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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

I need a ref!

C

Chamber005

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I know this is a "red-only" zone, but I'm desperately trying to figure out if it will actually be worth it to hold off on getting a couple of EX1/EX3 Sonys instead of waiting (and waiting) for the Scarlet to EVENTUALLY come out.

I know the Scarlet will supposedly be able to crush anything in the vicinity of its price range, but, for me, the camera doing that right now is the EX line (and especially the EX1 as the picture quality didn't improve on the 3). The EX1 is a $5-$6,000 1/2" CMOS that can blend in with some of the 3/4" HD big boys, right?

When I look at things like the P2 cards and how expensive they are -- Basically, does anyone here think the Scarlet will be THAT much better than the EX line, and will the Scarlet cost much, much more to actually operate than the EXs are?

I've been trying to put every camera (including the HPX500, the SDC615 and the 450WSL -- none of which are ACTUALLY in the same price range as the EX line, but still within my price range) against the EX1, and I'm just really not seeing anything to warrant a higher price (for the cameras themselves or the cost of recording with them).

If anyone could PLEASE break down in some finite terms what will be the very real differences between the Scarlet and the EX line in terms of picture quality and, since we're dealing with CMOS, the rolling-shutter artifact which leads to accumulated modes, etc., it would be greatly appreciated.

THANKS!!
 
Many folks, including myself are shooting on EX cams or Canon 5D mkII's until scarlet comes out. That's just the way it is.

I do have to say, however, I am incredibly happy with my EX1. Of course there's compression, but it performs beautifully in low light, and has a very nice dynamic range for the price.

And for memory cards, don't get hosed by Sony. Check out http://www.efilms.com.au instead. As long as you're not overcranking all the time, you're all set.
 
...and just to clarify, as much as I love my EX, I'm planning on getting a scarlet once it comes out.
 
AS someone who shot a feature on an EX-1 and a Letus Extreme with Zeiss lenses... sure it looks fine if you plan on a straight to DVD workflow..

BUT I will say the LONG GOP 20:1 compression codec on their SxS cards... SUCKS ASS in post. No latitude, horrible artifacts, noise galore, crushed blacks... etc and the DP was good. Lighting was great in most scenes... and it played back fine on the TINY onboard MONITOR... or TV...

but projected on a movie screen even just 92" diagonal looked so AMATEUR.

and we had a $450K Quantel Pablo iQ with a SENIOR operator for the color grade!

If you plan on doing any serious DI or film out, then I highly recommend renting a Wafian Field recorder so you can grab 10 Bit 4:2:2 off the HD-SDI out.

But just the fact you need to rent or buy an $18,000 deck just to record uncompressed 1080P says a lot about how much Scarlet is going to kick prosumer cameras collective asses :)

I sold my EX-1's and would rather rent a RED ONE than go thru that nightmare again.

Good luck
 
I have a red and an ex1. It is kind of like apples and oranges. I like both of them but the red is more of a studio kind of camera and the ex1 is very light and portable. I have used the sony to shoot tests for the red and have found some of the tests were good enough to use. I have also cut ex1 stuff against red stuff and in 2k the sony holds its own. Rent for now, unless you have a lot of work and can easily pay off the sony.
 
Tim Whitcomb said:
AS someone who shot a feature on an EX-1 and a Letus Extreme with Zeiss lenses... sure it looks fine if you plan on a straight to DVD workflow..

BUT I will say the LONG GOP 20:1 compression codec on their SxS cards... SUCKS ASS in post. No latitude, horrible artifacts, noise galore, crushed blacks... etc and the DP was good. Lighting was great in most scenes... and it played back fine on the TINY onboard MONITOR... or TV...

but projected on a movie screen even just 92" diagonal looked so AMATEUR.

and we had a $450K Quantel Pablo iQ with a SENIOR operator for the color grade!

If you plan on doing any serious DI or film out, then I highly recommend renting a Wafian Field recorder so you can grab 10 Bit 4:2:2 off the HD-SDI out.
Click to expand...

Pretty much my sentiments exactly. That's the one advantage of P2 is the bit depth and high quality codec. Scarlet seems poised to potentially have less drawbacks than these two cameras (since every camera has some drawback), but if you need a camera right now, then scarlet won't do it for you.
 
Tim Whitcomb said:
AS someone who shot a feature on an EX-1 and a Letus Extreme with Zeiss lenses... sure it looks fine if you plan on a straight to DVD workflow..

BUT I will say the LONG GOP 20:1 compression codec on their SxS cards... SUCKS ASS in post. No latitude, horrible artifacts, noise galore, crushed blacks... etc and the DP was good. Lighting was great in most scenes... and it played back fine on the TINY onboard MONITOR... or TV...

but projected on a movie screen even just 92" diagonal looked so AMATEUR.

and we had a $450K Quantel Pablo iQ with a SENIOR operator for the color grade!

If you plan on doing any serious DI or film out, then I highly recommend renting a Wafian Field recorder so you can grab 10 Bit 4:2:2 off the HD-SDI out.

But just the fact you need to rent or buy an $18,000 deck just to record uncompressed 1080P says a lot about how much Scarlet is going to kick prosumer cameras collective asses :)

I sold my EX-1's and would rather rent a RED ONE than go thru that nightmare again.

Good luck
Click to expand...


Wow -- I'd be really interested in seeing it! Do you have the DVD available for purchase?

And you had it projected? Like from a digital projector? I was really interested in experimenting with transferring the EX1 footage to 16mm. If a distributor wanted to take the 16mm and convert to 35, that would fine, but I thought that EX1 footage to S16mm to DVD might be a unique process. That way we'd be getting a picture of the digital footage in its most perfect state, thus avoiding having to blow it up, etc.

It's so strange to hear that you had the problems with noise. I've never heard this from any EX users. Many EX shorts have been transferred to film and put into festivals and have done just fine.

I guess what I just can't wrap my head around with digital to video transfer, is that if you're taking a "picture" of a frame of digital information that's being presented in its peak state, how could "noise" increase, regardless of how large it's blown up?
 
Chamber005 said:
It's so strange to hear that you had the problems with noise. I've never heard this from any EX users. Many EX shorts have been transferred to film and put into festivals and have done just fine.
Click to expand...

Really? "many" shorts had the budget to transfer to film? Which ones? Did they record to SxS cards? or record uncompressed and perform a DI?

First, I want to point out that my company provided the EX-1 cameras and post. I did not shoot it personally.

Pixelization and artifacts was probably more accurate than noise, especially in any scenes that required compositing or fixes... you cannot pull a decent key from that codec... or at all in most cases... so im refering more to shots that had problems and we tried to fix (i.e blown out windows).

HOWEVER, even RED has noise... so I find it very hard to believe you have no heard that from EX-1 users... especially in the blacks.

Do a search on these boards and you will find a guy offering de-noising service for the RED just in the last week on here.

Noise is typically a product of a low light situation. But there are other factors... your workflow is confusiing... why would you go digital to 16MM then blow up to 35MM?

I bet you would have a lot of grain (kind of like noise in digital)

Anyway, you asked my opinion, I gave it. I thought the camera sucks FOR FEATURE WORK...

(I did not say it sucked for shorts, or ENG, or TV or Weddings, etc)

Before Scarlett comes out, if I HAD to go prosumer again, I would rather use the panasonic HPX-170 as P2 workflow is superior to SxS IMO and uses a better 10 to 1 LONG GOP codec, versus the 20 to 1 of the SxS card.

at the prosumer level, its always a trade off from Pana to Sony Canon etc.
all have strengths, and lots of weaknesses compared to pro cameras.

THAT IS WHY all these low budget guys are DROOLING for the Scarlett.

But at the end of the day... id take a great script and acting shot on miniDV camera than a crappy story with bad acting shot on an EPIC 645

Good Luck
 
Hopefully in the worst case, (the 2/3") Scarlet will look as good as the EX cameras when downscaled to 1080p. In the best case, you should be able to go to 2K with quite a lot of cropping (for re-framing). Add to that the killer codec (you can shoot higher bitrate than the RED ONE!), and I think that it's going to be a very nice piece of equipment.

Of course, we won't really know for sure until we get some footage.
 
I will be horribly disappointed if Scarlet doesn't kill the EX-1.

I've worked on a few things for other people that were shot on the EX-1, and it does have a good side: lots of fine detail, nice colour rendition, better latitude than most cameras of similar price.

But the downsides are so bad I would never consider using it on one of my own productions. Firstly, there's some kind of digital blur on anything that moves. It's subtle but it completely undermines the cinematic effect of any footage, making it look like some kind of 80s british documentary in terms of motion characteristic. That alone ruins the camera for me. Secondly, there's the codec. When you try to colour correct it it crumbles like a sandcastle. I've had far more luck with HVX footage than XDCam, despite their equal data rates.

I'm expecting that the Scarlet will have better detail, colour rendition, and latitude (all reasonable assumptions, since it will have many more pixels and a more advanced sensor) and a film-like shutter (Jim has said it's close). Colour correcting r3d will be lovely. The noise will undoubtedly be less. It will KILL the EX-1.... and if it doesn't, I will cry.
 
REDneck said:
Secondly, there's the codec. When you try to colour correct it it crumbles like a sandcastle. I've had far more luck with HVX footage than XDCam, despite their equal data rates.
Click to expand...

DVCPro HD is 100mbit, three times more than EX1's max 35mbit, and four times more than HDV's 25mbit. But it's using an less efficient intra frame codec (as opposed to inter frame mpg2), so visually the compression quality is surprisingly similar in my opinion. I wonder what kind of workflow people have with EX1 and HDV - i use both quite regularly, and i've never had *that* big problems color correcting either one of these mpeg2 based formats.

HVX series use uprezzed CCD's, and they're thus very soft compared to i.e. EX1 (i personally have only used HVX200 and HVX500, but i assume this applies to all models?). Especially HVX200 is pretty noisy - it might actually be a benefit, hiding some of the compression artifacts in dithering. To level the playing ground in this regard, some noise could be added to the mpeg2 based footage before color correction.
 
If there is no compelling reason to buy now, I.E. you have projects to shoot that make you money, then I think it will be worth the wait.

I have decided to wait on Scarlet to upgrade from DV to HD since the announcement, but for me it is a personal camera, a toy.
 
Tim Whitcomb said:
Really? "many" shorts had the budget to transfer to film? Which ones? Did they record to SxS cards? or record uncompressed and perform a DI?

First, I want to point out that my company provided the EX-1 cameras and post. I did not shoot it personally.

Pixelization and artifacts was probably more accurate than noise, especially in any scenes that required compositing or fixes... you cannot pull a decent key from that codec... or at all in most cases... so im refering more to shots that had problems and we tried to fix (i.e blown out windows).

HOWEVER, even RED has noise... so I find it very hard to believe you have no heard that from EX-1 users... especially in the blacks.

Do a search on these boards and you will find a guy offering de-noising service for the RED just in the last week on here.

Noise is typically a product of a low light situation. But there are other factors... your workflow is confusiing... why would you go digital to 16MM then blow up to 35MM?

I bet you would have a lot of grain (kind of like noise in digital)

Anyway, you asked my opinion, I gave it. I thought the camera sucks FOR FEATURE WORK...

(I did not say it sucked for shorts, or ENG, or TV or Weddings, etc)

Before Scarlett comes out, if I HAD to go prosumer again, I would rather use the panasonic HPX-170 as P2 workflow is superior to SxS IMO and uses a better 10 to 1 LONG GOP codec, versus the 20 to 1 of the SxS card.

at the prosumer level, its always a trade off from Pana to Sony Canon etc.
all have strengths, and lots of weaknesses compared to pro cameras.

THAT IS WHY all these low budget guys are DROOLING for the Scarlett.

But at the end of the day... id take a great script and acting shot on miniDV camera than a crappy story with bad acting shot on an EPIC 645

Good Luck
Click to expand...

I think our (potential) workflow makes sense. The 35mm blow up isn't really in the equation, and certainly isn't something I need worry myself about. I think digital to S16mm to DVD makes a lot of sense, effectively turning digital noise into a graininess that would certainly work for this picture (I mean, let's face it -- it's is an independent feature, and a surrealist one at that).

Another idea we're talking about is doing the EX1-to-S16mm for scenes that will require more activity from the camera (e.g. cuts and numerous takes) but that will not contain a lot of fast movements from the actors, and shooting the more action-oriented scenes, which will have very few cuts but alot of in-frame movement, shooting straight S16mm. It would, ironically, be more cost-effective this way. Thus we could do EX1/S16mm to digital intermediate, and then do S16mm to digital intermediate and blend the two footages together.

I'm only part of the package in this equation; my friend is a lot stronger on the tech side than I am, but he seems to think this would be effective. The problem is that we've never seen it done.

And you never mentioned if you had the movie available that you shot with the EX. Do you have a website or something?
 
FWIW DCVPro HD is 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0 for EX1 and HDV, and 6.7:1 compression.

****shrugs**** Yer pays yer money......

David
 
I'm really hoping that Tim replies to my inquiries about the feature he said he's shot with the EX1. I'd like to see why it's as bad as he says it is. Most of the shorts I've seen shot on this relatively cheap camera have been sound...

http://vimeo.com/774232

Tim, please provide a link to your work? Again, if you have the DVD available for purchase, I'd probably be interested in buying it.

Thanks,
 
David Swan said:
FWIW DCVPro HD is 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0 for EX1 and HDV, and 6.7:1 compression.
Click to expand...

Yep - the color subsampling difference is slightly offset by the fact that XDCAM EX is 1920*1080 and DVCPro HD is 1440*1080 (at best). EX's color resolution is thus 960*540, DVCPro HD's is 720*1080.

In practice, i.e. HVX200 has much less real than theoretical DVCPro HD color resolution, due to upsampling in-camera. My guess is, it's actually worse than EX1.

Edit: after a bit of reading, it seems HVX200 sensors are of 960*540 size. So, the theoretical maximum chroma resolution it can deliver is limited to 720*540 - less than EX1, like i assumed - and the same as HDV.

And as said, the compression it uses is less efficient than mpeg2, so even the bitrate isn't as big a difference in practice as people assume.
 
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