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Scarlet 5k at speed

Ryan Hamblin

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This entirely at speculative post but with the current price drop and scarlet being nearly half the cost of epic but quite a bit underpowered. ( don't get me wrong I love my scarlet and it continues to serve me well ). It would be cool to begin testing firmware to see if 5k at 24fps could be pulled out of the cam. To really set RED ahead of all the other companies. At that point all their current models would be 5k cameras for a proper 4k delivery. Slow mo at 36 maybe even 48 at 4k. That way we are never having to Up res for our deliverable. Agin this is speculative, but I sure would be willing to be a test subject in trying to get it to work. It's about to hit the slow season and am doing a lot of projects for friends so best time ever to experiment with firmware.

Anyway. Just thoughts... Anyone else feel like it seems that little booger could squeeze out 5k?
 
+1. I would love to see this out of my Scarlet. 4k is amazing but when I take 5k stills it just blows me away. I think at least we should have a 5k WS option that would be killer and roughly the same pixel count as 4k. I beg you!
 
If full 5K is somehow not possible, I believe 5Kws is though. If you take a look at Phil's charts, it seems that Epic can do up to 121fps at 4K and less, and at 5Kws. However the Epic captures less at larger than 5Kws. Therefore I thought, if the Scarlet currently goes 4K 30 fps, perhaps 5Kws seems very possible.
 
It will be interesting to see what RED does firmware wise. As of now I know my rental rates will have to drop. Which is fine it's paid off, but still a bit of a sting. 5k at24fps would totally take a little of the pain away, and set REDs cameras out there as true 4k delivery cameras. It may not be possible though... Will have to wait and see
 
I'm afraid this would only add insult to injury for the unhappy Epic owners who feel attacked by lower pricing. While I find it hard to agree with anyone other than those who purchased in the last 90 days, I do respect Red's intention to keep the lines separate by defining Epic as the 5K camera.

Next week I lost a regular rental because the client wanted to shoot 5K for center extraction--it's the price paid for owning a Scarlet, or rather the price we didn't pay, since our camera is so much cheaper!

On the other hand, I would shoot 5K WS on every job that calls for 2.39:1, simply because music videos and short films aren't concerned with Michael Cioni's taller deliverables.
 
I'm afraid this would only add insult to injury for the unhappy Epic owners who feel attacked by lower pricing.

Yes,

But in the spirit of what Jim is trying to do... Put cinema tool in reach.... This demographic is key. Hampering it or side stepping so to speak seems silly.
4.5k, 5kws 24 or what ever, it seems that there is something there that can be done.
 
I would really like 4k at redcode 3:1 - 4k 3:1 feels to me about the same spatial resolution as 5K 12:1 . I currently shoot at 4k at 6:1, and i think 6:1 is mandatory for scarlet users if they will mix their footage with 5k epic shots. When I shoot photographs i shoot at 5k 3:1 at 8 fps. Really the scarlet can't currently shoot film with "true" raw sensor's linear space at 4k (i.e. it can't shoot at 4k 3:1). I would love it if the scarlet could save 5k redlogfilm on the SSD - makes a lot more sense to me having the log operation reduce color range then having a compression wavelet reduce resolution. Would be awesome to have RED push a industry standard 5k redlogfilm format.
 
It will be interesting to see what RED does firmware wise. As of now I know my rental rates will have to drop. Which is fine it's paid off, but still a bit of a sting. 5k at24fps would totally take a little of the pain away, and set REDs cameras out there as true 4k delivery cameras. It may not be possible though... Will have to wait and see

Oh yeah.
 
Look, if any 5K mode on scarlet is attainable, fantastic. More options are better no matter what. The 120fps mode is ok, an option even though I find it unusable when cutting between 4k the difference is drastic. Web content is what that was made for.

But i find it hilarious when Epic owners (i've seen in other threads not participated in) act like a 25p 5K mode for a Scarlet would make Epic with a 5K@120 blush. 25 is a far cry from 120, no debating. You pay for framerates.

I have to admit, shooting 5K timelapses on my scarlet did make me want EPIC on a certain level. But I cannot justify the increase investment as of today...yet ;)

I always hope the RED wizards find a way to do it, but the camera is fantastic either way.
 
If I was an EPIC owner I would be totally down for Scarlet having 5k 25fps! The opportunity of having a B-Cam for 2 camera interviews etc for half the price? That sounds like an awesome tool.

For a Scarlet user we wish to have 5k 25fps so we can get hired to shoot Broll or Second camera on Epic shoots... Thats what I hope for. 2k 120fps would be amazing. 5k 25fps would be mind blowing. Let Scarlets be a true B-Cam!
 
My understanding is if the chip fails the EPIC test it becomes a Scarlet. This means they are not physically capable of pushing that much data through by definition.

This is NOT a case of them making the same hardware and then restricting features based on price.

Seriously, the Scarlet is close enough to the Epic and less than half the price. I own both an Epic and Scarlet so I have no bias in the conversation, just looking at the reality of the hardware.
 
My understanding is if the chip fails the EPIC test it becomes a Scarlet. This means they are not physically capable of pushing that much data through by definition.

This is NOT a case of them making the same hardware and then restricting features based on price.

Seriously, the Scarlet is close enough to the Epic and less than half the price. I own both an Epic and Scarlet so I have no bias in the conversation, just looking at the reality of the hardware.
People are talking about the low end of that range....
 
I guess the biggest player/factor now is what happens with Dragon?

If new epics are selling at 19k now they will easily be selling used for 15k by next spring or not sooner. In the end it might be better just to tell my Scarlet and get an Epic.
 
i would love to see 5k 24fps on my scarlet....but it really depends on the compression....5k 24fps at 7:1 would be great....so would 4K at 24fps at 3:1....
5K on the scarlet really calls for a stills mode, because that is really all you can use it for.....
 
I think the real question is; would 5k/24-25fps on Scarlet prevent a substantial amount of potential Epic sales?

As a Scarlet owner, Epic is too expensive to justify paying even $19k for 5k/24-25fps (anything beyond 24fps would be used so rarely it'd make more sense to rent when needed.) However, how many Epic owners would forgo getting a second Epic if the Scarlet shot 5k/24 and was a mere $8k? Probably quite a few.

THAT SAID... 4.5k... C'mon, man. That should have been there from day one and it would have only prevented the 6 or so R1mx sales since late 2011. Besides, the whole purpose of 4.5k was so that it'd resolve to a "true 4k", which is the impasse that Canon and Sony, etc. will have to cross with their new "4k" (3840x2160) cameras, while RED users/Scarlet users *should* be laughing.
 
We had this in a recent thread, I think giving Scarlet 4.5k or 4.5K WS up to 30fps would be a move RED could certainly do without having to fear to step on Epic folks' feet.

And then there's the RED talking about true 4K delivery, which Scarlet can't do as of now, so that would be an argument to up Scarlet too. We'll see, love Scarlet anyway.

EDIT: Mike beat me to it, again :)
 
The problem is, how much do you realistically think you can get for your Scarlet now? After ownership transfer ($850), shipping to and from RED for re-evaluation ($150 each way?), the hassle, dealing with and trusting a stranger, the fact that there's no warranty (meagre 90 days compared to 1 year new), I doubt you'd get much more than $6k for your used Scarlet brain. If that's the case, you may as well keep your Scarlet, wait until Spring/Summer to buy a used Epic for $15k, and then have two DSMC cameras instead of getting a single Epic now for $13k ($19k - $6k = $13k)... You're basically getting to keep our Scarlet for a measly $2k...(assuming you can actually find an Epic Brain for $15k come spring/summer.)

And besides, with price drops, who's to say that Epic WITH Dragon won't be $17.5k brand new next November (after the F75 and C700 come out, of course).
 
Reading posts from Red it seems the Epic's current ASIC board is pretty maxed out with the Dragon sensor. Wondering now if there are 2 ASIC boards "in the oven"—one for Epic and one for Scarlet.
 
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