EPIC and Alexa...

[Tom Lowe]

Jim, you are like a pitbull with a tire. You are very focused and extremely tenacious.

 

[Ed Carlton]

For some reason I assumed it was 1080p ProRes, but of course, it could be 2.88K ARRIRAW debayered. Good question by Wolf. I will be extremely disappointed if 2.88K debayered to only 1.6K. I think we were all expecting proper 1080p ProRes outputs too. Certainly, Arri must speak up.

Certainly they must I'm new here but this place is hardly welcoming to open discussions unless they are pro Red. Of course it is Reduser so that would explain some of the "tone" issues.

After having gone back through threads catching up on what was said about Arri and read what was said about him personally when Mr Brevin posted here (and even when he doesn't even post here) it's not surprising.

But I found that Arri has their Arridigital website with tons of specs, open info about their technology etc. So in some way they do publicly speak and share, just not here LOL.

This is a very good place for info and discussion about Red but lets be honest not a very open community to outside opinions or discussion.

Ed Carlton
DP US/Mexico

 

[Mike Gross]

Certainly they must I'm new here but this place is hardly welcoming to open discussions unless they are pro Red. Of course it is Reduser so that would explain some of the "tone" issues.

After having gone back through threads catching up on what was said about Arri and read what was said about him personally when Mr Brevin posted here (and even when he doesn't even post here) it's not surprising.

But I found that Arri has their Arridigital website with tons of specs, open info about their technology etc. So in some way they do publicly speak and share, just not here LOL.

This is a very good place for info and discussion about Red but lets be honest not a very open community to outside opinions or discussion.

Ed Carlton
DP US/Mexico

Some good info on arridigital forums but it's like a sleepy town over there.

 

[Ed Carlton]

Some good info on arridigital forums but it's like a sleepy town over there.

Thanks for making my point about "tone" here Mike LOL. I was speaking of their website, the forum... well that's something else, but for me the good current accurate technical information is key, is there a place like that for RED?
Everything at Red.com seems to be talking about all that is coming soon.

Ed Carlton
DP US/Mexico

 

[Ed Carlton]

Some good info on arridigital forums but it's like a sleepy town over there.

BTW, a guy named Gary Adcock has a great overview of Alexa on his Creative Cow blog. He's neither an ARRI guy or an owner so he's kinda open minded toward Red and Arri, and Sony too.

Hey Mike, I see you posting some pretty rough stuff, here and on CML, are you a Red owner or just user? Are your posts kinda tongue in cheek?

 

[Lorenzo Straight]

Man, that resolution difference is the kill. Congratulations Red team.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Why do we need to compare? Where is the scope for comparison? EPIC resolution can not be compared with any existing camera right now. When Arri can not match EPIC in resolution and price I think we don't need this comparison test at all.

Once again, a clueless post from you.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Have you done it? On both cameras? It's all hearsay and assumptions based on slippy ground.

I like Jim's humble manner towards Arri's new camera. Alexa is a great camera, so is the RedOne MX and Epic will be a great successor. Why don't people here accept that others can manufacture nice digital film cameras as well? Bashing others does not make yourself better, on the contrary.

Both cameras have their merits and downsides, which are very subjective - so is filmmaking. Great to have the choice. We have that with film stock, we are going to have it with sensors. BTW, I love my RedOne, I love my Arri SR. Great that Arri is back, thanks to Jim Jannard and the Red team challenging this is old, trusty horse.

Thanks for posting the comparison charts - much appreciated!

Hans

Yes, great to have a choice, but impossible to make an intelligent choice without information like this thread.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

My assumptions are between small and big noise pixels. Small is better for noise reduction, at least this is my experience. If alexa has more or less noise than epic, I don't know that because i didn't make this test.

Saludos,

Jose.

YES For example, take a noisy 1080p image from say an Ex1 - now take an image that, unfiltered, looks EVEN NOISIER from 4K Red. After a good filter like Neat Video, the Red Footage will look much better and cleaner in 1080p than the initially less noisy EX footage, and it will continue to hold far more detail.

There is a real difference between post-filter-friendly and unfriendly noise that is, oddly, not that well understood.

Macro-blocking, as a form of noise (seen often on Canon Betacams) cannot really be removed without gigantic resolution losses.

Basically the smaller and more predictable/uniform the noise the easier it is to clean.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Agreed!



I don't know enough about the subject to comment when the likes of Graeme step into the room. But I can guess on a different front, a non-technical front.

Perhaps, ARRI might think they need to edge M-X at least on one of the most important fronts, even if by a hair. DR could be argued as the single most important spec at this time. Certainly, in the middle of this race to match film's DR it does get the most word of mouth, or close at least.

And then, perhaps all this downsampling is necessary to get a clean enough image to do so.

Then sticking to a downplaying the resolution leap Jim and Co. have achieved might be the best strategy for ARRI.

Bottom line, if this difference were to be clearly under a 1 stop, and what I get on the trade-off is more than double the FPS, about 1/4 the minimum size and weight, smaller files, and way higher resolution, etc, etc, etc, the list goes on and on... Then you start to think, can I capture it with 13.5? Or do I reeeealy need 13.(8?) stops for the project?

But red $K noise is much easier to filter out for 2K delivery - thus after a filter like Neat Video, which is easy and dirt cheap, Red footage might actually BEAT the DN of Alexa. I would like to see a comparison of this specifically.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Humm, I've always thought (after doing a crap load of shooting with the RED) that it was pretty kind of actors faces compared to other HD cameras. It was sharp, but not in a bad (AKA: fake, over sharpening) way.

Yes - Compare it to a line-skipper - line skippers are pore-magnifiers of the worst kind.

 

[Mike Gross]

BTW, a guy named Gary Adcock has a great overview of Alexa on his Creative Cow blog. He's neither an ARRI guy or an owner so he's kinda open minded toward Red and Arri, and Sony too.

Hey Mike, I see you posting some pretty rough stuff, here and on CML, are you a Red owner or just user? Are your posts kinda tongue in cheek?

I'm only a red user only recently but the MX has been the best tool for me so far.

Rough? I'm an Arri fan, always have been.
I'm disappointed they went lower resolution and for the tv market.
They need to approach film on resolution. Alexa is a short term camera as their competition will pass Alexa quickly. The 2k is enough arguement doesn't fly for 35mm cameras and doesn't fly with me.

 

[Stephen Williams]

Yes - Compare it to a line-skipper - line skippers are pore-magnifiers of the worst kind.

If you turn the sharpness down, it's not an issue, with all HD cameras even prosumer cameras like an EX3 I always turn the detail off. "it's all in the lighting"

 

[Uli Plank]

If you treat MX footage with Neatvideo right now, it has remarkable DR already. Disputable it can give you between 1 1/2 and 2 stops extra.

Measuring DR for film is highly subjective too, just like deciding when noise becomes unacceptable, you have to decide where the curve is getting so flat that there's no additional detail to be visible…

 

[Rob Ruffo]

You couldn't show all the dynamic range if you wanted to anyways since most display technologies don't have that much dynamic range! So your statement is going to be true *almost* 100% of the time at the moment.

That said, what I explain to people is that DR is about making it easier to capture life. When shooting outside in areas with extreme differences in dynamic range, the larger you have in camera, the more you get to have that detail in the shadows to play with in post. To me *that* is the true beauty of a large dynamic range and what I look forward to SO MUCH.

You can map any dynamic range to any monitoring device. You could map 35 stops to a 4bit display.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

If you turn the sharpness down, it's not an issue, with all HD cameras even prosumer cameras like an EX3 I always turn the detail off. "it's all in the lighting"

No, it's always an issue. AN Ex1 can give you a smooth face with detail turned down, but there is no off button for Canon line-skipping, and so with sharpness down you just get slightly blurrier, over-enhanced pores.

As per "it's all in the lighting" with Red I don't need to shine a Diva 5 inches from an actor's face to get nice skin texture. I don;t want a camera to limit my lighting choices.

 

[M Most]

The point is that we are quickly moving to a place with no compromises.

The frontier I'd really like to see crossed is the one that relates to highlight handling. Film still has a significant advantage there in the way it has a very graceful falloff with extreme highlights, allowing a lot of flexibility when shooting in uncontrollable locations. Electronic sensors - every one that I've ever seen, including Mysterium and Mysterium X - have a point at which clipping occurs. And while you can underexpose to avoid hitting that point - an approach made much more usable with additional range with little to no noise penalty at the low end - that's not always enough.

When clipping becomes a non-issue, THEN you're at a place with little to no compromises. But you're definitely getting there.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

If you treat MX footage with Neatvideo right now, it has remarkable DR already. Disputable it can give you between 1 1/2 and 2 stops extra.

Uli,

you are totally right and also you can add FCP plug-in FurnaceCore>>De-Noise from The Foundry and then for sure you'll get a couple of stops DR more with R1-MX footage.


Download 1920x800 widescreen example shot on R1-MX here>>>

Location: Schwarzenberg Platz Vienna, shot on R1-MX with Leica Apo-Summicron-M 75mm f/2.0 wide open @ f/2.0, 4.5K, 25fps, ISO 800, shutter 1/50.

 

[Matt W.]

The point is that we are quickly moving to a place with no compromises. Every RED sensor is increasing both resolution AND dynamic range. There is no reason to accept low resolution or low DR going forward. I see the day coming very soon where digital outperforms film in every aspect. At least that is our goal. And it appears that we have motivated others to step up their programs as well. That really is a good thing for the industry. There are so many advantages to shooting digital... we just need to systematically remove the deficiencies. I think we are. And with our modular system, you don't have to buy a whole new camera every time something improves. It isn't just about sensors.

Jim

Your company is awesome and the images here speak for themselves, but--no offense intended--I don't know if this is the right approach to cornering the high-end market.

Image quality has never mattered that much beyond "good enough" so far as acceptance in the film industry is concerned. Kodak color film overtook (the visually far superior) technicolor because it was cheaper and easier to shoot. Anamorphic (Panavision) lenses relatively quickly displaced large-format (70mm, Cinerama, Todd AO, Vistavision) photography in the 1950s and 1960s, despite far inferior resolution and major early issues with lens breathing, distortion, etc.

Red's increases in resolution are impressive and no other camera compares with yours on those terms. However, in terms of preparing dallies, monitoring on-set, etc., Red's constantly-in-flux software program is a real problem. The Alexa may only give you 1080p prores, but most directors and DPs have been fine with 1080p in the past (and not-that-much more from film, which resolves less per mm^2 than digital, especially at high ISOs) and 1080p prores dailies are easy to view and edit. Redcode at 4k takes quite a while to render (without proprietary hardware) and it's going to get exponentially worse as the resolution increases. And as recent tests have shown, even if the dynamic range is there, it's not visible on-set--and that's an issue when producers are looking over your shoulder not really sure what they're going to see in the final image (so too is it an issue when dailies look substantially different from the final grade, since producers offer feedback based on those, too).

It doesn't matter how much resolution increases in the long run or how many times color science improves; that kind of transition is a headache for post houses, and so is editing together footage shot on different builds, monitoring in rec709 for raw, etc. Arri didn't develop the Alexa with resolution in mind; they developed it for ease-of-use for and simplicity w/r/t to its transitional (film to digital) nature. It's funny to me to see Red fans get defensive because some DP or another chose the Arri; the issue with the Red isn't the image quality (other than some now-minor color issues, the MX is phenomenal!), it's the workflow. Each side (Arri vs Red) is arguing about what constitutes a good camera based on entirely different terms. Relax redusers, your camera produces great images. But that doesn't mean it's going to saturate Hollywood overnight, either, and I don't think increases in resolution are what's going to change that (my humble opinion).

There's no question Red's technology is in many ways superior to what's in the competition's far-more-expensive products, but w/r/t traction in Hollywood, it's about workflow, not image quality. This will become increasingly true as 3d workflows are developed and deployed, both on set and in post. I don't mean this to be inflammatory, just throwing it out there.

 

[Jannard]

The frontier I'd really like to see crossed is the one that relates to highlight handling. Film still has a significant advantage there in the way it has a very graceful falloff with extreme highlights, allowing a lot of flexibility when shooting in uncontrollable locations. Electronic sensors - every one that I've ever seen, including Mysterium and Mysterium X - have a point at which clipping occurs. And while you can underexpose to avoid hitting that point - an approach made much more usable with additional range with little to no noise penalty at the low end - that's not always enough.

When clipping becomes a non-issue, THEN you're at a place with little to no compromises. But you're definitely getting there.

The next gen sensors will have this completely covered...

Jim