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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 :)

New Arri Digital vs. Scarlet?

I don't really buy the "with a modular design it'll be easy to upgrade" philosophy.

They still have to design the ASIC for any new camera. They still have to do all the sensor R&D. That's what we've been waiting for. I can't imagine the IO or CF Card module has really been slowing down development.
 
Modularity

Modularity

With a modular design there is a hump to get over; at first you have to create all the modules, so there appears to be little time advantage.

But later on the advantages of not having to update everything becomes quite clear.....both to the manufacturer and to the customer.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
I don't really buy the "with a modular design it'll be easy to upgrade" philosophy.

They still have to design the ASIC for any new camera. They still have to do all the sensor R&D. That's what we've been waiting for. I can't imagine the IO or CF Card module has really been slowing down development.
Click to expand...

Hi Gavin- I think it's pretty obvious RED has moved past the "design" phase of the ASIC. Sounds to me like it's in advance testing prior to mass production.

I also believe the sensor development is far beyond R$D and at least at BETA stage since Jarred stuck a M- X (read: Epic) sensor in a RED ONE and shot the sexiest woman alive images with it recently.

Monstro is obviously a closely guarded secret.

For the last few months Jim has stated that ASIC's are the only hurdle left
and then production can commence.

Meantime, they have released a TON of advances in their software and post options, more advanced Color Science, a new REDCODE42 and 4.5K wide screen (9% gain) this week.

Clearly sounds like there is lots of stuff going on in the RED garage as confimed by Mark Pederson several months ago.

If a job or film comes along that demands another solution for you today, I also think Jim and Jarred would be the first to say. "Buy it!"

Meantime they have made it clear that they are taking the time to get this one as close to perfect as they can. I for one, respect and appreciate that.

We all are excited and impatient even to have this stuff in our hands... but RED has proven that good things come to those that wait.

cheers!
 
There is a limited lifespan of the "modularity" idea though. It's called "uncompressed video," eventually it will be the only accepted capture format. Which means RedCode will be obsolete, it won't be for some time, 10 years-ish. The existing wiring can only hold so much info and will ALL have to be upgraded.

The reason why genesis, d-21, f35 etc. are limited to 60fps in 4:4:4 mode is because hdsdi can only carry so much uncompressed info, so they are limited to those data/frame rates. Fiber optics on the other hand... wave of the future!
 
Sure fibre allows faster transfer, but you've got to think of the storage too. Uncompressed is actually the dead end technology because it's really no technology at all. Doing good, high quality, realtime compression is non-trivial, but gives a whole host of benefits - like the 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 resolution extraction we use, which becomes more an more important as frame sizes increase, for instance.

Graeme
 
Andrew McCarrick said:
Part of the reason alot of these cameras are so expensive is because they mark up for selling through resellers.

I.e; they construct/build for 35-40k, they mark up to sell to resellers to 45-55k and then they list at an additional 15-20k. Cut out the middleman, and they don't need to mark it up so high.

It's not like the manufactures are selling these things at costs to the resellers.

RED has no resellers.... I'd be suprised if RED is making 15-25% profit per unit sold.
Click to expand...

i always had the impression you could buy an arri camera only at arri. i think they have resellers e.g. for stuff like matteboxes, ff or lights, but cameras?

best wishes,
martin
 
Yey! Arri goes guerilla with a camera that gives badass images for a pricetag of ONLY 50 000 Euro!! ...or not :P
 
Modularity

Modularity

There is a limited lifespan of the "modularity" idea though. It's called "uncompressed video," eventually it will be the only accepted capture format.
Click to expand...

Two comments -

a) Modularity is ether irrelevant or argues the exact opposite to your compressed v's uncompressed example.

b) Only accepted capture format by whom? Digital video history only tells us that people prefer uncompressed v's crap compression.

There are MANY advantages to sophisticated compression.
 
Blaire Johnson said:
It's called "uncompressed video," eventually it will be the only accepted capture format. Which means RedCode will be obsolete, it won't be for some time, 10 years-ish.
Click to expand...

No way, in my opinion. We have codecs that are pretty close to being visually lossless, so what's the point in storing so much redundant information? I think it's the opposite - compression is only going to get better, and few people will want to use uncompressed video...
 
Stephen gets 10 out of 10 and a gold star.

Graeme
 
According to their Dynamic Range Test Chart it betters their 'Competitor' (Which I'm guessing is Red since it has 11.3 f-stops) by an extra stop of light. Not bad, but then again you're comparing it too something was developed around 3 years ago, I'd expect that frankly. If Epic doesn't improve to at least that or better with Mysterium or Monstro then it'd be a serious faux par on Red's part.

Paul
 
Graeme, quick question I've often wondered. Does having more pixels actually improve useable dynamic range?

For instance 4K vs 2K yields obvious differences in quality when going to a 2K DI simply because any noise is more obvious in the 2K and it can't therefore be pushed as much. Does increasing the amount of pixels therefore increase the useable dynamic range when going to the standard 2K?

Paul
 
Yes, downsampling should help reduce noise. Part of downsampling is a low pass filter, so any noise which has detail above that of the LPF should be eliminated in the downsample.

Graeme
 
Blaire Johnson said:
There is a limited lifespan of the "modularity" idea though. It's called "uncompressed video," eventually it will be the only accepted capture format. Which means RedCode will be obsolete, it won't be for some time, 10 years-ish. The existing wiring can only hold so much info and will ALL have to be upgraded.

The reason why genesis, d-21, f35 etc. are limited to 60fps in 4:4:4 mode is because hdsdi can only carry so much uncompressed info, so they are limited to those data/frame rates. Fiber optics on the other hand... wave of the future!
Click to expand...

You want the fastest car possible with the lowest fuel consumption.
This is valid not only for the Auto industry.

Compressed video is the future. Just like any other technology, compression is in constant development and it tends to get better everyday. Eventually, it will come to a point where you'll get true lossless compression.

- Marcelo
 
You can have true lossless compression today - but it's limited to around 2.5:1 at most, and that's it. I don't think we'll see that figure changing soon either. To go beyond that to a more usable amount of compression, it needs to get slightly lossy. With good lossy compression all you're loosing is residual noise, for the most part. As sensors get better, with wider DR, they're going to be putting out more real data with less noise, which means more information to compress. That's going to make the job of compression harder, not easier. (Yes, noise is the enemy of compression, but in the case I'm talking about, you're not so much removing noise as replacing it with real information).

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
You can have true lossless compression today - but it's limited to around 2.5:1 at most, and that's it. I don't think we'll see that figure changing soon either. To go beyond that to a more usable amount of compression, it needs to get slightly lossy. With good lossy compression all you're loosing is residual noise, for the most part. As sensors get better, with wider DR, they're going to be putting out more real data with less noise, which means more information to compress. That's going to make the job of compression harder, not easier. (Yes, noise is the enemy of compression, but in the case I'm talking about, you're not so much removing noise as replacing it with real information).

Graeme
Click to expand...

sounds like chinese to me...but i am sure you will do your job very well and make us happy
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
I don't really buy the "with a modular design it'll be easy to upgrade" philosophy. They still have to design the ASIC for any new camera.
Click to expand...

I think you're wrong Gavin.

My guess is when you buy a scarlet you are buying one ASIC and when you buy an Epic you are buying several of the same ASIC running in parrallel. So each camera is like having a different motherboards for the same processor and each module is like installing an expansion card in your tower.

Likely the ASIC only does tasks that are redundant among all Red cameras, mainly the fourier transform and other math associated with Redcode. Maybe there is a redesign going from 12bit to 16bit but for larger and smaller sensors or faster frame rates it's likely all the same shizzle, just break the image into blocks and send them through the wash.

So I think it's fair for them to say that the modules will continue to work as everything is changing because they just need to adjust the drivers installed on the brain for each available module, the bus technology has enough throughput (or is backward compatible enough) to stay the same for a long period of time as it does with conventional computers. With an adapter you can still install your AdLib Sound card on your PC today if you want to groove on some cool MIDI tunes.

Gavin Greenwalt said:
They still have to do all the sensor R&D. That's what we've been waiting for. I can't imagine the IO or CF Card module has really been slowing down development.
Click to expand...

I don't see why the sensor R&D couldn't be done without a camera at all, just capture the raw feed from the sensor and test all your algorithms on a desktop.

The majority of the math being done on the ASIC is likely very general or can be tuned by firmware for different sensors with different image characteristics.

All just a guess.... or a hope.

IBloom
 
I guess nobody understood what I said... I said "capture format" not completely irrelevant in all cases at all times... compression will get better and is necessary, duh... but not at capture. Storage will get faster and "eventually" catch up to the necessary throughput requirements.

Red's cameras are the only ones that have higher resolutions than 1080/2k, which are pretty dog-on close to eachother. SO the data rate needed to capture those formats has remained the same for a long time. And that means the next res increase will most likely double, then remain the standard for 10+ years.

Lifespan for Betacam-11yrs (1982-93) Digibeta-7years (1993-00) HDCAM-7yrs (2000-2007) HDCAM SR-???yrs (2005-???). I'm not talking about when these formats were released, I'm talking about when they were widely used in the various industries. So based on that every 7-11 years there will be a new standard for capture. Now that Sony is in the solid-state game there is a chance they will be able to do onboard-uncompressed capture, in 10yrs.

AGAIN, I am saying this probably won't happen for 10yrs-ish. I don't really think anyone expects their cameras to be relevant for more than 10yrs. News/wedding shooters don't count, I don't care that you still shoot with your beta-sp camera, you're not apart of this convo.
 
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