Scarlet 2K?

[Anthony Survant]

Oh, look it's this thread again.


IMO, it seems that people are being attracted to Scarlet for the price tag instead of the product, and then expecting RED to be something it's not. It's not Panasonic. I love Panasonic, but you'll notice there isn't a R, E, or D anywhere in their name.

 

[Lee Saxon]

it seems that people are being attracted to Scarlet for the price tag instead of the product

I can't wrap my head around this concept. I've had very bad experiences with quickly outgrowing gear.

If I'm cross-shopping two cameras that are the same price, and one is vastly more capable, I'm going to choose that one even if the other does everything I [think I] need [right now].

I think that fits in perfectly with Red's "obsolescence obsolete" philosophy.

 

[Stephen Strangways]

The reason the 2/3" 3K Scarlet is cheaper (than the RED ONE and EPIC) has far more to do with the fact that the sensor is only 2/3" than the fact that it is only 3K. A 2/3" 2K Scarlet wouldn't be much cheaper at all. Likewise, it can do 120fps because of the sensor readout speed and the fact that it only has to process 3K worth of data. Going down to 60fps wouldn't make it much cheaper, seeing as the bigger expense is the sensor capable of a 120fps readout, not the system bandwidth to handle the data at that framerate.

 

[Anthony Survant]

I can't wrap my head around this concept. I've had very bad experiences with quickly outgrowing gear.

If I'm cross-shopping two cameras that are the same price, and one is vastly more capable, I'm going to choose that one even if the other does everything I [think I] need [right now].

I think that fits in perfectly with Red's "obsolescence obsolete" philosophy.

I meant my comment at no one in particular (I rarely read the names of posters when I skim). So, my apologies if it possibly offended you. I'll clarify: I feel that in general a lot of the attention RED is getting on Scarlet is because of the price they put on it, and that is causing a lot of threads of people asking or wishing for a "1080p RED" or something very similar for cheaper. The lower price on Scarlet is causing people who don't fully appreciate the quality of RED products to ask for less.

There are people who could afford multiple fully tricked out Epic X's who are also wanting to invest in the Scarlet because of the product it is, and not because of its price tag.

Also, I think the mindset of RED making an amazing 2k camera to beat out the competition is broken... They have the RED One, the Epic, and Scarlet... They've already secured their place as winners among the future competition. Very soon all those other companies will be making 3k DSLR bundles and 4k cameras and people won't have to ask RED to make a better camera than the competition because they didn't waste their time on 2k. I mean, there's no point fighting the curve if you're ahead of it.

 

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

The reason the 2/3" 3K Scarlet is cheaper (than the RED ONE and EPIC) has far more to do with the fact that the sensor is only 2/3" than the fact that it is only 3K. A 2/3" 2K Scarlet wouldn't be much cheaper at all. Likewise, it can do 120fps because of the sensor readout speed and the fact that it only has to process 3K worth of data. Going down to 60fps wouldn't make it much cheaper, seeing as the bigger expense is the sensor capable of a 120fps readout, not the system bandwidth to handle the data at that framerate.

I'm not sure that's *entirely* valid; consider the price difference between a 5K S35 EPIC-X brain, and a 5K S35 EPIC-S brain... something costs that money!

But I don't remotely see a 2K Scarlet - for the same reasons many others have stated.

Mike

 

[Lee Saxon]

No offense taken Anthony, don't worry.

I'm more interested in Epic-S than Scarlet, so I'm not taking this thread too personally.

 

[Lee Saxon]

I'm not sure that's *entirely* valid; consider the price difference between a 5K S35 EPIC-X brain, and a 5K S35 EPIC-S brain... something costs that money!

Yeah that's what I think too.

But I don't remotely see a 2K Scarlet - for the same reasons many others have stated.

Yeah, I've changed my mind, I think maybe a better idea would be new models in the massive price gap between Epic-S and Scarlet 2/3".

I say reintroduce S35 Scarlet at ~$7,000, except this time 3K instead of 5K.

 

[Stephen Strangways]

I'm not sure that's *entirely* valid; consider the price difference between a 5K S35 EPIC-X brain, and a 5K S35 EPIC-S brain... something costs that money!

A 5K EPIC-S at 30 fps would be pushing 414,720,000 pixels per second.
A 5K EPIC-X at 120fps would be pushing 1,658,880,000 pixels per second.

If the Mysterium-X sensor is exactly the same in both cameras, the system bandwidth needed to handle that much data is the biggest factor in why it costs more, IMO.

 

[Lawrence Bansbach]

Yeah, I've changed my mind, I think maybe a better idea would be new models in the massive price gap between Epic-S and Scarlet 2/3".

I say reintroduce S35 Scarlet at ~$7,000, except this time 3K instead of 5K.

Scarlet fixed and Cinema already don't fit into Red's "4K is the future" mantra. They are legacies of Red's attempt at penetration of the prosumer market. They represent "obsolescence rendered all but certain" -- the only Red cameras that, if Red is successful in accelerating the transition to 4K, will be effectively obsolescent from the get-go. Scarlet 3K was originally supposed to be released in "early 2009," so it may end up two and a half years behind schedule (and thus a much shorter lifespan relative to the general adoption of 4K) and cost probably more than twice as much as originally projected. Which is not to say they won't be great cameras and worth every cent. But I really can't imagine that Red would develop another, more expensive 3K camera that would be even later to market.

 

[Lee Saxon]

Probably a valid argument, Lawrence. But I feel like there needs to be something in that big price gap. Just not sure what.

 

[Lawrence Bansbach]

Probably a valid argument, Lawrence. But I feel like there needs to be something in that big price gap. Just not sure what.

We haven't seen the final pricing of Scarlet, so we don't yet know that the gap is all that big.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Comparing the price/performance ratio of Red to the other brands (3K@120fps@100MB/s vs downsampled 1080p@60fps@24Mbps for the same $6k) is just absurdly embarrassing for those other brands, in my opinion.

I'm forced to wonder how affordably could Red deliver a 2K@60fps@~50-60MB/s prosumer camera? Cheaper than a GH2? Give them out for free?

DO IT. CONQUER THE WORLD.

I've discussed with them the possibility of doing a less than $1000 professional usable camera years ago before scarlet camera along.

It should be possible to do a SHD camera today in this price range. If you can order so many thousand of them, you could get them customized by an OEM. If you go to ambarella.com and look for the Ione chip you can see an android consumer 32mp still, 5mp video camera chip. They supply the low powered and cost chips for those $99 and up FullHD cameras and higher priced cameras, and seem to have higher performance chips for some individual cameras than what they show on the website. It is likely they could do a SHD model now, and I wonder what the JVC SHD camcorder uses?

If you look at it this way. you can get a $150 camera capable of 24mb/s h264 inter, the technology should be scalable to 100mb/s (they reportedly have a highly programmable parallel dsp array etc) in a bigger higher powered unit. A 100mb/s SHD should be cheaper than the $600 dollars the equivalent four $150 cameras would cost (except you would want better optics and minimalist pro-features). For a while they have been able to ingress SHD raw but not compress it as video. As it is supposed to be highly programmable, it should be possible to even do some basic raw inter/perdition based compression (something I put forward in the DIY Digital Cinema projects) but this is a bit iffy.

I'll take a rough stab at how much 100mb/s inter is worth. H264 intra and wavelet intra performance should be broadly similar and broadly half as efficient as inter. So, 200mb/s, or 25MB/s wavelet, but then raw is compressing less pixels in a different efficiency to normal video, so the final equivalent amount in wavelet intra raw compression should be lower again. But now. how does this compare to scarlet. A professional in redcode/h264 compression could complete the calculation. However, it would not surprise me if 200mb/s h264 inter would be possible to take it closer to visually lossless at Shd.

I would also not be surprised if somebody hacked the GH2 to do SHD. Oh well, we could probably guarantee that the GH3 will do something like SHD in 2012 and be hackable to do it in 3D for $1000.

If you want to explore a lower priced pro camera, go along to dvinfo and look up the DIY project based on the elphel camera.