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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 :)

Now that Red is the acknowledged Future King...

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Bruce Allen

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...can someone at Red please fix the sleazy marketzoid half-truths on the "INTRODUCING RED ONE" page on the site? That single page is the thing I hate most about Red.

I love the camera, love the people, love the footage, love the community.

I hate the way the misleading comparisons on that page make Red out to be some kind of confidence trickster and generally cheapen Red's image.

EDIT: specifically the "PIXEL SHIFTING AND UP-REZZING NOT SPOKEN HERE" paragraph...
http://www.red.com/cameras

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
We've been totally up-front on the sensor, it's dimensions, it's Bayer pattern, it's pixel count, it's a-to-d bit depth right from day one. Compare and contrast with the launch of the HVX200.... How long was it after HDCAM was launched that it's 1440x1080 and 3:1:1 became common knowledge?
 
Hang on, I will Photoshop a parody together quickly...

But basically, I content they are using wordplay in a sleazy way - due to the built in ambiguities of the English language, the statement "typical high-end HD camcorders have 2.1M pixel sensors" implies
"a typical high-end HD camcorder has ONE 2.1M pixel sensor"
when that is not true.

If Red said "typical high-end HD camcorders have THREE 2.1M pixel sensors" there would be no ambiguity, but some marketing nitwit has decided to deliberately not do that in order to mislead people.

After trying to paint current HD cameras as 2.1M pixel only, they say that "12,065,000 pixels deliver resolution that can only be called Ultra High Definition". Again, this is trying to get the reader to erroneously think that the Red will have 6 times the resolution of the puny 2.1Mpixel res competition.

My other contention is: pixel shifting (where the r,g,b sensors are sensing at different spatial positions) is pretty similar to the Bayer concept (barring the fact that the Bayer system has more G pixels).

Seriously, I love Red but I have to apologize to my friends in advance about that damn page every time I tell them to go there. Because they can smell cheap marketing a mile away.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
As I've said, we've always been up front about what we're doing.

As for the resolution comparison - all you need to do is measure the image and look at the numbers. Make sure you've got a really sharp lens on and looks for alissing issues.
 
Bruce, to be honest, I think you're taking it far beyond RED's meaning. I have not felt that way once about this company, and with so many people backing the company and their revolution, it's hard to think that THAT many people think the same about their advertising slogan.

I think they brought this company out of nowhere in a great way. I mean, look at all the people that actually caught on to the slogan. They are upfront, truthful, and immensely intelligent.
 
Also, Graeme, I apologize to be taking up your weekend time with this! Get some rest, man! Much more important things to do.

Graeme Nattress said:
As I've said, we've always been up front about what we're doing.
Click to expand...

Yes, you guys are totally great. You are more than upfront. You are amazingly open and wonderful about communicating every detail on the Red. I love the wonderful up-frontness from you guys, both personally and from Red as a company.

You go way, way beyond what's expected of you and behave with true class.

All I have a problem with is that stupid paragraph on the Red.com page which is unfortunately the first thing most people read and runs totally counter to the superb up-front attitude of practically everything Red has done, before or afterwards.

Imagine if Ferrari was a start-up company in a world of Model T fords. They're just making their first car now, have fantastic buzz, all of the engineers and the company head were on the forums being amazingly transparent, the car was kicking ass on the road.

The only problem is that on Ferrari.com the first thing you see is "our competitor, the Model T Ford, has a top speed of 45 mph. Our Ferrari One has a top speed of 310 kph."

It makes every fan's heart sink - "WHAAAT? Why are they doing some stupid mph / kph switch when their car OBVIOUSLY CRUSHES the competition. No need to resort to snake oil tricks."

And then you tell your buddies about this new Ferrari and your buddies check it out and say "it looks good but Bruce, looks like you fell for some kind of kph / mph bait and switch? You're stupider than we thought."

Again, that paragraph just bugs me because it's so out of line... Eveything else is about Red WAY BEYOND FANTASTIC. It's just that the presence of that paragraph makes me always wonder why Red doesn't just acknowledge the intelligence of their customers and not try any sneaky wordplay.

Red is great because they believe in the intelligence of the consumer 99.999%. I just wish it would be 100%. Sorry, I'm a crazy perfectionist. But you guys are too I think ;)

Happy weekend.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Justin_Kirch said:
Bruce, to be honest, I think you're taking it far beyond RED's meaning. I have not felt that way once about this company, and with so many people backing the company and their revolution, it's hard to think that THAT many people think the same about their advertising slogan.

I think they brought this company out of nowhere in a great way. I mean, look at all the people that actually caught on to the slogan. They are upfront, truthful, and immensely intelligent.
Click to expand...

Yeah, totally agree. This one thing is totally miniscule and inconsistent. It's like you're shooting a huge crowd scene Gandhi and there's one frikkin' extra wearing a digital wristwatch. It just irrationally bugs the heck out of me.

I do think that RED intentionally meant to be ambiguous, though, because it's such a simple change to make it non-ambiguous. Just add the word "three" - eg "Typical high-end HD camcorders have THREE 2.1M pixel sensors".

Hopefully in the future this will be replaced with some nice image examples or something... besides I think that this paragraph doesn't sell the Red in the best way, either.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Bruce Allen said:
If Red said "typical high-end HD camcorders have THREE 2.1M pixel sensors" there would be no ambiguity, but some marketing nitwit has decided to deliberately not do that in order to mislead people.
Click to expand...

Oh, I see...

Funny though, I always looked at it differently than that... I never considered the 3-chip cameras to have THREE pixel sensors. In most cases, they are using a three-layer CCD with one layer assigned to a specific RGB value. Besides, many current model cameras have gone the route of single CMOS... I suppose it's a matter of semantics. But I always felt that companies who marketed their cameras as having 2.7M pixels sensors when they're really talking about 3-CCD 1280x720, were a bit slimy. T/GV does this with the Viper and many feel it's a load of rubbish, intended to make it sound like it's much more than it really is.
 
Bruce Allen said:
...can someone at Red please fix the sleazy marketzoid half-truths on the "INTRODUCING RED ONE" page on the site?

EDIT: specifically the "PIXEL SHIFTING AND UP-REZZING NOT SPOKEN HERE" paragraph...
Click to expand...

This phrase tells me that Red is uncompromising in its pursuit of quality images. It's a positive in my opinion. There is nothing sleazy about the product page... you may be reading way too much into things.
 
Web site

Web site

Jeff Kilgroe said:
What's wrong with that paragraph? It's right on the money, IMO.
Click to expand...

Its probably too kind to the competition.

I can't think of a single HD camcorder whose combination of color purity, resolution or dynamic range even comes close.

When you see our images on a 4K projector that is crystal clear.

And yes, quality does translate to smaller screens (and print)
 
E Street Band

E Street Band

I'm confused what Bruce Allen is trying to say at least what I get is that he and rightly so just doesn't like the wording on the camera page. I don't understand how the conversation veered towards how good of an image Red creates none of his discussion focuses on performance just on wording. That the slogan read by some people is slightly incorrect in that many 3ccd cameras have more then 1 chip but three and regardless of how it is used and what the final result is, it is still more then One 2.1 MP chips. Also by how the camera works it does move pixels around and shifts them even if it isn't any kind of squashing or stretching in order to try and fake a higher resolution. I don't think there is any accusing of misleading or anything just that the statement if only read at face value and without digging deeper into the entire workings of Red and other cameras on the market it is technically wrong.
 
but some marketing nitwit has decided to deliberately not do that in
order to mislead people.
Click to expand...

I thought you were supposed to taunt the competition a bit? :) Btw, Jim probably wrote that....
 
Airlawn said:
I don't think there is any accusing of misleading or anything just that the statement if only read at face value and without digging deeper into the entire workings of Red and other cameras on the market it is technically wrong.
Click to expand...

With respect, no it isn't technically wrong. (We do not say one 2.1MP sensor, we say sensors i.e. plural. We said 5 times not 6. Most HD camcorders do not have 2.1MP pixel sensors, and high end 3-CCD HD camcorders don't do pixel shift)

If you were to look at the just the central 9.4 million pixels that represent our 4K REDCODE RAW recorded image and measure resolution x bit depth v's the two most popular high end HD camcorders you would see -

(4096*2304*12) / (1440 * 1080*8) = 9.10 x more

(4096*2304*12) / (960 * 720*8 ) = 20.48 x more

Or compare our 4K deliverable output image and measure resolution x bit depth v's the two highest quality HD video formats..

(4096*2304*12) / (1920*1080*10) = 5.46 x more

(4096*2304*12) / (1280*720*10 ) = 12.28 x more

Thats just comparing 4K v's HD at the same frame rate, operating as a camcorders or output frame size. That ignores delivering in 4:4:4 v's 4:2:2 color spaces, and recording even higher frame rates and 12.1MP resolution over the RAW PORT to a high end DDR.
 
Stuart English said:
With respect, no it isn't technically wrong. (We do not say one 2.1MP sensor, we say sensors i.e. plural.
Click to expand...

Yes, but you have a plural "cameras" before that. If "a camera has a CCD", we know it's one camera with one CCD. If "a camera has CCDs" , we know it's one camera with many CCDs (3CCDs for our purposes). If it's "cameras have CCDs", we don't know if it's one CCD per camera or many.

There is ambiguity in your statement and I don't think you can deny it when any high school student could point this out.

Stuart English said:
We said 5 times not 6. Most HD camcorders do not have 2.1MP pixel sensors, and high end 3-CCD HD camcorders don't do pixel shift)
Click to expand...

Totally agreed.

Stuart English said:
If you were to look at the just the central 9.4 million pixels that represent our 4K REDCODE RAW recorded image and measure resolution x bit depth v's the two most popular high end HD camcorders you would see -

(4096*2304*12) / (1440 * 1080*8) = 9.10 x more

(4096*2304*12) / (960 * 720*8 ) = 20.48 x more
Click to expand...

You should say that then! You're obviously making a veiled comparison to the Sonys but yeah, Red crushes the Varicam (although I wouldn't say by 20x, because you are only recording one channel of color per pixel, whereas they are 4:2:2 - let's say 18x better tops ;). Versus the Viper, Genesis and D20 it gets a lot more tricky (we get into Genesis' striped R,G,B and weird latitude setup, the Viper's interesting pixel layout, etc) but you still have the edge and you crush them on price and workflow.

As I said, I also don't think your current paragraph sells your camera very well. You should re-write.

Stuart English said:
Thats just comparing 4K v's HD at the same frame rate, operating as a camcorders or output frame size. That ignores delivering in 4:4:4 v's 4:2:2 color spaces, and recording even higher frame rates and 12.1MP resolution over the RAW PORT to a high end DDR.
Click to expand...

Yes, although on your side, you happily point out the competition being 3:1:1 but ignore the fact that Red is only recording a single color channel per pixel. I know you can reconstruct but it will not be the same as a true 4:4:4 capture.

Anyway, who cares, your cameras rock. Just want to point out that you have a weird ambiguity, that it upsets many people I send to your site and that you could perhaps sell the camera better.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Maybe there should be a nitpic clever complaint of the day forum. Then I could get on and complain that of all the things Jim and everyone must do to make every single person happy, this would have to rank really really low.
 
wshultz said:
Maybe there should be a nitpic clever complaint of the day forum. Then I could get on and complain that of all the things Jim and everyone must do to make every single person happy, this would have to rank really really low.
Click to expand...

No contest. That's why it's in Off Topic and I have already admitted its insignificance multiple times in above posts. You're right. It's a total nitpick. Like having a spelling mistake on the front page. Who cares. It's stupid. If it were just me noticing, I wouldn't care.

I won't post on this again. It's there, it's wrong, it's tiny, hopefully one day someone'll fix it. Again, Red - people, community, camera, company, etc - is fantastic.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Bruce, what are you babeling about ????
On another note, How are the monitors coming along ?
Aloha
-A
 
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