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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 :)

Any UK people on here getting a RED?

Yes Gibby, I'm sure there'd be a few of us in the UK who would be very happy to get a peek at Red #8 before our own ones arrive. If you can drop by in the UK, I for one would be happy to buy you a few drinks in return for a look!

Nick
 
I'll keep you posted as we get closer to a delivery date for my camera. I love stopping in London and I'll be glad to give you guys a gander at the camera.

Cheers!
 
randomfactor said:
I My friend was their UK distro and he finally grew sick of Iridas lack of support and inability to provide fixes. It's a shame as it could have potentially been a great product, as Iridas Framecycler is for previewing 2K VFX shots. Also it isn't very user friendly:(
Click to expand...

Hi,

I was using framecycler (pro version) yeaterday for 10 hours, no problems to report. I was taking frames from 50 DSLR's!

Stephen
 
Stephen Williams said:
Hi,

I was using framecycler (pro version) yeaterday for 10 hours, no problems to report. I was taking frames from 50 DSLR's!

Stephen
Click to expand...

As I said.. Framecycler is a great product. Speedgrade has lots of issues such as failing to playback 2k dpx files in real time (on a properly specd system). Iridas kept claiming to have fixed this and other problems in subsequent releases but they never did. My friend who was their UK distro got sick of their attitude and gave up trying to sell it.
 
no 2k? on the speed grade DI I take it? was that an issue with a grade applied? I should have about 450meg a second raid so playback shouldnt be an issue. Unless their wrapper is not working properly. They did say they wanted to send me a proper full sytem to eval but I'd rather eval on the kit I'll be using.. kinda makes sense..
 
flameop said:
no 2k? on the speed grade DI I take it? was that an issue with a grade applied? I should have about 450meg a second raid so playback shouldnt be an issue. Unless their wrapper is not working properly. They did say they wanted to send me a proper full sytem to eval but I'd rather eval on the kit I'll be using.. kinda makes sense..
Click to expand...

This was just standard playback with no grade applied. The system we had was the recommended spec. Also the UI was clunky. You couldn't seperate the colour wheel panel from the image that you were grading - It was always partially over the image:eek: (this may be fixed now). Overall I got the impression that here was a tool that had very little design input from actual colourists. This was confirmed by my friend who said that Iridas took the Framecycler engine and built Speedgrade around it.
 
Nick Shaw said:
Yes Gibby, I'm sure there'd be a few of us in the UK who would be very happy to get a peek at Red #8 before our own ones arrive. If you can drop by in the UK, I for one would be happy to buy you a few drinks in return for a look!
Click to expand...

Would be great to meet up in London. Gibby, you could be rather hungover with all the free drinks by the time you leave the UK!! :D
 
Well it looks like i will be the first to have a red one in Scotland.

A large part of me is looking forward to getting the camera :)

The rest of me is just preparing for the massive learning curve i will have to undertake to just get to a basic level:o

I must say it is trully exciting and deeply worrying all rolled into one:eek:

Michael
 
Stephen Webb said:
D'ya think he'd get hung-over enough that he'd forget to take his Red with him? :cool:
Click to expand...

I expect we'd have to cut through the handcuff and chain first! :)
 
Looks like I better pack some pepper spray for the trip!

I'm a non-drinker, so no chance of me getting so hungover I lose track of my RED...but I love going to the pubs in UK, that's where the fun is and the best food!
 
IRIDAS SpeedGrade

IRIDAS SpeedGrade

randomfactor said:
Personally I wouldn't recommend Iridas Speedgrade. We evaluated it a while ago and it just failed to perform. My friend was their UK distro and he finally grew sick of Iridas lack of support and inability to provide fixes. It's a shame as it could have potentially been a great product, as Iridas Framecycler is for previewing 2K VFX shots. Also it isn't very user friendly:(
Click to expand...

Dear Adam,

I'd like to know when you tried it out. Also, since we never had a UK representative for SpeedGrade, I'd also really like to know who this friend of yours is. We had a FrameCycler reseller in the UK but this relationship ended almost 2 years ago.

Do you have any first-hand experience with a recent SpeedGrade system?

Indeed we built SpeedGrade on the basis of FrameCycler. A bit of history:

I wrote the the first FrameCycler flipbook over the course of about half a year in my spare time during late 2000 and early 2001, where I founded the company and quit my day job.

Then I wrote FrameCycler DDS with the help of Michael, a programmer I hired over the course of half a year, using the RAM flipbook as the basis of course.

DDS was first released at the end of 2001, making it the first product that was able to do disk-based playback of 2K frames on an off-the-shelf PC. In 2002 we built the first stereoscopic versions of FrameCycler and DDS (also industry firsts). Then later that year we started building the cross platform version of FrameCycler and released the first LINUX versions.

In 2003 we introduced the first SpeedGrade RT, which ESC used to pre-grade the last Matrix sequel and Catwomen, in conjunction with a Shake node for SpeedGrade.

I find it odd that 4 years after we introduced the world's first GPU-based grading application which already was quite capable of real time playback and grading (much simpler than today of course), you are claiming we can't even playback without grading.

There are always challenges, especially when you go into grading. It's a constant battle to meet user's expectations who want tape-to-tape-like performance while having access to unlimited numbers of grading layers and masks. But it sometimes helps to look at what the competition is offering. So far there's only one solution that is considerably faster than SpeedGrade. It's a cluster of PCs, each working on their own chunk of the frame.

I can do real-time grading of HD frames in RAM on my Dell M90 notebook, with color-keyed and masked secondaries.

I can easily do the same in 2K direct-from disk on a decent system with a RAID array. Playback is surely not an issue...

One word about "supplying your own system": No problem - in theory. In practice I have to caution: The world of hardware has not become simpler in the last years and it's quite possible to configure a system that looks great on paper but doesn't perform for "whatever" reason. Sometimes it's just a component, sometimes it's some stupid power management quirk, sometimes it's something that's not easily determined. The only reason we advise people to stick with a certified system is because you will have less trouble with it. We have nothing to gain except peace of mind.

Cheers,
Lin
 
Lin said:
Dear Adam,

I'd like to know when you tried it out...Do you have any first-hand experience with a recent SpeedGrade system?...Indeed we built SpeedGrade on the basis of FrameCycler. A bit of history: I wrote the the first FrameCycler flipbook over the course of about half a year in my spare time during late 2000 and early 2001, where I founded the company and quit my day job...
Cheers,
Lin
Click to expand...

Hi Lin

Never used SpeedGrade, but it's great to have direct responses from the manufacturers. Got to love the Internet for enabling such direct communication! :D
 
Lin said:
Dear Adam,

I'd like to know when you tried it out. Also, since we never had a UK representative for SpeedGrade, I'd also really like to know who this friend of yours is. We had a FrameCycler reseller in the UK but this relationship ended almost 2 years ago.

Do you have any first-hand experience with a recent SpeedGrade system?

Indeed we built SpeedGrade on the basis of FrameCycler. A bit of history:

I wrote the the first FrameCycler flipbook over the course of about half a year in my spare time during late 2000 and early 2001, where I founded the company and quit my day job.

Then I wrote FrameCycler DDS with the help of Michael, a programmer I hired over the course of half a year, using the RAM flipbook as the basis of course.

DDS was first released at the end of 2001, making it the first product that was able to do disk-based playback of 2K frames on an off-the-shelf PC. In 2002 we built the first stereoscopic versions of FrameCycler and DDS (also industry firsts). Then later that year we started building the cross platform version of FrameCycler and released the first LINUX versions.

In 2003 we introduced the first SpeedGrade RT, which ESC used to pre-grade the last Matrix sequel and Catwomen, in conjunction with a Shake node for SpeedGrade.

I find it odd that 4 years after we introduced the world's first GPU-based grading application which already was quite capable of real time playback and grading (much simpler than today of course), you are claiming we can't even playback without grading.

There are always challenges, especially when you go into grading. It's a constant battle to meet user's expectations who want tape-to-tape-like performance while having access to unlimited numbers of grading layers and masks. But it sometimes helps to look at what the competition is offering. So far there's only one solution that is considerably faster than SpeedGrade. It's a cluster of PCs, each working on their own chunk of the frame.

I can do real-time grading of HD frames in RAM on my Dell M90 notebook, with color-keyed and masked secondaries.

I can easily do the same in 2K direct-from disk on a decent system with a RAID array. Playback is surely not an issue...

One word about "supplying your own system": No problem - in theory. In practice I have to caution: The world of hardware has not become simpler in the last years and it's quite possible to configure a system that looks great on paper but doesn't perform for "whatever" reason. Sometimes it's just a component, sometimes it's some stupid power management quirk, sometimes it's something that's not easily determined. The only reason we advise people to stick with a certified system is because you will have less trouble with it. We have nothing to gain except peace of mind.

Cheers,
Lin
Click to expand...


Hi Lin,

It was 2003 that we evaluated Speedgrade. This was after I met you when you came to visit some friends of mine (with your UK reseller - not naming any names, but I think you know who I mean now :) ) at Goldcrest in London. My inital impressions of the software were very positive. After this, your (then reseller) supplied us with a system for evaluation. We couldn't get the system to playback 2K DPX files in realtime. This was something that was blamed as a software problem by this person and he claimed that he had repeatedly tried to get fixes from yourselves but was consantly being let down.

I understood at the time that Speedgrade was early in it's development and I hoped that things would improve but everytime I checked in with you know who, he blamed you guys for lack of support. I could only go on what I was being told, and for whatever reasons he seemed to have lost faith in the product. It wasn't as though he had an alternative product to sell me, so I had little reason to doubt him.

I realize that there are many challenges with grading applications and if I have unfairly judged Speedgrade and Iridas then I am sorry. Maybe the person we are talking about was the wrong guy to handle the product? - I know that DI kit is constantly evolving and I would love to check out Speedgrade again to see if it is compatible with our future Red/Mac based workflow.

Regards,
 
randomfactor said:
Hi Lin,

It was 2003 that we evaluated Speedgrade. I know that DI kit is constantly evolving and I would love to check out Speedgrade again to see if it is compatible with our future Red/Mac based workflow.

Regards,
Click to expand...

Hey Adam,

2003 is an awful long time ago! Back then we indeed had trouble on SATA systems because of their longer seek times as compared to SCSI which we used before. I think all parties back then made errors, so I don't want to get into that in detail. Suffice to say, that you won't have any trouble on a 2006/2007 SpeedGrade or FrameCycler system (I hope!).

We are about to release the Universal Binary version of SpeedGrade HD, DI and all FrameCycler versions, so I hope you find something for your Mac-based workflow.

Cheers,
Lin
 
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