Cineform as a Tiered Partner

[Lucas Wilson]

Well then they are doing a pretty poor job with Redcine......... We are not asking for any of the functions or features of Scratch....I just want a stable way to output and convert footage. Is that really asking too much from an application stand point? For now I will wait until after NAB08 before doing any real projects with our REDs....I sure hope we will not be stuck with the same buggy software from Assimilate after that....

I've said this a lot - and I'll say it again now.

ASSIMILATE did help with REDCINE. But it is a RED application. Anybody who says "ASSIMILATE wrote REDCINE" is not part of the small crew of people who actually did work on REDCINE.

Lucas
-----
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

 

[Frank Weeks]

I have tried to be patient. Held off on building or buying a computer because I have no idea which workflow will work best. Apple is supposed to work best, but if it can’t deal with 4k or 10-12 bit files, what good is it?

I feel like I have wasted precious time (that I don’t have) trying to find an answer that just doesn’t seem to arrive. I could be learning how Redcine works but my computer is AMD and won’t run it. I could go to the dark side and learn FCP (despite years of experience with Avid and Adobe) but it’s limitations make that seem foolish. I am marking time when I really need to be moving forward.

I am a small operation. Other than corporate videos, I will never produce anything for the big screen. I respect and even envy the talented people on this forum who do, but I will never be using solutions like Scratch. Even at half it’s cost it is beyond my means.

Most of my work is for broadcast or DVD. I produced over 1000 show for local broadcast and cable since I opened my production company in 1984, I truly believe there are thousands of similar operations around the world that would love to have 4k ability within their grasp.

My point is.. we need a workflow that can deal with the assets that Red provides (4k, 12bit) that work efficiently and doesn’t costing the farm.

I am proud of what Red has accomplished and I have been very vocal in the local production community about the wonders of this camera. All we need now is a workflow for us “little guys”. I am really hoping that NAB will provide some answers.

I respect Red and their integrity. My only request is, please HURRY!

Respectfully
Frank

 

[Lucas Wilson]

...I could be learning how Redcine works but my computer is AMD and won’t run it. I

??

AMD machines run REDCINE without issues... do you have a logfile that you can post to the logfile section?

Lucas
-----
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

 

[Jay A. Kelley]

Frank,

IMHO: Premiere is far better suited for RED's resolution and bit depth
Jay

 

[Kyle Mallory]

Guys,

As Jay said, quite completely... They are working on it, trust them. And they are working hard, and fast to give us the best product possible.

I hope Deanan will forgive me for quoting part of a PM, but I think this says it all:

Everyone is working overtime... I get four hours of sleep a night at best.
Rob works 7 days a week as do I. Our families are constantly pissed off.

I'm one of those few in that uber-small group of linux users. If I can get a "we haven't forgotten you" in reference to the 5 others like me, I'm sure there is plenty more focus on the 1000+ of you PC users. Again, just trust that they are doing the best they can, as fast as they can, within the limits of their current agreements.

 

[Joel Kaye]

I am a small operation. Other than corporate videos, I will never produce anything for the big screen.

But you want to be able to online in 4K and you're worried about 12bit? I think you've wandered off into theoretical-land. If you need to buy something new buy a Mac and run it as a PC. You'll be able to go either way at any time.

 

[Maz Mawlawi]

Luki,

I think he means an AMD/ATI video card. Currently Redcine bombs on ATI/AMD cards.... as well as certain Nvidia cards. And thanks for clarifying that Assimilate does not write Redcine. I apologize for wrongly blaming your company.

 

[Brent J. Craig]

Crewpix.. you seem to bitch alot, if you don't like it here, there are many other places you can go.

I'm sorry you feel that way Jarred. I know constructive criticism can be challenging.

I have always felt that as someone who is not buying a camera (but is responsible for the care and feeding of several) I was in the unique position of being able to say things that need to be said without worrying about politics.

The fact is that exclusive deals and encrypted files stifle innovation. There won't be any digital whiz-kids whipping up a small app to build look files this week, because the look files are encrypted.

There are things this camera system can do that you guys haven't even thought of yet and may never think of. I have been looking forward to the day that the community can do some hacking and see where it takes us.

That is all.

I'm sorry if my opinions are taken unkindly. Talk to anyone in Toronto - I'm the biggest Red promoter here, but closed minds are taking some of the wind out of those sails.

 

[laguun]

Yes, Assimilate writes REDCINE and SCRATCH so they have potential conflict of interests here.

Assimmilate codes Redcine? is that speculation or fact?

But potential SCRATCH clients will never even come close to consider Adobe/ CineForm solution, so if Assimilate thinks that giving people the path to $2000 workflow will impact 50K+ software sale the marketing guy there is wrong.

We have 3 DIs, in the same pricerange or above scratch. The most expensive seat is at ~200.000. We are a potential scratch client.

We consider Adobe/cineform.

this has several reasons.

A) Strategic planning
DI/colortiming as speedgrade, scratch, color is desktop software and is (apple color, speedgrade HD) a $$$$ market.

Not even 6 years ago it was -totally- normal to pay $$$.$$$ for an uncompressed PAL or NTSC editing place. Today its $$$$-$$.$$$. Same happened to 3D animation (was $$$.$$$), compositing (was $$$.$$$), even audio mixing (was $$$.$$$).

the DI/colorcorrection market will have a top-price level (4K realtime systems) for some years, but 2K pc/nvidia graphics card desktop software as color/speedgrade/scratch/matrix will see an extreme reduction of their average price/license.

For post operations who operate several systems, these consideration are quite relevant. if you dont offer DI services so far, its rather interesting if you will earn back the system within 12/24 months. If you have already many systems in the house, things as retraining, revenue and strategic technology partnership, targeted clients etc have a much higher weight in the investion planning - and therefore $$$$ desktop systems or $$$.$$$ 4K RT systems are more appealing to us (and many facilities having many DI systems and/or $$$.$$$ in finishing systems).

B) Toolkit
scratch is a fine software, however, for us it would offer few new functions to the tools we already offer. In fact, for us it would mainly be a "single trick" pony for redcode, and we want to have -many- redcode native online seats, mainly for online 4K editing. editing often takes much longer than colorcorrection - and therefore scratch, who has other strenghts, wouldnt be a good fit (yet - if they add a online editing toolkit as matrix or smoke this might be more interesting for us).

c) Workflow
Having already many systems of other manufacturers in the house, it is often a preferred solution to stay in these tools - as they can exchange many setups, image- and metadata. cineform would offer us a common exchange for many systems we use, the scratch system would be a island as redcode use would be restricted to it, while cineform would allow us to network operations.

How many times I have heard that SCRATCH Light for $2-$5 K has no market.
SCRATCH is studios and editing houses workflow, not Indie one.

There is no longer a studio/indie borderline in 2K desktop software. No matter if VFX (nuke/combustion/fusion/AE/toxik), 3D (max/maya/xsi/c4d/lw), editing (avid mc/fcp/adobe cs3/ppro) or Colorcorrection/DI (speedgrade/color/scratch/matrix). All these tools are used by large and small operations, for a-budget and skeleton-crew indies.

Price of the software is no longer the differentiator it was is the 90ties. Its the indian, not arrow, who makes the difference. And all these groups of software, as NLE, 3D, VFX and DI - are software, and once the usual massmarket economic dynamics work, 98% of the market is in the $$$-$$$$ space. And make no mistake about it - colorcorrection will be massmarket, or already is. within 24 months from here, it will be pretty tough to get a $$$ camera -without- at least 1080p resolution.

I always was and still am a strong advocate of a $$$$ REDCODE-only scratch version, as i suppose that this variant would be assimilate all-time bestseller and almost any red customer would be highly interested in a $$$$ scratch. However, for many reasons, assimilate has so far found that they prefer a different business model. My professional opinion however remain: they are missing an excellent window of opportunity, and someone else will gladly offer this.

When i was working for discreet logic and their distributors in the late 90ties, i fought a similar battle, when i tried hard to convince the management that we would need a $$$$ uncompressed desktop NLE ASAP.

They had a different opinion, the discreet logic "edit" NLE is gone and Apple and Adobe can be quite grateful to discreets management back then.

 

[Thor Wixom]

??

AMD machines run REDCINE without issues...

Lucas
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ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

Sure, but to what end? I load my .R3D files into Redcine, and then what? Ouput to half a dozen file types and codecs that won't produce professional results on my Windows / Premiere / Axio machine?

-Thor

 

[Lucas Wilson]

Sure, but to what end? I load my .R3D files into Redcine, and then what? Ouput to half a dozen file types and codecs that won't produce professional results on my Windows / Premiere / Axio machine?

-Thor

Thor - Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand this comment at all. You can output to 10-bit DPX, 16-bit TIFF, and Uncompressed Quicktime. What about those is not professional?

Lucas
-----
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

 

[Thor Wixom]

Thor - Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand this comment at all. You can output to 10-bit DPX, 16-bit TIFF, and Uncompressed Quicktime. What about those is not professional?

Lucas
-----
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

Lucas,

Professional, sure. Realistic? No.

-Thor

 

[Chris Parker]

Remember, what you signed up was for at that time was 4k uncompressed shooting out fiber to a bar fridge. Remember that part? I lived it for 6 months.. and trust me, we should all be glad that changed.

Well, MOST of us should be glad that changed. Not all of us though.

Especially not the good folks hard at work at Codex. In case you didn't know, that 'beer fridge' is now a 'toaster'. A magic toaster really. Some of us are in the business of managing the uncompressed media. An option that was dropped by RED. Yes, the MASS demand is not there, but there is still demand for this feature. Believe me.

But I see that it does not fit in with what RED is doing, and that is fine. It will just mean that there will still be a market for the F35's, Genesis's, D20's of the world.

For the record, I do love the RedCode RAW. Just wish that option was never dropped, as the technology to manage it has advanced light years in the past 2 years.

 

[laguun]

red did an excellent for the camera, the endurance and passion they put into this product is outstanding.

the frustration which is surfacing has some reasons:
a) the communication.
when we (and ~1000 other people/corporations) ordered in 2006, "open workflow" was the keyword - that changed "silently" and that was the opposite of the admired red "no tricks" communication so far. Apple was presented as first partner, and i was thinking - great. At IBC 06, when we understood that Apple was not first, but -the only-, we were -highly- disappointed. As ironic it is, but if one sets a high standard, everyone is disappointed if you later behave as the rest of the crowd.

b) Apples progress with redcode has been bad.
No Color support, no 4k, no 10/12bit RGB, the QT 7.4 massacre and many other things come to mind instantly. I would care much less about the delay in the SDK if apple would offer a NLE and DI which would be able to work with the quality of the red camera - sadly, this isnt the case, therefore making the only NLE a compromise - a big setback for people who are used to work in a native online environment.

c) More experienced and better value partner not in the boat
Not having Cineform and iridas as native tools, -the- pioneers of RAW workflow (in fact, iridas supports any raw camera IIRC, arri D20, si/ps 2K and 2K mini, cineform, phantom 65...) is especially frustrating, as their solutions have most of the teething problems which the 2 only native redcode softwares are experiencing still, behind then. Also, for both customers dont have to pay a premium, which is important for low-budget indies as well as for customers as us, who have to plan with many seats and licenses.

d) -non- camera owners.
The most important point for us. Many people in the industry are skeptical red, because it they see it as a threat to their business, dont want to move on or are simply 2nd class. These people make the huge majority of the people working in the industry. And now they are bitchin about the workflow. When people where trying to criticize the camera, we were almost on top of it and had answer for nearly any problem/issue. With the workflow its different. I wouldnt dare to rent a camera to a house which has -no experience- with red but decades with NLE, DI, wetgate scanners & filmtransfer, HDCAM (SR) VCRs etc. Every single customer has to get consulting for his workflow, and that is indeed problematic for a also rental orientated company as ours.

e) the lost momentum
RED is the talk of the industry right now. It started brilliant and now the postpeople are bringing the camera from awesome to problematic, and they are correct. The answer "buy some other system" is not an answer, especially not for a house who has -the- top gear already in house. And that is in the -huge- majority baselight, clipster, discreet smoke/fire/flame/inferno/flint/lustre, avid symphony/ds, speedgrade, quantel Q-series... at least here, in germany. These systems have thousands of installations, and they all are locked out.

A -stable- redcine with -EDL support- would ease the pain for all of them at once.

f) who is first: customer or industry
RED stands for most people for the "customers first" approach, and its sad to see that there is one exception to this brilliant spirit: the postproduction. REDs customer clearly want choice and modularity, and competition is a good thing. I wouldnt be surprised at all if cineform, iridas, matrix etc would already have fully functional solutions by now, and would in fact be -much more responsive- in implementing changes in firmware than apple. In fact, i cant remember what apple did -at all- to enhance FCP in order to match REDs quality.

 

[Andrew M.]

But you want to be able to online in 4K and you're worried about 12bit? I think you've wandered off into theoretical-land. If you need to buy something new buy a Mac and run it as a PC. You'll be able to go either way at any time.

Joelnet, looks like you never worked with RAW.
Having 4K 12 bit RAW allows you to manipulate the output down to even 8 bit 1080p and the way better than 1080 RGB at 8 bit or DVCPRO does.

Good scaling from 4K to 1080p or 2K looks so good that I will not change it for anything else once you see the final product. There is nothing even close out there that will give me the 1080p at such good color quality and details as RED 4K 12 bit does.

Yes, the common output for BlueRay and broadcast will be 1080p for some time but what you started with and the amount of latitude and color manipulation you get it makes all the difference.

BTW, today for the first time I was able to produce 30 seconds of 4K DPX 10 bit from REDCINE on NVIDA 8700 after 5 attempts and I processed it in AE and Premiere. From there I can take it anywhere I want.

I used AE scaling from 4K to 2K and made beautiful 2K QT H.264 and burned it in Premiere Pro on the BlueRay. So REDCINE works some times with NVIDIA 8700

I guess it was my lucky day.

 

[planet e]

yeah, the real bitch is that apple hasn't done anything much to serve RED users, and that RED has to then turn around and support a partner agreement with what is turning out to be a weak partner--at least on the surface of things. i'm sure there are things happening behind the scenes that i can't see, i certainly hope that's the case.

where's my blu-ray support, where is my serious macbook pro upgrade not this useless Air release, where is my 10/12 bit color...

...and a no-show at NAB, would be nice if they at least had a RED Apple display, to show a little bit of RED love...

i've been an Apple user since 1986, and i would just like to see them lead this thing, instead of stalling it out...

here's a camera that brings us a world of wonder, and an NLE that will convert these wonders into footage that is...darn similar to the same stuff that other cameras already produce...

 

[Finner]

Wow Laguun very well put.

That post sums it up for sooooo many of us.

My one concern is the dog and pony show apple will try to put on to sell the new red support that they offer right around NAB. Kind of like the incredible red workflow solutions they touted at NAB 07 with studio 2. Those really didn't pan out to well. So I will have a lot of mistrust towards what they try and sell us all this year. I live by the mantra "Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on me!". So I'm not in a big hurry to jump on the apple band wagon this year and be fooled again.

 

[Lucas Wilson]

Lucas,

Professional, sure. Realistic? No.

-Thor

Now I'm really confused. What are you trying to accomplish?

Best,

Lucas

 

[Frank Weeks]

quote from Luki
AMD machines run REDCINE without issues... do you have a logfile that you can post to the logfile section?

When I try to open Redcine I get a:

Unsupported CPU: Missing SSE2 instructions...

Im running Dual AMD Athlon MP 1800+

If I am missing something please let me know.

Thanks
Frank

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Partner lag

Partner lag

Resistance from the post houses is impacting my ability to get my RedOne package rented. I am not suggesting that RED or Apple has to conform to some arbitrary workflow, just that the alternative workflow they offer needs to rock.

Laguun makes a number of good points. I wonder if the stalling of RedCode support on Apple is due to the scope of the changes RED is making to the de-bayering algorithms? Perhaps it is as simple as waiting for the code to get settled and the SDKs to go out. In any case I join the chorus of disappointed Apple/FCP users waiting for overdue improvements.

DPX pipelines are great for some clients but file/clip based workflows are far more attractive to the vast majority of people I work with than frame based solutions.