New camera from Sony

[Carsten Fenstermacher]

I wouldn't have to dupe with tapes thats the entire point. Bring along 25 HDCAM-SR tapes at a cost of $1875. Compared to RED RAM Drives at $122,500.
.

The drives are truly reusable so the cost comparison is disingenuous not to mention you have choices between CF, drive, and ram for different levels.

Compare it to red drives and you will save a hell of alot more if you have high shooting rations like you do for nature.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

i am not sure, but there are rumours that you can rent redrams...dont know if you can rent tapes
edit: i personally dont like tape...it drives me crazy to handle tapes...so i am a biased.

Still would be more expensive than using tape. What's the cheapest you can rent a RED RAM for? Also less of an insurance liability to have 25 HDCAM SR tapes compared to 25 RED RAM drives. Not to mention a hell of a lot lighter to carry around. :lol: Keslow is renting the RED Ram for $250 per day. Thats over 3x the cost of a HDCAM SR tape with the same equivalent data storage. I doubt that they have 25 in stock though, much less 25 for each of the 19 teams. Rental is also a per day cost so in the long run it would cost you way more to use the RED RAM drive than to use tape. If I equipped my team with 25 HDCAM SR tapes it could conceivable cover 5 days of shooting. If you equip the team with 25 RED RAMs it could cover the shooting but it would be 25x250x5=$31250. The tape stock would be a hell of a lot cheaper at $1875.

The drives are truly reusable so the cost comparison is disingenuous not to mention you have choices between CF, drive, and ram for different levels.

Compare it to red drives and you will save a hell of alot more if you have high shooting rations like you do for nature.

Who will be your data wrangler on the dinghy?

 

[Rick Presas]

Tapes have the archival edge.

 

[Stuart English]

Archive choices

Archive choices

Tapes have the archival edge.

Video tapes do or data tapes do?

 

[Ace]

Video tapes do or data tapes do?

Arent HDCAM SR tapes, Data tapes?

 

[Stuart English]

Tapes, data and formats

Tapes, data and formats

Well that's just the point, there are expensive data tape recorders and inexpensive data tape recorders.

Why the difference? What's the relative advantage once you move beyond an established video format?

And 720p or 1080p or DPX are not video formats in this sense... whereas HDCAM, DVCPRO etc would be...

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Well that's just the point, there are expensive data tape recorders and inexpensive data tape recorders.

Why the difference? What's the relative advantage once you move beyond an established video format?

And 720p or 1080p or DPX are not video formats in this sense... whereas HDCAM, DVCPRO etc would be...

Well Sony did announce they are reducing the tape stock price by 40 percent. As far as the data tape recorders don't you notice the difference between a SRW-5800/2 and a typical LTO4 deck? I'm guessing the same reason ARRI sells an MB-20 mattebox for almost 6k is the reason why these decks cost 80k. Why does a RED RAM drive cost $4500? Why does a Element Technica EVF mount cost $1300? I think the reasons are because only a few people in the world use these devices and the company that makes them has to pay for parts, labor and operation cost.

 

[sergio arguello]

If I equipped my team with 25 HDCAM SR tapes it could conceivable cover 5 days of shooting. If you equip the team with 25 RED RAMs it could cover the shooting but it would be 25x250x5=$31250. The tape stock would be a hell of a lot cheaper at $1875.


Ok your point is well taken, but not really set in reality,IMHO. Wont you agree that if you were renting the whole or even part of the (red) gear from whomever that you wouldnt be paying a 5day week. 25x250x2 maybe even 1 depending how long your out for and the house relationship. My next question are there no costs besides tape? perhaps digitzing? just asking

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Ok your point is well taken, but not really set in reality,IMHO. Wont you agree that if you were renting the whole or even part of the (red) gear from whomever that you wouldnt be paying a 5day week. 25x250x2 maybe even 1 depending how long your out for and the house relationship. My next question are there no costs besides tape? perhaps digitzing? just asking

25*250*2=$12500

Thats $12500 even with a great rental deal where you pay only 2 days for a 5 day rental. The same equivalent cost for the HDCAM SR would be $1875. You let me know the rental house that has 25 RED RAMs much less that will allow you to have them for 5 days for only a one day rental price? IMHO that is highly unlikely and highly speculative of best case scenarios. With both workflows there are issues... with the HDCAM SR the footage is already archived. With the RED RAM you would have to store it on a RAID and then store it on LTO4 for the vault archive. In both scenarios the digitizing is really transferring. Since the archiving is already done with HDCAM SR then thats one less step in post.

Lets go to the issue of ingest speed. I mainly record on the 8GB CF cards... on my Lexar FW800 CF card reader it takes me 2.5 minutes to transfer roughly 5 minutes of footage (this is without the checksum process). With the SRW-5800 deck and double speed ingest this will be roughly the same time duration. The tape workflow saves you time in post and also money if you are paying a data wrangler or a post facility to archive/transfer it for you.

Also add at least one more day to the rental to allow you to transfer the footage from the RED RAM drives. If you turn on the checksum process to verify the data... add more days. :lol: With the 40% reduction in HDCAM SR tape stock the price for the 25 HDCAM SR tapes will be $1125. Even without owning the HDCAM SR deck and renting one for 5 days to do the ingest... you would still save thousands. Now lets look at your very unlikely best case scenario... a rental house hooked you up with 25 RED RAMs for 5 days and you only pay one day. That comes out to $6250... even with the tapes at their current price and renting the deck for 5 days... you still save thousands.

 

[Mitch Gross]

Mitch, I'd be interested to hear your views on how you see the industry changing over the next 12 months ... you guys have been in the game a lot longer than most of us and have never ceased to adapt and change and continue to deliver great products and services.

Thanks,
Neil

What we see as the big change in the industry is how the market now leads the manufacturers. Unlike what so many sometimes think, the manufacturers have always tried to listen to their customers to develop products with which everyone will be happy. Focus groups and meetings with large clients worked well in the past, but the business of Image Capture has expanded at an exponential rate. And there are also forums such as this that communicate in minutes what once took months. There are different markets and different ways to serve them. And these markets are letting the manufacturers know this and the manufacturers are responding. And sometimes a manufacturer just might know something and drop a product that makes everyone stop and take notice.

“Horses for Courses” is not just a catchy turn of phrase. There really are appropriate tools for given clients and given jobs. No one camera head is best and no one recording media is best. What’s interesting now is that we are quickly getting to the point where professional-level product is available in all of the shapes and sizes that people could ever want. One job may call for a relatively small sensor (which means a certain kind of lensing and physical form factor) while recording to a cheap & easy in the field media. Another may require a large sensor with a media that is quickly and inexpensively duplicated on set. A given production might need to record in a format that allows for maximum flexibility in post for adjustment and refinement. Still another may need to output in a form that is instantly available for finished use.

Not every production is shot on a studio backlot with a full camera truck, DIT workstation and a bunch of lighting & grip trucks. And not every job is a kid running around with an HDSLR in a backpack. There is validity to them all and there are now products being made for them all. The task is to see where the crossovers are so that the most work and the best work can be done with the fewest and most appropriate tools. What tools work for a major broadcast network are not necessarily what is most appropriate for a studio shoot, and neither might serve a sports cinematographer, or a timelapse guy, or a nature doc shooter, etc., etc.

A few years ago we had a client shoot a feature doc on terrorism. The main camera was a Sony F900R but a JVC HD100 was used for segments where a large camera would be a real target for life-threatening concerns. If that same movie were to be produced today, I could imagine a large sensor camera being used for interviews and beauty shots here in the US, a 2/3” camera used for much of the field work around the world and an HDSLR used for shooting in war-torn danger zones. And the finished product would likely be better for it.

Think of the camera heads as “image capture devices.” It’s great to be able to choose the most appropriate one for your needs. Then think of the actual recording media (tape, card, hard drive, etc.) as “intermediate media.” The raw material is only going to live there temporarily until being moved into the post environment where it can be stored, altered and archived as needed. So both the Image Capture Device and the Intermediate Media should be the ones that work best for a client’s given job and workflow. One is not better than the other, just more appropriate. And that’s the new world that we are moving into.

 

[M Most]

“Horses for Courses” is not just a catchy turn of phrase. There really are appropriate tools for given clients and given jobs. No one camera head is best and no one recording media is best.

Everything Mitch said is accurate and wise.

I would add that not every job uses the same post path, either. Not everything is a do-it-yourself job done by the individual doing the shooting or editing - which seems to be the dominant scenario on Red User. In the high end television world, post is usually performed in facilities that are built and staffed for the purpose, in part to ensure timely completion, in part to ensure that all technical criteria for delivery are met, and in part to take advantage of the talent that resides in these facilities. Things like HDCam SR decks are plentiful in large post facilities and allow those facilities to operate efficiently and interchangeably - an advantage in a market like the television industry that requires extremely fast turnaround at extremely high quality, not to mention an elaborate array of dailies products and the ability to pull clips immediately when necessary. Getting all of this dirt cheap is not the overriding necessity. Getting it done, and done right, is.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Not everything is a do-it-yourself job done by the individual doing the shooting or editing - which seems to be the dominant scenario on Red User.

Yes the Ronin mentality of production is quite endemic here, so much so that many REDusers cannot see why other Professionals make the decisions they do and their production needs. As Mitch stated... not every production is done in a Studio backlot.

 

[Simon Dunne]

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/technology/sony-moves-to-future-proof-the-srw-9000/5008679.article

 

[Stuart English]

New products

New products

Obviously different markets have different needs, but equally obviously you'd expect us to not agree with the following -

“We have unveiled the media of the future,” “There is nothing else capable of this level of quality native recording anywhere on the market today.”


I'm sure it'll work just fine, but what's laid out as the file-centric future sounds a lot like many REDUSER's current IT technology based reality...

 

[Deanan]

Obviously different markets have different needs, but equally obviously you'd expect us to not agree with the following -

“We have unveiled the media of the future,” “There is nothing else capable of this level of quality native recording anywhere on the market today.”

It's actually a funny statement because theirs isn't on the market so the statement is self canceling?

 

[M Most]

It's actually a funny statement because theirs isn't on the market so the statement is self canceling?

No different than statements here that say things like "Scarlet has....." when Scarlet hasn't been manufactured yet. :sarcasm:


Reality is a very amorphous concept in today's world.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

No different than statements here that say things like "Scarlet has....." when Scarlet hasn't been manufactured yet. :sarcasm:


Reality is a very amorphous concept in today's world.

True.. i for one love what they showcased and cant wait to hear if RED has any plans to come out with something comparable to what Sony unveiled (1TB SR Memory with RAID 5 & 5Gbps speed).

I'm sure it'll work just fine, but what's laid out as the file-centric future sounds a lot like many REDUSER's current IT technology based reality...

SXS media was first unveiled around April of 2007.