Scarlet Upgrade...hmmm...not sure.

[Paul Schneider]

While I commend RED for the potential upgrade possibility of the Scarlet, I honestly am very torn about the viability of doing so. In fact, I'm a RED fan debating possibly just selling and moving on.

The way I see it, the world the Scarlet occupies is quickly becoming a home to much more economical choices. I'm a director of (mostly) national commercials. I can use any camera I want on any shoot. Sometimes I use my Scarlet...often I do not. Honestly, as a rental, if I wasnt able to apply it occasionally to my shoots I'd be hard pressed to pay it off and given the current rock-bottom rental prices of cameras like the Epic, F65 and Alexa I'd be surprised if most of the folks who own Scarlets can actually claim a profit, much less breaking even.

Its a great camera. But approximately 10K for an upgrade that almost surely requires another 7K in accelerator cards and a couple more thousand in larger, proprietary Red mags? I have trouble wrapping my mind around this given that I can potentially buy four 4K BM cameras and all the media I could ever use for that price. Thinking of what I can rent is equally disconcerting.

I dig RED, always have, but these concerns are coming from an honest, in the trenches place.

So I'm not just whining, here's a few things I'd love to see.

1. A updated sensor option for the price of a BMC 4K camera. Give me 5k to 30, 4K to 60 and a base iso of 1600...for 4K. Beat them down. Boom.
2. Partner, license or otherwise open up r3d's to software and vendors in order to create a real time workflow without multi-thousand dollar cards. Seriously, Sony RAW and BMC RAW cut like butter on most decent systems...RED should too.
3. Media. I know its probably a big moneymaker, but also think proprietary media is eventually a dead end. Bring the pricing in line with current SSD's or create an adapter to record to them.

Of course, I don't expect any of these things to happen, but they should. I'm a fan, but my allegiance isn't blind.

Discuss?

 

[Enrique Blein]

I have already recovered my investment, cut in Premiere Pro like butter and have used 3 x 64 Gbs cards on a rotating basis without ever having thought that I needed an extra one. I put down my name for the Dragon upgrade but the more I think about it, commercially speaking, is that an upgrade to Epic would yield more dividends than an upgrade to Scarlet Dragon, even though I crave for the reduced noise/higher sensitivity, and would love to be able to use the new colour science and 16+ latitude (which by the way will not really make me earn mo money)

 

[Daniel Pearson]

BMC RAW cut like butter on most decent systems...RED should too.

I didn't think there were many native options to edit with Cinema DNG?

 

[Ryan Hamblin]

I think if your thinking of ditching... why not stick with the scarlet as is... just cause there is a new sensor doesnt mean the camera just started looking like crud. Hell the Redone which is more compressed than your scarlet can be has shot amazing films and mastered in 4k. I'm just keeping my scarlet and riding it out till its just not cutting it. The camera shoots just over the UHD standard resolution. 3k with wavelet compression allows you slomo that scales up to 4k very effectively ( we just mastered some commercials in 4k and upres 3k... had to soften the 3k cause it looked sharper than 4k for some reason once upres'd) I mean this camera is still great, and beats the pants of the BlackMagic at the moment. I really think the Scarlet is going to be a work horse in the industry. Kinda like the DVX100 used to be... only way more cinematic quality. Your effectively shooting with digital film now, no one is forcing us to upgrade... so im not. I say shoot with what you got and enjoy it.

 

[Paul Schneider]

Right. I agree an Epic upgrade may yield more in the long run...thats why I feel a more modest Scarlet upgrade might be a sensible option for RED given the current camera client being offered up by Sony, BMC etc.

As for the R3d's. Yes, it is possible to cut in Premiere at 1/4 res, but there is huge room for improvement. A decent system should be able to offer real time performance at full res when editing, and that performance should carry over equally into Color Grading, Compositing, etc. I've done all kinds of informal apple to apple tests between r3d, sony raw, and BM and things really do slow down with the r3d...especially when taken out of the edit bay.

Recently I cut two different projects for HBO in r3d on Premiere only to find my local colorist really couldn't work on the 4K files in real time. I honestly don't know where the bottlenecks are, and really don't care, but buying a camera that requires a card that costs half as much as the camera to work on the files is probably not a sustainable solution given the marketplace.

All this said, I do comment RED opening some of their effect tasks up to the GPU in the latest versions of RCX. I'm just being overly realist for the sake of debate at the moment.

 

[Paul Schneider]

I think if your thinking of ditching... why not stick with the scarlet as is... just cause there is a new sensor doesnt mean the camera just started looking like crud. Hell the Redone which is more compressed than your scarlet can be has shot amazing films and mastered in 4k. I'm just keeping my scarlet and riding it out till its just not cutting it. The camera shoots just over the UHD standard resolution. 3k with wavelet compression allows you slomo that scales up to 4k very effectively ( we just mastered some commercials in 4k and upres 3k... had to soften the 3k cause it looked sharper than 4k for some reason once upres'd) I mean this camera is still great, and beats the pants of the BlackMagic at the moment. I really think the Scarlet is going to be a work horse in the industry. Kinda like the DVX100 used to be... only way more cinematic quality. Your effectively shooting with digital film now, no one is forcing us to upgrade... so im not. I say shoot with what you got and enjoy it.

I may very well do that.
However since I know I can use whatever I want professionally, I've started to think something smaller, lighter, easier and cheaper (with regard to media and workflow) might be more appropriate to my personal work.

When I look at my reel, the things I did with standard lowly DSLRS is often what folks like. Obviously the qaulity and fidelity isnt there, but there was something in the immediacy and casual nature of the shooting style that folks gravitate to. Tech isnt everything apparently. Why hold on to 20K worth of equipment for personal use when I might get more use for much less. Just thinking of course, no decisions yet.

 

[Paul Schneider]

I think if your thinking of ditching... why not stick with the scarlet as is... just cause there is a new sensor doesnt mean the camera just started looking like crud. Hell the Redone which is more compressed than your scarlet can be has shot amazing films and mastered in 4k. I'm just keeping my scarlet and riding it out till its just not cutting it. The camera shoots just over the UHD standard resolution. 3k with wavelet compression allows you slomo that scales up to 4k very effectively ( we just mastered some commercials in 4k and upres 3k... had to soften the 3k cause it looked sharper than 4k for some reason once upres'd) I mean this camera is still great, and beats the pants of the BlackMagic at the moment. I really think the Scarlet is going to be a work horse in the industry. Kinda like the DVX100 used to be... only way more cinematic quality. Your effectively shooting with digital film now, no one is forcing us to upgrade... so im not. I say shoot with what you got and enjoy it.

Price aside, I agree on the BM and wouldnt get one. It's heavy and has the ergo of a block of cheese.
Tho RED really needs to be aware of those price points. They are real and becoming more ubiquitous every day. Its a tough market to be in.

 

[Paul Schneider]

I didn't think there were many native options to edit with Cinema DNG?

The basic crux of the argument is that DNG is more or less and open source format. It works very well in progams like AE and I predict it will be included as a standard across the board soon enough. I really admire and appreciate RED's color science, but I'm a non-proprietary kind of guy. Revolutions come when the answers are ubiquitous.

 

[Carlos Reyes]

"that almost surely requires another 7K in accelerator cards and a couple more thousand in larger, proprietary Red mags?"

Where are you getting this information? No such thing has been stated anywhere, unless I'm missing something?

Also in terms of editing, whats the point of editing a 4K file in full res?

 

[Björn Benckert]

Yes, why edit the files in pixel 1:1 I see no point in that. 6k screens will not come any time soon. So edit in premiere in whatever size your computer / screens can handle and render at any wanted resolution...

It's ofcourse up to each an every one of us to judge if it's worth it or not. For us, very much so, I find it amazing how much I can actually charge for camera gear. Our Epic is paid of many times over even on just the jobs where we use it ourselves and then we rent out as well. And getting a BMC camera (that does not exist just yet) I think you will find the small differences between the scarlet and the BMC to be more than what they seems to be at first.

 

[Paul Schneider]

"that almost surely requires another 7K in accelerator cards and a couple more thousand in larger, proprietary Red mags?"

Where are you getting this information? No such thing has been stated anywhere, unless I'm missing something?

Also in terms of editing, whats the point of editing a 4K file in full res?

More data equals requirements for more processing and storage.

A red rocket card is 3-5K ish depending on new/used. Its pretty old tech.
The new red rocket x card, to my knowledge, has a estimated price release of about 6-7K

Adding a new 5K Dragon sensor to Scarlet will increase the media consumption considerably. Therefore many, including me, would need new, larger cards for typical on set use. RED mags are SSD's, they are proprietary, they only fit in a RED camera and they are considerably more expensive than even the fastest SSD's one can buy in similar size ranges.

Not trying to make anything up. It's all very straightforward information. They have every right to charge what they need to charge for such things.

As for editing. There are a ton of reasons to have a 4K file in a timeline. Repo, and downsampling are two good ones. I personally don't consider editing just cutting these days. The footage gets graded, composited, repo'd, tracked, etc in all manner of programs...all of which benefit from a larger initial file size. Likewise, many folks would rather start with a 4K master in the color suite before downsampling. Finally, if RED's ambitions are to be accepted whole-heartedly, 4K viewing and distribution are right around the corner. Right or wrong, they're the advocates and they're designing they're workflows at 5 and 6K size starting points.

 

[Carlos Reyes]

Ok I misunderstood, I thought you meant newer faster REDMAGS.

About editing, I meant whats the point of editing at full rez on your timeline, I edit with 4K files in my timeline but at 1/4 resolution its sharp enough where the quality loss isnt really getting in the way of the edit.

 

[Paul Schneider]

Yes, why edit the files in pixel 1:1 I see no point in that. 6k screens will not come any time soon. So edit in premiere in whatever size your computer / screens can handle and render at any wanted resolution...

It's ofcourse up to each an every one of us to judge if it's worth it or not. For us, very much so, I find it amazing how much I can actually charge for camera gear. Our Epic is paid of many times over even on just the jobs where we use it ourselves and then we rent out as well. And getting a BMC camera (that does not exist just yet) I think you will find the small differences between the scarlet and the BMC to be more than what they seems to be at first.

I really don't have much issue with RED's plan for EPIC upgrades given the market that camera resides in. My thinking is based on the middle ground Scarlet occupies and the myriad of options appearing in that middle ground. I wouldn't get the BMC, its a brick, but that doesn't mean that one can simply discount the placement all together. By choosing the price point, the specs, and consumer available workflow options they have certainly taken a bold stance. The fact that it hasn't shipped and that I haven't actually seen a frame of Dragon footage (and don't expect to for a bit) kindof put them in similar camps in my opinion.

I agree its a personal decision...and thats kindof the point to this thread. I'm at a crossroads with a company that made something I really admire. The Scarlet is good, but as things stand I really don't know if the quailty of my work would suffer a bit if I let it go. If I chose to, likely I'd go back to a much lesser, smaller unit like the 5DIII or c100 for personal work...something easy and small. Again, I'd rent whatever I need for my commercial shoots...Epic, Alexa, whatever.

I do have a small series coming up and a few commercials that don't require specs beyond the scarlet. Perhaps I'll change my thinking after a fresh bit of time with it.

 

[Paul Schneider]

Ok I misunderstood, I thought you meant newer faster REDMAGS.

About editing, I meant whats the point of editing at full rez on your timeline, I edit with 4K files in my timeline but at 1/4 resolution its sharp enough where the quality loss isnt really getting in the way of the edit.

Agree, generally 1/4 res would be enough for editing.
I tested out a few Sony Raw clips to play with right before NAB. On my semi-heavily souped up mac pro I got significantly faster hi-res performance over r3d in all my programs...Premiere, AE, Resolve. The stuff looked great too.

It was by no means a scientific test, but it got me thinking.
I NEED my files to work beyond just cutting. They must be fluid from program to program without a hiccup. I don't want to transcode.

 

[Jeff Whitehurst]

Paul I hear you on your dilemma, but you may be unwittingly spreading a bit of FUD here.

First the RED Rocket-X would be $4,495 with either the Scarlet Dragon or Epic Dragon Upgrade. Since the upgrade is the point of this post, I would assume that choice would be obvious if you were considering purchasing one.
http://www.red.com/store/products/scarlet-dragon-upgrade

Second, the data rate for Dragon footage is actually very likely to be lower than the current sensor. Read this:
http://nofilmschool.com/2013/02/red-6k-dragon-file-sizes-turbo-red-rocket-card/

 

[Carlos Reyes]

Second, the data rate for Dragon footage is actually very likely to be lower than the current sensor. Read this:
http://nofilmschool.com/2013/02/red-6k-dragon-file-sizes-turbo-red-rocket-card/

I remember reading this but couldnt remember where, thanks! Hope this is still true.

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Its a great camera. But approximately 10K for an upgrade that almost surely requires another 7K in accelerator cards and a couple more thousand in larger, proprietary Red mags? I have trouble wrapping my mind around this given that I can potentially buy four 4K BM cameras and all the media I could ever use for that price. Thinking of what I can rent is equally disconcerting.

RED never required accelerator cards, and just because higher data rates are available doesn't mean you have to use them... it's quite possible the higher performance of the new sensor will save space since compression tends work better with more pixels and with less noise. It seems likely people shooting 4k 7:1 now may be able to get even better image quality shooting dragon 5k 12:1 at similar datarates.

So I'm not just whining, here's a few things I'd love to see.

1. A updated sensor option for the price of a BMC 4K camera. Give me 5k to 30, 4K to 60 and a base iso of 1600...for 4K. Beat them down. Boom.
2. Partner, license or otherwise open up r3d's to software and vendors in order to create a real time workflow without multi-thousand dollar cards. Seriously, Sony RAW and BMC RAW cut like butter on most decent systems...RED should too.
3. Media. I know its probably a big moneymaker, but also think proprietary media is eventually a dead end. Bring the pricing in line with current SSD's or create an adapter to record to them.

Of course, I don't expect any of these things to happen, but they should. I'm a fan, but my allegiance isn't blind.

Discuss?

Except BMPC is 12 stops and will have ridiculously high storage requirements that will be a dealbreaker for most people. 100+ MBps for 4k Prores HQ, 150+ MBps for compressed 4k RAW... Have you used the BMCC? It is a lot of image quality for the price, but the RAW uses a LOT of storage, and the ergonomics and design is worse to work with than DSLRs which were already quite bad. I am often on jobs with the budget for an EPIC, and they often have trouble keeping up with the data, so it's hard for me imagine most productions using a $4k camera will be ready to handle 3-4x more data, and will people buying these $4k cameras be comfortable spending $2k on "cheap" SSD media?

The world may not yet be ready for uncompressed or lossless 4k RAW, and it may never be, since by the time it is, 8k compressed RAW will be better... Off the shelf SSDs seem great and definitely are for certain applications, but in the end RED media still costs about the same per minute of footage compared to blackmagic due to REDCODE's higher compression. And that space savings will also be seen in the archival and editing storage costs. Then again this could be mitigated to some extent by ingesting BMPC SSDs directly into cineform RAW and throwing out the originals...

I'm not just a devil's advocate, I'm also a fellow RED owner, and I do also wish REDMAGs were less expensive since I find them prohibitively expensive compared to the other cameras I own and end up having to cut corners and not own enough media.

If RED lives up to expectations, Scarlet Dragon will be in a whole different league than the BMPC, with far more DR and frame rates and a much wider range of features, but BMPC will definitely challenge the old Scarlet since they have similar specs. At the end of the day, I wish RED would take a hint from Sony rather than Blackmagic in that they should make cameras that are more all-around cameras. Scarlet is a great camera to shoot a feature or a short film, as will be BMPC and Scarlet dragon will be even more no-compromises for shooting films/commercials, but Sony makes cameras (F5/F55/FS700) I wouldn't hesitate to use for films, commercials, events, performances, ENG, etc, all in one camera. Scarlet and BMPC as they are now (or when they are available) are limited in their use in that they are very poorly designed for run and gun shooting and require a lot of work and support on set. I use my FS700 far more than my scarlet because by comparison Scarlet feels like I'm jumping through hoops for the camera, rather than the camera working for me, sometimes it's worth it for the extra resolution and better color if the budget and support is available, but often it is not.

 

[Paul Schneider]

I agree with most of your analysis...but what I'm trying to figure out is when when the rubber meets the road will it matter for me.

I don't suspect I'll be able to rent my scarlet out any more than I do now, and is it fair to push it on the DP or production when I can easily rent an Epic (or Dragon EPIC) for a song. To me it's coming down to personal use...and how much personal use. I brought all of this up because as I've been assessing these new potential costs I'm finding I'm not alone and many folks in the Scarlet camp are weighing the options.

We'll see.

I still think my thoughts are valid on some level. Being a little less proprietary and facilitating options for alternate real time workflows would (in my opinion) increase the popular opinion and usage of the camera.

 

[Paul Schneider]

If RED lives up to expectations, Scarlet Dragon will be in a whole different league than the BMPC, with far more DR and frame rates and a much wider range of features, but BMPC will definitely challenge the old Scarlet since they have similar specs. At the end of the day, I wish RED would take a hint from Sony rather than Blackmagic in that they should make cameras that are more all-around cameras. Scarlet is a great camera to shoot a feature or a short film, as will be BMPC and Scarlet dragon will be even more no-compromises for shooting films/commercials, but Sony makes cameras (F5/F55/FS700) I wouldn't hesitate to use for films, commercials, events, performances, ENG, etc, all in one camera. Scarlet and BMPC as they are now (or when they are available) are limited in their use in that they are very poorly designed for run and gun shooting and require a lot of work and support on set. I use my FS700 far more than my scarlet because by comparison Scarlet feels like I'm jumping through hoops for the camera, rather than the camera working for me, sometimes it's worth it for the extra resolution and better color if the budget and support is available, but often it is not.

This is a pretty astute thought. Scarlet is in a weird place now...between cameras that are ridiculously easy (and even fun) to use and cameras that come complete, fast and ready to go for nearly everything.

My buddy has an FS700 and I gotta say most of what I see comoing out of that camera is gold for the money he spent.

 

[Paul Schneider]

Paul I hear you on your dilemma, but you may be unwittingly spreading a bit of FUD here.

First the RED Rocket-X would be $4,495 with either the Scarlet Dragon or Epic Dragon Upgrade. Since the upgrade is the point of this post, I would assume that choice would be obvious if you were considering purchasing one.
http://www.red.com/store/products/scarlet-dragon-upgrade

Second, the data rate for Dragon footage is actually very likely to be lower than the current sensor. Read this:
http://nofilmschool.com/2013/02/red-6k-dragon-file-sizes-turbo-red-rocket-card/

Absolutely.Fair enough.

I guess my point was, more or less, do I need to upgrade a camera that requires a card that costs half as much as the camera in order to truly maximize its potential. For 5K I could probably build a pretty nice computer that would accelerate all my stuff, not just r3ds. Feasibly, I could also get a BMC 4K camera as well...if I was so inclined...which I certainly am not. Just worth mentioning.

I totally get the media data rate argument. Very possible and good to know. Red Mags are pricey...really pricey...and I don't think its wrong wishing that they weren't so much.