Dsmc..

[Jun-Dai]

We are skipping a generation in design and possibilities. Someone just challenged us to compete in the big leagues. We accept.

Jim

Partnership with Pentax? They seem to be the biggest camera company lagging the farthest behind, and I'm sure they have distribution channels that Red would have some difficulty building.

Just a shot in the dark at unraveling cryptic messages.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Daniel has lost his way... and in his frustration is trying to pick a fight from behind his little mouse.

Jim

You mean Daniel aka BobSimon aka GuyB, the low-rent PR hack posting away from the basement at the Sony PR building in NYC...

 

[Jannard]

I think Sony would be embarrassed if they knew he worked for them...

Jim

 

[Christo]

As I have a foot in the pro photo world and the other in motion pictures, I can appreciate the sentiments of both camps. Most of the people discussing the Canon 5d II and the Nikon model with video, on this board, are highly critical or skeptical about their video capabilities. For the majority of the photographers considering them it isn't a compelling reason to purchase it. The video capabilities are just a nice bonus.


I was planning on getting a 5D II prior to Canon's announcement of its video ability. Now that I know of it, I'll be pleased to have the video option just in case I need it, but the reason for buying it is the high res full frame sensor with low noise, shallow DoF, and great lens options (or rather because I already own a bunch of L lenses that I'd like to continue using) - for shooting stills.


I was planning/hoping to get a Scarlet. Now that it has potentially merged with the DSMC, I'll be pleased to have the option to shoot stills just in case I need it. Unless it really can do photos as well (or better) than a 5D...then maybe I'd sell my Canon bodies (I just hope I can continue to use my Canon lenses if so...).


RED has proven its merit in having created a revolutionary digital motion picture camera. I hope the engineers are equally successful with this project. Mr. Jannard, do you have any openings at your company?

 

[Joey Ciccoline]

Vincent Laforet's video is up.

Vincent Laforet's video is up.

And there appears to be no motion issues, whatsoever.

http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2008/09/22/without-further-ado-reverie/

It's rather impressive, coming from a DSLR, but it will be interesting to see if the technology makes it into new Canon prosumer video cameras with the same level of low light ability.

 

[dalen johnson]

Dude...there needs to be a sticky that has the quote from Vincent that said he had an expensive tripod.
I have no idea how expensive...but the only clue I have is that one guy mentioned it would be about the cost, or more, of the camera.

Now isnt that a deal breaker?
You need a tripod the cost of the camera to make the video you saw?

The whole thing from Vincent is a good PR piece, even if it was 'unintentional'.

Most people go away and think he just grabbed a camera with nothing else and made the video. (he had help with the lights as well, though he tries to play it down...help is help, and every bit goes to improving the video footage.)

Again, there needs to be a sticky/caveat with that blog.
"Totally enthusiastic canon user...who was given a secret canon and not expected to write a hyped review..." wink wink.

Im not against the camera...but I do want to see real footage from real people. (The guy down the street who doesnt know anything about film...let him swing it around 360 degrees and see what skew does or does not show up.) lol

The camera, Im sure, has its purposes...but folks...until we have more details on what is fully needed to make the camera work under certain conditions...one may need to temper their excitement as not to get disappointed.

Im waiting to hear what Jim has up his sleeves...Im sure it will actually be that camera everyone is hoping the 5d Mark II will be. (well, actually more hopefully.)

Peace

dAlen

And there appears to be no motion issues, whatsoever.

http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2008/09/22/without-further-ado-reverie/

It's rather impressive, coming from a DSLR, but it will be interesting to see if the technology makes it into new Canon prosumer video cameras with the same level of low light ability.

 

[Luis de la Cerda]

Dude...there needs to be a sticky that has the quote from Vincent that said he had an expensive tripod.
I have no idea how expensive...but the only clue I have is that one guy mentioned it would be about the cost, or more, of the camera.

Now isnt that a deal breaker?
You need a tripod the cost of the camera to make the video you saw?

I heard he also used fairy dust on his lenses that makes the images look pretty

 

[Emanuel A.]

It's rather impressive, coming from a DSLR, but it will be interesting to see if the technology makes it into new Canon prosumer video cameras with the same level of low light ability.

Apart the resolution and some other recent remarks related to, the performance on higher sensibility hasn't generally resulted from much other than the sensor size adopted, as well. You won't have the same "space" into a 1/3" size format whether the technology or its (r)evolution will be, that's for sure.

 

[dalen johnson]

I heard he also used fairy dust on his lenses that makes the images look pretty

Im just trying to keep it realistic.

There are a lot of expectations out there from people about this camera...and its good they realize that there are extra cost involved. If you read the forums, you will realize most people think its just off the shelf hand shot footage. - the story grows bigger and grander by the moment....(so yes, he probably does use pixy dust. lol )

Peace

dAlen

p.s.
Just looked at Vincents video - apart from the helicopter and car scenes...there really are no pans.
Maybe a couple, very slow, and short pans. (with the flowers)...scene so fast you cant really tell.
NOt to mention some jumpy bits at one point in the helicopter ride...if the fancy tripod couldnt hide that, would hate to see it handheld.

So it could be that the handheld is as jello like as the Nikon when it comes to pans.
Only time will tell.

 

[Hugues Wisniewski]

I understand that a Scarlet is no DSMC but being kind a rookie in the HD world I feel like the DSMC should be better than a Scarlet in several aspects.
In the various discussions and possible comparisons between this DSMC and the Scarlet, one thing I haven't seen mentioned is the depth of field situation
The DSMC being a professional camera should provide the same depth of field control as any 35mm camera. Competing against the D3 or D700 or other, the sensor will likely be 35mm. But the Scarlet having a smaller sensor and its fixed lens design will not offer this functionality unless we put some third party adapter which is costly, bulky, and eats up a lot of light.
It sounds like, JUST for this particular feature, the DSMC should be compared to a Red One and not a Scarlet. The price tag of this DSMC will be interesting to see.

 

[pango]

DSMC product positioning

DSMC product positioning

Up to now, you have just proposed the best product you can make as opposed to, e.g. Canon who propose the most crippled product they can sell. In the long run, both strategies lead to better products, of course, but not for the same reason. For Scarlet as it was I understood how it was to be "best you can make" for that pricetag. For a DSMC competing with movie DSLRs, it is less clear to me.

So, will you let the dark side of marketing seduce you and sell a product that is not the best you can make (so as not to compete with Red One)?

 

[Steven Caesare]

I don't think the "consumer compression scheme" argument is a fair one against this camera. We've all seen the videos canon posted. It looks at least as good as or better than "professional codecs" such as DVCPROHD, XDcamHD, HDV, XDCamEX, etc... On one hand it has better chroma resolution (from the looks of it, at least 4:2:2), virtually no mosquito noise, apparently handles things inside YUV colorspace (which is nice) and very little macroblocking. I know there's higher quality alternatives out there, such as redcode, but the files canon has posted are far from what you're making them out to be from a compression standpoint. YUV H.264 at 35Mbps is nothing to sneeze at. Maybe I'm missing something here, but apart from HDcam, Cineform and RedCode, what else even compares to it?

PS. I'm sure we've all seen movies at the theatre shot on plain DV... This is a huge leap from that.

Is everybody assuming they won't be doing any post work on these files?

You don't really want to edit with H.264. It is an interframe codec. That is, the compression happens not only spatially but temporally. Each frame is not decompressable on it's own, but must be derived from a previous full frame. That process is lossy, and has reprecussions when editing.

While H.264 allows for great file-size reproductions as a final distribuion format, it's not a preferred edting format.

REDCODE, and other intraframe codecs only compress spatially within each frame. Every frame is decodable upon it's own. While that doesn't provide as much compression of the file size, it eliminates a whole host of issues (both visually and technically) that can arise during the ingest/edit/VFX/render process.

Jim, Jarred, Graeme & the boys have mentioned time and again: REDCODE is a significant piece if the intellectual property pie that you can't simply replace with abandon and expect to get superior results.

 

[Matt Uhry]

There's some weird motion artifacts in the "La Foret" video some are more of a temporal nature ( post generated ) than spatial.

http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2008/09/22/without-further-ado-reverie/

Generally it looks pretty good. It's hard to tell if he's shooting around the skew or just used clips where it's not that bad.

Time will tell when the EOS 5d Mk2 gets tested in anger....

We live in exciting times.

Matt Uhry
www.mattuhry.com

 

[pango]

It's hard to tell if he's shooting around the skew or just used clips where it's not that bad.

And what if ... the skew were "not that bad" in general?!

There are several occasions where you can see the effect of a rolling shutter, easierst is the gps-thingy where you see horizontal stripes flicker. The only other shot where it is really visible in frame by frame is the bumpy handheld shot inside the car on the steering wheel, a definite killer w.r.t. rolling shutter. But even there, unless you look at the individual frames, it is hard to tell.

I think you really can't say that motion were avoided in the footage.


(The inside car shot reminded me of this, enjoy : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qC0_nIUq9s ).

 

[Luis de la Cerda]

Is everybody assuming they won't be doing any post work on these files?

You don't really want to edit with H.264. It is an interframe codec. That is, the compression happens not only spatially but temporally. Each frame is not decompressable on it's own, but must be derived from a previous full frame. That process is lossy, and has reprecussions when editing.

While H.264 allows for great file-size reproductions as a final distribuion format, it's not a preferred edting format.

REDCODE, and other interframe codecs only compress spatially within each frame. Every frame is decodable upon it's own. While that doesn't provide as much compression of the file size, it eliminates a whole host of issues (both visually and technically) that can arise during the ingest/edit/VFX/render process.

Same thing could be said about XDcamHD and XDcamEX, both considered professional AND workable in post. The first thing I did after I downloaded those sample files was drop them in my NLE (newtek speededit) and they work great. Playback gets skippy because of the huge amount of resources it takes to play the files, but it can be manipulated flawlessly. I need to try a faster machine

PS. One thing I noticed inside my NLE is that the files have more information than quicktime lets us see. There's shadow information below the black clipping level for RGB as well as extra highlight information beyond RGB white. I assumed the colorspace to be YUV instead of RGB, but I could be wrong. Anyway, what this means is that much of the edited material out there might be clipped and not showing the whole enchilada.

 

[Steven Caesare]

Possible? Yes.

Preferable? No.

 

[Charles Angus]

REDCODE, and other interframe codecs only compress spatially within each frame. Every frame is decodable upon it's own. While that doesn't provide as much compression of the file size, it eliminates a whole host of issues (both visually and technically) that can arise during the ingest/edit/VFX/render process.

Typo: you mean INTRA, right?

 

[Buck Forester]

Wow! I thought the sample footage was great! Especially from a guy who claims no video experience and had a very short time to put this together. I'm impressed. When RED comes out with their version shooting RAW, it'll be even better, especially if it shoots 3K. I hope RED can bring their version to market soon. The pros and cons of being a great start up company like RED are that they can be flexible and innovative and ground breaking, but not having the large production facilities it's tougher to actually get the product to the market and do so in a way to fulfill demand. Once RED is up and running, and they can maintain their same philosophy and accessibility as they do now, they're gonna be more action than talk and rock the imaging world. It seems RED is a step ahead in ideas, but the established guys are a step ahead in getting product delivered, even if it's scaled back compared to REDs planned offerings, it does steal a little of their thunder. I'm hoping soon enough RED will be able to do both at the same time. I'm sure they will. HURRY! Ha!

 

[Steven Caesare]

Typo: you mean INTRA, right?

Yup, thanks.

Edited.

 

[Buck Forester]

Dude...there needs to be a sticky that has the quote from Vincent that said he had an expensive tripod.
I have no idea how expensive...but the only clue I have is that one guy mentioned it would be about the cost, or more, of the camera.

Now isnt that a deal breaker?
You need a tripod the cost of the camera to make the video you saw?

Not sure why having a good quality tripod is an issue in evaluating this camera? I shoot with a Canon 5D and I have a pretty nice tripod. I think most photographers shooting with Canon 5Ds and the 1Ds series are at a level where they recognize a good tripod is necessary for images... it's one of the most important things you can have to improve your photography. And that would carry over to videography as well. So of course people paying $3,000+ for a digital slr camera will have good tripods. In the sample video he even has a pretty nice looking car mount used for the car scene... I guess he also could've gotten someone to handhold the camera on the hood as he drove. :0