New Wired magazine has a hot article about RED and JJ

[Thomas Mathai]

Convert away from deprecated file formats every 10 years: $1,000/year
Rackspace, monitoring, dead hard drive RMA, etc: $1,000/year

How did you calculate the above costs to being 1k a year each?

 

[Lawrence Bansbach]

The article was generally pretty good (although its brief discussion of depth of field was simplistic and therefore somewhat misleading), but it omitted the real revolution: Scarlet. It could sell ten times what One and Epic sell combined.

 

[number6]

Scarlet. It could sell ten times what One and Epic sell combined.

Yeah, in the first six weeks.

 

[Daniel Browning]

How did you calculate the above costs to being 1k a year each?

Management of storage units can be heavily automated, so the minimal amount of oversight will just be in response to automated alerts ("verify failed", "disk offline", etc.) and regular human investigation. Based on the colocation facilities I've visited in Portland, OR, I think $500/year is a comfortable rate for 1U at managed-service. Two geographically separated would make $1k/year. But you might prefer a fancier facility with high security, full service bar in the waiting lounge, swanky downtown real estate, etc. With all that it might be as much as $3k/year. On the other end, you could use a riskier offline storage service where the units are only booted once a quarter, and so don't take A/C or power. That would cost almost nothing, but there's a small chance that more than one drive would die in two separated arrays at the same time.

As for the transcoding at $10,000: that's 50 hours at $200/hour. Breakdown:
5: Request temporary transcoding system in data center ("box cart").
5: Connect to remote KVM and install transcoding software.
5: Connect to old storage array and new storage array.
10: Transcode.
5: Test.
20: Margin for a custom box cart, shipping, unforeseen issues, etc.

 

[Cameron Preyde]

I think the ProVideo Coalition blog about this article was excellent. It was mentioned earlier in this thread and just goes to show how little Wired actually cares about decent journalism. For those of you who've read the Wired article and are praising it...did you realize that it was full of errors and was incredibly misleading?

Read: http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/aadams/story/wired_magazine_gets_the_red_totally_wrong/

I'm not saying that RED ONE isn't good, I'm saying that Wired isn't.

 

[Roberto B]

Is it a good article?

Jim

:w00t:

Rethoric. You dictated it on the phone...

"Standing nearby is the man who developed it—a handsome guy with a neatly trimmed goatee and a pair of sunglasses perched atop his clean-shaven head."

edit
my fav..

"Jim Jannard, 59, is the billionaire founder of Red. In 1975 he spent $300 to make a batch of custom motocross handlebar grips, which he sold from the back of a van. "

 

[Emanuel A.]

Yes, it's funny. BTW, we'll be in Rome these days... Any chance for una pasta a casa tua, Paolo?

E.

 

[David M]

have a bit of a cross stitch fetish have you??....heheh

No, actually I was making a sarcastic comment to my wife about what an 'exciting' place the sewing forum must be. She certainly showed me a side of fabric-oriented society that I never suspected existed.

All those nutjobs, handling sharp needles and scissors.:ranting2:

 

[Priyesh P.]

Film will always be. Just as I still listen to vinyl records on tube amps, film will always be, although vastly displaced in number.

Graeme

OK, but to produce vinyl doesn`t need that much sophisticated equipment like film does (a german company did some vinyls for a client on old machines they bought from somewhere in their garage). But what do you need to produce film? the base material , chemicals and coating devices and all the knowledge to properly produce, apply and fixate the colour layers. and this was "just" the production step of the film...

Just think about the availability of the Pathé 9,5mm or even worse, the 17,5 or normal 8mm film and processing today...

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Not Easy...

Not Easy...

But what do you need to produce film? the base material , chemicals and coating devices and all the knowledge to properly produce, apply and fixate the colour layers. and this was "just" the production step of the film...

I have made my own photographic materials, and can say that making black and white film faster that EI 3 is almost impossible for someone who wants to start a new film company to fill the vacuum after the major companies die and has not been in the photographic materials business for 15 years or more, unless he hires people from a film making company since most of the tech is a trade secret. Those workers would have been bound by non-disclosure, so even that option would be hard. Making color film to compare with Kodaks new stocks is next to impossible. Making a good color film with fine grain at EI 800 is not something a new small company can do on their own.

Lucky Film in China seems to be using chemicals and technology from Kodak, they may be the last maker to go under, but I do not see any kind of motion picture film being made 100 years from now, maybe limited print stock 50 years from now, but doubt that any movie camera film will be around 25 years from now.

Its hard to say when all the Movie projectors will be taken out of theatres, but I would think that by 2060 almost all? By 2030 half?

It makes me sad to think all the tech invented by AGFA, KODAK, and FUJI will die with the workers who know the secrets of making film, since these are not documented in detail outside the companies. 100 years of knowledge gone forever...

Where are ANSCO and DUPONT, they both made great film stocks that were used to make great movies...

As the volume falls, the labs will close, the chemicals will become impossable to purchase, and even if you have a hord of film stock, you will be unable to get it processed.

 

[Thomas Mathai]

Management of storage units can be heavily automated, so the minimal amount of oversight will just be in response to automated alerts ("verify failed", "disk offline", etc.) and regular human investigation. Based on the colocation facilities I've visited in Portland, OR, I think $500/year is a comfortable rate for 1U at managed-service. Two geographically separated would make $1k/year. But you might prefer a fancier facility with high security, full service bar in the waiting lounge, swanky downtown real estate, etc. With all that it might be as much as $3k/year. On the other end, you could use a riskier offline storage service where the units are only booted once a quarter, and so don't take A/C or power. That would cost almost nothing, but there's a small chance that more than one drive would die in two separated arrays at the same time.

As for the transcoding at $10,000: that's 50 hours at $200/hour. Breakdown:
5: Request temporary transcoding system in data center ("box cart").
5: Connect to remote KVM and install transcoding software.
5: Connect to old storage array and new storage array.
10: Transcode.
5: Test.
20: Margin for a custom box cart, shipping, unforeseen issues, etc.

Well I wouldn't pay more for fancier, but I would pay more for proactive oversight. Considering that it would be MASTERS and other original material that can never be replaced, it would make sense that there be more than just the minimal oversight.

Isn't that why so much film negative has been lost from minimal oversight and negect?

It's only been the last few decades that the studios realized the importance of their libraries and have been more interested in restoration and safe storage.

I'm sure as solid state storage becomes more affordable, there will be better reliable long term storage systems.

While storage media has come and gone, I haven't seen many file formats disappear. So when it comes to transcoding, I don't see it being as important as long as the masters and original material are conformed to a standard.

I don't know if SMPTE is working on a digital cinema standard yet, but Adobe is going to introduce Cinema DNG. We'll see if that one has promise for mastering and archival use.

I would transcode to whatever becomes the Digital Cinema Standard, both Master and original material before going to long term storage, then not worry about it unless there is a good reason to transcode to something better.

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Time is Money?

Time is Money?

I would transcode to whatever becomes the Digital Cinema Standard, both Master and original material before going to long term storage, then not worry about it unless there is a good reason to transcode to something better.

The 50 hours gives seems very low, if you archive 20:1 ratio on a 2 hour film as 16bit 4K TIF files, you have:

40*60*60*24=3,456,000 frames of about 60MB is 208TB.

With copy and or processing of each frame at 30 seconds to 3 minutes the time to backup or transcode the frames would be:

480 hours to 2880 hours?

At $200 per hour that is:

$96,000 to $576,000?

The slower the equipment runs the more money charged? It should charge by the GB processed?

 

[Daniel Browning]

20:1 ratio on a 2 hour film, 16bit 4K TIF files, you have 208TB.

I would suggest using a codec from the late nineties or even more recent. Modern codecs like Cineform can compress 4K in 120 MB/s (16 TB for 400 hours) while retaining quality equivalent to film. Some might think that archiving 400 hours for a 2 hour feature is being pack rat, but you know what they say about "one man's garbage..."

480 hours to 2880 hours at $200 per hour that is $96,000 to $576,000?

$200/hour is just for a skilled expert to prepare and execute the transcode, not material costs. Even if it takes 2880 hours to render 400 hours of archival material on today's computers, we can comfortably expect that render speed will double every 18 months. So what takes a 2880 hours and a $100,000 30-node render farm today will in the 10 years be done in 140 hours on a 64-core workstation.

 

[Priyesh P.]

It makes me sad to think all the tech invented by AGFA, KODAK, and FUJI will die with the workers who know the secrets of making film, since these are not documented in detail outside the companies. 100 years of knowledge gone forever...

Where are ANSCO and DUPONT, they both made great film stocks that were used to make great movies...

As the volume falls, the labs will close, the chemicals will become impossable to purchase, and even if you have a hord of film stock, you will be unable to get it processed.

Exactely.
Agfa stopped production of motion picture filmstock. Just like Technicolor did when single-strip colourfilm had wide sucess. It`s a slow process, but nonreversible. 35 and 16mm Filmstock was even in it`s best time terribly expensive - just imagine what will happen when production volume decreases - everything in the chain will get more and more expensive while in parallel the digital cameras will get better and better, there will be a crossing point whereafter it`s just pure nostalgia but no advantage left for film...

 

[Thomas Mathai]

I would suggest using a codec from the late nineties or even more recent. Modern codecs like Cineform can compress 4K in 120 MB/s (16 TB for 400 hours) while retaining quality equivalent to film. Some might think that archiving 400 hours for a 2 hour feature is being pack rat, but you know what they say about "one man's garbage..."

I wouldn't use Cineform for long term archive because it's proprietary. You never know what would happen in a decade or two. To transcode to a non-open format can leave you stuck.

 

[Ryan Damm]

Did anyone else notice how over-sharpened the photo at the lead of the article was?

Kind of ironic, eh?

(And you'd think they'd at least run the technical details by someone in the photo department -- who could've set them straight on the difference between analog/digital and photochemical/semiconductor... my 10-year-old Hi-8 analog consumer camera doesn't have narrow depth of field.)

 

[Antoine Fabi]

Film is Film i agree.

BUT, we're not far from NO banding at all, more aesthetic highlight handling, and very fine and round grain patern like film.

Then...Film will be replaced (at large scale).
Even now (only 6 months of experience here), with good knowlege and testing, many camera upgrades, some of us here have found the way to produce stunning images with very good highlight aesthetic look. It's incredible how fast things are improving.

Cheers!

Antoine

 

[Tim Fassnacht]

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/16-09/ff_redcamera?currentPage=1