KOMODO....

[Brian Boyer]

My contribution to wild speculation on Komodo: RED agrees to record to Komodo in ProRes RAW. That would-be license fee cancels out the license fee RED charges for shooting compressed RAW in-camera for any camera that shoots ProRes RAW. The lawsuit is settled. Apple subsequently releases a cinema camera using their own custom designed sensors that records in ProRes RAW.

 

[Bastien Tribalat]

My contribution to wild speculation on Komodo: RED agrees to record to Komodo in ProRes RAW. That would-be license fee cancels out the license fee RED charges for shooting compressed RAW in-camera for any camera that shoots ProRes RAW. The lawsuit is settled. Apple subsequently releases a cinema camera using their own custom designed sensors that records in ProRes RAW.

IF it only records in ProRes RAW, that's a HUGE NO for me because it is exclusive to Final Cut Pro X (unless I missed some news but I can't imagine with the new Mac Pro and its ProRes and ProRes RAW encoding/decoding accelerator card coming that Apple would allow other softwares to handle ProRaw RAW)

 

[Brian Boyer]

IF it only records in ProRes RAW, that's a HUGE NO for me because it is exclusive to Final Cut Pro X (unless I missed some news but I can't imagine with the new Mac Pro and its ProRes and ProRes RAW encoding/decoding accelerator card coming that Apple would allow other softwares to handle ProRaw RAW)

I should’ve added that Apple would open the SDK up to other NLE vendors as well. I think it’s only a matter of time before they do that, anyway.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Since you also write all over the place, here's a three-parter once more to adress all you're saying.

A few of your responses were so off base, you actually supported the point I was making without knowing it, thinking you were arguing the opposite viewpoint when you weren't. You've wasted a lot of words on things I never said or meant. At times it was by willfully ignoring things that I explicitly stressed in bold and italics.

You essentially communicate that Red is not interested in the owner-operator market who will move over to less expensive but equally capable in quality. That is the point I argued against; my point was that Komodo is a direct answer to keeping that user-based in the Red infrastructure. It's even hinted by Jarred when he agreed it to be within the realm of Z Cam cameras.

I said RED's primary target was the high end. Not their only target. This suggests they have a secondary market, and tertiary markets, they try to accommodate as best they can. You said it yourself: "Their aim is to deliver digital cinema at the highest quality..."



Consumers are very comfortable with three choices. Too much choice is problematic, as is not enough. Most people go for the middle range. I know what you're thinking. The middle is clearly better than the bottom in my example, which won't be the case when BMD and others close the gap.

Here's the thing: BMD will also contribute to the tiered system (like RED eventually did) and, once things settle, will themselves have clearer distinctions among models.

Red has always struggled with getting back to the original philosophy. Their highest-end system, the Red One, was priced at $17500 when it came out and it radically changed the landscape of digital cinema.
They've always cared for the smaller players at the same time as the big ones. But to be able to compete in high-end cinema, they needed to release much more competitive cameras and therefore the price-point went up radically compared to their initial philosophy. Red has always been disruptive, until the day they weren't anymore. So they tried with the 3K for 3K Scarlet, changed it into a low-tier model, released a Raven and then canceled it. They have never been able to return to the disruptive times they initiated since everyone today is doing digital.

But the reasoning you put forward is that Red's aim at the high-end cinema is the bulk of their business. I would argue against that and say that the mid-tier is their business. The high-end is marketing, the income of sales for high-end productions aren't close to the thousands of people and smaller companies around the globe who want to use Red since Red is used in high-end productions. People aren't speaking about Arri, Red and Sony because they are good systems, they speak about them because it's what big productions use. It's an inherent will of people to be a part of a group and using the same systems as big productions makes people feel they're part of that business. It's marketing 101. Big productions, special made systems like the Ranger and the Xenomorph, are all part of Red's image, it's part of the marketing for Red. And I would bet that the number of owner-operators and small businesses around the globe vastly overshadows the number of sales within big high-end productions.

To have a good image within the highest productions being made is a superior marketing tool to sell cameras. Imagine if BMD had their cameras being used as A-Cams on large productions; that would radically change how people view their cameras without even changing what's inside those cameras.

This is why Red can charge a premium price for their cameras, because of brand recognition. But since the landscape of technology is shifting, I've seen plenty who start to ignore that brand recognition and just go with something more investment-friendly. The brand of the camera starts to become irrelevant when it's harder to justify the quality of a camera through brand recognition alone. It's far less effective today to just point out productions being made on Red today and let that influence people's choice when we have the less expensive options giving almost the same quality. People, meaning, owner-operators and small companies have started to wake up to these facts because knowledge in digital cinema is growing and the social and business status of owning a Red or an Arri has become less important now compared to how it's been before.

If Komodo is done right, then the brand recognition will continue to work for Red. Failing this will alienate a large customer-base and there's been some bad publicity about Red in previous months, especially aimed at the price-point of the equipment. So if Komodo fails to show a quality for a good price mentality, the same kind of philosophy that Red had in the beginning, then that is a bigger blow to sales than I think most realize.

Yes, RED sells more cameras to the middle - the owner-operator crowd makes up the bulk of their sales. However, given their business model, it's still congruent with the notion of primarily targeting the high end of digital cinema. They can and have done both successfully.

So, as mentioned, the highest-end productions aren't the sales which creates the highest income for Red, but the marketing slide that creates brand recognition. There's a difference between targeting the world of high-end digital cinema and using it as a marketing tool. Arri, for example, is much closer to the ideal you present and they are no way near the way Red markets to the mid-range customers. Most publicity from Red is clearly aimed towards owner-operators and smaller companies through the lens of status within high-end cinema and television. What happens when these mid-tier people start to find other brands better suited as investments?

RED probably would've put knobs, switches and buttons on their cameras, as those things are a big draw on the cameras that do primarily target owner-operators and solo shooters. But RED never has, because, well...I've already told you.

Red has focused on the modularity philosophy for a while, but few really wanted it like that, even in the high-end arena. Just look at all the custom builds Red has done, what do they do? More buttons and options. What do all the modules do? More buttons and options. Every improvement of Red since the modularity concept was initiated has been to add more buttons and features. So your point here fails, especially when counting in cameras like the DXL2. More buttons does not equal better for just solo shooters, people actually want it on their cameras, whatever tier you're in. I would even argue the opposite because what mid-tiers want is flexibility with side-gear, gimbals and similar; they want small light systems because that would enable them to get far more options in production than just a locked-down camera on a tripod because they couldn't afford a techno-crane.

The middle is broad and I'd argue that RED caters more to the middle of the middle tier on up, leaving the bottom of the middle tier to other manufacturers, including BMD with the URSA Mini Pro.

Yeah, so it has been. Which is my point; you are arguing based on the status quo of how its been, not what we're heading towards. The bottom camera companies of the middle tier couldn't perform to address the needs of the ones higher up, but that is exactly what they're starting to do now and that is the whole point I'm making. In two years time, the whole middle tier will have options outside of Red and Arri and no real reason to pay premium price in an investment better put into something else.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Since we don't know what cameras will exist, what capabilities they'll have and how much they'll cost, let's use today's cameras (merely for a frame of reference - these might not be the cams in question) and capabilities and apply future, market disrupting prices.

So, the Pocket 4K costs $495. The Pocket 6K costs $795. URSA Mini Pro G2 costs $1995. Most of RED's cameras range from $5K - $10K, with Monstro costing $17.5K. Guess what? The market is still tiered. There's still a high-medium-low stratification. The price points have merely shifted. There won't be a one-size-fits-all price for cinema cameras.

If this happens two years from now, maybe these are the cameras in question. Let's say that's true. It's so close that many people considering and prepared to buy an URSA Mini Pro for $5K might now consider buying a RED for $5K.

Because like you said, "Their aim is to deliver digital cinema at the highest quality..." People value that. It's an intangible that's hard to quantify.

There's two things I can guarantee you:

1) Those low tier prices will bottom out at some point. BMD isn't going to lay people off so they can produce a Pocket Whatever K for $150. Diminishing returns, remember? In fact, once they hit bottom, you can probably expect a slight increase in the bottom tier over time. There will be no more room at the bottom to be priced disruptively.

2) There's no way in hell RED is going to jump in the fray of $495 cinema cameras. There's too much volatility and that segment is fickle. They'll do what they've always done by targeting the high end while simultaneously serving the middle-to-upper middle tier. Their business model scales with the market. I think they can exist there indefinitely.

If they can do that, there's no real need to treat BMD or Z CAM as direct competitors in a way that impacts their business any more than it does now. That doesn't mean RED is ignoring them.

How do I know this? By looking to the past. It happened with audio gear. It happened with video gear. It happened with graphics software. I've seen it all before. There's no reason to think it will be different for cinema cameras. The future, however inexpensive it may be, will be tiered.

But you are arguing against yourself over and over here. Diminishing returns mean that when a certain technology hit a ceiling, no one will buy premium price because it's the most irrational investment they can make. And because Red has a large customer base in the middle tier, they won't buy premium-priced gear from Red anymore. And going by diminishing returns, even high-end cinema might use something else if it fits the purpose.

You reference graphics software and audio gear, but you don't seem to see that what has happened there is that mid-tier equipment dominates the market and all of them now cost quite low compared to previous times. The diminishing returns have made it so that everyone can get top quality gear for a fraction of what it previously cost, while software has gone down so much in price that even Avid can't compete without lowering its price-point. All while BMD continues to pull in people by having their base software free. A software with as much industry recognition as both Arri and Red.

And your example with Monstro getting as low as $17500 demands that new Red cameras outperform the Monstro 8K so much that it can justify a premium price, which gets harder and harder due to diminishing returns.
The last ten years featured improvements to digital cinema on a yearly basis because it was a tech that had just taken off. But we're now hitting a ceiling and diminishing return with the amount of stops we can pull out of sensors, the amount of needed K's, the amount of accurate color science, the decrease of camera body sizes, etc. There's not much that can be done to improve the current tech without inventing a radically new type of technology and Red have never invented something new, they have taken existing tech and improved it.

Your argument, therefore, demands that technology has the same curve of innovation as it has previously had, which it doesn't.

Other companies are far behind Red with what they have, but their curve of innovation, of improvement, has not yet hit their ceiling. So they are improving within lower costs while Red tries to keep the premium price for as long as possible.

And this is why such a strategy will fail because others still have their curve of improvement going for them while Red will struggle to radically increase the capabilities of their cameras beyond what they are capable of now.
Komodo is a way to jump onto the low-cost tier of cameras that are about to reach the same level of performance within a couple of years. It's a way of staying relevant when increasing the camera performance will struggle to justify a premium price. It's the more's law of camera development.

Until we have a new sensor technology we have hit a ceiling with CMOS sensors at the highest tier. We can push and stretch a bit, but physics are in the way here. Improvements going forward will be about camera bodies, processing power, cooling, boot times etc. We will see much less of a computer shooting footage and more of a traditional feel to the camera. This is what can be improved. The problem though is that everyone else is doing it at the same time as they are increasing camera capabilities.

When we're down in the realm of 2-5 nanometers of processors, the power supply and heat won't be an issue and cameras will look radically different. Everyone's already on board with this progress, not just Red.
So how can they keep the ship afloat with premium prices if their customer base is primarily mid-tier and increasing camera quality isn't going to be as radical as it's been over the previous ten years?

You can't predict the future if you can't take into account more's law, the status of CMOS development, etc. Just pointing out that prices go down and we get new gear is ignoring what actually happens when you can't really push quality further with that current tech.

Monstro is hard to beat, even by Red themselves. But others have it easier to reach it as technology gets cheaper and processing gets more efficient. All while people can't really use more stops in any meaningful way, while people don't have a reason to go beyond 8K in any meaningful way, while people can't really do much more with the colors they get. There's a lot of ceilings hit and you need to include that in your predictions. With MX, we wanted more K's to supersample, with Dragon we wanted less noise in our shadows, with Helium we wanted a larger sensor to handle the 8K resolution. The high-end market might want to increase K's to supersample to 8K, they might want a 65mm sensor for that, but there's not much more you can do, which creates the diminishing returns of camera technology. All of this is important to think about when predicting the market, a market that is closing in on the same features as Red delivers in premium price.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

In your previous post you mentioned "Pocket 6K" every 57 words. You talked about it like it was the Messiah. Now, it's only "indicative" of the inevitable changes to come? Ok.

I've used the Pocket 6K as an example camera. I can use any number of cameras close to Red tech, but because of the Pocket's 6K resolution with compressed RAW it's close to what Red is as a system much more than say the S1H which doesn't have RAW or compressed RAW.

How you interpret things is up to you, I think I'm quite clear in what I refer to with the Pocket. If you deliberately misinterpret what I'm actually saying, there's no wonder you're confused with my argument.

My argument relies on everyone improving their cameras, not just the low end. You're the one who seems shortsighted about what more advancements there are to be made in imaging technology. Did you not see the link Misha provided about Panasonic's sensor tech? That's only one of the things they're working on.

Yes, and what cameras do you think will have that sensor tech? What market do you think they will aim for? It will start with the Varicam, go into a new EVA and eventually settle in their DSLR-type video cameras like the S1H. Panasonic is not competing with Red and Arri in high-end but will deliver a sensor vastly better than what Arri and Red have.

But the fact remains that what people can do with these sensors is the ceiling of development. You can improve tech to a certain point, then need to invent totally new tech in order to continue improving, but everything needs to be in line with what the customers actually need and can utilize. If the sensor tech can deliver far more than people will actually use, they will not buy into such marketing. This is why it's been so hard selling the high K-number argument because people don't actually care if the perceivable result isn't there. Yes, there are still improvements to be made to CMOS and camera tech, but my point is still being missed here, EVERYONE is doing it as you yourself say, which means the highest tier price-points will drop when ceilings are hit. Which is exactly what happened with NLE prices, color grading applications, compositing software, audio software and so on. They couldn't justify the preimum prices when high-end and mid-tier were at the same level of quality, which we are heading at with camera technology.

If BMD releases a $10K camera, it justifies the price of middle tier cameras and users, in terms of price, that RED very much caters to. A $10K BMD cam seems to contradict everything you've said about $2,500 being disruptive to similarly priced RED and Canon cams, not to mention a $6.5K Komodo with similar specs to the Pocket 6K.

A $10K camera with the capabilities of the Monstro 8K will kill the Monstro sales. That is disruptive. A Komodo 6K with the same capabilities as the Dragon 6K will kill the Dragon, but will keep the customer-base within Red.
Red are fools if they haven't checked out the Pocket 6K and concluded that it's a serious threat to their lower-end cameras. Nothing of this contradicts anything of what I'm saying. The Komodo, the Pocket aren't a threat to the Monstro, but a threat towards the Dragon and Gemini. But a $10K BMD camera based on what they can do at a $2500 price-point is easily predicted to rival the Monstro 8K. It's the disruptive Monstro counter-part of what Komodo and Pocket 6K is for the lower tier Red cameras in their lineup today.

Huh? I mentioned Dragon-X, not Epic Dragon. I also said the Dragon-X was more camera than the R1. I told you, you've wasted a lot of words on things I never said. You're all over the place.

I could draw the same argument there. You will have a hard time justifying the cost of a non-dual-iso 5K dragon camera with its noise floor and a camera body that is still too heavy for many gimbal applications and solutions.
What you can do with the smaller options, like the Pocket 6K, compared to the Dragon-X is getting more options with camera moves, getting lower noise, better low-light handling, one more K for stabilization/reframing and downsampling, faster boot times and so on. If Dragon-X is more of a camera than the R1, what is the Pocket 6K then? The Dragon-X is pretty DOA in the current landscape. Even some mid-tier people rather get the Gemini and those who can afford the Dragon-X might have a hard time justifying why.

You're all over the place.

Right back at ya. You argue that technology is always advancing, ignoring more's law and the current state of user's needs depicting development. You argue that other areas in technology; audio, software etc. are tiered when they really aren't that tiered anymore, especially software (just look at NLE's, VFX and color grading). You argue that the Monstro will fall down to a $17500 price-point because new Red cameras will fit the premium price, without explaining what kind of improvements people are really looking for and demanding and that no one else will do the same for less as we hit diminishing returns of camera technology.

Diminishing returns in camera technology works in conjunction with peoples demands of what their cameras can do. You can't ignore such factors when predicting the future market. This is why Avid lost so much to the competitors, because everyone dismissed the "low-tiered" software of Final Cut and Premiere. This is why Avid's stock plunged and they try to struggle with only being a company for high-end filmmakers. This is also why Resolve will take more and more people from both Avid and Premiere. People underestimate technological advancement from the low-end because they don't predict users behavior, needs and demands. Most people who fail in predicting the future markets do so by only looking at the status quo and including statistics excluding the human factors.

What do people want from their cameras? What performance do people ask for? If you make a camera that has a built-in rocket to go to the moon and back, will anyone buy that for its absurd price or will they just be happy with a camera that does the same for a lower price? What improvements are you referring to will make people rush to buy premium price if the result isn't that much better than other brands?

NLE's are about editing together footage. That's it. You can improve speed and usability, but in the end it's pretty basic stuff. Since every software can do the same, there's nothing really there to improve and them all need to lower their price-point to stay relevant. Adobe charges a lot, but they do it in the form of a package, same with Resolve who gives you much more than just an NLE, Final Cut is included in buying an expensive mac and Avid struggles with trying to do just a basic NLE. They've all hit a ceiling and they are all pushing prices down. They cannot improve upon the basic concept of an NLE without changing what an NLE really is.

So, I don't really see the argument you are trying to make, because it's ignoring so many factors to make a sound prediction of the coming market. You make the same type of argument that people made for investing in failing companies because they exclude the cocktail-effect of all factors and only see a few within the status quo. Prices will fall, everywhere, high-tier cameras will struggle, low-tier cameras will improve, the camera market will flatten out and price-points will decide sales. All based on the cocktail-effects of user demands/needs, diminishing return of current camera tech, distribution to consumers and consumer preferences. We will not see a new era of camera tech until light field technology, holographic walls etc. until then, we will see an increasing flattened market of camera technology.

 

[jordan levy]

im thinking reduser should go to 140 characters or less, does anyone read these long winded arguments amongst two members?
once i see more then a paragraph, i skip it.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

im thinking reduser should go to 140 characters or less, does anyone read these long winded arguments amongst two members?
once i see more then a paragraph, i skip it.

You mean putting the forum on the same level as Twitter? :tongue_smilie:

 

[jordan levy]

You mean putting the forum on the same level as Twitter? :tongue_smilie:

i was obviously being sarcastic, but the level of twitter would be an upgrade compared to what's going on now, like full pages of nonsense.

 

[Rakesh Malik]

IF it only records in ProRes RAW, that's a HUGE NO for me because it is exclusive to Final Cut Pro X (unless I missed some news but I can't imagine with the new Mac Pro and its ProRes and ProRes RAW encoding/decoding accelerator card coming that Apple would allow other softwares to handle ProRaw RAW)

Scratch has ProResRaw support. I think Baselight does as well.

 

[Brian Boyer]

i was obviously being sarcastic, but the level of twitter would be an upgrade compared to what's going on now, like full pages of nonsense.

Aha! How do you know it’s nonsense if you haven’t read it? I’ll have you know that, buried within every long-winded post I make on Reduser, you’ll find a hidden gem of wisdom and the secret to a happy life.

Also, before this thread, I hadn’t really commented in this forum for a few years. I’m getting it all in at once instead of spreading it out.

I have one more short response to Christoffer and then I’m done.

 

[jordan levy]

Aha! How do you know it’s nonsense if you haven’t read it? I’ll have you know that, buried within every long-winded post I make on Reduser, you’ll find a hidden gem of wisdom and the secret to a happy life.

Also, before this thread, I hadn’t really commented in this forum for a few years. I’m getting it all in at once instead of spreading it out.

I have one more short response to Christoffer and then I’m done.

no, no, please dont, then he'll reply again, then you'll have another "one" more, no!
just take it offline for the sake of us all!
you two should exchange phone numbers and text each other all day long
and i hope you know im playing, but...

 

[Misha Engel]

Scratch has ProResRaw support. I think Baselight does as well.

Scratch supports everything, even stuff that isn't out yet, forbidden, banned, released in 2021, etc.. No NLE supports more than Scratch.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I have one more short response to Christoffer and then I’m done.

I'm not sure how much more in detail I can describe my point. So if you have a short answer you could just go with "I don't agree", that's fine and under 140 characters. :tongue_smilie:

no, no, please dont, then he'll reply again, then you'll have another "one" more, no!
just take it offline for the sake of us all!
you two should exchange phone numbers and text each other all day long
and i hope you know im playing, but...

The horror of a dislocated finger by the consequence of scrolling too much :laugh:

 

[Rakesh Malik]

Scratch supports everything, even stuff that isn't out yet, forbidden, banned, released in 2021, etc.. No NLE supports more than Scratch.

Yep... sometimes I wish that Scratch were also an NLE, but Assimilate is staying focused on dailies + color and finishing.

 

[Bastien Tribalat]

Scratch has ProResRaw support. I think Baselight does as well.

Here is the official list of third party products that support ProRes Raw right now :

ASSIMILATE

• SCRATCH

Atomos

• SUMO 19
• SHOGUN INFERNO

DJI

• Zenmuse X7

FilmLight

• Baselight
• Daylight

MTI FILM

• Cortex

Telestream

• Switch

So no NLEs in there.
I've never used Scratch but it seems really nice, but again it's not an editing software.

 

[Steve DiMaggio]

has red said what this thing is yet?

steve

 

[jordan levy]

has red said what this thing is yet?

steve

nope. it's all speculation. which is getting old. with canon's announcement and sony's next week, red better reveal the full specs soon.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Speaking of speculation about RED's recent silence on Komodo...

1) Launching at IBC was always the plan

2) They are making changes to features and/or pricing

3) They are waiting for something like a final agreement on licensing, FCC compliance, component supplies, etc...

Cheers - #19

 

[Andrew R Lewis]

im thinking reduser should go to 140 characters or less, does anyone read these long winded arguments amongst two members?
once i see more then a paragraph, i skip it.

Yep. Skip.