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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 start up time

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Gun slinging.....I've just finished a doco. series. Five months on the road on six continents and cache (prerecord) woudn't have helped at all. Observational docs. in third world countries don't allow for excessive battery budgets as there is often nowhere to charge them. The prerecord won't help you if your camera is turned off. The fact is that digital cameras at this time consume way too much power to leave on and the cold start time is essential.

I have had many incidents of hitting the roll button as the camera hits my shoulder. Its not about the one shot in a career but about getting a sequence that may never happen again.

Don't brand me with peeves about anything digital....I have been a cinematographer of drama and docs for 20 years and base my living on "anything digital" shooting on high end systems. I want to see a camera that equals my film camera for picture quality with the convenience and cost I have found in an F900 or similar. As a professional who tests his lenses and cameras meticulously before purchasing decisions I'm not about to take a stab in the dark when parting with hard cash. I'd just like solid answers. Hard
questions hopefully are greeted by hard thought answers or thanks, I didn't think that so important.
 
Just a stab in the dark based on my experience from other cameras.
I'd expect RED to be ready to roll very quickly, most of the delay in DV or HD cameras is due to the time it takes the heads to spin up and the camera to repo the tape. None of this delay should occur in a non tape based camera.

The camera's software should also come up very quickly as it's not being loaded from a disk.

From my experience the worst camera in this regard is the Z1, it can take several seconds to go into record from when you hit record and that can be an agonising wait.

What might be a postive design idea is to have an instant startup and record button. I find the on/off switch on a lot of Sony cameras to be too damn fiddly. Having to get the camera On and then on your shoulder and then hit record a time waster. What I think matters most to fence sitter is the total delay from deciding to get the shot until the camera is rolling, anything that reduces that delay would be a positive.
 
Tapes aren't the only thing that need to spin up. There is going to be a delay as the hard drive heads unpark. aka about 1-10 seconds.

Honestly I would be pretty suprised if the whole process took longer than that. The DSPs encode in real time (1/30th of a second). That's probably the most processor intensive operation that happens in the camera. Most DSLRs take what 2 seconds tops unless you want flash. The only component which the main board is going to need to look for is the storage medium. Everything else should be pretty much assumed intact and mounted. It's going to be loading its OS from solid state memory so there should be no hardware lag time.

I think the reason nobody cares to investigate further is because I at least for one have never encountered a piece of dedicated hardware that takes more than 15 seconds to boot. Or at least I can't remember any.
 
I only ask because there is talk (founded or unfounded) that the SI2k takes aprox a minute to take from off. Yes, running XPe off solid state but there is a chance that RED won't be instant and I think I would want to know as it is a serious consideration. I like SI2k from the stand point of 2 copies of walk away media in camera and the integration of iridas speed grade so neatly. No outboard hardware...tweaks from in the camera. They are also licencing local support also so that is a big plus. On the RED side they have the goto guy for viewfinder and eventual Apple written support in FCP. Loads of pros and cons in both directions....if only it was the one camera we might start talking turkey.4K of course but for me 2K is fine with 4k as a futureproof option. I want to know what everyone has to offer before laying down hard currency on anything if at all.

I'm also keen to know what we are looking at as far as Redcine conversion times. Like it or not....professional use or hire will need Avid integration otherwise you will be cut out of alot of potential work. A playback VTR emulator outputting SDI woud certainly allow a device at offline editorial for playback into any NLE. This would be ideal until everyone supports RED code.
 
Before malaigning the camera, just be a little patient and usually someone with inside knowledge will join in and tell us what we want to know.

You obviously have specific needs and you know what you need to get your job done. I doubt if it is a common request but I'm sure Stuart, Rob, or Graeme might chime in with an answer when they get time.

If the timing on getting your answer is a deal breaker...then so be it.

If you can wait a little, I'm sure you'll get an answer from someone.

I would imagine these guys are a little preoccupied.
 
im.thatoneguy said:
Tapes aren't the only thing that need to spin up. There is going to be a delay as the hard drive heads unpark. aka about 1-10 seconds.

Honestly I would be pretty suprised if the whole process took longer than that. The DSPs encode in real time (1/30th of a second). That's probably the most processor intensive operation that happens in the camera. Most DSLRs take what 2 seconds tops unless you want flash. The only component which the main board is going to need to look for is the storage medium. Everything else should be pretty much assumed intact and mounted. It's going to be loading its OS from solid state memory so there should be no hardware lag time.

I think the reason nobody cares to investigate further is because I at least for one have never encountered a piece of dedicated hardware that takes more than 15 seconds to boot. Or at least I can't remember any.
Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong but you don't HAVE to run RED with a HDD do you?

I thought one option was to record to flash, that not only means no disk spinup delay but also less power consumption at idle.

I did have one thought that might help. The EVF is a major source of power consumption when a camera is idling. The Sony a100 DSC has a neat bit of tech in it. The AF can power down when it detects there's no eye to the viewfinder. Can't see any reason why the EVF on the RED couldn't use the same trick to save power consumption. This would make it more practical to leave the camera in standby for long periods without too much drain on the battery.
 
Fence sitter said:
Not huffy just frustrated at how such a basic requirment isn't a solid spec this late in the red game.
Click to expand...

If this was any other company, you wouldn't know anything about the camera yet... not until it was shipping at the next trade show. My point is that the way you're asking these questions is not the way to get answers.

Just wait. I'm sure you'll have an answer before you get a camera in your hands.
 
Yeah it seems like there's a lot of impatience being expressed, but if you just cool down I'm sure these questions will be answered.
 
Fence sitter said:
Not huffy just frustrated at how such a basic requirment isn't a solid spec this late in the red game.
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Fence,

I hear you. There is a wierd dichotomy going on here. I'd like to draw a comparision to when Panasonic was releasing the HVX 200. First they showed it to us (under a viel). Then they were extraordinarily tigh lipped about the product and what it would do. It was hard to get a shipping schedule. Then, they showed protypes made of wood at NAB. The next year they showed a camera. Anyhow, you see where I might be going with this.

Let's look at RED. They have been very forthcoming and completely transparenent with their customers. They have been up front about delays. They have stuck to their word on dates and things, and when things didn't go quite as planned, they told us.

They are less than a two months away from releasing the camera. They are placing it in the hands of some big hollywood players and fine tuning to the finish line.

I'd venture a guess that they do not quite have the manual written yet (but I bet it is well under way).

So to put your question in perspective. You have asked about what seems to you to be "simple" feature and an easy question to answer.

In my years of reading manuals I have never seen this as a statistic or part of any spec sheet. I know that you can probably expect it to be about 15 seconds with just about any camera. Red has no tape transport system so I imagine you can eliminate "threading" time and VTR start up. So it might be quite quick, but I do not think you will get you answer until the camera ships.

If there is tape based camera that is faster, or that you can get the actual timing stat on, then maybe you should go ahead and buy that.
 
Ok I see where you are coming from now I had forgotten the SI ran on a normal PC like the andromeda.

Yes. Something like the SI would have a long turn around time from power on because you are really waiting for a laptop to boot before recording. RED will not have this problem. No extraneous crap to boot.

Correct me if I'm wrong but you don't HAVE to run RED with a HDD do you?

I thought one option was to record to flash, that not only means no disk spinup delay but also less power consumption at idle.
Click to expand...

No you are correct Flash will be an option, however since this is a documentary shooter I'm operating on the assumption he wants to be able to shoot without cutting or reloading until hell freezes over, which at this point would be a very expensive proposition to accomplish with solid state.
 
im.thatoneguy said:
Ok I see where you are coming from now I had forgotten the SI ran on a normal PC like the andromeda.

Yes. Something like the SI would have a long turn around time from power on because you are really waiting for a laptop to boot before recording. RED will not have this problem. No extraneous crap to boot.



No you are correct Flash will be an option, however since this is a documentary shooter I'm operating on the assumption he wants to be able to shoot without cutting or reloading until hell freezes over, which at this point would be a very expensive proposition to accomplish with solid state.
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Actually flash or something similar would be perfect. It would still be quicker than changing tape. If the flash media can hold an hour or more then even better. With HDrives with or without an operating system it will take at least a few seconds to be ready to record, I can imagine with flash it would be more like a modern DSLR. I'm also assuming any sort of purely digital recording media (flash, compact flash...) would hold up better in rough conditions.
 
Brook Willard said:
If this was any other company, you wouldn't know anything about the camera yet... not until it was shipping at the next trade show. My point is that the way you're asking these questions is not the way to get answers.

Just wait. I'm sure you'll have an answer before you get a camera in your hands.
Click to expand...

Well put.

Also, there will be plenty of 3rd party field tests in the coming months that will cover these unknown areas. Patience.
 
im.thatoneguy said:
Ok I see where you are coming from now I had forgotten the SI ran on a normal PC like the andromeda.

Yes. Something like the SI would have a long turn around time from power on because you are really waiting for a laptop to boot before recording. RED will not have this problem. No extraneous crap to boot.



No you are correct Flash will be an option, however since this is a documentary shooter I'm operating on the assumption he wants to be able to shoot without cutting or reloading until hell freezes over, which at this point would be a very expensive proposition to accomplish with solid state.
Click to expand...

The current SI-2K runs embedded WinXP from flash, I don't expect it's boot time to be very long at all. We'll have ours in a few weeks so at the moment I can't say for certain what it's boot time is but I do know the embedded version of XP cuts out an aweful lot of the crap however since that switch they've added things like Look management so I have no idea how long that'll take to load.

So at the moment boot times for both RED and SI-2K are unknown quantities, lets assume they're roughly the same. Fence sitter's shooting requirements raise an interesting question. Which best suits his needs, say the choices come down to these options:

1) S16 film camera
2) F900
3) RED
4) SI-2K

For openers I think the SI-2K is out. No EVF option at the moment that I know of, plus all camera setup driven through a touch screen. Great functionality but not really for gun and run. Plus the recording medium is still HDD and I don't think leaving a HDD spinning while a camera is bounced around in vehicles etc such a wise move. I'd say the same goes for RED, that's where the recording to flash is his best hope.

The F900. Haven't a clue how long it takes to be ready to roll. However Fence Sitter made much of battery budget. OK, but the F900 from memory needs one tape per 40 minutes of record time. Those tapes are not small. So one should realistically factor in tape AND battery budget.

Option 1), the S16 film camera is still the one to beat in my opinion.
Option 3), RED recording to flash should also be very viable. To make it a fair comparison against the F900 you'd need a flash drive that holds 40 minutes of vision. Yes these modules are going to be expensive however like tape they're reusable and unlike tape there's no risk in reusing them
 
Somebody!

Please close this thread. It's just getting dumber.

David
 
XPe...this is found in many day to day applications. Photocopiers and the like...no exessive requirents for third party drivers and the like. Also very upgradeable. Lets look at the upgradeability of say a Qantel box solution and a windows/Mac software solution. Both approaches have their benefits and in this case the Red seams to have an advantage in start up time.

Pluses for SI:

Iridas colour lut integration in the camera as well as from Iridas grading suites via email and since its monitoring is DVI driven has the ability to profile a monitor so that the monitor emulates film output and the like.Set your lut to the profiled monitor and what you setup should translate through to a print profiled monitor in a suite.

Raid one in camera backup on a low cost caddy walk away system - you can give your clients the drives never to return

USB flash stick recording - like REDs flash module but at no cost as the camera already has the USB on board.

Viewfinder is in the works

FCP support soon.

Shipping

This is not an SI rant but proves that the camera is worth consideration. I have more answers from them and would like more from RED so that I can evenly compare.
 
OK.

Now I know this thread was a plant. Last post in here for me.

ciao!

David
 
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