The future...

[Craig Schober]

What I have always wondered is why don't they just shoot for the moon? why doesn't someone just say ..."hey you guys why don't we just make 4Ghz unit?" 8 cores on single die for the pro-sumer? why not? is to crazy to think outside the box? Will convention always drive the development of products in the PC industry? I have sometimes laid in bed at night and dreamed about the products I would like to develop for the PC, I have even tried to get money for development and been laughed at all the way out the door. For god-sake this is the age of nano technology!!! Would I pay $2500 dollars on a single processor that would future proof me for the next 5 years? Hell yeah.

you say that Red and the processor makers are so different but you are describing the same thing. where's red's 22k super epic? it's not available yet but it's coming. where's your 4ghz 100 core processor, it's not available yet but it's coming. if you wanted either of these speed demons you would pay through the nose and both would have a limited lifespan because of motherboards and other components that will eventually get outdated before the processor or the brain. if you really wanted to ignore quantites of scale and just buy a super processor or brain that would last 5-10 years before obsolescence, you're talking about $10-20k for a processor and a super epic...well just ask how much phantoms used to cost and how many people could afford to buy them and you'll understand why red is really changing cinema by allowing many pros to also be owners instead of just a select few.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

We've been trying to explain how ISO works to sanjin for 4 years. Can we officially give up?

 

[Antonio Forjaz]

EPIC-X is on track. End of this month.


Jim

Great news... How many +- will ship per day?

 

[Jannard]

A few to begin. Lots to follow...

Jim

Great news... How many +- will ship per day?

 

[Patrick OMara]

Would I pay $2500 dollars on a single processor that would future proof me for the next 5 years? Hell yeah.

YOU CAN!!
Intel has their server chip line, which is exactly what you'd want. You can get a Xeon E7, 10 core chip(threaded to 20). It has more than double the transistors (2.6 billion) compared to the best consumer Core I7 chip. Since it's server you can go up to 8 chips. Even the xeon 7500s are about twice as fast as Core i7, they are a bit cheaper than the E7s too.

 

[Mark Andersen]

I feel like a spoiled child saying this, but I want my second Epic. I have an "M" now but I have a production in September that requires two. I hope my stage 2 camera will be available by then. I know, I can hear lots of folks calling me whiner, saying, I should be glad I have at least one, and I am. But the Epic is so awesome, and perfect for this shoot, that I don't want to work with anything else.

 

[Sterling Wescott]

We only have one lens issue to resolve. Then we are ready...

Jim

Wow! How major is the problem?
I suppose, to phrase more direct, could Scarlets be out and about within the next two months?
I'm one of those overtly inquisitive assholes who doesn't understand "When it's ready." aren't I?

 

[Emanuel A.]

update info

update info

A few to begin. Lots to follow...

Jim

I concur António's post! In the name of portuguese speakers, obrigado (E.

 

[Patrick OMara]

* I think the coolest module you could add is a device that records accurate 3d point cloud data along with the footage.

* Another useful feature would be able to set realtime metadata tags. Assign a few buttons to anything you'd like "goal" "penalty" "cheerleaders". to tag footage as you are taking it so that later it's easier to sort or find. sounds easy (is that available already?)

* camera stabilization built-in to the firmware, shoot at 4k and use your 5k gap as the stabilization buffer.

 

[Sam Eilertsen]

* I think the coolest module you could add is a device that records accurate 3d point cloud data along with the footage..

Uh, where would that data come from? You'd need a lightfield sensor or something like it for that...

 

[Steve Johnson]

A few to begin. Lots to follow...

Jim

Cool!!!

I'm still going with my prediction...

1 EPIC-X = 5 minutes
12 EPIC-X = 1 hour
144 EPIC-X = 12 hour day
4320 EPIC-X = 30 day month
Stage 2 & 3 complete by beginning of November???
Stage 4 = November???

That's based on Jarreds post a while back that he said that the guys can build an EPIC-M in about 5 minutes.

Hee...hee...hee...

 

[Pierce Cook]

I have a shoot in October I'd love it on...but I'm far enough into Stage-3 that I'm planning on Red-M and praying for my Epic-X.

Good times ahead! Makes me feel good to see these comments from you Jim! Drinks all around

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Don't get me wrong... I like Sanjin. I just don't understand what he is saying half the time.

Jim

His posts are relatively easy compared to the other guy I mentioned, and the guy is a moderator.

I consider myself a pretty hardcore PC Mod Enthusiast and one thing that annoys the crap out of me is the constant "stepping" in the CPU market. ( not to mention Ram, HDs, Graphic Cards etc) You would only just land the latest 2.5 GHZ CPU when wouldn't you know it, a month later they released the 2.6, then the 2.8 then the yadda yadda yadda. What I have always wondered is why don't they just shoot for the moon? why doesn't someone just say ..."hey you guys why don't we just make 4Ghz unit?" 8 cores on single die for the pro-sumer? why not? is to crazy to think outside the box?

I think they had 4GHz clocked around ten years ago, then they introduced processors that were clockable to 6 ghz. But most of these were based on inefficient designs that consumed too much power, so they went to efficient low powered designs that out performed them at slower speeds. This is where we are largly at at the moment, keeping the speed down to lower power consumption. FPGA has been bad for power consumption in particular, but you arr able to cram in processing units. But you will be happy to know that the latest AMD bulldozer processor chip has been reportedly running overclocked at over 5 GHz air cooled at something like 184 or 164 watts. So I wonder if it is possible to reach 10GHz with suitable refrigeration based cooler? The stepping is just trying to take advantage of the latest tech they are setup for.

There are fundamental barriers restricting the top end speeds at the moment otherwise we would be looking at 50-100GHz processors that I would be cool with. I guess we might see 20GHz systems before optical takes off. Optical is the place to look, even I am exploring techniques to make low-cost optical, doable now, and many times more powerful than a 100GHz conventional chip, Expect to see optical chips from others within the next 5 years, though I know from a one departed source that such technology was developed ten or more years ago, but the source of the laser has been an issue.

For the moment look at General Purpose GPU processing through Open CL. The modern, most recent to dx11 standard, offer many times more processing for the same complexity as a CPU for a number of applications. This alongside the CPU, is probably the direction of the immediate future for substantial bang per buck once companies take advantage of it. AMD is staking a claim in it. There are many small processing array chips out there as well, but a guy I know makes the best as far as I know. He is a leading processor designer, and has a startup company making array chips running at pure natural, low powered, speed, at 700MHz unclocked. I cant remember what process they use, but I would guess using the latest, it might be 2GHz+ unclocked. The individual processors in the array are probably less then 10 thousand transistors each, so you get crazy amounts of them in the space of a conventional processor die. They are targeted as an low powered alternative to low powered programmable logic, but the potential is there to design them for high performance (he has achieved performances ten times more than conventional chip design in the past, wherever that could translate into 20GHz I don't know, but you get a problem of lack of memory speed to match anyway) but all that is needed is investment in this climate from somebody with the money and vision. www.greenarraychips.com. He is also a key patent holder, and most processing chips use his patent.

About your experiences with the funny brigade, don't take them too personally, such situations are usually a sign somebody is an idiot, and it is too often the ones doing the laughing.

I would be interested in hearing about some of your adventures John, give me a pm.

 

[Frank Weeks]

Great news on the progress Jim and congrats on exceeding the 7000 post mark. seems like just yesterday we were celebrating your 1000th. Time flys when your shooting Red.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

* I think the coolest module you could add is a device that records accurate 3d point cloud data along with the footage.

What about something that spontaneously recorded an pattern of intelligence that then would make just the right film for you from nowhere. Then you could make a business selling them built into sunglasses

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Uh, where would that data come from? You'd need a lightfield sensor or something like it for that...

I was working on that years ago.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

We've been trying to explain how ISO works to sanjin for 4 years. Can we officially give up?

Gavin,

the quality of high ISO was logarithmically increased rapidly in the past couple of years and will continue this trend all in that way in the future

(look at very clean high ISO from Sony FS100 or F3 just to name a few examples,...).

If you can understand the exposure triangle: aperture, ISO and shutter speed then you will know exactly what the hell I'm talking about!!!

"For example, aperture affects depth of field, shutter speed affects motion blur and ISO speed affects image noise."

Aperture is always fixed and lens related.

Shutter speed is an old fashioned technology to increse exposure from early days of photography.

Only a super clean high ISO is a pure digital realated technology and will help to finally take over the celluloid acquisition (a.k.a. film)

with its quality and also in quantity at the future (that already started with RED and Epic).

It is just because only ISO logarithmically increases in quality (low noise or even no any noise) from all of three way of exposure

and can easy beat the shutter speed (high ISO speed has no any motion blur or lighting flicker artifacts)

in a certain situation right now especially at use of blending the two images those although limited but at the end in a fusion more DR capable for a kind of digital video HDR.

Read more about that exposure triangle>>>

 

[Patrick OMara]

Uh, where would that data come from? You'd need a lightfield sensor or something like it for that...

The technology is already available and super cheap(ie Microsoft Kinect)(although it's more about depth than a point cloud). You'd just need a higher resolution version.
There's also some 3d scanning technology you can use(using a projector), since epic can shoot high frame rates you could have the scanning done to the image inbetween your actual footage(similiar to their hdr trick). You can get very accurate and high res 3d data from that.



The possibilities would be wonderful.
* Already have all your tracking data available to use.
* Adjust lighting in 3d. Fog. etc..
* pick out characters/objects and only apply filters to them. colour correction
* green screens would be a thing of the past.

Pretty much all features you could be using in your 2D editor in a 3d way. It'd be incredible.


(side note)
Oh also, I've seen research tech that can auto tag your video(aside from face recognition), it can recognize actions, like "Shaking Hands", "Hugging", "Kissing". Yes it detects motion like that, crazy huh. Take that research and combine it with google goggles. You'd pretty much have all your video searchable/sortable. Metadata is really really important but everyone hates filling it out. Tat wouldn't exist on the camera though it'd be something you run after.


anyways.. lots of exciting potential out there.

 

[Petri Teittinen]

Stage 2 & 3 complete by beginning of November???
Stage 4 = November???

I'm in Stage 3.5 and have managed to convince myself that I will have an EPIC-X in my hands before Xmas 2011. The sooner the better, of course, but November does not sound bad at all.

 

[Jeffrey Loewe]

So I'm a little unaware of how the different stage's work....But are they finishing all Stages of the Epic X program before moving onto any other cameras? Or is there a certain point at one of the Stages in Epic X where they'll begin with the Scarlets and or Epic S cameras? Are the Stages where certain customers are slotted to have there cameras made?