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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 :)

RED RAY - VTR style controls

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laguun

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Red Ray promises to be an excellent product, but my *main* question is: WIll it be controlled by RS422/232 to work as REDs VTR? That would solve *dozens* of problems at the same time.
 
Red-ray

Red-ray

Red Ray promises to be an excellent product, but my *main* question is: WIll it be controlled by RS422/232 to work as REDs VTR? That would solve *dozens* of problems at the same time.
Click to expand...

No promises on that one, but its a great idea, and we'd certainly like to hear your thoughts on all the potential applications for this technology...
 
What I would love to see is an extension card that you would stick into your PC or your Mac, and that would accelerate Redcode RAW decoding in RedCine or other applications.

Being able to transcode / downconvert R3D files to Quicktime / DPX /... in realtime (or at least near realtime, depending on drive speeds) is the missing link right now. I know Scratch Cine is supposed to do something like that, but for $30K.

I suppose there is a chip in the RED-Ray which is able to decode Redcode-RAW in realtime. Couldn't this chip be used to build such an extension card ? Kind of a "Redcode accelerator" ?

Nils.
 
Wonder if there's an application for this piece of tech akin to how the P2 Store works... Suspect not at this point, but that was one of my first thoughts on seeing the render. Depending on the outputs, seems like a lot of the right technology is there to perform this sort of function.

Irrespective of which, this eclipses the camera announcements for me. Good stuff.
 
VTR is the perfect metaphor for Red Ray.

RS422 control would be huge. But, please, oh please let Red Ray record/burn discs that contain R3D files and their look files and then play them back.

Also, if we could dump CF cards to a Red Ray and have them burned onto a rewriteable media as a storage/backup solution, I will kiss a cop and punch my grandma. :biggrin:
 
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Stuart English said:
No promises on that one, but its a great idea, and we'd certainly like to hear your thoughts on all the potential applications for this technology...
Click to expand...

Ok, here is some feedback and input from different european customers.

I spoke with mid-size cinema chains and distributors (they are operating ~150 digital cinemas) and posthouses, who asked me before NAB to do a round up of the main news.

The cinema operators and the distributor like the idea *very* much.
They have the problem that a DCI master is pretty expensive, and they dont get enough content for their screens. The distributor, which has all his movies (~400 titles) digitally, has the problem that especially smaller and foreign movies do not justify the ~20.000 a DCI mastering usually costs.

So, the red ray was very interesting to them, to say the least.
But all of them asked at once: Whats the automation? If they are midsized (>=5 screens) they all want automated playback (not only for the main movie, but for their commercials), so playlist / tc / rs422 is very important to them. If there is sony VTR control, there are many many inexpensive apps who can control this, some even opensource iirc.
All of them were basically floored and flabbergasted by the pricepoint.

The posthouses even had *more* interest.
Their mayor concern, and i have to say, reservation, is that the HUGE mayority of all of them is basically in TC / VTR land. If they do 1080P/2K, HDCAM and HDCAM SR is pretty much the >90% workhorse here. For offline, its still mainly Digibeta. They all dont want to understand raw workflows yet, and many dont see the davantages but only the disadvantages (to slow, to incompatible, no hd-sdi in an hd-sdi infrastructure, no *direct* online on an avid/discreet, anotehr steps, yada yada, you know their points).

If redray works with a VTR control for them, it would be a *totally* well selling player for them. They would basically not use the raw advantages, but at once would integrate RED into their supported format lists.

Another example, there are *many* very very successful editors out there, who surpringsly work on vintage systems (lightworks, discreet edit, old pre-adrenaline avids to name a few). They have "their" systems, are working lightspeed fast with them and are often 50,60 years and have *no* interest in computers at all. Some of them had #1 in the boxoffice several times, and computer still are bizarre systems to them.

These people dont get REDs current workflow at all, as they only know offline and a VTR style. red ray with TC rs 422 control would be highly appealing to them as well, all of them which i got on the phone asked at once if redray is sony/panasonic protocol controlled.

Another area is the whole studio exchange thing: look at this (if you dont know it)
http://www.rosendahl-studiotechnik.com/bonsai.html
its selling very well in germany, and its more expensive than red ray. Its main uses are to carry discrete 5.1 audio from studio to studio, to exchanged video between systems without renting a digibeta etc. so far, no tapeless recording system was able to replace the whole standard VTRs - redray could *exactly* be that, if if would have tc / remote - a single HDCAM SR mastertape alone costs 150-200 here.


Then *venue* and *digital signage*. This is one of the fastest growing businesses of moving image production. one example: we are right now doing the preproduction for a ~8K ride in berlin at the new international airport. using 9 1080P displays, we feed them with an iridas venue system, which costs >50K. Such systems are used, just to name some, by disneyland, the museum of modern arts, several rides exactly around the corner in NAB / Vegas (The Star Trek Experience: BORG 4D is an Iridas 3D Venue System iirc) etc. All these systems have to be automated, controlled and synchronized, most of them work in existing control infrastructures which use RS422/232 with Sony Protocol. Current prices in this area: The Mantis quadchannel HD player, which is pretty much the usual device for such installations is ~10.000$ and only offers 36Mbit MPEG2, iridas venue can scale up to 10k uncompressed, but is >50.000.

So, control, TC and synchronization would extremly boost the benefits and uses of the red ray, i would dare to say, fundamentally.

p.s.
i assume red ray has an usb or firewire interfacer to attach harddrives?
 
I can't agree more with you.
Well said laguun.

e-SATA/Firewire 800 & RS422 is a must for RED RAY.
 
ok, some more feedback after speaking with more clients, partners and emplyees of ours.

-All- are for RS232/422, all think it would enhance *extremely* the use of red ray. This is pretty interesting - usually you get always very miced preferences and opinions from pro digital / neutral / pro film, editors / vfx / producers / directors, distribution / production / post. Not in this case, not a single voice against it.
 
Great Post, Laguun.

That's great news about the digital cinema houses and very good suggestions.
and, anything to smooth out the workflow will be welcome. If you could back up CF cards to it, or your harddrive that would really help.

Keith
 
Stuart English said:
No promises on that one, but its a great idea, and we'd certainly like to hear your thoughts on all the potential applications for this technology...
Click to expand...

I posted some of this before, but just to get it all in once place:

1. Stream REDCODE RAW to the device out of RedCine or FCP over FW800, for real-time 4K monitoring of REDCODE RAW timelines, or real-time transcoding to HD to writing out to tape.

2. Hook the Red Ray up to a capture device for real-time transcoding to uncompressed HD though a Kona card or maybe ProRes through an IO HD. It would be really amazing if there were some software to coordinate this so that that transcoded video was broken up into properly named clips. This seems like it could be done even without RS-232, via a device control protocol that worked over FireWire.

3. Allow REDCODE RGB footage to played off of generic external hard drives. (Maybe this is already planned?) This would turn the device into a general purpose 4K media player, allowing hours of content to be played back uninterrupted (far more than can fit on a DVD 9).

4. Stick a gigabit ethernet port on the device. Then, in, for instance, theatrical environments, one media server could hold all the content, and stream it to any screen. In a post facility, any machine on the network could stream 4K directly to the player.

5. Have an option to power the thing off of a Red Brick, so it can be easily used in the field for reviewing footage.

6. In combination with 5, you could put an appropriate LEMO connector on the device so it could be directly attached to a Red LCD, providing a nearly pocket-sized mechanism for reviewing raw footage. Or maybe this could be a separate integrated device; basically that would look like a thicker version of the Pro LCD screen, with a CF card slot, a FW800 port, and some buttons to control playback.
 
Using a DVD-9 seems very inexpensive and a great choice for most applications. I'm somewhat surprised to hear this suggested for theatrical screening though. If the DCI spec is anything to go by, strong copy-protection is supposed to be absolutely required for that application (?)
 
jbeale said:
Using a DVD-9 seems very inexpensive and a great choice for most applications. I'm somewhat surprised to hear this suggested for theatrical screening though. If the DCI spec is anything to go by, strong copy-protection is supposed to be absolutely required for that application (?)
Click to expand...

Yes, strong copy protection is a must for DCI. However, while berlinale many movies are shown from HDCAM (as the dci master isnt ready or the filmrecording is still rolling), smaller movies which start with 10-20 national copies often dont justify a dci master / filmout, internal premieres are always tricky to organise, any< festival where the director presents the movie himself... etc.
 
jbeale said:
Using a DVD-9 seems very inexpensive and a great choice for most applications. I'm somewhat surprised to hear this suggested for theatrical screening though. If the DCI spec is anything to go by, strong copy-protection is supposed to be absolutely required for that application (?)
Click to expand...

If Red is targeting this at mass-market theatrical distribution, they'd probably do need to add some copy protection features, yeah. There's no reason they can't implement whatever sort of encryption/watermarking they want just because they're using DVD 9, though. That all comes down the data format, not the media. Sure, people would be able to easily duplicate the discs, but if they didn't have the appropriate keys for playback, that wouldn't do them any good.
 
PLEASE seriously consider adding RS422 control guys. It could potentially make me a lot of money and then I would be able to buy more RED cameras; Mmkay?
 
If people are thinking theatrical distribution; forget it. Do you have any idea how paranoid those people are? Have you read the DCI spec. document? Advertising however is a whole different ball game. Those people actually want other people to see their content; as big and bright as possible.

The other shoe needs to drop however ~ 4K projectors...........
 
Stuart,

I can't seem to find this info anywhere. So Red Ray has Quad HDMI and Quad HD-SDI. My questions is by Quad HD-SDI is that Quad Dual Link HD-SDI. Baiscly I would assume that it is outputing a 4K 4:4:4 at 10bit via Quad Dual Link HD-SDI and 4K 4:2:2 8bit via Quad HDMI. Is this right? Please correct me where I am wrong. Trying to understand the output.


Thanks!
 
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