Arri Alexa and Mysterium-X...

[I Bloom]

I think Arri has carved out a really smart niche. I actually think that it's a niche that overlaps alot with the major income sources of most of the Red owner operators that I know. And the prores option is what sells it. Future proofing is not important for these productions, neither is raw. So it's a bit scary, especially if you have a small shop and you survive on just a few good clients who call you just when they shoot Red.

So yeah, we've known for years that Roland had closed this deal with Arri, now it's coming to fruition. The thing is that the Prores option on Alexa is only really just a step beyond a Red feeding HD to an onboard CF recorder. These recorders are now tiny and inexpensive. What they currently lack is image quality and full integration with the camera. (i.e matching filenames, timecode, start and stop without a science project hanging off the side of your camera.)

What I want is a great camera, that makes the best possible image for all my personal projects and movies. But to afford that camera, what I need is to make that investment adapt to the needs of a wide range of clients, many of whom don't value or judge image quality the way that I do and whose decision making doesn't conform to my aesthetics.

I've hoped in the past for direct support of a baked in 1080p format from Red to fill this gap. I guess I renew that request. My hope is that there is an answer to my need to be found at NAB.

Warm regards,
IBloom

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

1080p pro res and raw is a cool option.
i cant see why there shouldnt be the possibility for RED to do it (besides paying the licence fees, maybe even DNxHD is better)

dailies/offlines direct to cards, raw directly to drives or the other way around.
or a whole 2TB dailies-direct to edit module

edit:+
plus get your BWF files per WIFI and sync these with the ProRes/DNxHD files in realtime in the module (absolutly having no clue if this is even possible)

 

[Tom Lowe]

I find it funny how red is now the camera to beat and compare yourself too, and Alexa is going to be used on commercials and music video's... strange (but good) times.

Well when Arri is out there pushing ProRes 1080p as the feature that will make Alexa "the highest quality" digital cinema camera in their press releases, obviously something has fallen through the cracks. 1080p ProRes vs 5.1K Red RAW??

Scott, you got it correct. Maybe there will be slight differences between what I am seeing at 5.6K RAW on Canon FF35 and what Epic Monstro 6K FF35 will look like, but I doubt the differences will be too dramatic.

 

[Scott Crawley]

The thing is that the Prores option on Alexa is only really just a step beyond a Red feeding HD to an onboard CF recorder. These recorders are now tiny and inexpensive. What they currently lack is image quality and full integration with the camera. (i.e matching filenames, timecode, start and stop without a science project hanging off the side of your camera.)

What are the odds that AJA will have a new box like the Ki Pro at NAB that accepts a wider range of inputs and will fulfill that request before Epic even ships? Doesn't Epic offer 1080 out already?

 

[Terry VerHaar]

I'm not generally a ranter, but I've got to say that Arri should be ashamed to show their face on this forum: "The highest sensitivity and dynamic range on the market"

WTF? Where was this established. It's great to promote yourselves, and we all respect marketing, but seriously? You're going to anoint yourself winner with zero substantiation?

(snippet)

- Tim

"Obsolesence obsolete." (Red)
"Scarlet: Fall 2009" (Red)
"The best fleshtones" (Panasonic)
"The best editing software on the planet" (Avid)
"The greatest name in color" (Technicolor)
"The ultimate driving machine" (BMW)
Any claim ever made for a product that hasn't even shipped yet (Red, Arri, Sony, Panasonic, Apple, and just about any technology company you can name)

Marketing is marketing. If you're going to get bent out of shape over this, you should be just as judgmental with every other company and product. Companies say things to get attention drawn to their products. It's a fact of business life.

Having been one of those low-life "marketers" in a past life (I am almost cured now. I promise.) The one nit I'd have with the examples you cite, Mike, is that they are all subjective and cannot be proven or disproven. BMW is somebody's Ultimate Driving Machine while yours may be a 1963 Corvette Stingray. However, the issues that Tim point out are much more measurable and thus "provable." You can measure dynamic range and sensitivity. Yes, you can argue all day about the tests, the specs, the results, whatever. But the two types of claims ARE different.

 

[I Bloom]

What are the odds that AJA will have a new box like the Ki Pro at NAB that accepts a wider range of inputs and will fulfill that request before Epic even ships? Doesn't Epic offer 1080 out already?

To really make it work you need frame accurate start and stop so that the files are a frame to frame match to the raw files and you need that box to be much smaller. A third party module on Epic would be the real answer.

IBloom

 

[Scott Crawley]

I think AJA has said the Ki was frame accurate, but I could be mistaken. A smaller and sexier solution might definitely be better.

ProRes built in will be a nice feature no doubt, but as you say a similar solution wouldn't be far away.

 

[Quentin Brown]

None of us outside of Red have seen +5K RAW digital motion picture photography in all their glory (though I guess we're about to see it soon)... but it's not unreasonable for a marketing department to ignore a competitor's future product, even if it's the near future. When they make advertising claims, they are referring to their immediate competition, the M-X Red, the F35, etc. When the 5K Epic hits the stores, then they can claim to have the best digital cinema camera on the market.

Does it matter? Does anyone here take any manufacturer's claim as to being the best as the literal truth without the need for independent verification?

ARRI's is making a bet that many producers, directors, and studios don't place resolution at the top of their priority list. For better or worse, they have some evidence to back that up, such as a decade's worth of 2K digital intermediates and HD-shot features, some of which are the highest-grossing movies of all time. The issue isn't whether that's a good thing, just whether it's a marketable thing. +4K feature filmmaking may be the future, but the issue is whether it is the immediate future, before the next generation of ARRI cameras have to come out, which may well be +4K.

For the next few years, it may just be a judgement call as a renter which package to go for -- for a landscape movie, go for resolution over everything else, for an urban night movie, go for sensitivity over everything else, for the buyer, go for value-for-money over everything else. Different projects have different priorities.

I'm looking forward to all of these cameras.

What David said encapsulates my thoughts more effectively than what I wrote earlier.

I hope my little piece of personal therapy helped give some insights for others though. I used to be a therapist for a while ... sorry, can't help it.

It is great to see more openness from people like Michael Brevin as Tom pointed out.

The little implied snub at RED in Arri's press release about them not introducing new standards that don't fit into current pipelines made me chuckle. So Arri RAW existed before they originally introduced it?

 

[Johan Lindgren]

I think the Alexa system makes a lot of sense. Sure the ProRes HQ option does not speak well to many of us in terms of getting the most quality out of the system. On the other hand, I know projects that have been mastered straight from RED proxys.
ARRI suggests different kinds of workflows that ranges from easy to advanced. Maybe image quality and ease and control of operation is not all measurable in K´s.
I know celebrated cinematographers that are not nearly as technically advanced as the average poster on this forum, yet without being able to dismiss or applaud a system on mere specs from a brochure they are in the leading edge of cinematography.

From my point EPIC, ONE MX and ALEXA seems like very fine tools that will make good aid to all skilled artists of the trade.

Johan

 

[Tom.Wong]

also makes you wonder if this is all just another marketing strategy. For all we know they already have a 4k and beyond plan, maybe interchangeable sensors like RED has in mind already, maybe a retrofit in a year or 2 when 4k and beyond is in full demand.

They are a power house company and know that RED is their competition too, and it's gonna be a good fight, and it's probably gonna be back and forth.

and who wins? US. We all win, cause their competition makes better cameras, we get the better cameras, we shoot our stuff with the better cameras and frolic and dance in our ever so RAW glory.

 

[Tim Morten]

There are a lot of steps you're skipping over. I think you've got your cameras mixed. The Alexa's Pro-Res solution is ready to edit, out of the box. The Red takes a lot more steps, and some of those steps and solutions are missing because key components aren't updated yet. In most situations, you have to transcode. If conforming off the raw, you'll have to figure out another way outside of Rubber Monkey to ingest, conform and transcode your EDL. Maybe Clipfinder with RedCine-X beta.

I'm not talking about image quality with any of this, I'm just talking about ease of use, post-wise.

I'm on an M not an MX quite yet (and yes I do copy to a RAID before I edit, so if that's what you call skipping a lot of steps, you got me - copying files is some complicated sh*t). I use R3D all the way, which is completely feasible.

Want to use a system without R3D support? Yeah, then you transcode. So what? Taking film to a lab and getting it telecined for a decade is simple, but a simple format conversion is suddenly prohibitively difficult? Come on.

I guess you can argue that support for new resolutions/color-science on MX incurred a delay in workflow support. Let's discuss that subject after NAB. I think you're going to find that "out of the box" ProRes support isn't the advantage that you're making it out be.

Not so long ago that ProRes was the upstart file format... .

Cheers,
Tim

 

[Peter Moretti]

Well when Arri is out there pushing ProRes 1080p as the feature that will make Alexa "the highest quality" digital cinema camera in their press releases, obviously something has fallen through the cracks. 1080p ProRes vs 5.1K Red RAW?? ...

Tom,

Stop it. It's not what they are doing and this has already been explained. If you want the highest quality out the camera you go ArriRAW which uncompressed 16-bit.

ProRes 4:2:2 and 4:4:4:4 is a multi-recording option that allows you to create dailies, offline edit media and if you need a fast turn around you can finish off them if you want. (BTW, I've heard of more than a few examples of Red footage being finished in ProRes or DNxHD b/c it was just faster and easier.) It's for workflow and quick turnaround, and it's a nice feature.

Why you insist on mischaracterizing it is beyond me.

 

[Quentin Brown]

I think Arri has carved out a really smart niche. I actually think that it's a niche that overlaps alot with the major income sources of most of the Red owner operators that I know. And the prores option is what sells it. Future proofing is not important for these productions, neither is raw. So it's a bit scary, especially if you have a small shop and you survive on just a few good clients who call you just when they shoot Red.

So yeah, we've known for years that Roland had closed this deal with Arri, now it's coming to fruition. The thing is that the Prores option on Alexa is only really just a step beyond a Red feeding HD to an onboard CF recorder. These recorders are now tiny and inexpensive. What they currently lack is image quality and full integration with the camera. (i.e matching filenames, timecode, start and stop without a science project hanging off the side of your camera.)

What I want is a great camera, that makes the best possible image for all my personal projects and movies. But to afford that camera, what I need is to make that investment adapt to the needs of a wide range of clients, many of whom don't value or judge image quality the way that I do and whose decision making doesn't conform to my aesthetics.

I've hoped in the past for direct support of a baked in 1080p format from Red to fill this gap. I guess I renew that request. My hope is that there is an answer to my need to be found at NAB.

Warm regards,
IBloom

I'm with you on this.

Could really see a module as being the best solution if not too bulky - whatever size though I'm sure it would be a huge improvement over a Ki pro box stuck on it and making it unwieldy. Would definitely want the option to record both RAW and proRes up to 10bit 4:4:4 at same time to separate recording media. If affordable this would take the RED DSMC into these markets very convincingly. What would be even nicer would be recording straight to the side CF module or any recording module in a fast easy edit format at 1080 as standard in camera. We'll have to wait and see the 1080 scaled mode on epic and Scarlet to see what recording format they have for that. That would allow you to keep all the flexible form factor benefits of the DSMC on a shoot where simple 1080 workflow and finish is all that's required.

Whilst we're on that topic, I love smooth workflows. Would be nice to link all notes to a digital script with shooting notes, continuity notes, camera notes, camera filenames and metadata including slates all on a DataBase and linked to files on camera - maybe combining data coming off several ipads via wifi and in a format that all edit software can understand and build a multicam script linked and scene numbered timeline from. Perhaps RED can oblige? (apologies to assistant editors out there if this comes true but I hate doing all that stuff manually)

 

[Tom Lowe]

Tom,

Stop it. It's not what they are doing and this has already been explained. If you want the highest quality out the camera you go ArriRAW which uncompressed 16-bit.

ProRes 4:2:2 and 4:4:4:4 is a multi-recording option that allows you to create dailies, offline edit media and if you need a fast turn around you can finish off them if you want. (BTW, I've heard of more than a few examples of Red footage being finished in ProRes or DNxHD b/c it was just faster and easier.) It's for workflow and quick turnaround, and it's a nice feature.

Why you insist on mischaracterizing it is beyond me.

Peter, I was quoting directly from Arri's own press release:

“Combining our digital imaging technology directly with ProRes makes the ALEXA camera the highest quality digital camera system available,” said Adrian Widera, ARRI Strategic and Business Development.

http://news.creativecow.net/story/863611

Seems like a clear statement to me. To say that ProRes coupled with anything makes it the "highest quality" is of course untrue. Raw is higher quality. And most certainly Red RAW at 5.1K or even 4.5K MX is much higher quality than 1080p ProRes.

 

[Michael Hastings]

First, let me start by saying that I will be ordering my Epic-X #206 the day I get the email - even if I have to sell a kidney - because the resolution, framerates, form factor AND PRICE work for me as an owner/operator shooting primarily nature footage. For other stuff I can deal with the workflow.

However, I think one has to acknowledge the accuracy of Ian's post that Arri has carved out a nice niche - particularly with their current customer base.
Bottom line is Epic will probably exceed the Alexa in total image quality, but if your projects are mainly 1080P 2K oriented, the other advantages may outweigh the resolution factor.

Sure their will be ways to get 1080P direct recording on the new RED cameras but it seems it will still be an addon/workaround situation which left a door open for the Alexa. But that's marketing 101: product differentiation, market segmentation, brand loyalty, pricing, etc.

And I think we REDUSERs have to acknowledge that just as we are often passionately loyal to RED, there are also thousands that are passionately loyal to ARRI and so when they tout the advantages it isn't necessarily a grand conspiracy against RED or to keep film alive. It is just their passion to make sure that people understand what's good/advantageous about the Arri camera (just as we are passionate about explaining the ins and outs of RED) before simply dismissing it and buying the higher resolution Epic.

As far as future proofing - nothing really is.

1080P/2k is more future proof than SD
3K is more future proof than 2k
3.5 is more future proof 3K
4K is more future proof than 3.5K
5k, 6K 28K etc. is more future proof than: you get the point, it is a continuum but none is truly future proof.

I calculated that even 28K is going to be a third lower resolution than my 14 x 8 foot "picture window" LED wall at 300 pixels per inch (today's normal print resolution) - on some form of flexible LED wallpaper - which I expect will be available at reasonable prices (say the cost of a good grading monitor today) within my lifetime.

It boils down to how future proof you want to be and what features you are willing to give up or what you are willing to pay for.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

REDusers don't need to panic!

REDusers don't need to panic!

REDusers don't need to panic!

Why!

Just add Aja KiPro to your RED kit and you are fine having still better performance and cheaper camera than Alexa.

How?

Have a look and simply follow the things below:

Alexa tech specs (a bit poor in comparison with RED1-MX).

RED1 tech specs.

AJA KiPro is better solution than Alexa SxS QT ProRes recording.

Add 1.67 kg of KiPro weight and your RED body is almost "heavy" as an Alexa.

KiPro costs Price : $ 3,995.00 at BHPhotoVideo online store.

Summary is that RED1 with EVF, LCD, battery set and Aja KiPro is still cheaper*** than Alexa

and the most important is that this R1+RedRocket+MX sensor+KiPro kit is far superior than

any of three ARRI Alexa digital acquisition systems.

***The best is to do your own calculation about the price.

 

[M Most]

In addition, ProRes adds a lot of noise and artifacts to the image.

Really? You would have to actually show me some, because I've looked at a LOT of ProRes footage and have never seen any of that. Particularly when using the HQ or 4444 flavors.

 

[Scott Crawley]

I'm sure it would be a huge improvement over a Ki pro box stuck on it and making it unwieldy.

Mounting it underneath with the currently available bracket wouldn't be the most ergonomic thing, but unweildy? The tiny Epic and a 9" box is unweildy? I'm certain a bracket could be fashioned to mount it more comfortably and it might still be smaller than Alexa.

Edit: With a little software, you might be able to control the Ki Pro with the RedMote.

 

[M Most]

Well when Arri is out there pushing ProRes 1080p as the feature that will make Alexa "the highest quality" digital cinema camera in their press releases, obviously something has fallen through the cracks. 1080p ProRes vs 5.1K Red RAW??

Uhhh... you would have to show me that quote, because that's not what they're saying. The ProRes recording is a feature that makes the camera usable in common post pipelines, efficient, and versatile. It has nothing to do with making it the highest quality digital cinema camera and that's not what they said.

 

[Tom.Wong]

i think the Pro-res codex is simply an addition the decided to put in for broadcast use, which requires incredibly fast turn overs. and if anybody has worked in broadcast, certain areas are really slow to upgrade in systems, and get new hardware. having straight pro res to dump in and and edit right away without debayering or fancy hardware, or giant HD sleds for uncompressed HD, or red rocket and what not.

I once did assistant editing work in a post house where they were still running 5 year old Avid Adrenaline's on broken down HP's. but they did SD offlines, and spent their money on a single Symphony to online everything HD.

Direct pro res recording allows for the use of the sensor and its low light and super fast turn arounds that can edit on a macbook pro if you absolutely needed to...

You tell that to a producer and they'll be all about it in a heartbeat...