Arri Alexa and Mysterium-X...

[Carsten Fenstermacher]

Michael, when the 4:3 sensor'd version of the Alexa comes out, will that unmask additional height of the same sensor, or is it a different chip? Additionally, what are the pixel specs for that.

Finally, with all of this debate about resolutions, when recording ArriRaw, has Arri determined the maximum effective resolution you can get out of the sensor with the optimal debayering possible?

I'd like to know that also.
2880x2160 at 12bit is the spec I heard but that would be wider than 2.40.
2592x2160 would be a 2x anamorphic resolution, correct?

 

[jonnycom]

The new 4k projectors from Sony, NEC and Christie are great because of their dynamic range is getting so much better. The first gen 4k Sony's not so much.........The AMC Sony 4k installs will not have any way to project 4k with the current servers being installed. 1080p is awesome on screens 45' and under..... a lot of movies were finished at 1080p last year like Avatar and Hurt Locker... For TV it would take another 15 years if they started 5 years ago to come up with a higher rez spec....

Now when it comes to acquisition.... yea it's all about 4k and above at this point. It seems like $100k for a 1080p camera is a brand prestige thing and maybe it will do 350 units to the rental houses but with a $25k price they could get 10,000 out the door if thats what they really want to do.

I could not believe how hyped up a lot of major players were at the DGA thing tonight... the demo footage was not that impressive....

 

[Carsten Fenstermacher]

Does Alexa have cmos skew on EV and EV+?

 

[Todd M.]

You're almost better off reasoning about what it would make sense for Apple to do based on public information than believing rumors about what Apple supposedly is doing.

Exactly. Apple has released a new version of Final Cut every two years since it's release (with the one jump to v.3 thrown in the middle for the OSX transition.) We should expect a new FCS hopefully with 64-bit quicktime x underpinnings around this time next year.

 

[Chris Kenny]

(not on topic...) Quicktime X as an API is missing a ton of features to make a usable professionally. We would love to move everything to 64bit Quicktime X encoding but don't expect it to happen anytime soon. There's no indication yet that Quicktime X is intended as a pro pathway. For now we have to use all the old quicktime api's.

Either Apple is going to turn QuickTime X into a serious platform for professional video editing applications, or Apple has decided to abandon any notion of the Mac being a system that can host such apps in the future. The former seems more likely.

And they do seem to be making slow progress, if you look back. Until QTKit in 10.4 (IIRC) there was basically no Cocoa interface to QuickTime at all, and QTX in Snow Leopard does begin the process of moving the core functionality of QuickTime away from the 32-bit codebase. They'll get there eventually.

 

[Mike Gross]

The new 4k projectors from Sony, NEC and Christie are great because of their dynamic range is getting so much better. The first gen 4k Sony's not so much.........The AMC Sony 4k installs will not have any way to project 4k with the current servers being installed. 1080p is awesome on screens 45' and under..... a lot of movies were finished at 1080p last year like Avatar and Hurt Locker... For TV it would take another 15 years if they started 5 years ago to come up with a higher rez spec....

Now when it comes to acquisition.... yea it's all about 4k and above at this point. It seems like $100k for a 1080p camera is a brand prestige thing and maybe it will do 350 units to the rental houses but with a $25k price they could get 10,000 out the door if thats what they really want to do.

I could not believe how hyped up a lot of major players were at the DGA thing tonight... the demo footage was not that impressive....

I was blown away by how awesome the 4k Sony T420 at red day was.
I dragged my producer friends to the next red day and now they don't want to shoot anything less than 4k. That's why Arri missing the boat is so frustrating to me. It was such a great option except for the 3k.

 

[Todd M.]

Either Apple is going to turn QuickTime X into a serious platform for professional video editing applications, or Apple has decided to abandon any notion of the Mac being a system that can host such apps in the future. The former seems more likely.

And they do seem to be making slow progress, if you look back. Until QTKit in 10.4 (IIRC) there was basically no Cocoa interface to QuickTime at all, and QTX in Snow Leopard does begin the process of moving the core functionality of QuickTime away from the 32-bit codebase. They'll get there eventually.

It would be logical that this is the main reason the last major update was only a .5 upgrade for both Color and Compressor given that these two are the most purely image-processing based. They probably just didn't have the quicktime x architecture solid enough to do a new version release and bought themselves a couple more years of coding to truly rebuild this thing. I would expect big things out of the next suite. I think we will finally see the GPU accelerated image processing tech they bought with the Final Touch acquisition.

 

[nathanail nathanailoglou]

Obviously ARRI want to CASH with 1080p until they would be ready for 4K+.

Obviously ARRI was not ready for a 4+k camera and gave us what they could.

Prices are "a bit" high but this was always Arri's economic politic : Give the best you can at the highest price....


Market always gives answers.

 

[Stefano Spiti]

ALEXA includes native support for Apple ProRes codecs

ALEXA includes native support for Apple ProRes codecs

Hello RED colleagues
news from our friend competitors:


(Los Angeles - April 6, 2010) - ARRI today announced that its new ALEXA digital camera now includes native support for Apple ProRes codecs used in Final Cut Studio. The ALEXA camera supports Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) and ProRes 4444, and allows stunning HD images to be captured and recorded onto commercially available removable storage media. These unique recording and workflow capabilities, combined with the unparalleled image quality of ARRI's new CMOS sensor, create an ergonomic, lightweight and portable camera ideally suited to both high fidelity studio and location production.

"Combining our digital imaging technology directly with ProRes makes the ALEXA camera the highest quality digital camera system available," says Adrian Widera, ARRI Strategic and Business Development. "The simple, immediate access to ProRes brings a whole new level of productivity to the professional motion picture and broadcast market."

"Final Cut is already the first choice of professional video editors," says Richard Townhill, Apple's director of Video Applications Marketing. "By recording directly to ProRes, the new ALEXA camera gives editors the most efficient workflow possible."

The ALEXA camera's workflow solution offers native recording of ProRes compressed HD images onto high performance SxS cards and provides instant access, viewing and editing of images in Apple's Final Cut Pro on Mac desktop and notebook computers. No ingestion or transcoding step is required.

The ARRI ALEXA will be shipping to customers worldwide in June, and is currently being used to shoot the new motion picture "Anonymous" for acclaimed director Roland Emmerich.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

From the invitation of Alexa launch in LA.

A couple weeks ago I asked RED (Stuart English) what about dual HD-SDI 1080p recording with AJA KiPro with existing R1 but no precise answer till today.

If it's R1 hardware limitation they should offer immediately an upgrade part and not wait to offer that option with EPIC,

because till EPIC officially start to ship then ALEXA is going to eat a lot of RED cake in 1080p TV/Broadcast and even in motion picture market.

Actually that was a part of main Arri strategy to beat RED1 (also others like a F35,...etc,...) in 1080p fast and easy delivering togeteher with

offer of an "affordable" zoom lenses pricing at the new two brand fusion ARRI/Fujinon (those are available only with ALEXA!)..

Also remember the time a couple years ago when I was "advising" RED to get in to the Leica Cinama GmbH (like a Joint Venture, but now is closed)

and "possible" buyout of Panavision as the best option to compete against ARRI and Sony.

There are many ways to meet and seduce the PROs.

But here usually nobody listen to me anyway.

 

[Steve Dent]

But here usually nobody listen to me anyway.

It's probably better that way Sanjin

I'm a pilot, and on a user forum a few years ago I suggested that Cessna should buy Lancair. A few months later, they did. I'm pretty sure it wasn't because of my suggestion. However, now that their Lancair (now Corvalis) sales are down, somehow I feel culpable!

So trust me, you don't need the guilt.

 

[Steven Caesare]

BTW... the amount of misinformation you [Michael Bravin] have spread about RED the past few days is extremely disappointing.

Jim

Are there any examples of this that folks can point to?

I must say I was surprised by the number of direct references to RED in a couple of the Arri press releases I saw.

As well as some interesting perfomance claims.

But I'd be interested in hearing what sort of misinformation Arri is spouting.

-sc

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

Are there any examples of this that folks can point to?

I must say I was surprised by the number of direct references to RED in a couple of the Arri press releases I saw.

As well as some interesting perfomance claims.

But I'd be interested in hearing what sort of misinformation Arri is spouting.

-sc

they claim to have the highest DR and sensivity. they didnt proove yet. and trying to build the advertising on we are better then red is rude. and again no proove.
i will see how producers will look when they have to rent a codex for 1000 $ per day along the cam and when they need petabytes to store a feature.

 

[Eric Haase]

While I would think that most would agree that 4k and beyond is going to be more future-proof, 1080/2k is still perfectly fine for anything outside of theaters. There's still a lot of commercial and music video productions being cut in SD. A LOT.

The pro-res offline/online offers a pretty simple and attractive workflow for them. We asked for a 1080 output from RED years ago. Looks like Epic will have that option. For a lot of productions, if not most, 1080 is all they need. They're really not giving a shit about the future, all they care is how much it costs right now. Maybe for some FX shots they'll shoot at higher resolutions, but the majority probably won't.

Straight to Pro-Res (which they're used to anyway) off of camera? Well that solves a lot of head scratching in post. It makes it simple, and post for the Red is quite simply anything but simple.

This is a great point. One of the major hurdles in convincing a production to shoot RED is the somewhat complicated post workflow. I've had to hand hold SEVERAL productions through the process of working with RED footage. Having to transcode the footage takes time and manpower (even with a Rocket). There are times on smaller jobs that I've found myself wishing I could just record 1080 files with a baked in look that I could dial in the camera. The final grade would be on top of these files. It's not ideal for the best image but you can still get great results and it's very easy and fast. Sometimes you don't want/need to go back to the RAW or finish in any resolution higher than 4K. TV and Music videos are market segments that this can make a lot of sense for. I think TV production in particular will be attracted to Arri's Alexa for the simplicity in its workflow. This is a market segment that RED has not really been able to capture, as many shows are either shot on film, or other HD formats like Genesis. This could be largely due in part to the heavily entrenched tape based post workflows for television production. RED is just viewed as complicated and burdensome in the post process.

 

[M Most]

i will see how producers will look when they have to rent a codex for 1000 $ per day along the cam and when they petabytes to store a feature.

And you're accusing Arri of spreading misinformation?

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

And you're accusing Arri of spreading misinformation?

are you referring to the codex? a codex costs 1000 a day.
if you claim to be the best of the world you should prove it, they could easily show their arri DR test results.
misinformation, no. but when i say i am the strongest man in the world i should prove that by showing how i lift 350 pounds.

 

[Martin Stevens]

This statement by Adrian Widera, of ARRI Strategic and Business Development, where he says....."Combining our digital imaging technology directly with ProRes makes the ALEXA camera the highest quality digital camera system available", irritates the heck out of me.

There Alexa system isn't even available yet, and when it is available it won't even provide 5k/4k like the Epic will.
Do they think that we're going to actually believe them?

:furious3::furious3::furious3:

 

[Tim Morten]

The sales pitch is lot less compelling when they're honest...

 

[Stuart English]

Workflow

Workflow

I think TV production in particular will be attracted to Arri's Alexa for the simplicity in its workflow. This is a market segment that RED has not really been able to capture, as many shows are either shot on film, or other HD formats like Genesis. This could be largely due in part to the heavily entrenched tape based post workflows for television production.

This is an interesting point. But I'm left wondering how shooting to solid state media makes an Alexa more compatible with "heavily entrenched tape based post workflows". A second issue for workflow efficiency in TV production is whether the compressed video and metadata files are compatible with the large installed base of Avid NLE systems.

i.e. if you want to finish in a linear 1080p HDCAM SR bay, or perform editorial on an Avid, you may need to dub / transcode at least once anyway.

 

[Martin Stevens]

The sales pitch is lot less compelling when they're honest...

Thank you.....you brought a genuine smile to my face.

:smile::smile::smile: