equivalent higher data rate you should see subtle improvements on DCT when running a dif. Komodo reveals much of this actually, it's just not 1:1 because there's no equivalent previous sensor. But if you can code you can run out a few interesting tests with patterns and that reveal some of the pros and cons of encoding methods.

I agree DCT likely works better in post on some hardware due to modern GPUs and CPUs. But the other big one is not using the hardware needed to encode Wavelet, which is making cameras smaller, lighter weight, less expensive, and likely better on the thermals and power efficiency.

I highly suspect the reason to avoid DCT originally was hardware (processing power) and media related. i.e. RED One, DSMC, and even DSMC2 were launched in eras where those data rates and even media didn't exist to sustain that initially. This made/makes Wavelet powerful. But improving upon that with modern hardware opens new doors.

DSMC2 got to 2:1 at some shooting resolutions with 3:1 through 5:1 used pretty often with the bigger hit in compression ratios coming from higher frame rates. The question is where do you go from there. V-Raptor is spec'd to do 1-60fps 8K 17:9 at HQ, going to 120 you get LQ, and it appears all the encoding data rates look very good because of the increased data rate, i.e. they are all similar. In my mind this is an area where RED could improve and this is basically how they got there. My pea size brain just didn't figure it out during Komodo's release, but it makes sense given currently available media data rates.

 

[Nick Morrison]

Cool test. I figured this but these are the 1st tested number I've seen.
Was this with RCX?

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA

No out of Davinci Resolve.

 

[Nick Morrison]

But DCT compression looks worse at the same ratio.

I think the reasons to go DCT are pretty easy to understand. People never really look at storage needs when choosing a camera. I've seen productions already way into the production phase having producers or coordinators panicking over disk drive costs and the need for backups. People never really look at the budgets for storage on long-form shows and films outside of the most organized ones (i.e the ones with actual competent people calling the shots). So if DCT makes it easier for Red to reach a better shooting experience and also performance in post, that's something they can showcase to industry people without ever really getting the hard questions on storage costs.

Another reason is I think how Apple's new processor architecture for professional work, pretty much revolves around ProRes and ProRes is DCT compression. If their processors are fine-tuned to handle DCT compression, then changing R3D to DCT makes the experience of working with these files on Macbooks extremely fast. But you could easily see that as a marketing stunt. People have for years said R3D is too complex and requires too much processing power in post, so changing to DCT at the same time as Apple changed their systems and this combo makes it super-easy to work with R3D is probably a very intentional thing Red has done to show off the power of R3D. At the cost of storage space and compression quality at the same ratios.

So I think the choice of DCT is purely based on making the cameras better while the rest is marketing. Changing compression on the R3D is not something people will be aware of, they will just know that Red "made things easier with three compression choices and much faster performance on low-end systems". They won't know about the downsides until it hits them, but if they've never worked with R3D, they will never know that Wavelet was better in terms of quality and storage.

I've noticed this in the changed behavior from Red: less presence on this forum, more focus on polished videos about the cameras, more focus on celebrities getting custom made cameras, more focus on making the marketing more traditional instead of how Red used to be: more focused on the community, the "rebels", the raw brute force of image quality performance instead of easy handling. It looks like I'm stretching, but I think DCT is part of this change. Since other brands have now caught up, and we have a form of diminishing return in what improvements we can actually achieve with cinema cameras, people who needed high-resolution cameras have started to look elsewhere. Red has always had a niche "style" with their community; the "rebels", the "military aesthetics" and there are many who don't like that style, but have been forced to use their cameras because they simply made one of the best cameras in the world, especially in terms of resolution. But nowadays when Arri, Sony, Canon, etc. all keep releasing cameras with 4K+ resolution, many people have just moved on. This shows up on the traditional "award season camera usage" chart where Red has dropped significantly compared to Arri, Sony, and even Canon. Many indie productions have even gone with BM Pocket cameras instead. The only Red camera that is used at the same level as Arri and Sony is Panavision, which has a whole other marketing and status in the industry.

So what does Red need to do in this scenario? They released an s35mm camera that was supposed to be just a crash cam but quickly changed focus to be a smaller A-cam (without losing the crash cam idea). This exploded with indie filmmakers, obviously. But it won't change the dropping rate in camera usage for larger budget productions. So changing how Red plays the game is probably an intentional strategy to increase the status of Red among the largest stage productions. Keeping some of the "military" style, but engaging more with the industry in more in traditional and new marketing ways; building celebrity ties (high-level influencer marketing), clean information videos, less engagement with the "crowd" (this forum), closed beta testing groups instead of testing tech with folks here on the forum, reveals when a camera is done instead of years before and so on. One of the major things, in order to keep the relevance in the industry when many people move over to other systems, is to make a splash with a new system. The splash here was the smaller DSMC3 camera body and performance, first in Komodo and then now with Raptor. In order to succeed they had to make the performance of R3D better for the camera and post. Simplifying it, making it closer to industry standards (ProRes-like DCT compression) so that showing the performance on the industry-common laptops (Macbooks) looks like a revolution in performance for Red cameras.

Changing from Wavelet to DCT, from an industry perspective and marketing of Red cameras to the industry, this makes a lot of sense. The problem comes for those who already work with Red cameras, who built an infrastructure around knowing the numbers. I, for one really have no problem with the old compression numbers. It was pretty easy to understand and any argument that it's easier now misses the point of the old system showing actual numbers. 4:1 is four to one ratio, 6:1 is six to one ratio. HQ, MQ and LQ have no numbers, you don't know what the compression ratio actually is and can only guess, while at the same time the ratio looks different between the two. It's only easy for new people. Which is the point. They market all of this to get new people into the Red architecture since new people seem to focus on other systems instead, systems these people deem easier to work with, both on set and in post.

DCT will be no problem for those who already did post-production using ProRes as the main file format. They will feel at home. This is the point for the post-production reason to change to DCT. I just miss wavelet because it was simply better. But at the same time shooting with Komodo feels much better, less cumbersome, faster, which I don't want to go back from. But wavelet was superior and it can be felt in post, in grading and storage. I just hope marketing and pushing Red into industry standards more than before doesn't ruin the things that are actually good about Red. Streamlining for new people to get on board can have the effect of losing what Red really was before, the ones who pushed the industry, not following it.

Of course, I can be completely wrong, but the business side of my brain can't ignore the broader picture surrounding changes like these. If a change comes with only positives and improvements, it's logical, if it's a compromise choice to get some improvements by losing other positive aspects, the reasons come from something specific, a choice made by carefully choosing the path forward to be on that specific road.

All I can tell you is from practical experience.

We've shot on Epic Dragon for years. I know that sensor very well. It's quit old, but holds up with enough exposure. We always shot btw 6:1 and 8:1, almost always at 6K. And generally rated low at 320 to 640. Almost everything on our website is Dragon.

With Komodo at LQ, all I can tell you is that rating at true 800 ISO (ie Dragon 1600) in LQ, the file sizes are comparable to Dragon 6K, but the footage is more gradeable. Highlights look good. Noise is very controlled (wheres Dragon here would be quite noisy). And the color is better. We noticed grey charts are cleaner. That was something we noticed day one. And its a fatter negative. It just pushes and pulls better.

So tell me all you want about DCT, all I can tell you from hands on experience is Komodo is better than Dragon - noticeably so. And it transodes faster.

Short of having better offspeed, Komodo is just better.

Now Gemini is a different story, and its a really good sensor. You get smaller file sizes than Komodo and Dragon, and I'd say it's even easier to push around than Komodo.

What's interesting about Raptor is it may kind of be a hybrid you know? Except that it consumes lots of power, and has very high data rates.

Meaning I think we kind of have 3 sensors now in the RED ecosytem:

Gemini: the most practical
Komodo: great budget 6K with global shutter
Raptor: best 8K Vista Sensor, but the power and data levels make it "expensive" to run - more batteries, more media. But its the best sensor.

This puts Monstro in an interesting place. Its a very convenient sensor as its Vista, consumes less power, and can be more manageble data-wise.

So lots of good choices I suppose.

I don't think we need to complain either - choices are good.

 

[Russ Fill]

Somewhere between the advancements and improvements, the fickle hearts of many, industry realities, and the need for progression it's moderately easy to forget that every camera RED has made to date is still a viable digital cinema camera in the modern market. That is a feat in itself.

But there have also been improvements along the way as well as new technologies, sensors, formats, etc. I get excited about new tools of all types. But I also get real curious about what they are capable of.

Agree with much of what you said there Brian.




Good to hear Nick. Day one with Komodo I shot some HFD material and found good things and subtle differences between HQ, MQ, and LQ. But it does seem the movement is towards a pretty consistent quality level while still having a variable compression ratio. For the lack of a better way of saying it, I think when approaching HQ, MQ, and LQ try to forget the background knowledge of REDCODE RAW from DSMC2 and prior. It just works different and has different data rates. That's about it.




I can confirm I've worked with V-Raptor on a notebook and it edits well, but it's a beefy notebook. Don't expect anything 2013 to wow you performance-wise, but modern mobile and desktops do nicely. My biggest box cranks it out.

Not sure what you mean about REDCINE-X Pro, but it handles both REDCODEs in similar fashions as far as I can tell.




For anybody cracking into 8K properly I suggest decent GPUs however. 8GB is moderately the baseline, but 16GB+ and 2X cards is ideal if you want to really move fast. And for those that explore other processing methods, more engine = more power.

IN REGUARDS TO RED CINE X
Ill be the first to say I don't know diddly about creating programs or apps to handle image processing pipelines. I was nearly wondering if there was any gain or benefit to having a Program that deals exclusively with certain image pipelines from each camera. IE Wavelets vs DCT vs what ever else is coming.
Every few months or less we see updates on all our post software, It would be interesting to maybe think about a complete new software. Designed with new computers in mind.. instead of just patching or updating the previous one thats been built on for years.

 

[Mattia Palombi]

Raptor XL is coming soon.

 

[Phil Holland]

IN REGUARDS TO RED CINE X
Ill be the first to say I don't know diddly about creating programs or apps to handle image processing pipelines. I was nearly wondering if there was any gain or benefit to having a Program that deals exclusively with certain image pipelines from each camera. IE Wavelets vs DCT vs what ever else is coming.
Every few months or less we see updates on all our post software, It would be interesting to maybe think about a complete new software. Designed with new computers in mind.. instead of just patching or updating the previous one thats been built on for years.

Nope. No reason to have separate programs that I can possibly think of in this case. All is driven by the SDK and the program will detect whatever the heck it's getting and deal with it from there. Potentially you could make a smaller package, but that wouldn't really equate to performance gains in any way.

On a complete side note. I'm coding in between doing script revisions and notes right now and my brain hurts hilariously bad.

 

[Curren Sheldon]

But DCT compression looks worse at the same ratio.

I think the reasons to go DCT are pretty easy to understand. People never really look at storage needs when choosing a camera. I've seen productions already way into the production phase having producers or coordinators panicking over disk drive costs and the need for backups. People never really look at the budgets for storage on long-form shows and films outside of the most organized ones (i.e the ones with actual competent people calling the shots). So if DCT makes it easier for Red to reach a better shooting experience and also performance in post, that's something they can showcase to industry people without ever really getting the hard questions on storage costs.

Another reason is I think how Apple's new processor architecture for professional work, pretty much revolves around ProRes and ProRes is DCT compression. If their processors are fine-tuned to handle DCT compression, then changing R3D to DCT makes the experience of working with these files on Macbooks extremely fast. But you could easily see that as a marketing stunt. People have for years said R3D is too complex and requires too much processing power in post, so changing to DCT at the same time as Apple changed their systems and this combo makes it super-easy to work with R3D is probably a very intentional thing Red has done to show off the power of R3D. At the cost of storage space and compression quality at the same ratios.

So I think the choice of DCT is purely based on making the cameras better while the rest is marketing. Changing compression on the R3D is not something people will be aware of, they will just know that Red "made things easier with three compression choices and much faster performance on low-end systems". They won't know about the downsides until it hits them, but if they've never worked with R3D, they will never know that Wavelet was better in terms of quality and storage.

I've noticed this in the changed behavior from Red: less presence on this forum, more focus on polished videos about the cameras, more focus on celebrities getting custom made cameras, more focus on making the marketing more traditional instead of how Red used to be: more focused on the community, the "rebels", the raw brute force of image quality performance instead of easy handling. It looks like I'm stretching, but I think DCT is part of this change. Since other brands have now caught up, and we have a form of diminishing return in what improvements we can actually achieve with cinema cameras, people who needed high-resolution cameras have started to look elsewhere. Red has always had a niche "style" with their community; the "rebels", the "military aesthetics" and there are many who don't like that style, but have been forced to use their cameras because they simply made one of the best cameras in the world, especially in terms of resolution. But nowadays when Arri, Sony, Canon, etc. all keep releasing cameras with 4K+ resolution, many people have just moved on. This shows up on the traditional "award season camera usage" chart where Red has dropped significantly compared to Arri, Sony, and even Canon. Many indie productions have even gone with BM Pocket cameras instead. The only Red camera that is used at the same level as Arri and Sony is Panavision, which has a whole other marketing and status in the industry.

So what does Red need to do in this scenario? They released an s35mm camera that was supposed to be just a crash cam but quickly changed focus to be a smaller A-cam (without losing the crash cam idea). This exploded with indie filmmakers, obviously. But it won't change the dropping rate in camera usage for larger budget productions. So changing how Red plays the game is probably an intentional strategy to increase the status of Red among the largest stage productions. Keeping some of the "military" style, but engaging more with the industry in more in traditional and new marketing ways; building celebrity ties (high-level influencer marketing), clean information videos, less engagement with the "crowd" (this forum), closed beta testing groups instead of testing tech with folks here on the forum, reveals when a camera is done instead of years before and so on. One of the major things, in order to keep the relevance in the industry when many people move over to other systems, is to make a splash with a new system. The splash here was the smaller DSMC3 camera body and performance, first in Komodo and then now with Raptor. In order to succeed they had to make the performance of R3D better for the camera and post. Simplifying it, making it closer to industry standards (ProRes-like DCT compression) so that showing the performance on the industry-common laptops (Macbooks) looks like a revolution in performance for Red cameras.

Changing from Wavelet to DCT, from an industry perspective and marketing of Red cameras to the industry, this makes a lot of sense. The problem comes for those who already work with Red cameras, who built an infrastructure around knowing the numbers. I, for one really have no problem with the old compression numbers. It was pretty easy to understand and any argument that it's easier now misses the point of the old system showing actual numbers. 4:1 is four to one ratio, 6:1 is six to one ratio. HQ, MQ and LQ have no numbers, you don't know what the compression ratio actually is and can only guess, while at the same time the ratio looks different between the two. It's only easy for new people. Which is the point. They market all of this to get new people into the Red architecture since new people seem to focus on other systems instead, systems these people deem easier to work with, both on set and in post.

DCT will be no problem for those who already did post-production using ProRes as the main file format. They will feel at home. This is the point for the post-production reason to change to DCT. I just miss wavelet because it was simply better. But at the same time shooting with Komodo feels much better, less cumbersome, faster, which I don't want to go back from. But wavelet was superior and it can be felt in post, in grading and storage. I just hope marketing and pushing Red into industry standards more than before doesn't ruin the things that are actually good about Red. Streamlining for new people to get on board can have the effect of losing what Red really was before, the ones who pushed the industry, not following it.

Of course, I can be completely wrong, but the business side of my brain can't ignore the broader picture surrounding changes like these. If a change comes with only positives and improvements, it's logical, if it's a compromise choice to get some improvements by losing other positive aspects, the reasons come from something specific, a choice made by carefully choosing the path forward to be on that specific road.

100%.

I think the removal of the much easier to understand compression ratios and no lower level compression (11:1 - 13:1) is the main reason I would not get a Raptor. That and the nearly 100wh power draw per hour. I am someone who calculates the cost of the work I do and I could make it work with the Gemini and Epic-W because 11:1 - 13:1 still looked amazing. However, DSMC2 is just not great for a lot of jobs, especially docs or small crew commercials due to not having good audio, lots of work to rig on a gimbal (and you need a Movi Pro or Ronin for that), etc - The Raptor definitely fixes those issues. Looks like it will be easy to put on smaller gimbals (like the RS2), has phantom power and a minimalist XLR breakout, I LOVE the RF Mount because Canon's RF lineup is incredible with many stabilized lenses, and seems just smaller and more integrated than DSMC2. BUT, the new limited codec options are silly, especially on a $6k camera like Komodo.

Perhaps a 5K Gemini sensor will be next in the DSMC3 lineup and 5k at LQ may be manageable for some work - and hopefully a 5k sensor can have a power draw closer to 50-60wh.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

This is incorrect. DCT will look worse at very high compression ratios/lower data rate encodes, that is where it falls apart. DCT can look better than Wavelet at higher data rate encodes as it pertains to micro-contrast and fine detail. It should be subtle, put observable difference.

But I'm talking about normal shooting, comparable disk space storage. DCT may look good in HQ, but it's impractical to work in HQ. So you need to go to higher compression ratios in order for it to be practical. At this level, DCT breaks down faster than Wavelet. If low compression ratios are needed for DCT to shine, we lose the benefits of the high resolution / high compression benefits that made Wavelet so practical for high-resolution shooting. Especially if we are to work with a comparable disk space requirement.

I highly suspect the reason to avoid DCT originally was hardware (processing power) and media related. i.e. RED One, DSMC, and even DSMC2 were launched in eras where those data rates and even media didn't exist to sustain that initially. This made/makes Wavelet powerful. But improving upon that with modern hardware opens new doors.

As I mentioned... but I also think it was chosen based on the other reasons I mentioned.

 

[Thomas B.]

I do hope a 10:1 or perhaps 12:1 version of the new REDCODE gets released.
Just hope they don't call it "Very Low Quality". That won't go well with any client.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA

Erm...you just have to be a little creative and make those abbreviations sound better to your customers.
First of all, tell them that Raptor cannot film in Low Quality - it's just not possible.
As Jarred said in the Q&A "meeting", at HQ this camera outperforms every other RED/sensor of the previous generations easily. (well, maybe not his exact words..)
So, in my understanding HQ, MQ and LQ cannot mean the same as in Komodo's compression settings.
I guess it's much more something like this:

LQ - (visually) Lossless Quality
MQ - Magnificent Quality
HQ - Hilarious Quality (with a little wink to Spaceballs' Ludicrous Speed)

Should a setting with higher compression be released, they could call it BQ. No, no...not "BS" Quality,
I mean Brilliant Quality. ...I can already see your customers eyes sparkling just because of this renaming, heheh. :ihih:
Hope this helps. :thumbup1:

 

[Ryan Sims]

I'll add to list of resolutions: OK quality (Over-Kill)

 

[Brian Timmons]

Erm...you just have to be a little creative and make those abbreviations sound better to your customers.
First of all, tell them that Raptor cannot film in Low Quality - it's just not possible.
As Jarred said in the Q&A "meeting", at HQ this camera outperforms every other RED/sensor of the previous generations easily. (well, maybe not his exact words..)
So, in my understanding HQ, MQ and LQ cannot mean the same as in Komodo's compression settings.
I guess it's much more something like this:

LQ - (visually) Lossless Quality
MQ - Magnificent Quality
HQ - Hilarious Quality (with a little wink to Spaceballs' Ludicrous Speed)

Should a setting with higher compression be released, they could call it BQ. No, no...not "BS" Quality,
I mean Brilliant Quality. ...I can already see your customers eyes sparkling just because of this renaming, heheh. :ihih:
Hope this helps. :thumbup1:

To be honest I might personally rename "LQ" to people on set that ask since "Low Quality" in itself can produce some problems.
Might refer them to some of the statements Phil Holland made vouching for LQ's quality or just have them pixel peep shots themselves in RCX.

What's in a name? Perception when it comes to non-technical people.
Unfortunately the perception in the name LQ as "Low quality" does not match the reality.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I feel for the RedTeam on this issue. Having numerical ratios is the obvious choice, except it's not. Why? As an example, I had a producer tell me to "up" the ratio to 10:1 from 8:1 because it would be higher quality. When I told him it didn't work that way, he quickly pointed out that 10 was higher than 8 so it must be better :emote_headwall:

IAC, I do see the potential for LQ to send the wrong message to a client. Good, better, best is the typical workaround for a 3 tier offering - but doesn't have an obvious two character representation. I remember when VHS tape speeds were labeled SP, LP, SLP - standard play, long play and super long play. So intuitive :rolleyes5:

Whatever names they use, I really don't want to see a low bitrate DCT option that inevitably tarnishes the brand. Perhaps there will be a ProResLT RAW option down the road that will provide a simple solution for very long takes...

Cheers #19

 

[Brian Timmons]

As an example, I had a producer tell me to "up" the ratio to 10:1 from 8:1 because it would be higher quality. When I told him it didn't work that way, he quickly pointed out that 10 was higher than 8 so it must be better :emote_headwall:

Cheers #19

I know that was a conversation that ended with that "this guy better know what he's talking about" look from the producer.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA

 

[Kemalettin Sert]

anyone did a test against Venice or Alexa LF??

 

[Kenneth interiano]

It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming months as far as price points , I don't see anyone paying full price for a Monstro or Helium when a raptor can be purchased for much less .
No trade in program will also mean the second hand market prices will have to dramatically decrease as well .
Raptor will definitely be making some waves .


P.s To those who purchased a helium or Monstro this year I feel your pain hahaha

still ,
I don't think ill be selling mine for a raptor . The only real incentive right now is cheaper cards :dread:

 

[Kemalettin Sert]

I guess we have to wait few months more for someone to test this camera against monstro or others? dang...Pls stop shooting nonsense slowmo test nobody needs those lol

 

[Kenneth interiano]

Agreed ,
comparison tests would be amazing .

 

[Russ Fill]

I guess we have to wait few months more for someone to test this camera against monstro or others? dang...Pls stop shooting nonsense slowmo test nobody needs those lol

Hey Kemalettin, Ive received my V Raptor and I'm in the process of getting all the support on it to make it functional. I did some quick test from the door of my garage the last couple afternoons and in to the full dark street and single street light shots, and Im seeing the same as Phil mentioned that the V Raptor in low light seems noticeably cleaner. There is a Cromatic Noise reduction switch that is new in latest REDCine X update that cleans up a lot of the magenta and purple and some of the blue noise you usually see when its a very dark or low light shot. So Ill have to see how that compares to what the Monstro vs Raptor sees with and with out that Cromatic Noise switch turned on or off.

After I get a way to mount it on the tripod in a couple days so I can put it side by side with my Monstro Ill post some comparison here. But Ill bet that by then most questions will be answered by others or others will have posted by then. Ill bet Phil is cooking his camera and seeing where it starts to break down in image.

I feel ya on the slowmo posts. Great to see but we all really want to see what it will do side by side against its predecessor the Monstro. And in a normal 23.98 format.
Ill just add this, yesterday night I was shooting at 4000iso on that dark street at 4k and 8k 23.98 180 shutter and I was really excited to take it on set with low light and fires for one client that I shoot a lot of that kind of work... the CBS US version of Survivor. So Im super excited to have cleaner low light stuff.

Right now Im feeling like its the next step in RED cameras but only side by side will tell by how much and in what situations.

Ill keep you posted.