Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

4K Alexa is on its way!

I knew this was going to get twisted the moment I saw the original article. First, let's look at the main gist of the article, via Franz Kraus' initial quote:

“What annoys me, more than being asked about whether we are launching a 4K camera, is that at trade shows, HD quality is often being dumbed down, or not presented to its optimum quality, in order to make Ultra HD 4K look good,” Kraus said.

He doesn't like marketing falsehoods altering perceptions.

As far as any 4K camera from ARRI goes, it is no secret that OF COURSE Arri has been in development for years. Everyone has been in development for years and always will be. You must keep working on whatever you will be doing next, otherwise you fall behind. RED is a bit more public about some of its R&D work, but all companies do it. At least the smart ones. Franz Kraus even admitted that an earlier stage of R&D was not brought to market because they did not like how it had progressed. That's the process.

Eventually, everything moves forward or you're left behind. RED is moving forward as well. When Arri is ready to announce a 4K or 6K or 200K camera then they will. It could be tomorrow, it could be next year, it could be never. That's how these things go. And don't keep asking Arri what its plans are; as stated, it annoys them. ;-)
 
Bing Bailey said:
Competition is healthy. red got what they wanted. they awoke giants sleeping in the end we all win
Click to expand...

I think so, and also diversity is a great thing too. Arri suggest that they could have made a 4K camera but another company was strong in that space (I wonder who) so they wanted to differentiate themselves and do something different. I think it's great to have a variety of cameras to choose from too, especially if they have different looks, sometimes I worry that the Alexa with everything attitude will lead to everything looking too samey. Thankfully we seem to be moving into a period of lots of different visual options. :)

Freya
 
Mitch Gross said:
I knew this was going to get twisted the moment I saw the original article. First, let's look at the main gist of the article, via Franz Kraus' initial quote:

“What annoys me, more than being asked about whether we are launching a 4K camera, is that at trade shows, HD quality is often being dumbed down, or not presented to its optimum quality, in order to make Ultra HD 4K look good,” Kraus said.

He doesn't like marketing falsehoods altering perceptions.
Click to expand...

I hope you don't think my article has twisted anything. Certainly I havn't set out to do that.

As far as any 4K camera from ARRI goes, it is no secret that OF COURSE Arri has been in development for years. Everyone has been in development for years and always will be. You must keep working on whatever you will be doing next, otherwise you fall behind. RED is a bit more public about some of its R&D work, but all companies do it. At least the smart ones. Franz Kraus even admitted that an earlier stage of R&D was not brought to market because they did not like how it had progressed. That's the process.

Eventually, everything moves forward or you're left behind. RED is moving forward as well. When Arri is ready to announce a 4K or 6K or 200K camera then they will. It could be tomorrow, it could be next year, it could be never. That's how these things go. And don't keep asking Arri what its plans are; as stated, it annoys them. ;-)
Click to expand...

I don't think it's true to say that a 4K camera from Arri was a definite. There was always a lot of speculation about it as I think there was some expectation that there might be one, however I for one was beginning to wonder if there would be one, especially after the launch of the Arri HD camera. I began to wonder if Arri was just going to focus on anamorphic and 1080p instead.

I think it is quite a revelation from Arri both that they have been working on a 4K camera all along, but also that they are definitely working on a 4K camera (or higher) for release.

I think it might be an assumption that things will keep moving forward in a linear fashion, and which direction is forward might be a matter of perspective too. We can already see that from the choice that Red made vs the choice that Arri made. Red chose spatial resolution and Arri chose dynamic range. Both companies went forward. There used to be a sculpture in Birmingham here in the UK called "Forward" (Birmingham's motto) with lots of people facing in different directions. Lots of ways can be forward.

4K is obviously presently the thing, but it may not continue to be so into the future. There is a bit of a window at the moment to define what a 4K future might look like. It will be interesting to see what that future looks like once the music stops. I have my fingers crossed that a 4K future will be the best it can be but it does depend on what choices are made now.

Freya
 
I'm sure it will be a bit before there's an actual camera. But as someone said, those RAW files are going to be huge! I'm sure they'll be looking at using terabyte cards like the F65. It's always an interesting time when the top developers are getting close to their next tier of cameras, higher resolution, DR, ISO, and much more.
 
Mitch Gross said:
I knew this was going to get twisted the moment I saw the original article. First, let's look at the main gist of the article, via Franz Kraus' initial quote:

“What annoys me, more than being asked about whether we are launching a 4K camera, is that at trade shows, HD quality is often being dumbed down, or not presented to its optimum quality, in order to make Ultra HD 4K look good,” Kraus said.

He doesn't like marketing falsehoods altering perceptions.
Click to expand...

LOL!

Which is also another way to say ... "4K doesn't really look that much better than HD" - which, was the whole point of showing ARRI RAW footage upressed to 4K in their booth at NAB this year - which, of course - was a reel of cherry picked shots that happened to stand up well to 4K upres. Of couse one can 100% cherry pick shots that DO or DO NOT stand up to upres well.

MARKETING is all about altering perceptions - and ARRI is pretty good at it IMO - it's a pretty silly quote.
 
Resolution is the ante

Resolution is the ante

Freya said:
(snip)
4K is obviously presently the thing, but it may not continue to be so into the future. There is a bit of a window at the moment to define what a 4K future might look like. It will be interesting to see what that future looks like once the music stops. I have my fingers crossed that a 4K future will be the best it can be but it does depend on what choices are made now.
Freya
Click to expand...

There are many challenges to getting great IQ from the post suite to the viewer. Bit depth of the distribution master, color gamut, compression quality/bit rate, display capabilities, viewing environment, viewing distance as a ratio to screen size, etc. I take your comment to imply that in the rush to get UHD/4K into the wild - in a bandwidth limited world - critical image metrics might be so compromised by compression that the end result is inferior. Sadly, that is all too possible. HEVC/H.265 will help, and for those who get on the RedRay train, the .RED codec appears capable of credible UHD/4K IQ at real world bit rates.

If your note is more about whether UHD/4K is enough resolution to be an enduring viewing standard I'd say yes. Will 8K look better in some exhibition scenarios - of course. That said, the wetware (viewer) has inherent characteristics that invoke the law of diminishing returns fairly strongly past 4K. At the risk of echoing the ARRI party line, I'm more interested in seeing 16 bit, high DR, rec2020, UHD/4K displays fed lightly compressed signal first, then 8K.

Cheers - #19
 
I think the point he was making in the interview was poor monitor presentations for the HD material. Certainly one can "cherry-pick" shots to illustrate any point. He was simply asking for a level playing field in the presentation of the material.

"4K Alexa on its way" is misleading. ARRI isn't working on a 4K Alexa. They are developing their next line of cameras, which could be years away. These cameras will have high dynamic range, excellent color reproduction, low noise, and yes, higher resolution than the current Alexa cameras. The current cameras are 2.9K. The next cameras will be "at least 4K." That's all that was said.

This reminds me of when Jeff Krienes was developing his Kinetta camera. He had all of these fascinating target goals in the design, but he made one casual mention of an idea for a rotary encoder control for variable speed adjustment and suddenly everyone was talking about a "hand-cranked digital camera". It had very little to do with what was actually in development.
 
Mitch Gross said:
"4K Alexa on its way" is misleading. ARRI isn't working on a 4K Alexa. They are developing their next line of cameras, which could be years away. These cameras will have high dynamic range, excellent color reproduction, low noise, and yes, higher resolution than the current Alexa cameras. The current cameras are 2.9K. The next cameras will be "at least 4K." That's all that was said.
Click to expand...

That's true. To be fair I do say in my article that it will feature at least 4K:
Franz Kraus, managing director of Arri, has announced that Arri are working on a new 4K camera. It will feature at least 4K resolution
Click to expand...

which I think does make clear that the camera might feature more than 4K.

I would be surprised if such a camera wouldn't support UHD 4K.
Are you feeling pessimistic about UHD Mitch?

I think that if UHD 4K doesn't get the backing it needs to succeed, then a camera with 4K or greater resolution is unlikely to be that significant.
In that situation other features of any new camera will take precedence.
I hope that doesn't happen but it's not quite in the can yet, so to speak.

To be fair also, my article has the title "Arri are developing a 4K Alexa" and while the title "4K Alexa is on its way" might sound more definite, I would suggest that something can be on its way, but then not actually arrive! ;)

I really hope it does arrive but I'm glad that it is at least in development.

I also hope that it won't be years and years away, but then we have been waiting for quite some time for that 4K varicam already, so it does happen.

Freya
 
I definitely see UHD in the future, and likely very near future. But I also see 1920x1080 HD hanging around for quite some time. Most content is ephemeral. It would be lovely to have as a long-lasting archive but for many clients this just isn't a big issue. Lots of web content is still not in HD because of bandwidth issues. Same for numerous cable TV channels. It's great fun to be on the leading edge, but one must remember that the trail behind us is long. HD and 4K will co-exist for some time to come.
 
Mitch Gross said:
I definitely see UHD in the future, and likely very near future. But I also see 1920x1080 HD hanging around for quite some time. Most content is ephemeral. It would be lovely to have as a long-lasting archive but for many clients this just isn't a big issue. Lots of web content is still not in HD because of bandwidth issues. Same for numerous cable TV channels. It's great fun to be on the leading edge, but one must remember that the trail behind us is long. HD and 4K will co-exist for some time to come.
Click to expand...

I agree, but I don't think UHD is a done deal yet, and there are certain things that are, so far, worrying about the approach to it.

If Arri make a new higher resolution camera, it largely only makes sense in the context of UHD 4K.
I'm sure this is why Franz mentions 4K because it is actually a special number. Yes Arri could make a 5K camera but I don't think that would be that exciting. An 8k camera might be kinda wild but to be honest 4K is the magic number, because there is the chance of 4K distribution via UHD.

If UHD doesn't happen properly then 1080p is likely to be more than good enough for a long way into the future.
In which case Arri doesn't need to bother with a higher resolution camera, it only makes sense in the context of UHD.

In that future I also see content becoming even more ephemeral than it is already.

Freya
 
Considering nobody is distributing 4k yet and essentially no movie has been finished in 4k... they aren't really late to the party. The party hasn't started yet. Even banner films like The Hobbit and Prometheus for RED are 2k movies. Notice that the fireplace in the 4k Hobbit footage shown at NAB was just some cellophane and a light. VFX are pervasive and if you don't finish in 4k you probably won't ever see a 4k version.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top