red camera useless?

[xstimux]

why does everyone just give this camera the benefit of the doubt? Its not a production camera? Its not for professionals YET.

The image is almost there but the camera menus and software, high frame rate [push in on sensor] issue that gives a soft image and the entire post workflow is FAR from being ready for someone who makes a living creating imagery.

Anyone who replies otherwise is just a RED fan ...

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Your conclusion is correct. Your premise is wrong.

Yes: if you couldn't get footage out of REDCine you wouldn't have a viable workflow and the camera would be useless.

No: you can get footage out of redcine just not through quicktime.


As I see it I have the exact same workflow with RED as I do with 35mm. Except instead of dropping by AlphaCine to do a convoluted chemical process I work through a mildly convoluted and inefficient software process.

You add command line network rendering to DPX to into the mix and you have a quite straightforward DPX workflow.

If you have a 2k or 4k workflow right now replace your Spirit with REDCine and you've got the exact same workflow. (The only difference being that a REDCine suite costs next to nothing compared to even an unsupervised spirit scan.)

 

[Poi Boy]

why does everyone just give this camera the benefit of the doubt? Its not a production camera? Its not for professionals YET.

The image is almost there but the camera menus and software, high frame rate [push in on sensor] issue that gives a soft image and the entire post workflow is FAR from being ready for someone who makes a living creating imagery.

Anyone who replies otherwise is just a RED fan ...

I think a lot of us disagree with you. I make my living creating imagery and it certainly works for me.
Aloha
-A

 

[Fergus Meiklejohn]

I
Sometimes I wish they made an Apple voodoo doll, so every time my Mac crashes I could stick a pin into...

Oops, gotta stay positive. Gotta stay positive.

Best of luck to ya!

I reckon even Laotze would have lost it with Apple over their quicktime issues inch:

He'd have takin his Mac Pro and gone and filled in Steve Jobs' empty space with it..:biggrin:

 

[Lucas Wilson]

...and the entire post workflow is FAR from being ready for someone who makes a living creating imagery.

Anyone who replies otherwise is just a RED fan ...

Or someone who actually is making a living creating imagery and working with RED material in post, and is too busy to respond to inflammatory trolling.

Lucas
------
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

 

[Colin C]

I can't wait for that Linux workflow! It's gonna be a great thing.

Lexicon have you heard something?? I'm still building my post kit and this brought the planning to a crashing halt. Well ok, it just really caught my attention.
Linux? :sorcerer:

 

[Craig Meadows]

To the original poster - my workflow for the first spot I shot on my RED:
-Shot 2K for file size management, wish I had shot 4K-but that's another
story.
-Brought files in to RED ALERT on my lowly 2.16MHz MacBook Pro.
-Scrubbed all day long in low-rez - color graded in hi-rez. Not one crash.
-Exported sequential 2K DPX files. Not one error.
-Imported those in to AE interpreted as 23.976.
-Popped them in to a 720x486 23.976 SD comp.
-Scaled to taste (letterbox).
-Rendered out (adding pull down) to a AJA Kona 8-bit uncompressed codec.
-Imported those in to FCP SD timeline.
-Edited as usual.
-Client loved it.
Professional work flow, no? I've been in this business over 20 years, I make my living doing this. Perhaps you should consider another line of work if you can't figure it out because it's not hard for a professional.

 

[Dylan Reeve]

Personally I was very disappointed with the RED - I took the cartridge thing from the camera, put it in our Panasonic AJ-HD1400 (a top of the range professional deck) and the thing just kind of fell in. I pressed play but nothing happened.

But seriously... The camera is still pretty new - there's what, 500 of them in the market now? It's still officially in Beta. There certainly are workflows, even in Windows, they're not idea, but they will be... I'd like to quote this:

All,

Many Avid customers and employees have commented on this thread and the one on the Reduser.net forum so I wanted to weigh in.

I understand the interest that the Red Camera is creating in the market as well as our mutual customers’ desire to have a cohesive workflow with Avid.

We are currently trying to set up a meeting with Jim and his team to figure out the best way to move forward with this.

Thanks,
Graham

That is a post from Avid GM of Video, Graham Sharp on the Avid Forums. The industry is ready - as soon as RED has their format locked off then we'll see balls rolling in many different NLEs.

 

[Andrew M.]

To the original poster - my workflow for the first spot I shot on my RED:
-Shot 2K for file size management, wish I had shot 4K-but that's another
story.
-Brought files in to RED ALERT on my lowly 2.16MHz MacBook Pro.
-Scrubbed all day long in low-rez - color graded in hi-rez. Not one crash.
-Exported sequential 2K DPX files. Not one error.
-Imported those in to AE interpreted as 23.976.
-Popped them in to a 720x486 23.976 SD comp.
-Scaled to taste (letterbox).
-Rendered out (adding pull down) to a AJA Kona 8-bit uncompressed codec.
-Imported those in to FCP SD timeline.
-Edited as usual.
-Client loved it.
Professional work flow, no? I've been in this business over 20 years, I make my living doing this. Perhaps you should consider another line of work if you can't figure it out because it's not hard for a professional.

Try the same with XP based laptop machine, pick the one. I tried 3 different Dell machines.

Anything from Dell XPS (NVIDA based) to Dell Latitude (ATI based)
So far no word of help from RED, they support top of the line Mac Laptops but looks like no top (or not so top) of the line XP based laptop is supported.

Only XP based desktops so far, I have heard are working.

Yes MacBook Pro......well, maybe instead of changing the profession as you suggested I will change operating system.

But it is like asking Catholic to convert to Muslim or vice versa, just so his job is done.

Andrew

 

[Craig Meadows]

Try the same with XP based laptop machine, pick the one. I tried 3 different Dell machines.

Anything from Dell XPS (NVIDA based) to Dell Latitude (ATI based)
So far no word of help from RED, they support top of the line Mac Laptops but looks like no top (or not so top) of the line XP based laptop is supported.

Only XP based desktops so far, I have heard are working.

Yes MacBook Pro......well, maybe instead of changing the profession as you suggested I will change operating system.

But it is like asking Catholic to convert to Muslim or vice versa, just so his job is done.

Andrew

Apology for the rant on changing professions, did not mean to offend those having problems on the pc side - original post and his follow ups got me a bit riled.

We run both macs and pc's in our shop. I like to use whatever tool is best for the job. Swearing off a tool even though it might make your life easier seems counter productive to me. The more tools you learn in this business the more versatile you will become. In this case being OS agnostic works really well - lol.

A RED ONE is a big investment for many of us. If you want RED image quality and a efficient, painless work-flow - the investment in a intel mac while an extra expense should be considered since it is what works best at the moment. People are paying $5k for matte boxes, up to $10k for heads/sticks. A little extra expense for a computer that will pull it all together just makes sense at this level. Wouldn't have to use it for finishing, just processing RED files. Think of it as your telecine suite using RED ALERT or REDCINE. When done processing send the files to your PC for editing. We are considering a iMac to sit along side our Mac Pro in the edit suite so we can process files on one while the other finishes.

 

[Craig Bowman]

The camera is always the inexpensive part of the setup. When I bought a pair of DVX100As a few years back I spent well over tens times their combined new worth on support gear including computers and software. I just dropped over $50K on my first Red package. Although a lot of that original support gear translates over, such a location audio, lights, dollies, cranes etc. I still see dropping at least another $50-100K in supporting all that Red will need. Its just part of the process. Anyone who thinks otherwise is in for a rude awakening. (Think of display, 4k displays and at least one Red projector down the Road)

 

[Lexicon]

Lexicon have you heard something?? I'm still building my post kit and this brought the planning to a crashing halt. Well ok, it just really caught my attention.
Linux? :sorcerer:

Jannard said Linux would be supported (eventually) for workflow. He didn't say it was coming next week or anything like that and given the state of DV on Linux, I highly doubt it would be coming anytime in the immediate future but I for one will gladly adopt a Linux solution if I'm not already using something I'm comfortable with. I'd gladly pay for it if it was a solid choice that I can trust. At the very least, it will allow me to incorporate inexpensive Linux machines into a work pipeline once it's ready.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I think when they say "linux workflow" they're referring to the REDCine side of things with the command line tools.

Jim's not going to write a quality editor.

I suppose you could say that Smoke is a working linux workflow and I know there are some smoke editors on these forums who have used smoke with red.

 

[Andrew M.]

CraigF and Craig the money is not a big issue here.
Portability is. I can have only one laptop in the field and have to run XP for some other programs. At the same time exporting to H.264 or VC-1 is the best so far in our workflow for initial checking and sending it back home over the wire from remote location.

Will MacBook Pro dual-boot in to the XP?
Andrew

 

[Deanan]

Will MacBook Pro dual-boot in to the XP?
Andrew

Yup. I run XP as dual boot and also under parallels on MBP.

 

[Craig Meadows]

Andrew, I hear what you are saying. I have not used boot camp and not sure how well it plays with RED ALERT or REDCINE. Perhaps some others can chime in here on their experience. We installed Parallels on our office intel mac and found it rather slow and clunky. Boot Camp requires a re-boot but it does runs native unlike Parallels.

Here is a link to the apple site about boot camp:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html

Sounds all cozy from a marketing view but not sure how well the boot camp drivers, particularly for graphics display work with RED software.

I actually have a unused copy of XP around here. Need to see what my available disk space is like on the MacBook Pro. If I have time this evening I will attempt some simple tests installing boot camp, XP, and RED ALERT in particular. Could be a long evening!

 

[Andrew M.]

This will be great! experiment to see if RED ALERT works on MacBook Pro in XT mode.

I don’t think so. But REDCINE should work fine.
Try to output H.264 QT mov file from REDCINE.

What I see from the log files so far REDCINE has trouble to talk to NVIDIA
On the Mac running XP it should work without any problem.
It is more card driver specific problem that I see on my laptops here.

 

[J.D. Frey]

why does everyone just give this camera the benefit of the doubt? Its not a production camera? Its not for professionals YET.

The image is almost there but the camera menus and software, high frame rate [push in on sensor] issue that gives a soft image and the entire post workflow is FAR from being ready for someone who makes a living creating imagery.

Anyone who replies otherwise is just a RED fan ...

Wha? there are Pros using this camera. Anyone that replies otherwise is just a dick.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

The problem with Macbook pros is I've had some color consistancy issues on apple laptops. The non-macpro version is absolutely useless color wise even by laptop standards.

The drivers are still kind of iffy for 3D and it's an ATI card instead of NVIDIA.

If your primary machine is XP a Macbook pro is an inferior XP machine imho.

 

[Colin C]

I think when they say "linux workflow" they're referring to the REDCine side of things with the command line tools.

Jim's not going to write a quality editor....

Good point! Reining in speculation. :whistling:
I love the look of smoke but I think its a tad out of my price range or skill base at this point in time.