November 30th Announcement Feedback

[Dave Blackham]

I'm not so sure.

Ethernet is typically not a mass storage interconnect in this type of scenario, like USB mass-storage is. The exception is iSCSI, which is non-trivial and won't be plug-n-play for 99.9% of systems out there.

I suspect a more likely scenario is that the camera gets plugged in to your network (rather than directly into your computer), and you go from there.

The camera woyuld then get an IP address, and provide some method of interacting with it. This could be a small web interface, and/or hopefully a command interface (scriptable!). These would allow you to browse and transfer data from the camera media. (And also provide for remote control).

It's possible that the camera could also implment an NFS or CIFS stack and share the data out that way, so it could be mounted as a volume from your computer... that's the closest you'd get to having it show up as an external HDD, but I think that a slightly less likely scenario.... but would be cool if included.

All pure speculation, of course (other than the camera-control via commands over the ethernet link, which has been confirmed).

-sc

iSCSI is a good real world solution, but if it is to be used then it will require some work by Red to implement it. I had some FC to GigE convertors once and those than at near wire speed (full1000Mbit) and were very robust. I cant believe Red hasnt considered it, probably one of those things to release some time soon.....

 

[Steven Caesare]

iSCSI is very workable and robust... we have several iSCSI SANs at work, and I'm running one at home. Using GigE copper works just fine (especially if you have jumbo-frame support in your infrastructure).

The bigger issue, I believe, is that even the above-average Joe is going to be challanged to figure out how to find, install, and configure an iSCSI initiator for his personal machine, and then figure out how to map the camera in as a LUN in order to get at the data.

Of course, RED could roll all that together in a pint-n-click installer... but I suspect that something you can just aim a web-browser at, or a discoverable share/export system that your Mac or PC can mount )NFS/CIFS), is much more likely a "workable" solution for most folks.

-sc

 

[Brent J. Craig]

The bigger issue, I believe, is that even the above-average Joe is going to be challanged to figure out how to find, install, and configure an iSCSI initiator for his personal machine

I thought MacOS had iSCSI built-in since v10.4, and Windows since 2003. Is it still difficult to set up, because it would be a great solution for footage delivery while the camera is still shooting.

 

[Nik Harper]

I'm not so sure.

Ethernet is typically not a mass storage interconnect in this type of scenario, like USB mass-storage is. The exception is iSCSI, which is non-trivial and won't be plug-n-play for 99.9% of systems out there.

I suspect a more likely scenario is that the camera gets plugged in to your network (rather than directly into your computer), and you go from there.

The camera woyuld then get an IP address, and provide some method of interacting with it. This could be a small web interface, and/or hopefully a command interface (scriptable!). These would allow you to browse and transfer data from the camera media. (And also provide for remote control).

-sc

See this was what I was worried about with the ethernet because if you have to use your internet connection, then mine is not that fast and it would then take forever for footage to transfer. That's why I was asking about if you have to have the 1.8" reader or if you can plug the 1.8" straight into the computer. And also if it will be just drag and drop your files (which would also be nice.) if someone from RED wants to answer those questions that would be awesome! Those have been bugging me for a while

 

[Quentin Brown]

See this was what I was worried about with the ethernet because if you have to use your internet connection, then mine is not that fast and it would then take forever for footage to transfer. That's why I was asking about if you have to have the 1.8" reader or if you can plug the 1.8" straight into the computer. And also if it will be just drag and drop your files (which would also be nice.) if someone from RED wants to answer those questions that would be awesome! Those have been bugging me for a while

A direct connection via Ethernet will give you speeds up to the theoretical limit of that ethernet connection type (depending on the supported speeds in your hub and PC (usually 10/100 and on macs 1gigabit per sec) and of course the read and write speeds of the storage media at each end) - It would not be limited by your internet connection speeds in any way as it is not running through the internet and any of it's bottlenecks like your phone line (though this may be a possible extra function - remote browsing and downloading of the footage or triggering of camera functions when it is secured somewhere physically hard to access and you need to leave it there for some time - like for doing a long timelapse ) it would be directly connected to you LAN so potentially very fast.

 

[Chris Kenny]

Would you really want another cable hanging off the camera? It'd be better if you could mount two harddrives and have it make two copies as it recorded, take one off and when you put it back on have the camera duplicate any missing shots back and checksum them both whilst the camera isn't rolling. Though frankly if the drives were reliable enough I don't see why you couldn't just walk away with two copies each day without doing any backups whatsoever.

I don't think an extra cable would be too problematic, if you could yank it at any time with zero notice. Although it is true that standard ethernet cables aren't quite as happy being walked on as, say, BNC cables.

But, yes, the ability to insert, say, two SSD modules, and have the camera maintain mirrored copies of everything would also be extremely useful. Especially if they could be remotely mounted via ethernet so you could actually check shots from a computer without having to download.

 

[Billy Gedney]

A direct connection via Ethernet will give you speeds up to the theoretical limit of that ethernet connection type (depending on the supported speeds in your hub and PC (usually 10/100 and on macs 1gigabit per sec) and of course the read and write speeds of the storage media at each end) - It would not be limited by your internet connection speeds in any way as it is not running through the internet and any of it's bottlenecks like your phone line (though this may be a possible extra function - remote browsing and downloading of the footage or triggering of camera functions when it is secured somewhere physically hard to access and you need to leave it there for some time - like for doing a long timelapse ) it would be directly connected to you LAN so potentially very fast.

I see the ethernet option like the AES/EBU option. It is great to have, but from a day to day production standpoint, I'm not sure I'd really use it. Sure, one time in the situation that never happens where on I'm a shoot any we have audio already being preamp'ed and converted really really well and I want it or need, Sure- I'll hook up AES/EBU. I have a client who makes guitar amps and one day we're going to do a product video, and really good, clean sound is a huge selling point, so we'll use some class A preamp and a class A converter over AES or S/PDIF [just need a 110 ohm resistor on pins 1 and 2 and they're one in the same] (I know, if you've seen my other posts, I actually requested AES/EBU, but it wont become standard in my production rig till I become very very rich and have the extra cash to carry around an audio lunchbox with some sweet 500 series preamps and the money to invest in an Apogee or some other nice AD converter)

Same with the SSD. I can transfer footage via ethernet, and the times I'm an idiot and forget a dock while on a shoot, I'll use it. But the dock will be in my own edit bay, and when I need it, I'll have it and use it over ethernet.

Don't get me wrong, these features are great to have and will someday save my ass when I've made a stupid mistake or forgotten something on a trip away from home (every time I've gone international, I've forgotten the power adapter for my laptop), but the ol' standards are still better for me.

From the standpoint of footage transfer, there is something to be said about a FW800 connection and eSATA vs Ethernet.

Just my 2 cents...

 

[Lee Fingersh]

At least from posted tests on DPreview,....

Which are worthless for determining lens resolution since they are system tests shot through an AA filter. In other words, on sharp lenses, they're tests of the AA filter, not the lens.

The long (135mm and up) L-primes can shoot sharp shots with 2.8x worth of TCs on a camera capable of 70lp/mm. So, that's 70*2.8=196lp/mm from the lens.

 

[Rick Burnett]

Yes, I completely agree that there would be some definite motion problems doing it the way I described. I mean, it would be interesting to see what you could do with it, but the Arri method seems like the only way you could really do it right, and that is use gain because the time you expose has to be the same or the frames are going to be different regardless. I mean, even on a stills camera if there is any wind and you have trees and such it can be difficult to get any usable result.

The question is, hypothetically speaking, the last frame will still contain the movement of the first frame (since the reset was never called) albeit blurred I imagine, so it would quite interesting how that would combine. I have no camera that I could attempt to do this since there is no control of the reset.

I have only played slightly with HDR so I am not sure even what framerate would be required to get what kind of range in the image.

And don't care about *seeing* HDR images in an HDR monitor, I like taking them and getting all that extra detail in the image. I cannot even imagine how that would look in video.

Rick

 

[Quentin Brown]

Is it possible to control audio levels with REDMOTE ???
Can you make a headphone plug on the REDMOTE so one can hear the audio ???

Maybe the REDMOTE can be a simple audio mixer(controler)... That would be a great feature...

I posted with a range of thoughts similar to yours some pages back but as more details have come to light it seem (REd team please correct me on this) that the REDmote uses a proprietary communications protocol called Redlink which is designed for interference free operation over longer ranges than wifi and not for carrying large amounts of data. It seems that it can only support the small data flows that are needed for controlling camera functions and doesn't have enough data bandwidth for much more. Certainly they explained that this is why it can't stream video.

So I guess audio streaming for headphone monitoring is out but nothing to stop them displaying some meters and allowing level control - but it would be so great if it could stream audio. Perhaps if a the redmote pro could receive wifi then it could do this and the video monitoring when close enough to be in wifi range? Perhaps that's part of why it costs as much more as it does?

....the speculation continues... :wink:

 

[Billy Gedney]

I posted with a range of thoughts similar to yours some pages back but as more details have come to light it seem (REd team please correct me on this) that the REDmote uses a proprietary communications protocol called Redlink which is designed for interference free operation over longer ranges than wifi and not for carrying large amounts of data. It seems that it can only support the small data flows that are needed for controlling camera functions and doesn't have enough data bandwidth for much more. Certainly they explained that this is why it can't stream video.

So I guess audio streaming for headphone monitoring is out but nothing to stop them displaying some meters and allowing level control - but it would be so great if it could stream audio. Perhaps if a the redmote pro could receive wifi then it could do this and the video monitoring when close enough to be in wifi range? Perhaps that's part of why it costs as much more as it does?

....the speculation continues... :wink:

To be the devils advocate- Have we heard it from the lips of RED that there isn't video on the REDremote and REDremote Pro? They like to leave those important things up their sleeves. OLED- Just sayin'. (And if they have- my bad. I've done what I can to keep up on all the reading. Shoot- If I read this much in college, I'd have gotten a 4.0)

And seriously- they dont have an extra 400kb/s to stream some compressed audio in the bandwidth budget? It's RED- they're perfectionists (and we love you for it- don't take offense). The could have not wanted to compress the audio, or they wanted both audio and video and then maybe the budget wasn't there, or maybe they're using a bluetooth like protocol and are limited to like 1 mb/s and have like half of it used up with camera control and don't want to push it to the fringes of function. It cant be because they didn't think of it...

 

[Quentin Brown]

I'm almost certain that we have heard this directly from Jim - the Redmote will not be able to monitor video. I don't have time to find and post the quote here right now. The Redmote Pro has appeared since then though... but there is the thing about the Redlink limitations.

Gotta rush a cook dinner for the wife and kids before they get home.

 

[Billy Gedney]

I'm almost certain that we have heard this directly from Jim - the Redmote will not be able to monitor video. I don't have time to find and post the quote here right now. The Redmote Pro has appeared since then though... but there is the thing about the Redlink limitations.

Gotta rush a cook dinner for the wife and kids before they get home.

Ok...

 

[Steven Caesare]

I thought MacOS had iSCSI built-in since v10.4, and Windows since 2003. Is it still difficult to set up, because it would be a great solution for footage delivery while the camera is still shooting.

I know there is a free iSCSI initiator for Windows 2003+ server, and I suspect MacOS X server. I'm pretty sure the workstation flavors of Windows do NOT have one by default, altho I suspect the server version might work there, but would be unsupported. I'd guess the situation is similar for the Mac side.

And even if they do, it's not like a USB or FW drive where you plug it in, and they show up as a local volume automagically. You still have to have to allocate IP addresses, understand LUN mapping, do a local volume mount, etc...

Like I say, RED could wrap all that up in to an installer you simply run... but I suspect that's a VERY non-trivial task.

Even if they did, you scenario of transferring out the GigE port via iSCSI while still shooting gets tricky, as iSCSI presents a block volume to a host. If you want multiple hosts accessing the same volume, then you must have a multi-node acessible shared filesystem, which the common ones used on Macs and PCs are not. in this situation an NFS/CIFS mount or web interface would be far simpler, as then you are mounting the storage as network shares/exports, rather than as a filesystem.

This isn't a big problem. NFS over GigE should be darn near as fast as iSCSI, if done well. A web interface with HTTP would not likely be as fast, but still pretty zippy.

-sc

 

[Steven Caesare]

See this was what I was worried about with the ethernet because if you have to use your internet connection, then mine is not that fast and it would then take forever for footage to transfer. That's why I was asking about if you have to have the 1.8" reader or if you can plug the 1.8" straight into the computer. And also if it will be just drag and drop your files (which would also be nice.) if someone from RED wants to answer those questions that would be awesome! Those have been bugging me for a while

Quentin is correct if what you are worried about is your broadband INTERNET connection speed. That doesn't come in to play when transferring over your local LAN.

You can find a GigE capbale switch and network card for your machine for ~$100 or under if you watch for sales. A Cat6 crossver cable wouold cost you even less.

-sc

 

[Billy Gedney]

I know there is a free iSCSI initiator for Windows 2003+ server, and I suspect MacOS X server. I'm pretty sure the workstation flavors of Windows do NOT have one by default, altho I suspect the server version might work there, but would be unsupported. I'd guess the situation is similar for the Mac side.

And even if they do, it's not like a USB or FW drive where you plug it in, and they show up as a local volume automagically. You still have to have to allocate IP addresses, understand LUN mapping, do a local volume mount, etc...

Like I say, RED could wrap all that up in to an installer you simply run... but I suspect that's a VERY non-trivial task.

Even if they did, you scenario of transferring out the GigE port via iSCSI while still shooting gets tricky, as iSCSI presents a block volume to a host. If you want multiple hosts accessing the same volume, then you must have a multi-node acessible shared filesystem, which the common ones used on Macs and PCs are not. in this situation an NFS/CIFS mount or web interface would be far simpler, as then you are mounting the storage as network shares/exports, rather than as a filesystem.

This isn't a big problem. NFS over GigE should be darn near as fast as iSCSI, if done well. A web interface with HTTP would not likely be as fast, but still pretty zippy.

-sc

The question of transferring while shooting, while discussing the iSCSI option aswell, comes down to do you want to add additional load to running camera/drive?

 

[paulherrin]

The new Arri cameras do some interesting tricks to get High(er) Dynamic Range video

For some reason I'm a little wary about having the camera do this for me... I fear unpredictable (or predictably low) results in some cases. It is a neat idea, I'd just like to see it performed. It may be great. As far as stills, though, I don't see any reason why RED would do it in such manner. I guess it's possible, but I just don't think so. It's hard to say what we're in for.

Yes, I completely agree that there would be some definite motion problems doing it the way I described. I mean, it would be interesting to see what you could do with it, but the Arri method seems like the only way you could really do it right, and that is use gain because the time you expose has to be the same or the frames are going to be different regardless. I mean, even on a stills camera if there is any wind and you have trees and such it can be difficult to get any usable result.

...I cannot even imagine how [HDR] would look in video.

Rick

I feel like if you're going to do it the way they do, I'd rather just work from the RAW and use its latitude, as I described before. And there is some time-lapse HDR motion being shot.

http://www.hdrtimelapse.com/

 

[Rick Burnett]

Wow, those are really nice HDR time lapse, thanks for pointing to that. And I completely agree with you. There are many times where having HDR video is not going to produce much of anything useful if you are not using your range to begin with! I can say this with certainty on stills that I have seen. HDR seems mostly useful where outdoor bright sky is involved.

Of course, if the sensor has a huge dynamic range (anyone know what the range is of the sensor in the scarlet 2/3?) than you are already working at a higher than can be displayed dynamic range to begin with in the raw output which you can work with just as you say. The method I describe wouldn't be necessary as if the sensor is THAT sensitive, the number of scenes that could benefit from additional sensitivity would be limited.

 

[Nik Harper]

Quentin is correct if what you are worried about is your broadband INTERNET connection speed. That doesn't come in to play when transferring over your local LAN.

You can find a GigE capbale switch and network card for your machine for ~$100 or under if you watch for sales. A Cat6 crossver cable wouold cost you even less.

-sc

Ok so I'm confused now haha. How does gigE work? The reason I mentioned the internet is because that what it was sounding like. So if you aren't plugging your Ethernet cable straight into your comp, where are you plugging it? And I guess my impression of LAN is also skewed. An explaination of that would be great too, just to help me understand the whole gigE thing.

I think that's still on topic enough haha.

 

[Quentin Brown]

You can plug your Ethernet cable straight into your computer or into your network hub. GigE is just a way of saying Gigabit Ethernet - the faster speed ethernet connection available on modern Macs and some Windows Pc's as Standard. It can be used to create a high speed network between Computers in a specific location (Local Area Network - LAN). The confusion may lie in the fact that some routers also have a built in modem so they can share the internet connection between a number of computers but a LAN can work without any connection to the internet by definition.

Hope that clears it up..